SPEAKER_99

Good morning.

The Select Budget Committee will come to order.

It is 9.31 a.m., November 13th, 2024. I'm Dan Strauss, chair of the Select Committee.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Council President Nelson?

Present.

Councilman Osaka?

Here.

SPEAKER_16

Council Member Hollingsworth.

SPEAKER_99

Here.

SPEAKER_16

Council Member Kettle.

SPEAKER_09

Here.

SPEAKER_16

Council Member Moore.

Present.

Council Member Morales.

Here.

And Chair Strauss.

SPEAKER_09

Present.

SPEAKER_16

Seven present.

SPEAKER_09

Thank you.

Today on the agenda, we have a public hearing on the Memorial Stadium Redevelopment Project.

We have an overview and introduction of the budget actions and voting process for the next few days.

And we have a presentation of budget legislation, including groups A, B, C, and D, including consent amendments as presented on the Chair's balancing package on October 30th, proposed amendments to the Chair's balancing package submitted on November 1st, and legislation generating additional revenue sources.

If there is no objection, the agenda will be adopted.

Hearing no objection, the agenda is adopted.

I just had a brief overview of the agenda in very technical terms, so I'm going to say it in a little bit more plain language for us, and then we're going to get moving.

Today, we have two different types of public comment.

We have a public hearing that was publicly noticed in the newspapers of record for the last 30 days regarding the memorial.

STADIUM REDEVELOPMENT PROJECT.

WE WILL THEN MOVE INTO VERBAL PUBLIC COMMENT.

THANK YOU ALL FOR BEING HERE LESS THAN 12 HOURS AGO, RECEIVING PUBLIC COMMENT AS WELL.

WE WILL HAVE A PRESENTATION REGARDING, IT'S AN INTRODUCTION AND OVERVIEW OF THE NEXT FEW DAYS.

FROM THERE, AND TODAY THERE ARE ZERO VOTES.

WE WILL NOT BE VOTING ON ANYTHING TODAY.

TODAY IS INFORMATIONAL ONLY.

In this part of the budget, we are dead set in the middle of our two longest days, having the public hearing last night and an overview today.

From here, we'll turn into some of the more difficult days, but not as long.

So today we are only doing overviews, no votes.

We will look at other budget legislation, capital gains from Council Member Moore, Seattle Channel from Council President Nelson, and the payroll expense tax legislation from myself.

We will review the consent calendar.

Those are items in group A that were mostly, that were all in the chair's package.

Today when we go over them, we will only be talking about the changes since the chair's package.

We will be doing these, we will have these in groups labeled by departments.

I will ask colleagues for you to hold questions until we get through the entire department, and then at that point we can go back to individual CBAs within that department.

From there, we will brief groups B, C, and D.

If you are the sponsor, I will turn it over to you.

So we'll have a brief introduction from central staff, and then I will turn it over to you.

Colleagues, if you have questions or anything, you can ask them.

Or if you would like to hold your questions for one-on-one sessions with central staff, it will make sure that we're out by five.

Council Member Moore has a comp plan.

MEETING TO GO TO AT 5. I ALSO HAVE A SOUND TRANSIT WEST SEATTLE OR BALLARD LINK EXTENSION OPEN HOUSE AT 5. COUNCILMEMBER MOORE, I JUST WISH THESE DEPARTMENTS WOULD CHECK THE SCHEDULE, BUT HERE WE ARE.

AND SO I SAY YOU CAN SPEAK AS LONG AS YOU WANT, BUT PLEASE HOLD YOUR COMMENTS AND QUESTIONS IF POSSIBLE, BECAUSE THERE ARE YOU'VE SEEN THE LIST.

WE'VE GOT A LONG LIST TO GET THROUGH TODAY.

When we move into the next few days, so that's today.

We're just doing the overview.

When we get into tomorrow, we will be voting groups A and B.

We'll just be going through the voting.

So the chair's balancing package.

Council members, if you want to pull an item out of the consent package, you're free to do so.

You do not need to pull an item out to speak to it.

So when we vote on Group A tomorrow, if there's an item within the chair's package that you want to speak to, you can speak to it.

When we start pulling items out, if we have to vote affirmatively for 150 items, we're gonna be here for a really long time.

So it's just an operational process.

Again, you can pull items out for individual votes.

We'll then go to Group B. And then Group C is general consensus that could have been in Group A, but we didn't get them into the chair's package.

And again, the sponsor will speak to the item.

In Group D, this is the old Group C where we reserve more time for more robust discussion.

So there's a lot of time.

Tomorrow, we will vote on Group A and B and C.

If we are not voting on Group D by 3 p.m., I will hold it for Friday.

I can tell you it can get kind of exhausting up here voting for that many hours.

And for Group D, where we need to have the most amount of discussion, I'd like us to be as fresh and ready to go.

So we have two business days, Thursday and Friday, to vote on all of these items.

It may go fast, it may go slow.

We'll just kind of take it as it comes.

Colleagues, any questions on the Chair's report?

All right, well then let's move into the public hearing.

The Select Budget Committee will now open the public hearing on the Memorial Stadium Redevelopment Project.

Comments only on this topic will be accepted at this time.

If you have general comments on the 2025 proposed budget, those comments will be accepted at the conclusion of this public hearing.

Clerk, how many speakers are signed up to address the Memorial Stadium Redevelopment Project?

SPEAKER_16

Excuse me, Chair.

I don't believe anyone, but there is one in question that I'd like to just clarify, which is Darcy, a remote speaker.

Other than that, no one in person.

SPEAKER_01

Okay.

SPEAKER_09

Good morning, Darcy.

If you could press star six to unmute.

Are you here to speak about the Memorial Stadium Redevelopment Project or for general public comment?

SPEAKER_20

General public comment.

SPEAKER_09

Great, thank you.

We'll come right back to you in just a moment.

SPEAKER_20

Okay, no one?

SPEAKER_09

Thank you.

Seeing as there are no speakers physically or remotely present for this public hearing, the public hearing on the Memorial Redevelopment Project is now closed.

Thank you, colleagues.

We're going to move on to the open hybrid public comment period.

Public comments should relate to the items on today's agenda or within the purview of the Select Budget Committee.

Clerk, how many folks do we have signed up today?

SPEAKER_16

Sorry, I lost my public comment sheet.

Four in person and then we have 10 remote.

SPEAKER_09

Thank you.

We're going to take groups of 10. So we'll do in person first, the group of four, and then we'll move into the group online.

So in person, you can stand up at both podiums and alternate.

We have Brian Chu, Jason Austin, Alex Witt, and Hallie Willis.

Brian, welcome.

SPEAKER_05

Good morning.

Thank you, Council.

I just want to call out, I appreciate your service of coming back so soon.

As somebody who has had experience staffing council, I know what that's like.

So thank you for your service last night and tonight and today.

I'm here to speak on behalf of the SDOT Transportation Equity Workgroup.

I know one of my colleagues spoke as well last night, Keisha Jones.

So I'll have some abbreviated remarks similar to hers.

I just want to reiterate that we strongly urge council to support Mayor Harrell's and SDOT's levy budget centered around community engagement, transportation safety, accessibility, and equitable mobility options.

And we really urge you strongly to prioritize these investments, especially for our most vulnerable communities, including low-income, BIPOC, immigrant, refugee, disabled, unhoused, and aging communities.

As personally speaking, as somebody who works with individuals and families in the unhoused community, transportation safety and transportation equity and mobility options are sometimes some of the greatest determinants for them to get housing, particularly in their job search or housing search.

So we really appreciate programs in this levy budget, such as the NISPP, the Neighborhood Initiated Safety Partnership Program.

So we really would appreciate your close attention to those programs.

As my colleague mentioned earlier, facets like language accessibility, face-to-face engagement in community and data-driven decisions are what we feel like are very important considerations.

We've appreciated the opportunity to give public comment, to give feedback, to work with the council, Mayor Harrell, and SDOT.

on this budget, and we'll look forward to advocating for more transportation equity, accessibility, and information transparency.

We hope that you will work together with SDOT to ensure budget priorities can be implemented smoothly in a timely manner.

Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_09

Thank you, Brian.

Up next is Jason, followed by Alex, and then Hallie.

Morning, Jason.

SPEAKER_26

Good morning.

My name is Jason Austin, District 2 resident and program director at the Meals Partnership Coalition.

I am here today to speak in favor of investing in Seattle meal programs.

I want to thank Councilmember Hollingsworth and Councilmember Strauss for supporting amendments HSD 4 and 10, adding capital and operations funding for meal programs to the budget.

I also want to thank Councilmember Moore for proposing a capital gains tax to fund food security, among other important services.

The members of the Meals Partnership Coalition are the frontline of defense against hunger in Seattle.

Our 45 member organizations produce over 4 million ready-to-eat meals every year.

Our members include organizations such as the Pike Market Senior Center, Lake City Lifeline, Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church in the University District, and Cultivate South Park.

Every single neighborhood in Seattle contains at least one meal program that will benefit from these investments.

This funding will help our members stay afloat.

This year, Seattle meal programs witnessed a dramatic increase in demand from the previous year.

This increased need could not come at a worse time, as federal funding for hunger relief programs are now in serious jeopardy.

When people are unable to feed themselves and their families, they will resort to whatever means necessary to get their next meal.

Meal programs provide stability and structure to people who otherwise end up cycling through the medical and criminal justice system at great expense to taxpayers.

Again, thank you for funding both capital and operations funding support for meal programs.

These modest investments in food security will help create a Seattle that is safe and welcoming to all.

Thank you for your time.

SPEAKER_09

Thank you.

Up next is Alex, followed by Hallie.

Alex, welcome.

SPEAKER_00

Hello.

Good morning, council members.

My name is Alex Rios-Witt.

I am the kitchen manager at Chief Seattle Club in District 1. I'm here today to speak in favor of investing in Seattle meal programs.

I also want to thank Councilmember Hollingsworth and Strauss for supporting Amendment HSD 4 and 10. And that adds capital and operations funding for meal programs to the budget.

I also want to thank Councilmember Moore for proposing a capital gains tax to fund food security among other critical needs.

This funding has allowed Chief Saddle Club to purchase traditional meats and fresh produce in the amounts that we need that are normally out of our budget.

And being able to provide these meals for our members is important both culturally and health-wise.

It brings our people together and is important to keep traditional meals alive and in our diets.

We've also been able to replace and purchase new kitchen equipment that keeps us running smoothly with large numbers of members we serve daily.

Thank you again for supporting Council Member Hollingsworth's proposal to invest in meal programs like ours so we can continue to meet the needs of everyone who calls Seattle home.

Thank you, guys.

SPEAKER_09

Thank you, Alex.

Hallie, welcome.

SPEAKER_14

Good morning, council members.

Long time no see.

My name is Hallie Willis.

I'm the policy manager at the Seattle King County Coalition on Homelessness, and I'm a renter in District 6. I want to thank Councilmember Morales, Hollingsworth, and Moore for their amendments to restore funding for tenant services.

Those services are essential to keep people housed and resolve issues before someone loses their housing.

And these are some of the most cost-effective tools we have to prevent homelessness.

Please vote yes on SDCI 002 and SDCI 005. Rental assistance is also critical, and it's essential that we grow those investments too, but not at the expense of already modest tenant services investments.

Council should avoid carving those funds out of tenant services and vote no on HSD003A1 to keep tenant services funding whole.

However, the city does need to ensure that rental assistance and tenant services are connected so that people accessing tenant services through community-based organizations can get access to rental assistance funding to keep them housed.

We also recommend that you avoid limiting legal defense to people at or below 200% of federal poverty.

That's about $30,000 a year, and that's an outdated metric that doesn't reflect the extremely high cost of living in this city.

If we want to prevent homelessness, we need to expand these services, not restrict them.

Please vote no on the proviso that would limit these important services.

Thank you.

SPEAKER_09

Thank you.

We'll now move on to online public comment.

We do have a participant, Patricia Bowen, who is listed not present.

So, Patricia, please call in now.

We have now 11 folks who have signed up online.

And so, Patricia, you've got about...

10, 20 minutes right now until we'll call on you.

So we're gonna move through this.

I'll call everyone in the order in which they're registered and then we'll go one by one.

We'll first have Alberto Alvarez followed by Celestine Berry-Smith, Ankur Duhut, Ellen Green, Patricia Bowen if she calls in, Shomya Tripathi, I said it wrong last name.

It's not Phoenicia.

It's Phonica Zhang, Paulina Noblock, Darcy Wendia, Kate Rubin, and BJ Last.

With that, starting with Alberto Alvarez.

I see you're already off mute, Alberto.

Thank you.

Welcome.

Good morning.

SPEAKER_29

Good morning.

Affordable housing, worker protections, progressive revenue, Council, you know the spiel by now.

But I want to take a moment to point out how well the budget meetings have been conducted.

When the public is allowed to speak, to voice their needs and opinions, true governance is achieved.

Respect is earned.

And out of all the meetings I've followed, it is clearly proven that people will maintain order as long as they know they will be heard.

To budget chair Strauss, well done.

To council members Hollingsworth, Moore, Morales, Saka, and Strauss, please work together, reach out and partner up on a budget that will build housing, protect workers, and bring in the revenue needed to build a city for the working class.

Thank you, and have a good day.

SPEAKER_09

Thank you.

Next is Celestine Berry-Smith.

Good morning, Celestine.

I see you're here.

Star six to unmute.

You're off mute.

Welcome.

Take it away.

SPEAKER_15

Good morning, council members.

My name is Celestine Berry-Smith, and I manage Solid Grounds Tenant Services Program.

I want to thank the council, especially council member Morales, Moore, and Hollingsworth for their efforts to fully fund tenant services.

When tenant services are fully funded, we can help renters problem solve issues before they reach a point of eviction or needing rental assistance.

For example, a call came into our voice message line from a Seattle tenant whose unit flooded due to weather, who was questioning why their landlord was insisting to call a move out.

did not want to pay for displaced lodging and increased the rent without issuing a 180-day notice.

Our tenant counselor educated this caller on renters' rights they were unaware of and helped avoid a potential future eviction notice.

In 2023, over 1,700 renters in Seattle and King County got support through our program at Solid Ground.

With more people homeless in our city than ever before and with eviction rates at historic highs, we need tenant services programs to be fully funded.

Please support Councilmember Morales' amendment.

Thank you for considering our comments.

SPEAKER_09

Thank you, Celestine.

Up next is Encore, followed by Ellen.

I see you're here now, Encore.

Star six to unmute.

Thanks.

Welcome.

SPEAKER_30

Good morning council members.

My name is Ankur.

I live and work in D7 and D6.

I'm calling to give public comment on the city budget and to voice support for projects like the Route 40 transit multimodal corridor project.

This was a project with over four years of community engagement.

It'll deliver safety improvements for all users and reliability improvement for transit users along the corridor.

Bus-only lanes, bus bulbs, curb extensions, and median islands are proven tools and the city should continue to implement them.

The Route 40 is the type of project that Seattle should deliver more of to meet our Vision Zero and climate commitments.

I'd also like to support the use of automated camera enforcement revenue back into traffic safety instead of as an indefinite funding source for other projects.

The ultimate goal should be to make our streets safe by design and infrastructure and remove the reliance on automated enforcement.

Thank you for your time.

SPEAKER_09

Thank you.

Up next is Ellen Green and Patricia Bone.

You have still not called in, so we'll have Shomya Tripathi after Ellen.

Welcome, Ellen.

I see you're here.

Star six to unmute.

I see you're off mute.

Welcome.

SPEAKER_22

Hi, my name is Ellen Green, and I'm a District 3 resident with the First Hill Improvement Association.

And on behalf of First Hill, I want to thank you for this opportunity to speak to you all and thank Councilmember Hollingsworth for her proposal to include critical maintenance funding in the budget for First Hill Park.

This park is an essential green space in one of Seattle's densest neighborhoods where open spaces are incredibly limited.

So every square foot of green space matters to this community.

Earth Hill Park underwent a community-led remodel in just 2021, testament to the neighborhood's care and commitment to this park.

However, without consistent funding for maintenance, that investment is now at risk.

Because without regular upkeep, the park is quickly underutilized and attracts unsafe and unsanitary conditions for all.

And to be clear, maintaining First Hill Park isn't just about keeping it pretty, it's about keeping it activated and safe.

When parks are well maintained, they are naturally more inviting for positive use.

So please help us in creating a thriving urban environment and prioritize funding for First Hill Park.

Thank you very much.

SPEAKER_09

Thank you.

Patricia Bowen is still not present, so we'll move on to Shomya, and then I think it's Phonica, but my apologies for getting it wrong so many times.

Shomya, I see you're off mute.

Welcome.

SPEAKER_18

Hi, everyone.

Good morning.

My name is Shomya, and I'm the policy director at Asian Counseling and Referral Service.

As a service provider to over 30,000 Asians, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islander clients in King County, ACRS is urging council to protect and invest in our city's most vulnerable communities.

With more clients and communities on the streets than ever, we ask that council protects the entire Jumpstart Spend Plan, which includes the 62% investment in affordable housing.

But we need to not only invest in affordable housing, but also invest in the structures that prevent homelessness and support our currently in-house, including increasing rental assistance, fully restoring tenant supports, and fully funding 300 shelter beds, day centers, and rapid rehousing services that have been funded with one-time dollars for several years.

Additionally, we have seen funding for gender-based violence prevention services lessened over the last few years, while the needs for our ANNHPI youth and other BIPOC and QCBIPOC youth who are vulnerable to trafficking and violence are very, very high.

And while we recognize that we are facing very major deficits, we are also trying to choose between essential services that our community members need.

This reaffirms our city's need for additional progressive revenue sources that can support housing, shelter, and human services.

Thank you so much for your consideration.

SPEAKER_09

Thank you.

Up next is Phonica, followed by Paulina Noblock.

And my apologies for getting your name wrong.

I see you're off mute.

Welcome.

SPEAKER_21

Good morning.

Thank you.

Good morning, council members and Chair Strauss.

Appreciate the effort.

My name is Finika Jong, and I am the Community Policy Specialist at Solid Ground.

And my colleague, Patricia Bowen, who manages the Benefits Legal Assistance Program at Solid Ground, unfortunately had to step away, so she won't be able to make comments.

But she did want to thank the council for restoring funds for legal services for people who are trying to access public benefits.

And we hope that you all will finalize those in the consent package.

We wanted to share some gratitude to Council Member Morales and Moore and Collingsworth for their amendment intended to fully restore tenant services funding.

And we ask that the council support this amendment to keep tenant services whole and reject the amendment to take funding away from these services to fund rental assistance.

As you heard from another commenter, from our tenant services program, rental assistance is really crucial and we fully support those investments and tenant services programs can help people avoid needing rental assistance in the first place or avoid reaching that point of eviction.

And so we think that this is a really important thing to keep whole in a time where we're going to expect more renters struggling.

Lastly, we'd like to ask y'all to hold off on making permanent policy changes to Jump Start during the budget process.

Numerous community groups have worked with the prior councils to pass the original Jump Start spending plan, and with such a major change to such a major revenue stream, we hope that there's a more thorough stakeholder engagement process.

And along the same lines, I wanted to thank Council Member Moore for introducing the capital gains tax and recognizing the need for more progressive revenue to fund critical services.

Thank you all so much for your hard work during the budget process, and we look forward to working with you.

SPEAKER_09

Thank you.

Up next is Paulina Noblock, followed by Darcy Buendia.

Paulina, I see you're here.

Star six to unmute.

You're off mute.

Welcome.

SPEAKER_17

Hello, my name is Paulina.

I'm a renter and live in Seattle's Fremont neighborhood, which is King County District 4 and Seattle County District 6. A comment is a continuation of yesterday's public comments in the context of the 2025-2026 budget.

I wanted to say that I've been volunteering in the U District at the Roots Youth Homeless Shelter for a long time now, but I've been providing warm beds, meals, and connection services to young adults who deserve not to sleep in the rain just as much as anyone else.

food shelter could lose about 100,000 in annual funding.

And generally, there are 16 homeless service projects facing 5.1 million cuts over the next two years.

Decreasing how much our population is unhoused continues to be a top issue for voters and residents in poll after poll of voters and residents in our city.

And I urge our council members to keep that in mind and to protect the jumpstart plan, including the 60% investment in affordable housing so that I, as a renter, Yes, Ruth's shelter and everyone in our city has the ability to stay here to live and work.

Thank you.

SPEAKER_09

Thank you, Paulina.

Up next is Darcy Buendia, followed by Kate Rubin, and then BJ Last, and that will be our final speaker.

Darcy, welcome.

I see you're off mute.

SPEAKER_20

Good morning to the council.

My name is Darcy Buendia, and I am co-executive director at Hunger Inclusion Team Program, a renter in District 3. and a long-time member of the Meals Partnership Coalition.

Like some of my colleagues before me, I am here to speak in favor of investing in Seattle meal programs.

I'm thankful for Councilmember Hollingsworth and Strauss who have supported amendments HFC 4 and 10, which add capital and operating funding for meal programs for the budget.

I also would like to thank Councilmember Moore for proposing a capital gains tax to fund food security, among other critical needs.

New revenue sources are so needed.

This proposed funding is critical to meal programs, big and small.

In coalition meetings, it is painfully clear that we are all serving more meals and doing it with less financial support than ever.

Many of us are facing the sobering decision to deepen our debts or let our neighbors go without meals.

At Hunger Intervention Program, we are struggling to keep our senior meal delivery program running due to financial restraints.

This particular meal program reaches our most vulnerable, often homebound, and resource-sourced community members.

Seattle is strong enough to support every citizen and this funding helps make that a reality.

Funding like that proposed in HSC Amendment 4 and 10, so serious funding gaps for vulnerable community members.

Funding like this goes so far for a meal program like mine.

Funding like this makes Seattle a safer and stronger place for every community member.

Thank you so much for the opportunity to speak today.

SPEAKER_09

Thank you, Darcy.

Up next is Kate followed by BJ.

Kate, I see you're here.

Star six to unmute.

You're off mute.

Welcome.

SPEAKER_19

Hi, my name is Kate Rubin.

I'm the co-executive director of BC Seattle and a renter living in District 2. I would like to thank Council Members Morales, Moore, and Hollingsworth for sponsoring Amendment SBCI 005A1 intended to fully restore tenant services funding.

However, due to the confusing way these services were combined with rental assistance in the Mayor's budget, Another $527,000 is needed to restore this funding and have the impact the amendment intends.

I urge the council to support this amendment and explore any additional efforts to fully restore tenant services funding to 2024 levels and reject HSD-039A that redirects $527,000 for rental assistance from tenant services under SCCI to HSD.

I acknowledge that tenant services and rental assistance distributed by tenant services organizations are distinct needs.

They should not be pitted against each other for funding as they are currently.

However, because SCCI is managing the tenant services contract, to reduce administrative overlap and ensure that rental assistance is used effectively, it should be distributed by the same department.

I strongly oppose the budget proviso SCCI-06A that limits eviction legal defense proceedings to clients with incomes at or below 200% of the federal poverty level and requires income verification reporting.

This would create a massive benefits cliff That would essentially include all full-time workers and many retirees, even those who are spending more than half of their income on rent.

Given that our cost of living is 45% higher and housing is 112% higher than the national average, facing anything on federal income limits is a fundamental disregard to the realities that Seattle renters face.

Finally, while I understand the role of the Jumpstart payroll tax, and balancing the budget, I urge against making it a permanent fix to the general fund shortfall.

Please reject proposals to permanently alter its spending plan and instead convene the Oversight Committee to explore all options, including new revenue, without diverting funds from EDI, Affordable Housing and Climate Program.

Thank you to Council Member Moore for interest.

SPEAKER_09

Thank you, Kate.

Last, we have BJ Last.

I see you're here.

Welcome, BJ.

Good morning.

SPEAKER_07

Good morning.

My name is BJ last.

I'm a D six homeowner and I support the Seattle solidarity budget and all nine guarantees.

I'm really disappointed with the way that council is trying to use this budget to advance policy items that failed during the year, uh, like attempts to cut minimum wage for gig workers and tipped workers, which failed this budget now goes ahead and does that by defunding OLS, uh, OLS office of labor standards so far this year has recovered over $6.4 million.

in wages stolen from workers.

That shows what absolutely vital work that they are doing to keep, well, honestly, well, to fight crime because wage theft is crime, even though y'all like typically don't refer to it as much.

So OLS should be actually getting fully funded and expanded to help people get their pay and stay housed.

Also, this budget has effectively guts, renter protections, which council had talked about doing earlier this year.

Budget does that by getting tenant services and making eviction defense pretty much unavailable by putting in income requirements that are absurdly low for the city of Seattle.

So I would urge council if they don't want to actually roll back tenant protections to do what the last caller laid out in terms of which amendments to accept and which to reject.

Because these cuts to OLS tenant services and eviction defense aren't due to a lack of funds.

At the same time, SPD is getting $39.5 million for 212 ghost cops.

And these ghost cops all got a massive raise from last year.

You can see this if you look at any of the central staff memos from this year and last year.

This year's cost of a ghost cop is $183,000.

Last year, it was $142,000.

So while we're cutting pay, not giving human service workers a pay, cutting labor protections and tenant services, ghost cops are getting a massive raise.

On top of that, that doesn't even count the millions that SPD gets for harbor patrol, despite council's own report showing that SPD has absolutely no jurisdiction on any waters and nine or 11 agencies also do search and rescue there, making them purely.

SPEAKER_09

Thank you, BJ.

And feel free to email any additional comments into council.

We see a late arrival in our public comment period when Mr. David Haynes, David, you are not present right now.

I will try to stall for just a second to see if we can't get that to come in.

Otherwise, please feel free to email your public hearing comments as well as your general public comments to council at seattle.gov.

I'm gonna stall just one more second to see if we are able to get you in.

And unfortunately, we do need to move forward so there are no additional registered speakers remotely or physically present And so we will move on to the first item of business today Director noble deputy director.

Ho I want to first start out by thanking you and your team I'll have the clerk read the item into the record in just one second But what many folks don't know is that we worked really hard you worked really hard to get a the agenda for these next few days out with enough time for the public to see the agenda before the public hearing last night, which required you to work over the weekend and on a holiday.

So I just wanna thank you.

You've been going nonstop since September 24th and it is now November 13th.

So with that, thank you.

Have the clerk read the short title into the record.

SPEAKER_16

Agenda item one, introduction and overview for briefing and discussion.

SPEAKER_09

Thank you.

Over to you.

Sorry if I stole your thunder with my chair's report.

It was my verbal test from the information you've presented to me.

SPEAKER_02

All good.

Thank you.

I'm going to turn this over to Yolanda very quickly here to kind of set the agenda for the day.

SPEAKER_09

I'm so sorry.

I forgot my one post-it note that's on my microphone.

Colleagues, we have hot coffee in the green room.

There's Clif bars.

Please feel free to grab some if you want.

It's for everyone.

Back to you all.

SPEAKER_13

Okay, great.

Good morning, members of the Select Budget Committee.

I am Yolanda Ho of your Council Central staff.

Before I start talking about our overview, I want to also thank my team, our team, for their incredibly hard work of turning around close to 170 budget amendments in a very short period of time.

and working with you all deftly to make sure they reflect your intent and will facilitate our conversation today.

So with that, I will turn to the overview of what is in store for the remainder of this week.

and going into next week.

So we're gonna start off today with talking about what we are categorizing as other budget legislation.

This is legislation that is on a slightly different track because just timing issues and other considerations.

So today central staff will be describing those items for the committee and also facilitating discussion there.

Those items will be for a vote on Tuesday, next Tuesday, the final committee meeting of the Select Budget Committee before adoption of the budget.

Any amendments to those pieces of legislation that will be presented at the front of our series of presentations needs to be submitted to central staff by noon on Friday.

So it's a quick turnaround.

That's why we are presenting those at the front end of all our presentations.

Next, we will briefly describe the budget legislation that has no proposed amendments that were transmitted with the budget.

This is proposed as a legislation consent calendar.

Ben will describe those briefly for your awareness, and then the intent is to vote on those pieces of legislation.

Next, we will be presenting on budget legislation that has proposed amendments and there'll be, well, three items in that category and then votes taken beginning tomorrow on those.

And then finally, of course, there are the many 164 amendments to the budget adoption ordinance.

And we will be describing those today.

And we will be voting on those amendments, only the amendments, tomorrow and possibly Friday if needed.

And then that will be voted on on the 19th on the bill as amended.

So...

That is the plan of action.

And as you have noted in the agenda packet, those 164 amendments are organized into groups A, B, C, and D.

So for today is discussion only.

So we just want to make sure everyone knows don't get ready to vote.

That will commence tomorrow.

And we will provide some brief reminders on motions that are common during budget committee that are not common during other times of the year.

So we will give you a brief refresher on scripting on those items.

But today we are just talking about all the stuff that is before you on the agenda.

So as I mentioned, we will be talking about the budget legislation that will be ultimately voted on on next Tuesday.

So that will be our first round of presentations.

AND WE'LL NOTE SOME INITIAL AMENDMENTS TO, IN PARTICULAR, THE JUMP START PAYROLL EXPENSE TAX POLICIES AND KIND OF ANSWER QUESTIONS AND KIND OF HELP THE COMMITTEE DISCUSSION.

THEN WE WILL MOVE ON TO THE LEGISLATION CONSENT CALENDAR AND THEN GO ON TO BUDGET LEGISLATION PROPOSED.

SO, SORRY, THE LEGISLATION CONSENT CALENDAR, BEN WILL BRIEFLY DESCRIBE THE GROUP AS A WHOLE.

And then he will pause at the end to answer any questions.

And then with budget legislation with proposed amendments, those will be individual presentations.

The first one should be very short because it was actually just a technical amendment that we noted needed to happen yesterday.

So we had to pull that one out of the consent calendar.

Otherwise it would have been included because there was nothing really substantive there for you all's consideration.

And then we will move on to describing the amendments in the, oops, that should be the 2025 budget adoption ordinance, not the 2024. So anyway, here we are.

Group A is going to, should look familiar to you all.

Those are mostly, those are all amendments, almost all the amendments that were discussed on October 30th that were included in the chair's balancing package.

Group B is currently only one item that is proposed as a substitute to vote in Group A. And then Group C is another proposed consent amendment package that consists of ideas that were submitted on November 1st by various members of this committee.

And then those are proposed for a single vote to kind of help expedite the voting, because there's a lot of voting.

And then group D is amendments that were identified by the chair as needing and warranting additional discussion and thus included in this individual vote category.

So the plan of action today, just for your awareness is that Because we already presented the items in Group A individually, we're gonna have various central staffers read each title of Group A by department into the record.

So they're gonna proceed by department.

They will pause at the end.

They will also note if there are any changes between October 30th and today for your awareness and allow for any questions.

So after each department is completed, ANALYSTS WILL PAUSE TO ALLOW FOR QUESTIONS AND THE INTENT IS TO MOVE THROUGH THAT FAIRLY SPEEDILY SO WE CAN GET TO KIND OF THE NEW ITEMS THAT HAVE NOT BEEN PRESENTED TO THE COMMITTEE PREVIOUSLY.

SPEAKER_09

THANK YOU DEPUTY DIRECTOR HO.

SPEAKER_02

Overall, it's an ambitious agenda, a busy day.

But the goal here is that you will have seen everything that will be potentially up for discussion before you're asked to vote on any individual thing.

So that's really the purpose of the day, is to give you a comprehensive view of all the possible things that are under consideration, a quick review of the balancing package, but then the new materials as well.

And again, you'll have seen everything.

And then once you start to commence voting, you'll have that full background.

SPEAKER_13

Yes, so the intent is for tomorrow.

So the Group A presentation tomorrow will be even shorter so that you can move towards voting, right?

So we will talk about them today, but then tomorrow they will be just described as one group, and then folks can do that.

You know, you can make your motions and all that.

So our intent is to have the conversation today so that tomorrow can be voted.

focusing on the voting and the motions and all that, and having that discussion around the amendments themselves and what you all are planning on to do.

So that is how we are structuring these series of meetings.

SPEAKER_09

Thank you, Director and Deputy Director.

I'll add just some operational details here.

And colleagues, if you have any questions on the presentation, this is the time.

I will just say we've engaged in a couple of budget reform process reforms this year.

You'll be seeing when it comes to full council and the committee for a vote, we are using the consent calendar, which is different than in past years where we have had to take a voice vote on every single bill.

which takes hours.

And so that is part of why we are using the groups A, B, C, and D, so that we can reserve more time for you to speak than for you to say yes or no, because it ends up two hours of everyone saying yes for two hours, and that's not very productive.

So trying to save some time.

Colleagues, any questions, comments on this overview?

Again, amendments to the payroll expense tax and the capital gains or any of these other due by Friday at noon.

Seeing no questions, I think we're going to move on to the next.

Do I need to read in the next agenda item?

It's just the same one.

So just keep going.

Thank you.

SPEAKER_08

Good morning, Chair Strauss, Vice Chair Rivera, and members of the Select Budget Committee.

I'm Tom Mikesell with your central staff.

So this morning, I'm going to brief you on two pieces of legislation regarding a city capital gains excise tax, starting with the legislation that imposes the tax and then ending with a bill that allocates the revenues from the tax.

So first, I'm going to give a little bit of background because the city's tax is based directly off of a state tax of the same type that was imposed a few years back.

Specifically, that tax was adopted by Chapter 196 of Laws 2001 of the State of Washington Legislature, and it was effective of July 2021. That tax imposed a 7% rate of tax on long-term capital asset sales above minimum standard deduction of $250,000.

So that was in 2022. The threshold has since been inflated, and I'll cover that a little bit later in the presentation because that applies to how the Seattle taxes is set up.

The proceeds from that tax were deposited into the Education Legacy Trust account in the state and the Common School Construction account.

So the tax was challenged and was successfully was maintained to be a constitutional tax, exercise of the state's taxation power.

The case was Quinn versus State of Washington.

And then finally, this tax has been collected for two years.

In the first year of collection in 2023, $840 million were collected by the state.

In the second year, $371 million were collected by the state in 2024. So let's go to the next slide.

So that was the state's tax.

This is the city's tax now that we'll talk about in terms of structure.

So the structure is the same, which has benefits in terms of compliance and administration and forecasting of the revenues for the tax.

The one key difference is that the city's tax is, of course, applied only within the city of Seattle jurisdictional boundaries.

And it's a 2% tax instead of a 7% tax.

And it's in addition to the state's tax.

So I mentioned the inflationary adjustments.

So there has been one inflationary adjustment to the state's tax since its 2022 initial imposition.

And that brings that standard deduction up to $262,000 for this year.

So that is what the current city tax before you is based on that threshold.

there is additional language within the bill that keeps that threshold up to date with the state's tax.

Every year that there is an inflationary adjustment made by the state, the city's tax would inflate in parallel.

In terms of other things that are standard deductions from the tax, any amounts prohibited for taxation by the state or federal constitution, gains from the sale of a qualified family small business, up to $105,000 of charitable deductions above a minimum standard deduction of $262,000.

And as I said, all those thresholds are inflated automatically each year by inflation.

Now let's look at the next.

So then there's also exemptions.

And so the difference between a deduction and an exemption will be if you're claiming a deduction, that means you're submitting a tax return.

However, things that are exempt, if you're fully exempt, you don't even have to submit a tax return.

Most of the taxpayers in this city or potential taxpayers would not qualify because of the exemption, because one of the key exemptions is real estate sales.

This tax would not apply to any sales of real estate in the city.

Furthermore, retirement accounts, which a lot of potential taxpayers have retirement accounts, all the gains within those accounts are fully exempt under this tax.

Condemnations, livestock, commercial fishing, timber, and then goodwill from an auto dealership sale are also similarly exempt, so no return would be if that was the only type of tax liability.

Finally, the tax would be effective on January of 2026, January 1st, with the first collections coming in April of 2027, so about a year and a few months after the tax is imposed.

And so these are just some really simple examples kind of to show how the exemptions and deductions work.

So in this first example, let's just assume that a resident sold a million dollars of stock.

And the original basis when they purchased that stock was $700,000.

And so now they're selling it, and they've realized a long-term gain of $300,000.

So first step.

Apply the standard deduction to $162,000, which brings you to a net gain of $48,000.

Apply the 2% rate for a $960 tax.

Next example.

So this is the real estate exemption that I mentioned.

So someone sells a house in 2026, originally purchased it in 2010. for $200,000, they sold it for $1.2 million.

So that's a capital gain of $1 million.

But because that property sale is completely exempt, there's a 100% exemption of $1 million.

So there is no capital gain in this example for which to apply the tax.

So let me pause just real quick before I move on.

OK, let's look at the next slide.

SPEAKER_09

I would just say run through it all.

I'm going to pass it over to Council Member Moore once you're done with your presentation.

SPEAKER_08

Great.

So now we're going to talk about the revenue from the tax.

So I guess to start off, because the tax would apply in 2026, the first collections will be in 2027. So this exercise is estimating revenues for a tax TWO YEARS FROM NOW BASED ON LIMITED DATA.

SO THIS ESTIMATE WAS DEVELOPED BY DIRECTOR DURAS OF THE OFFICE OF ECONOMIC FORECAST FOR THE CITY AND REALLY APPRECIATE THE WORK THAT THEY DID.

HOWEVER, THERE'S A LOT OF UNCERTAINTY THAT'S EMBEDDED IN IT BECAUSE OF THAT WHAT WE'RE PROVIDING IS A RANGE OF ESTIMATES AS OPPOSED TO LIKE A SINGLE NUMBER TO HONE IN ON.

So, within that range, there are assumptions and then data that the information is based on.

Primarily, because this is a state tax, there is a state forecast that they can rely on to kind of generate some of the information.

As I mentioned, the first year of the state tax was $870,000 or so.

The second year dropped to $370,000.

So, that indicates a lot of the volatility of the tax at the state level.

There is data for the 2023 tax that is available to us, available to the forecast office specifically, that tells how many taxpayers paid the tax and more so how many of those potential taxpayers are in the city.

So it gives us a sense of how many people would be liable to pay this tax if it were imposed.

At a high level, there was information attached with the fiscal note for this bill that indicated that I believe the state tax was received by about 3,600 taxpayers in 2023, so a very small number of taxpayers at the state level.

The city level was smaller than that.

I believe it was about 163 total taxpayers that paid the tax at the city level.

And so what the forecast office did is apply those relationships to the state's forecast to generate a range of estimates, including how many potential taxpayers they would be, what they are as a percent of the statewide share, and then estimates about compliance.

So the state assumed that compliance, that the percent of taxpayers that would comply with the tax would be lower in the beginning and grow in future years as informational efforts were improved and compliance was improved from starting from an 85% compliance rate up to, I believe, 95% compliance by 2026. So that's one assumption.

However, an alternate assumption would be that compliance did not up and that it stayed low.

So the range of estimates that the forecast office provided was for 2027, $51 million at the high end.

And so that is using basically a higher level of compliance for the tax and a low taxpayer response.

So elasticity, basically when you raise a tax, you expect some behaviors to change.

So they're anticipating at the high level that there would be not a lot of response to the tax.

And then finally, and this is kind of a different assumption about the share of tax and the amount of growth in the stock market, essentially.

In the state's forecast, they only assume a 13% growth rate.

coming into 2025. However, the forecast office looked at some IRS data for returns and indicated that perhaps there could be a much greater growth going into 2025 out of 2024 as taxpayers monitored a ballot initiative at the state level that would have repealed the state's tax.

So the implication is they were waiting to see what the result of was of that ballot initiative before they sold stocks to generate a potential gain.

Now that has been resolved.

That initiative failed at the ballot.

And so now the alternate assumption is that those grains would be much higher than what's included in the state's forecast.

So that's the $51 million range.

The $16 million, which is the low end of the range, is an assumption that the taxpayer compliance stays at 85%.

The response to the tax at the city level particularly is high, so a lot of drop off in receipts because taxpayers change their behavior.

They structure the way they sell their assets to generate gains.

And to be quite blunt, they perhaps change residents.

And so because this is a locally imposed capital gains tax and it applies to people that are assumed to be of high net worth, they have options and are better prepared to respond to a local-only tax.

None of it's a guarantee, but these are just the considerations that are implicit in forecasting the revenue from this type of tax.

However, if the tax was imposed, even if the tax is not imposed, we will get successive revenue estimates in 2025 and 2026 that will help fine-tune that range.

WHEN TIME COMES TO BUDGET THE REVENUES HERE IN THE CITY.

IF WE CAN LOOK AT THE NEXT SLIDE, I SORT OF HAVE TALKED A LITTLE BIT ABOUT SOME OF THESE RISKS WITH THE ESTIMATE.

ONE IS THE SMALL NUMBER OF TAXPAYERS.

I THINK I SAID 106. SO 85 PERCENT CAME FROM 163 TAXPAYERS.

THERE WAS ACTUALLY A LARGER GROUP, 816 TAXPAYERS THAT WERE INCLUDED.

23 collections from the state.

It's mostly equities because of the exemptions that are applied to real estate.

And it all depends on where the taxpayer is domiciled.

So basically, where do they call their home?

What do they consider their home?

And there are specific definitions in the bill that define what that means.

Um, so there was a memo again, I mentioned that the forecast office attached, they, you know, referenced that there's a lot of volatility, a lot of uncertainty in this tax.

Um, and that it could, even though there is a range, it could still come in higher or lower than that range.

And now if we could look at the next slide.

So, um, this is some budget considerations.

One, um, is that, uh, I, I mentioned the first revenue from this tax would not be until 2027. There are implementation costs, and so these are just rough estimates that would be informed by future budget requests.

And, you know, in this case, I would thank the Office of City Finance and Department of Finance Administrative Services for providing this information under a short time frame.

But they did indicate that there would be one-time systems costs of getting their systems up to date to collect this information of $1 million, and then ongoing costs, including systems and staff, of $1.2 million per year.

They indicated that they would require 18 to 24 months to implement, which does not necessarily pose a problem in this case because the first collections would not be until 2027. And then again, this is just a fiscal note estimate.

The actual costs would require further analysis and be part of a budget request.

And then finally, this is kind of in the caveats and risks realm.

Budgeting these revenues are made in the context of a high level of uncertainty and some ways to compensate for that uncertainty would be either to use the low end of the range or to in fact wait for the first year of collections to actually come in before making budget allocations.

And I believe that is the final slide for So I can pause about the actual tax before we talk about the use of proceeds bill.

SPEAKER_09

Thank you, Tom.

Council Member Moore is sponsor of the bill.

You are recognized.

I see Council President has her hand up.

Over to you, Council Member Moore.

SPEAKER_23

Great.

Thank you very much, Chair.

Thank you very much, Tom, for your presentation and your work on this.

So I'm just going to make some general remarks, which I sort of made them already, which is I recognize that most of us came to this position talking about being fiscally conservative and prudent.

and wanting to do a deep dive on the budget before we talked about progressive revenue.

And I think that we've done that.

Thanks to the leadership of Chair Strauss, I think we've engaged in an unprecedented deep dive and review, and I really do appreciate that.

I know there was a little back and forth about whether it was technically an audit, but nonetheless, it's been very much a thoughtful review.

And through that, we've also had the mayor present to us a plan to deal with our $270 million deficit by looking at payroll expense tax money to cover that in the general fund.

And I think we've done a good job in trying to cover THAT DEFICIT AND REMAIN TRUE TO THE VALUES THAT WE'VE EXPRESSED.

BUT IT BECAME VERY CLEAR TO ME IN THAT PROCESS THAT WE STILL ARE FALLING SHORT ON CRITICAL AREAS.

AND WHILE OUR BUDGET DOES HAVE MONEY FOR RENTAL ASSISTANCE, IT DOES HAVE MONEY FOR HOME OWNERSHIP down payment assistance, and it does have some money for food insecurity, all of those funds are severely lacking to the level of need that we have.

And I think that that's been demonstrated by the comments of people who've come to council.

And so, It's never fun to look at additional revenue, but I think the fact that this revenue source has been tested, both in terms of going through the legal process in the courts and upheld at the state level, and then it was challenged in the initiative, and I think it was a 60% vote to retain it, indicates to me that this is a solid, it's a solid form of additional revenue, and that it has broad public support.

And I'm hoping that my amendment to increase rental assistance by $3.3 million will pass.

But even if that does pass, we are, again, an additional need for more rental assistance.

I recognize that this is a volatile tax, so is payroll expense tax, and yet we are looking at using that as a significant factor.

source of revenue for our city now and going forward.

Most of these taxes are volatile.

We do not have the opportunity to pursue an income tax.

The state legislature made that decision as one of the initiatives that they adopted.

And so we are really somewhat hamstrung in which, where we can look for sustainable revenue.

One of the reasons that, so the reason I think I've explained why I chose the designated categories, but I did not set a percentage.

And one of the reasons I did not set a percentage is because of the fact that we don't know what the income is going to generate each year.

And so my thinking is that we get the money, we see how much we have, and then we use our discretion as we are elected to do with input from stakeholders and the community about what is the most pressing need and how do we distribute the money.

And so that is an ongoing budgeting decision, and it gives us the flexibility that we need to address issues as they arise.

So, those are just sort of my basic points about this.

And the other reason that I'm bringing it now is that it is a lengthy process, so it would take a year to track, a year to collect.

There is a possibility of legal challenge, I want to acknowledge that.

and then we would only be in a position to begin to allocate in 2027. And so we are looking at a significant deficit in 2027. So I wanted to get the ball rolling to at least provide us an additional revenue source at that point, rather than continuing to have additional discussion and wait longer before we started it.

So that is my thinking behind bringing this, thank you.

SPEAKER_09

Thank you, Council Member Moore.

Council President, did you still want to...

I see your hand's not there, but I figured I'd ask.

SPEAKER_10

It bugs me just to watch it on the screen.

I do have a question about the presentation, just a clarification.

Please.

I think that you were saying that...

I think I heard you say that the first year anticipated revenue from the state's income capital gains tax was X amount and the following year was quite a bit less.

Is that what you said?

SPEAKER_08

Okay.

I would, Council President, I would say that it wasn't the first year of expected revenue from the tax.

It was actually the first actual collections from the tax were $870 million.

In fact, the state expected less than that amount in the first year.

And then we're surprised to the upside.

And then in the second year, it came in at $370 million.

Wow.

SPEAKER_10

So from 800 to 300 something.

And what were the reasons for that drop?

SPEAKER_08

I don't know the specific reasons other than, I mean, one of the possible rationales is that the waiting for the results of the ballot initiative However, it could just be response to the tax.

It's unclear.

But the number of taxpayers was roughly the same, one data point that was provided by the forecast office.

So it was about 3,000, 3,600 taxpayers in total.

In the second year, it was about the same.

So it could just be the total value of the asset sales as different decisions are made.

SPEAKER_10

So the economic activity changed by the taxpayers, not necessarily they didn't move out of Washington is what you're saying.

Right.

SPEAKER_02

The concentration at the state level was also, if you will, extreme.

So a relatively large share of the statewide revenues were paid from a relatively few number of individuals.

So just those individuals making different financial decisions with regard to their own finances could have that kind of an impact.

I mean, I forget the exact data, but, like, the top 10 payers were responsible for 25% statewide.

It's just, like...

mind-boggling at some level.

But anyway, those individual decisions could drive literally tens of millions of dollars in revenue in terms of its impact.

And that's highlighted in the comments here about that, if you will, natural volatility.

SPEAKER_10

Thank you.

And one follow-up.

Last year we entertained or we talked about establishing a capital gains tax to offset the removal of the utility tax.

And I believe that that was about 32 million, is that correct?

Do you remember what percentage that was?

SPEAKER_08

I do recall that the number was in the $30 million range.

I think it was about $30 million, so it was estimated last year at that time.

But we didn't have the results from the 2023 collections at that time either.

But it was 2%, right?

It was 2%, correct.

Thank you.

SPEAKER_09

Thank you.

Council President, anything further?

SPEAKER_12

Yep.

SPEAKER_09

You good?

SPEAKER_12

Mm-hmm.

Council Member Morales.

Thank you.

Tom, you might not have an exact answer to this, but I am curious, if we do something like this, given the fluctuation and not having a good sense of what might be coming in from year to year, how we might anticipate what that means for programming of the dollars.

appreciate that the idea here is to make sure that it is going into housing.

But what does it mean for us in terms of programming expectations?

Right.

SPEAKER_08

Thanks for the question, Council Member Morales.

That is the part to how to deal with the risk.

So we will get two more data points in terms of collections from the state's tax.

So 2025 revenues and 2026 revenues will come in to see what the trends are, to analyze how much of that is coming from Seattle addresses to give a better sense than we have now because right now we have basically two data points.

So we'll get a few more data points.

And then also, assuming that there is still a range provided from the forecast office, budgeting to the lower end of the range would be the safer move to do, or even pause a year, apply the tax in the first year, and then kind of budget the money you've collected as opposed to budgeting based on a forecast.

SPEAKER_02

Got it.

Okay.

You can do a hybrid.

You could budget to the low, low end, and then when you've got the receipts, come April, May, make a mid-year appropriation to the difference.

Okay.

But it would imply that you're at some level waiting to see what you get before you make the commitments about spending it.

SPEAKER_12

Okay.

Thank you.

I appreciate that.

And I will say I am excited to be co-sponsoring this with Council Member Moore and really appreciate that we are beginning the conversation about how we're going to fix this structural budget deficit.

So thank you, Chair.

SPEAKER_09

Thank you, Council Member Morales.

Colleagues, anything further at this time?

And we are going to be bringing this up for a vote on the 19th, correct?

With an amendment deadline on this Friday.

SPEAKER_16

Correct.

SPEAKER_09

Great.

And Director Noble, if you could pull your microphone closer to you.

I've had too many concerts and chainsaws in my life.

Council Member Moore, anything to close us out?

SPEAKER_23

Thank you.

Excuse me.

Yeah, I just, I mean, I do want to acknowledge that it's not perfect by any means, and there's a lot of unknowns.

But again, I think, and it's intended to be supplemental because of the fact that we don't have all the data points, and that's also part of the reason that I've limited it to those three areas to really supplement the funding in the current city budget.

And it certainly would be my intent to based on receipts, not on proposed expected revenue, given the fact that we need more time to see how it's going to perform.

Thank you.

SPEAKER_09

Thank you.

Council Member Saka, that was the last word.

I'm going to turn it back over to you, but usually I'll let the sponsor have the last word.

Back to you, Council Member Saka.

SPEAKER_03

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

And I also note that there is one more slide on slide 12 on this topic.

So at your discretion, Mr. Chair, I'm happy to go after that.

But I do want to share some thoughts on this topic.

I'll defer to you on that.

SPEAKER_09

That's the next ordinance.

So I'll hold your comments until the next ordinance.

Okay, Tom, back to you.

SPEAKER_08

So the conversation has sort of already gone into the implications of the second ordinance.

So this is basically the council bill 120909 is the allocation of the proceeds from the capital gains excise tax.

So they're separate bills because of the single, so bills need to reference a single subject.

So the 120908 applies the tax.

12909 earmarks those revenues.

And what it does is it earmarks those revenues, kind of building off what Council Member Moore was saying towards rental assistance to rent burden households, down payment assistance to households, and food assistance to food insecure households.

And then it further indicates Council's intent to do a process to either put in place a resolution that puts more finer tuned allocations or to make those allocations in the budget process.

SPEAKER_09

Thank you.

Council Member Moore, I think anything further?

Council Member Stocker, over to you.

SPEAKER_03

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

So I want to clarify a few things, namely that there are a number of items that I, and amendments that I co-sponsored as part of this budget that I co-sponsored for purposes of elevating the discussion, even though I know I'm not going to ultimately support it this year.

And for purposes of, again, elevating the discussion, comedy, we all deserve to have our various issues heard and thoughtfully discussed.

Within reason, we need to streamline as much as possible.

We can't vote on 130-plus individual things.

But there are a handful, all that is to say there are a handful of items that I agree to co-sponsor, even though I know I'm not going to ultimately vote to support.

And this is definitely one of them.

Although this is probably the one that I feel the most sanguine about overall.

There's too much that needs to be worked out this year.

But two comments pertaining to this capital gains tax idea more broadly.

One is I think it is the right idea at the wrong time.

Some in our city would argue that we have a revenue problem.

Others would say, no, no, we actually have a spending problem.

And I happen to find elements of both of those arguments compelling.

And I personally feel I was elected to specifically reject the false choice narrative and framing and clap back against the either-or divisive kind of rhetoric and champion what Mayor Harrell calls the politics of A&D.

And so again, I think both are actually true.

But regardless of where you fit on the spectrum, whether you think we have a spending problem or a revenue problem, I think it is more crystal clear, there's much more consensus That in Seattle, in particular, we have an outcomes problem.

In Seattle, we have a results problem.

And so in less than until we're able to better get a hold of that and start producing better results, I don't think it's appropriate for us to go back and start looking at new revenue options.

I heard personally over and over on the campaign trail that people don't mind paying their fair share for whatever it is.

Even some of the wealthiest individuals said that to me, to my face.

16,000 doors I knocked on personally.

Heard it over and over again.

But people do have a strong problem with doing that if they're not seeing any return on investment for their existing tax dollars.

So I think we need to better position ourselves as a city to crush these everyday basics of local government Public safety, parks, potholes, infrastructure.

It's not an exhaustive list.

Libraries, amongst other things.

And once we start yielding better results on those things, then I think it would be appropriate to look at other revenue options, especially progressive revenue, that impact the wealthiest of individuals.

And this is a clear, concrete example of what is actually doable in terms of options.

Looking at the election results from last week, I note that the initiative 2109 at the state level was overwhelmingly rejected in the city of Seattle in virtually all precincts, but a handful.

And in my own district, District 1, it was unanimously rejected.

And so I think this is a revenue idea that people would generally support.

But I also think there's—we need to do more work to figure out how to best bring it to life.

So that's point number one.

And less than until—and let's revisit this every year, periodically.

Let's revisit this, because I don't think it makes sense this year until, again, we can get a better hand of producing better results.

But let's continue to revisit on an ongoing basis.

And the second thing I would like to know is that I appreciate the work of Council Member Moore, and thank you, Council Member Moore, for your leadership in championing this to begin with and bringing this forward so we can have this conversation now.

I would probably have slightly different spending allocations or designated categories of authorized spending for this.

I don't necessarily agree nor disagree with any of the things included in this suggestion, but as someone who strongly supports infrastructure, Getting hammers in hands, shovels in grounds, knowing the impact of the anticipated growth we can expect to see in our city and the correlated strain that has on our already decrepit and aging infrastructure, and the fact that people expect local government in particular to look after and heavily invest in infrastructure.

I can't in good faith support a new revenue option that does not include some sort of infrastructure, generic infrastructure investment, whether that's infrastructure modernization, something to better address and help us get a hold of and arrest the deteriorating infrastructure situation.

Because, as we know, the levy that just passed, there's a financial task force That's going to be set up pursuant to that.

And wouldn't be surprised if one of the recommendations at the principal, at the high level, would be every new revenue option you get, you should allocate a certain proportion of that for infrastructure upgrades.

So I think we need to have a more thoughtful analysis of what are the appropriate categories of spending.

But again, right idea, wrong time.

But I do want to thank Council Member Moore for her leadership and championing this and honored to co-sponsor it along with Council Member Morales.

Thank you.

SPEAKER_09

Thank you, Council Member Saka, Council Member Wu, followed by Vice Chair Rivera.

SPEAKER_11

So I know there are a lot of rental assistance, tenant assistance that are amendments that are coming up.

So I just want to make a general comment about rental assistance, tenant assistance.

We always talk about putting more money, giving more money to help people with rent, but let's think about the root cause and of why people need assistance.

And it's different for every single person.

And so I would love to see more priorities given to possibly having social workers inside buildings or resident advisors inside these buildings to help people get to the root cause and try to give people resources on why they get to the point where they will need rental assistance, where they get to the point where they may have to face eviction, and try to help get to the root cause and try to get them the appropriate resources.

Because when it comes to rental assistance, it's very...

I guess it doesn't really address certain issues So I think when we talk about more money for tenant assistance, rental assistance, for helping people who are facing eviction, I think that we need to look at possibly funding.

How do we get down to the root cause of why they have gotten to that point?

And it's different for every single person.

It's the same thing of why people are unhoused.

It's different for every single person.

And just giving them, I believe, you know, assistance without really addressing the resources they actually need could be, in a way, not, you know, as solving the entire—the reason why they got to that point.

And so I was hoping we could, you know, think about this when we look at our different amendments of, is this really tackling the root cause of the situation?

SPEAKER_09

Thank you, Council Member Wu.

Vice Chair Rivera, then Council Member Moore will have the last word.

So if anyone else has anything to say, now it's time to raise your hand.

Thank you.

SPEAKER_25

Thank you, Chair.

First, I just want to thank central staff in general and lend my voice to yours, Chair, on the hard work that they've done during this budget process.

And so I wanted to take, this was the first chance I could take to really thank Ben and Yolanda and their staff for the hard work the last, you know, couple weeks, especially the last week with the amendment scramble.

So really appreciate the long hours that have gone into this.

That said I wanted to bring up a couple points related to this particular topic, which is that I appreciate that we and you will see in this budget a number of slides because we're just getting to the the to make future decisions it takes time to gather that information and as a legislative body we don' t control the departments and so it' s through the budget process and through That we're really able to compel departments to give us information On the work that they're doing and so we've really started to in my opinion dig into these programs now and a lot of us have put in slides by which like I said earlier we are getting information and data by which we are making informed decisions and And as to this particular, I appreciate and thank my colleague council member Moore for her thoughtfulness and her passion around these issues.

I, however, think that we haven't done our homework.

by which we're able to make a decision of this nature.

I will say I'm not morally opposed.

However, we are far from really being able to bring a proposal that is really steeped in the data.

There are a lot of things in our budget and at the city that we fund There are a lot of things that we really care about and that our constituents really care about.

There's a lot of need out there.

We had a couple hundred people yesterday come to chambers yesterday to talk about their particular interests.

That's 200 people out of 750,000 people.

I have not seen any data points to demonstrate the needs.

which you know that doesn't mean I'm not I Very much appreciate that the folks that come down here to express their their needs have those needs of course And I'm very compelled by that and I also now know that there are other folks that are not able to come down here for whatever reason who also have a needs that we need to be able to address and that we don't know the level of those needs until we get these data points and information from departments.

And I think that is really critical and that is part of the homework that we have to be doing as a legislative body and it is our responsibility to do so It is part of the accountability piece to our constituents that we do that work before then we engage in this kind of exercise.

And so I appreciate my colleague, Council Member Saka's observations and points about you know Seattleites don't have the information regarding outcomes and results.

We do have an outcome and results problem.

I've been saying that since I got here in January and it's something that I've committed to my constituents to really continue to look into and dig into and I don' t feel we are there yet.

We don' t have that information by which to make a lot of decisions I will say not just this decision many other decisions I will be very transparent about that.

As I said earlier we are using this budget process to put in our slides requesting the information so when we are making decisions in the future it is actually based on real data and information about the things that we've decided to fund as a body and as a city.

And so for me, in terms of the accountability pieces, we're just not there with the information.

I appreciate that this body and I very much appreciate working with you all together as part of this particular budget process to request that information.

And I look forward to next year's budget by which hopefully we have a better understanding and better information by which we can make better decisions about City budgeting and what the needs are in community and see from the actual data what the needs are and how to better manage the money that we actually spend on these programs because you know I am very supportive of we've all said affordability housing affordability the importance of you know, rental assistance and food security.

And yet we're spending all this money and I don't actually, we don't, none of us can actually say how this money is being spent and what the actual continued need is.

How much are we falling short?

I have no idea.

And if you all know, please do share that with me.

But I have not seen what the actual numbers need is. when we talk about all of these things.

And I think that is really critical to this conversation.

So really look forward to the continued conversation moving forward as part of this and many decisions that we'll have to make in the time that we're here.

Thank you, Chair.

SPEAKER_09

Thank you, Council Member Rivera.

Council Member Moore.

We have Council Member Hollingsworth with her hand up.

Is it all right if she goes first and then you'll have last word?

Council Member Hollingsworth.

SPEAKER_01

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I do want to thank Council Member Moore and co-sponsors Morales and Saka for bringing this to the table for us to talk about.

Just knowing Seattle, we've always been a giving city and wanting to...

wanting to, you know, have an impact and for outcomes.

And so I just want to thank you all for bringing this to the conversation for us just to discuss as a council, because I think it's incredibly important for us to have this conversation.

So I just wanted to publicly say that.

Thank you.

SPEAKER_09

Thank you.

Council Member Moore, last word.

SPEAKER_23

Thank you.

So I did want to take the opportunity to thank both Council Member Morales for her co-sponsorship and Council Member Salka for your co-sponsorship and recognizing that this was an opportunity to get it before us.

And I appreciate your being willing to do that.

Again, I think we clearly have respectful differences of opinion.

I guess in terms of, true, I share Councilmember Rivera's concern that we don't have enough information and I think we are attempting to get that information.

And I do also share the concerns voiced by my colleagues that we have a results outcomes problem, and we do.

And we do need to do a better job of creating clear objective metrics to measure performance.

But all of that said, we still have unmet need in the city, and we're going to continue to have unmet need in the city.

And I think this is a time when we can begin collecting the funds that we can then have an intelligent discussion about where should it go.

So this is just really to start that process.

And to the point about root causes, yeah, absolutely, we need to address the root causes.

And I certainly support having more um, resident services and buildings, particularly in our affordable, um, housing buildings, permanent supportive housing.

We need quite a, we really do need to beef up those services.

But the other thing that I want to point out here is that statistics are quite compelling.

50% of Seattle residents are renters.

44% of households in Seattle are cost burdened.

That means that people are spending 30% of their income on their rent and utilities.

And 30% is the cutoff at which people are, that's the amount people are considered reasonable for them to be able to manage.

But then I would note that 19% of households in Seattle are severely cost burdened.

They're paying 50% or more in rent and utilities.

Then you look at our MFTE program where people get lower rent at 60% and below.

Eighty-five percent of those households are cost burdened, and 25 percent are severely cost burdened.

That means 25 percent in a reduced income subsidized housing are still paying 50 percent of their rent and utilities.

And this is in a city with one of the highest minimum wages in the country, if not higher.

I don't know how we compare to San Francisco.

Anyway, so one of the root causes is that people's income is not keeping up with the cost of living.

It's not keeping up with rent.

It's not keeping up with food, utilities.

We live in a very expensive city.

And we live in a city in which the income inequality is continuing to grow at a rapid pace.

And with our national election, we're going to see that accelerate exponentially.

So, yes, there are root causes of poverty.

There are root causes of mental illness.

There are root causes of addiction.

There's also root cause of economic inability to keep up.

And we have an obligation in this city to help people keep up.

And we have an obligation to not continue to create a city where everybody's unstable.

You know, the focus in our housing levy and in our Office of Housing is building more rental units, and that's great.

But we also need to put a lot more money in building home ownership opportunities.

We need to rebuild a middle class in this city.

And we are not putting enough money, and I agree we don't know where it's all going, and there's a pipeline issue, and we need to work on that.

But we also, as a city, need to have a vision and make a commitment.

And in my opinion, that's going to be even more important as we go forward with the national results.

So thank you very much.

SPEAKER_09

Thank you, Council Member Moore.

And a quick Google search shows San Francisco Standard reporting that Seattle is the only city with a higher minimum wage than San Francisco, but I have not completed my research.

It has just been since you made that comment.

Moving on, if we want to move on to Seattle Channel Funding sponsored by Council President Nelson.

SPEAKER_27

Okay, good morning council members.

Brian, good night, council central staff.

So council bill 120911, which as you said is sponsored by council president Nelson and co-sponsored by council members Kettle and Rivera.

A response to an issue that was discussed in previous budget committee meetings for the Seattle channel, and that's declining revenues from cable franchise fees.

So cable franchise fees have been declining for a number of years and are predicted to continue to decline as customers move away from traditional cable service towards streaming services.

So this bill states the council's intent to establish a dedicated and ongoing funding plan sufficient to meet the operating and capital needs of the Seattle Channel such that they can continue to provide the governmental programming and also the types of civic, cultural, and community programming that they currently produce.

The bill specifies that when established, the funding plan should include but not be limited to the following sources.

So the first is at least 50%, but no less than $1.7 million of cable franchise fee revenues in each year should be dedicated to the Seattle Channel.

The second is that Seattle Information Technology Department should incorporate a portion of Seattle Channel's expenses into its cost allocation model so that expenditures that are in support of the services and priorities of other city departments are appropriately allocated to those departments.

And then the third category is the general fund, and the general fund should be used exclusively for the coverage of meetings, press conferences, and other public events of the city council and other city of Seattle elected officials.

The bill requests that the executive present a funding plan consistent with the elements in the bill, along with any legislation necessary to implement the plan to the council by September 3rd of next year, 2025. And then lastly, the bill states the council's expectation that in creating the funding plan, the executive will utilize the research and recommendations of any advisory work groups that are established to study the Seattle Channel's operations and financing.

And this reference is two advisory work groups is in recognition of a statement of legislative intent that's included in Group C, and that will be discussed later today.

SPEAKER_99

Thank you.

SPEAKER_09

Fantastic.

Thank you, Mr. Goodnight.

Council President, as sponsor of the legislation, over to you.

SPEAKER_10

Thank you very much.

First, I would like to thank you, Chair, for including bridge funding in your balancing package through 2026. I know that probably every single one of us was really interested in ensuring that Seattle Channel was funded enough to continue its programming through this year and into next.

As noted already, this legislation does direct the executive to establish an ongoing and sustainable funding plan, and the legislation also identifies possible funding sources that include but are not necessarily limited to 50% of the existing cable fund revenues.

And I put this in here because it's...

Because the percentage of cable fund revenues has been declining over the years as more demands have been made on the fund as a whole.

And the resolution that was passed in 2001 does indicate that paying for Seattle Channel was the first priority after some of the administrative and obligatory payments.

things that the cable fund had to pay for.

So that's a marker for, yes, we are still considering the Seattle Channel as a major recipient of the cable fund revenues.

The second is a cost allocation to departments, as already said.

And the third would be general fund revenues.

That would be dedicated exclusively for paying for the production costs of our council meetings.

So what is...

all the hard work that Seattle Channel is doing right now, and also for press conferences and other public meetings.

Why?

Because we are obligated to have public meetings, and so therefore the thinking is that nobody would ever try, no future politician would try to go after that slice of funding and cripple the future of the Seattle Channel.

As noted, this legislation does anticipate passage of Chair Strauss' sly that will convene a work group that will make recommendations on long-term funding.

I completely welcome that.

I am told that one of the—so— not to get into the weeds, but it's important that the Seattle Channel be represented on that work group, and I have no reason to doubt that that won't be the case.

Ultimately, what's necessary, colleagues, is certainty.

is certainty.

We don't want to lose the talent or the employees that produce and make possible the award-winning programming and absolutely critical public service that is the Seattle Channel right now.

And so that is why I was motivated to put forward legislation that pretty much sets a date for the establishment of a funding plan that could be implemented in 2016 or 2026 so that there is no question going forward that we'll be talking about this again in the next biennium.

Thank you.

SPEAKER_09

Thank you, Council President.

Colleagues?

There are no other comments.

I'll share my comments and then pass it back to you for last word, Council President.

Just really appreciate your work on this.

You heard everyone on this dais express their support for continuing the Seattle Channel's funding and making sure that they remain a strong entity within the city of Seattle.

I really appreciate it.

the unanimous support across the dais.

Thank you, colleagues.

And what you noted is that we have to make sure that their funding source is independent from elected official influence.

With considering the cable franchise tax reductions at such a rapid rate at this point, And the fact that we need to make sure that everyone watching downstairs knows that we've got their back no matter what until we can find a bigger, broader way to make sure to support and hopefully expand their abilities.

This is a good bill.

So thank you, Council President.

And do you want a final word?

SPEAKER_10

Just I want to thank Brian very much for throwing all your effort into this in the last minute.

So thank you very much, and thank you to my colleagues for your support, hopefully.

SPEAKER_09

Thank you.

I think we'll move on to the next item.

SPEAKER_02

And the next item is another new piece of legislation, one that would establish new payroll expense policies.

So about a month ago, I was here during the policy considerations phase, giving you a brief summary of the executive's proposed changes to the Jump Start.

I'm going to use the phrase Jump Start PET, I think, but I may slip back and forth.

um uh policies um and i as part of that i uh sort of wound up that presentation with a series of questions about that i thought were going to be essential for you collectively to answer um as you said either adopted the executive's policies or set ones of your own um and what i'm here today to do is to describe the proposals from the chair regarding those policies and essentially answering those questions.

So I'm going to first take a couple slides to provide a summary of the chair's proposal.

This is legislation that was referred to this committee yesterday.

And then I'm going to highlight a couple of amendments that are being proposed by Council Members Moore, actually a total of three amendments, Council Members Moore and Morales.

They've already engaged central staff, me in particular, on those amendments.

If others are interested, the deadline is, again, this Friday, and the calendar has you collectively voting on the legislation and considering any amendments on next Tuesday on the 19th.

With that background, the legislation proposed by Chair Strauss begins with the executives as a base, but makes a number of significant and important changes.

So first of all, like the executives, it establishes a set of spending categories.

Those include what I would describe as the original five jumpstart categories, administration, affordable housing, the Equitable Development Initiative, economic development and revitalization, and the Green New Deal.

There was then the additional priority that was added as part of last year's budget process, youth mental health and violence prevention, and I'm using that title to describe that body of services.

This legislation would then add general fund, transfers to the general fund as an eligible use, and then also add contributions to a revenue stabilization account.

This legislation formalizes a revenue stabilization account for the payroll expense tax that is distinct from the executive which had proposed a reserve but not set up specific policies or proposed specific policies about how it would be established and governed.

It's not a hostile amendment, I suspect, for the executives.

I think that per their actions, they appreciated the value of a revenue stabilization account here.

And I'll remind you that it's the volatility of this revenue source is one of the reasons why such an account would make a fair amount of sense.

So I'll explain this further, but there are no restrictions put on the allocations among these categories.

So it is flexible in that way.

So it allows...

THIS YEAR AND NEXT YEAR AND GOING FORWARD TO ESTABLISH WHAT THE ALLOCATION IS BETWEEN THESE SPENDING CATEGORIES, MAYBE MOST SPECIFICALLY BETWEEN THE GENERAL FUND SUPPORT AND THEN THE OTHER ORIGINAL PRIORITIES.

I would add, with respect to one of the priorities, youth mental health and violence prevention, the executive proposal had identified those as eligible uses for the next two years, for 25 and 26, but not beyond, with the implied intent to provide funding for those through the renewal of the families and education levy, which now has a longer title, but I'm going to forget it.

But this legislation deals with that issue slightly differently, and that's what that footnote is, and it's an important footnote.

It would maintain youth mental health and violence prevention as an eligible use until a sustainable alternative funding source is provided for those items.

That funding source could be the levy, but it could be something else.

But it's explicit about that, just a notable difference.

In terms of percentage allocations, the legislation sets out as guidelines but not constraints the original percentage targets that were in the Jumpstart legislation.

So you can see the percentages set out.

I purposely set this table up so that it only covers the five and it has three blanks.

because the way these percentages work is they say, of the money allocated for those five categories, this is how it's divided.

They don't say how much money or what share of the total PET revenues have to go to this combined set of things.

That flexibility remains.

BUT OF THE MONEY ALLOCATED TO THESE FIVE ITEMS, THESE PERCENTAGES ARE SET AS GUIDELINES.

SO THE INTENT HERE IS TO PRESERVE THE RELATIVE PRIORITIES ESTABLISHED IN THE ORIGINAL JUMP START LEGISLATION, BUT AGAIN, TO PROVIDE THE FLEXIBILITY ABOUT THE TOTAL AMOUNT OF FUNDING THAT IS PROVIDED EITHER TO THE GENERAL FUND OR TO THESE PRIORITIES.

SO THOSE ARE, AGAIN, GUIDELINES, BUT NOT BINDING CONSTRAINTS.

Next slide, yeah.

As I described just moments ago, but now in more detail, it does establish a former revenue, excuse me, a formal revenue stabilization account, an RSA, if you will, within the Jumpstart Fund.

And in particular, it targets the balance for that reserve at 10% of forecast revenues.

That's now in the range of $450 million, so think sort of $45 to $50 million.

It establishes that that target should be reached within four years.

As part of the current proposed balancing package, some of the reserve proposed by the executive is being allocated to other things, so this sets a target so that that balance gets rebuilt.

That four-year time frame is consistent with the time frame for the REVENUALIZATION, THE RSA FOR THE GENERAL FUND.

AND SIMILARLY TO THE GENERAL FUND RSA, THE POLICIES, PROPOSED POLICIES ESTABLISH WHAT I'M GOING TO DESCRIBE AS AN AUTOMATIC MECHANISM TO HELP MAKE CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE REVENUE STABILIZATION ACCOUNT, AND IN PARTICULAR At the end of the year, we would look at the fund balance in the account and compare that to the projected fund balance.

As we budget from year to year, there is reason why you might have a projected fund balance, a purposeful fund balance.

For instance, in the first year of a biennium, because you expect to spend some of the money in the first year, but not all of it.

There will have been some projected fund balance.

If the fund balance ends up above that level, and it could end up above that level for two fundamental reasons.

One is that revenues came in higher than the forecast, and the other is that expenditures didn't reach the level that had been anticipated.

So you take the difference of those things, and half of that difference is automatically transferred to the revenue stabilization account.

The other half is then available to address some immediate needs, whatever those might be, or alternatively, to increase the contribution to the stabilization account.

You'd have flexibility about the other half, if you will.

And then a technical note, in comparing the actual and the forecast fund balance, we would take account for carry forward.

So there are some allocations that might have not gotten spent in the previous year, but there was every anticipation that they would have and the goal would be to carry forward those revenues.

So we'll take account for that.

In particular, if you made an allocation for some capital purpose that didn't quite get executed in that year, it would be natural to carry that forward as part of the fund balance.

Really a technical point.

Then withdrawals, There are criteria set for when you could turn to the jumpstart revenue stabilization account.

I would describe them sort of mechanically or practically in two ways.

One is if between the time the mayor submitted his budget and you took final action on it, the forecast for those revenues dropped.

The opposite thing had happened this year, but it could easily happen that the forecast that was prepared in August versus the one prepared in October shows a decline in revenues.

That would be sort of a last-minute change.

You might not be in a situation to make difficult choices about cutting appropriations, so it could make sense to lean on the revenue stabilization account.

That's one of the times you could do it.

The other is after you adopt the budget, so the budget gets adopted, you know, let's just say a week from now, and then come April, there's a revenue forecast update that reduces the amount of revenue that's anticipated for the then current year, so for 2025, for instance.

At that point, your budget is essentially out of balance.

You were balanced against the revenue forecast.

That revenue forecast has come down.

You have two choices at that point.

You can reduce expenditures.

Either the executive does that administratively, or you reduce appropriations, or you could turn the revenue stabilization account.

And so that's what's imagined there.

So that's the RSA.

Moving on to the other elements of the legislation, consistent with the executive proposal, the legislation before you now eliminates the Jumpstart Oversight Committee.

That committee had been established as a nine-member body that was created to provide oversight of Jumpstart spending and also to assess the taxes impact on the local economy.

Council appointed five members of that about a year ago.

The executive has not made nominations, and to date the committee hasn't met.

And then the last element is another significant one, is that it will remove the sunset date.

So currently the payroll expense tax sunsets at the end of 2040, and this legislation would eliminate that sunset and establish this, like most of the other cities' taxes, as an ongoing affair, if you will.

So I think probably worth a stop to answer questions about that before to move on to talk about the amendments.

SPEAKER_09

Thank you, Director.

And even though I stepped out for just a second, I could hear every word you said.

And so, yes, let's pause here, look at this in total, and then move on to the next slide with two policy proposals.

I'll just, not a correction for the record, but maybe a...

A clarification for the record, the removal of the Jumpstart Oversight Committee was not a change made at council that was in the base bill transmitted.

Yeah, meant to say that, so correct.

Thank you.

Colleagues, I am going, as sponsor of this legislation, I'm going to speak to it, and then we will take questions, comments.

And I see Council President already has her hand up.

So I'm going to start.

In the way back and current time machine.

Council President, if you could leave your hand up.

SPEAKER_24

Okay.

SPEAKER_09

Yep, just leave it up, otherwise I'm going to lose you.

When the last set of jumpstart policies were voted on, and that's the bill that's on the books, the ordinance on the legislation today, we at Council believed that today, setting up for 2025, we would be past the downstream economic impacts of the pandemic.

And so we had hoped.

This is part of why the question about the jumpstart uses are, this question is being called in this budget cycle.

I really wish that we had been correct, that in 2025 we would be past the downstream economic issues.

The reality is that the downturn forecast mid budget has only been experienced in 2008 and 2020, and we are not out of the woods yet.

We still need our parachute for this budget so that we do not unnecessarily cut staff or programming so that we do not engage in all out austerity budgeting.

Even with this parachute, we are cutting staff and programming, which are incredibly difficult decisions.

Due to central staff's really good work this year, we found existing funding for council's priorities without using the Jumpstart Reserve Fund until the downturn forecast, which is why we had to use the majority of the reserve fund's seed funding.

Again, the reserve account did not exist 90 days ago, and it's a really good idea.

What this experience taught me is the importance of how Jumpstart ensures we do not engage in austerity budgeting.

We used Jumpstart funding to increase access to food, to fund tenant services, legal assistance to youth, tax return services for Seattleites who can't afford it, additional home ownership opportunities, serving homeless youth, and so much more.

That's what Jumpstart is being used to fund this year.

What I know today is that the last time we had legislation before us, we thought we would be out of the woods.

And in fact, we are in the eye of the storm.

We are still experiencing the downstream economic impacts of the pandemic.

And at the same time, COVID relief funds are expiring, meaning that the buoy we used to allow Jumpstart to fund our four priorities is no longer available to us.

We need flexibility to get us through this moment, and we need to ensure that the original priorities are funded once we are past this economic downturn we're in.

We will likely need budget flexibility to be responsive to the moment over the course of the next four years.

Eight years ago, so now not Jumpstart, but eight years ago, if you can track with me, we began funding important priorities to serve Seattleites under the last presidential administration.

I foresee us having to do the same thing again, increasing funding for Office of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs, Office of Civil Rights, backfilling for changing federal funding priorities.

If you remember the grants and acceptance ordinance, we have received a lot of federal funding over the last four years.

because there's been the Infrastructure Act, the Climate Act.

I mean, we've got, if you look on I-5 right now, we've got, here in Seattle, we've got more federal funds coming in there.

We're not gonna have a lot of that funding moving forward.

We will also need to be funding local community-based organizations to meet the needs of Seattleites and many priorities we don't yet know about for the next four years.

I say this because while we don't know what our future holds, I do know that every one of us up here will want to be nimble and responsive to serving Seattleites through uncertain times.

The point there is that's why we need flexibility for the next four years.

Let's walk through what I'm proposing.

Director Noble did a very good job of giving a...

presentation on here and I wanna speak about why the comprehensive review, why I requested and required a comprehensive review in four years with a checkpoint in two years.

And this goes back to the experience that we've had with Jumpstart that it has, our needs for the general fund have changed as we get out of this economic recession, downstream impacts.

What I did not know a few years ago was that we would still be in it in 2025. I thought we would be out of the woods.

So that's why I don't want to put strict parameters on the next biennium because I don't know that we'll be out of the woods and I don't know what more we need to be responsive to for these next two years where the federal government no longer participates.

And I know that in four years, we have to have a comprehensive analysis and review about these policies.

The next thing that this does is it does, while the original four priority, five if you count administration, was included, we've included this with the original percentages to be allocated of Jump Start funding to these categories.

This is what Mayor Harreld did this year and then, THROUGH THE CHAIR'S PACKAGE USING THE JUMP START RESERVE FUNDS, THE THINGS LIKE FUNDING RENTAL ASSISTANCE AND HOME OWNERSHIP OPPORTUNITIES, THOSE ARE WITHIN THE ORIGINAL FOUR CATEGORIES, BUT THEY WERE NOT NECESSARILY CONSISTENT WITH THE PERCENTAGES.

I HAVE NOT INCLUDED A HARD NUMBER FOR JUMP START BEING USED FOR PRIORITIES OR THE AMOUNT OF GENERAL FUND TO BE USED THIS YEAR.

because the number of variables that are uncertain today on November 13th is higher than the number of variables with uncertainty in September.

Said another way, we are in a more uncertain place today than we were three months ago.

And that's why I don't think that adding hard numbers today is prudent.

I do think that that is absolutely something that we should do, which is why I've requested the two and four year check-ins.

We have included mental health as a use until a more stable funding source is implemented, not just identified.

It can't just be passed.

There cannot be a gap in addressing youth mental health.

And so that is why it is an allowed use until a more stable funding source is implemented.

The note in adding clarity that within this ordinance that if Jump Start revenue decreases and other sources of revenue supporting general fund are not reduced, the general fund should be used to fund our Jump Start priorities.

during our select budget series or it's one, I mean, I can't remember.

We have had so many presentations about this, but I just recall if you colleagues remember how much we were funding for equitable development initiative before Jumpstart.

It was not very much.

It was just from sweetened beverage tax.

If you remember Office of Economic Development, they did not have a large budget as compared to what they have today.

I remember Bobby Lee, a former director of OED saying that we should put a 1% on all contracts to fund OED.

And I think at that time, Director Noble of The budget office kicked him under the table.

But, you know, I mean, and the reason that Bobby brought that up was because there was not a dedicated source of funding to support our smallest businesses.

And that is what Jumpstart does.

Green New Deal was a priority clearly in 2018, 2019. That term you don't hear so much anymore because it is generally that the climate crisis is real and it's in our face.

We need to look no further than South Park with the flooding that has been occurring with the king tides, et cetera.

And housing.

We do have more support for housing since Jumpstart was passed and we are still decades behind in production.

I speak about this because this simply notes that Jumpstart is not a stable funding source, and the priorities I originally identified remain incredibly important for us to fund if we want a strong and healthy Seattle.

Moving on to the reserve account, I think it's pretty straightforward.

This was a very smart decision by the mayor's office because, again, this is not a stable funding source.

Creating a reserve account.

I spoke to the use of the reserve account this year It had been my intent before the revenue forecast to retain that reserve account and it did its job this year and said another way if the 33 million dollars had been programmed to rather than held in an account, we would have had really hard cost benefit choices to make to use that funding.

And so I just, I greatly appreciate the ability to have that fund, it's very smart.

And as Director Noble mentioned, using the rainy day fund and the emergency fund as guides, we created a policy for automatically refilling the reserve, as well as how we are to use those reserve dollars.

Lastly, I'll talk about removing the sunset.

My goal is that Jumpstart funds are used as a parachute for the general fund for a limited amount of time, with the reality that Jumpstart has been used in the general fund every year of its existence.

Retaining a sunset in a funding source we rely so heavily on creates a structural deficit in 2040 on a scale we have not experienced.

Colleagues, if we were to look at if this tax sunsetted today, we would have a $430 million deficit in 2025. We would have a $452 million deficit in 2026. We would have a $460 million deficit in 2027. And for reference, this year we had a $260 million structural deficit.

So said another way, if we retain a sunset, we are setting our future selves up for a structural deficit on the scale of half a billion dollars.

If in four years, the comprehensive review determines general fund should be an allowed use moving forward, the structural deficit becomes even more real because the council members in four years, if they decide to continue using Jumpstart for general fund, it absolutely is a source that the general fund is reliant on.

And even if we're able, which makes the structural deficit even more real, And if we are able to actualize our goals of having a structurally sound budget without using jumpstart in the general fund, the sunset ends our investment in economic development and revitalization, the support for the smallest businesses like I just spoke about.

It removes our investment, the majority source of funding for equitable development initiative.

It removes our funding source for addressing the climate crisis via Green New Deal.

Again, it reduces our investment in housing.

If we are going to continue using Jumpstart for general fund programs, again, legal assistance, tax prep, tenant services, home ownership, it is responsible governing for us to remove the sunset.

If we continue using Jumpstart funding for the general fund past four years from now, the sunset needs to be removed if we do not want to create a structural deficit larger than we have ever seen.

With that, colleagues, I will call on Council President and then Council Member Rivera.

And colleagues, if you have questions, comments, now is the time.

We will move on after comments now to an overview of at least a few of the amendments that have been daylighted so far.

Council President.

SPEAKER_10

I had a question, but could you repeat your last sentence?

It was...

poignant and I want to make sure I heard it.

SPEAKER_09

If we continue using jumpstart funding for the general fund past four years from now, so in four years I have stated we need to have a comprehensive review.

Let me say it even more plainly.

We need flexibility for the next four years.

That's why the bill is written as it is.

In four years from now, we need to have a comprehensive review because I think that if we are out of the woods on the economic downturn, we should return to the original four priorities plus mental health.

But if we don't, and in four years from now, the choice is made that general fund is an acceptable use of jumpstart funding, the structural deficit created by the sunset in this bill creates a structural deficit larger than we've ever seen before.

SPEAKER_10

Thank you for that.

So I could be wrong, but my read, I like the idea of a revenue stabilization account or, yes, an RSA.

We saw how fast that went.

The way I'm reading this, the proposed budget funded a PET reserve at 10% of the current PET forecast, and that's literally the explicit goal of the new policy, but within four years.

So we saw how fast four times the minimum amount put into the RSA went.

this year, so I think maybe some—I don't know how we will define what that can be spent on.

But in general, I just wanted to say that I support transparency in how we spend this tax source or this revenue source.

Because up until now, there's always been a question about whether or not a proposed expenditure by a council member would count as close enough to what the jumpstart spending plan described, and so there was always that back and forth.

That is why the oversight board was, that was one of the functions of the oversight board was to sort of negotiate, well, what is eligible for this fund?

And I understand this on page 15, it says, I am getting to my point, There was a nine-member committee that was created to provide oversight, perhaps to help council decide what counts as a jumpstart expenditure.

That was never convened.

I do think that it is important that we do need to have continual assessment of the jumpstart's impact on our local economy and also as it interplays with other policy decisions we may make.

And what's most, but the thing that I appreciate about putting it together in Jumpstart is simply, in the general fund is simply this.

We need to be able to compare the viability or the validity of expenditures against each other in an apples to apples manner.

And with the expenditures of our general fund adjacent revenue sources is that they are kind of put aside and they don't have to compete with other priorities.

And so that is, I welcome that there is a melding of resources so that we can make decisions based on a better understanding of all the revenue that we might have for that purpose.

Keeping in mind, however, that there are other restricted funds that we're not talking about.

Sweetened beverage, short-term rental, and transit.

I want to note that one huge thing that I'm seeing missing as a priority, it might be covered under mental health, is treatment.

So treatment for addiction and a response to the opioid crisis, however you want to put it.

As far as I can tell, the only new funding for addiction or treatment in this budget before us right now is $470,000 that I put in there, and I didn't even put in new money.

It was a redirection of opioid settlement dollars for a different purpose.

And I do want to urge us that this is a root cause, everybody.

And I would like to have that as we go forward.

Please, everybody, remember that addiction, the drug crisis, et cetera, is inextricably linked to our homelessness crises and our public safety crises.

And I urge folks to take that mindset into future budgets.

That's all I have to say in pontificate.

SPEAKER_09

Thank you.

Vice Chair Rivera.

SPEAKER_25

Thank you, Chair.

So I have a couple questions, Ben, on the revenue stabilization account, which I think is very prudent.

Can you tell me, is this a similar approach that's taken when we do the general fund rainy day account?

SPEAKER_02

It is.

It's not identical, but I pulled that piece up and used it as a model in crafting what's here.

SPEAKER_25

It's based on...

practice that we use, a prudent practice we use.

SPEAKER_02

I should say the percentage here is somewhat higher because of volatility.

Correct.

We have actually seen a slightly larger than 10% drop from one year to another.

SPEAKER_25

That makes sense, Ben.

Thank you for confirming that.

Also, I will say that I appreciate the fact that, I mean, it is a fact that since Jumpstart was passed, we've Council has always had to use it for categories other than the ones that had been named originally.

And I don't see, I agree with Chair, in the next four years that changing.

And I actually would say I'm not sure beyond the four years because we'd have to take a really very close look at the budget and start to cut things, I think, to make a difference.

I just don't see a likely scenario where things are going to change to the general fund where we're not going to be able or not going to have to take some certain portion of this jumpstart tax to backfill.

SPEAKER_02

So I'm...

And just to clarify this point, and I probably should have included in the summary, as written, these policies could continue until they do not.

As Chair Strauss has pointed out, there's very specific call-out of Council's intent to check in on them in two years when you pick up the next biennium, and then to comprehensively review them in four years.

And, again, I think that's compatible with what you're both saying about, like, hope is that we are in a better situation, but, again, no guarantee that we will be.

SPEAKER_25

Yes, yes.

Thank you, Ben.

And so I'm, yeah, I'm just reiterating that I don't even think, I mean, I think this is going to be a longer term policy decision.

Um, and I do, um, share the chairs and many of our colleagues, you know, it's, it's really fortuitous that we had jumpstart.

Otherwise we'd be sitting here having to have cut many things in this budget.

and we didn't have to do that because we had the reserves by which to backfill, and I very much appreciate the revenue stabilization account because we need to, if something happens, we need to be able to have a reserve by which to utilize funds in a way almost like we did this year, but there could be you know, COVID happened.

I don't think COVID will happen again, but something like a COVID could happen and we just need to be prudent.

Yeah, we need to be prudent about the reserves, both for the general fund reserve and then creating this very deliberate revenue stabilization account.

So very much appreciate the work that went into that and appreciate the mayor's office for sending it down like this and to the chair for including it, keeping it in his cheers package.

And then can you, I have one last question, chair, if that's okay.

On the sunset date, What was anticipated when this was originally put in?

Was it a review point?

I mean, we didn't get a lot of information about what went behind that thought.

And let me just say, I don't, you know, sunset dates are, what I think they actually help with is really forcing bodies to take a hard look at that moment whenever that sunset is coming up just to make decisions by versus getting complacent about things, especially in this case of a volatile tax.

So I'm wondering what the thought process though was at the time.

SPEAKER_02

I don't actually know the answer to that question.

SPEAKER_09

Do you?

Chair?

Not to get in the way back time machine of the fights that we have been in in the chambers.

I can tell you that there were some people very excited about this tax and some people very upset about this tax.

And a sunset was a nice middle ground.

And then after that, the bill was vetoed and then the over...

then the veto was overturned, and then it was challenged in court, and then here we are today.

And to your point, Vice Chair, really well said of if we didn't have Jumpstart this year, we would have had $460 million of cuts to make.

Like, that was poignant, and I appreciate you making that point.

But...

as well as it was in the original ideation of jumpstart, it was to get us through the pandemic and then to focus on these four priorities.

What we have found is that we haven't gotten out of these downstream economic impacts from the pandemic yet.

And two things there are true is like, we don't have the COVID federal funds anymore.

They expire this year.

We, uh, were able to not lay off any city employees during the pandemic.

Like very few other cities in this entire nation did that.

And then we had to make those hard choices today, right?

And through that process, we've created a habit of using Jumpstart in the general fund, which is different.

So again, like the last points that I was making was like, if only those four categories are funded in 2040, we will have to cut all of those fundings.

if we use it for general fund, we're creating a structural deficit for us to face.

Sorry, that was a really long answer.

SPEAKER_25

No, I appreciate that.

And I appreciate a point you just made, which reminded me that when this fund was passed, it is true that my recollection from having been at the city then was that there were things added to the budget beyond those five categories, because we had the federal funds, the jumpstart funds, we actually use jumpstart funds to to either expand current things or add programs.

And I think that also is really critical to mention because It bears why we also have this structural deficit that now we're looking to jumpstart to backfill because we don't have those temporary federal relief funds anymore.

So maybe if we had not used the federal relief funds to start new things or expand current things, then maybe we'd be in a position where we didn't have to take jumpstarts.

to backfill.

But I think it's important to be honest about that and transparent about that.

So I wanted to call that out.

And thank you for the reminder, Chair, because that's really critical.

And I can think of some programs while I was here that that got funding through those temporary federal funds.

Ben was here, too, so he knows his budget.

He was CBO director at the time.

So, anyway, that's really important.

Thank you.

Thank you for answering my questions, Ben and Chair, for adding to it.

SPEAKER_09

Thank you.

And I thought I saw Council Member Saka's hand up.

You still want to speak, Council Member?

No.

It's okay.

We got a lot of time to talk about this, so...

We'll just keep moving on.

Colleagues, any other questions, comments?

Thank you.

I'll just end by saying that to clarify, the Jumpstart funds will be deposited into the Jumpstart account and then will be transferred into other BSLs no matter if they're in the original four priorities or not.

And that is a responsible governance practice to be able to track how the funding is used.

Council President, you made a really good point about responding to the opioid epidemic, the fentanyl on our streets.

Because, and colleagues, just to put it in perspective, the fentanyl epidemic has skyrocketed in the four years since this tax was passed.

So when this tax was originally passed, fentanyl was not the major drug being used on the street.

It was heroin and meth at that time.

SPEAKER_10

And...

It's like a slow earthquake.

SPEAKER_09

Yeah.

Please remember to be recognized.

I'm just using this point to make the point that priorities change, and we have to be flexible and nimble.

This is an example of that.

We don't know what's going to happen in the next four years.

Lastly, I'll just read item C here, which is that allocations of the payroll expense tax proceeds to programs and services supported by the city's general fund shall be limited to the amount needed to sustain critical services and attend to emerging needs that cannot otherwise be sufficiently addressed within general fund sources.

This is in here to say that it cannot just be a carte blanche use.

It needs to really be an emergency release valve, a parachute, if you will.

Those are all my comments.

Remember, amendments are due Friday at noon.

Back to you, Director Noble, for a couple of amendment ideas.

SPEAKER_02

Thank you.

So there are three amendments that are under development and have been proposed.

I think what I'll do is describe each of them and pause for a potential comment, and then...

And then we can wrap this up.

So the first two are from Council Member Morales, and the first is quite simple.

It would preserve the payroll tax oversight committee.

As I described, when the tax was first authorized, there was a nine-person oversight committee called for, and this is a direct quote, to provide oversight on the services and programs supported by the tax and to assess its impacts on the number of jobs and businesses in the city.

As I pointed out, The council made an effort to appoint members fall of last year.

The executive did not, and as to date, the committee has not yet met.

But this would simply restore the language that calls for the committee to be appointed and to provide those services.

Council Member Morales.

SPEAKER_12

Well, can we just do them together?

SPEAKER_02

Sure.

That's fine.

Let's do it.

Second one, more significant, I would argue, so starting in 2027, so past this biennium, limit the amount of money transferred to the general fund to 20% of the total proceeds, and then allocate the remaining resources according to the percentages and the allocations that have been established previously.

So on a financial side, this would increase funding for the jumpstart priorities by, again, I'm using the 2027 forecast numbers to do this math, by as much as 137 million, excuse me, 136 million.

So without this, Under the current funding, let me take a step back here.

The forecast for 2027 is for $483 million.

The current general fund forecast anticipates a transfer of $233 million, so leaving, quick math, leaving $250 million for jumpstart priorities in 2027. although I would note that the $233 million transfer still leaves a deficit inclusive of the balancing package of about $100 million.

So it's a transfer of $233 leaving you $250 for the jumpstart priorities, but also still leaving you a $100 million deficit.

So that's the base math.

So again, with this policy restricting the transfer to the general fund at 20%, you'd increase the amount available for the jumpstart priorities from that base 250 to about 386 million.

And then that then has a direct implication on the deficit, though, because again, in the base case, the assumption was that there'd be $233 million and you still had $100 million deficit.

That would imply then that the deficit goes from $100 million to about $236 million.

But again, you have significant resource available for the jumpstart priorities.

SPEAKER_09

Thank you.

Council Member Morales has sponsored the amendments.

You're recognized.

SPEAKER_12

Thank you.

Just as a clarification, I did not intend these to be two separate amendments.

I don't know if it makes a difference one way or the other, but that wasn't my intent.

So thank you, Ben.

I know there was a lot of work for you, particularly in the last few days.

So I appreciate you helping us get through.

to this point.

Colleagues, I know that we all know how critical it is for us to approach this budget in a fiscally responsible way.

And yet we have before us a budget that includes $75 million in new spending from the mayor.

We have added another $25 million.

Much of this is ongoing spending.

And so the fact is that we do have a structural budget problem.

As Ben pointed out in a previous meeting, in 2027, we go back to having a deficit.

Chair Strauss mentioned it will be enormous if we don't sunset this bill or if we do plan to sunset it.

Um, even, uh, even if we do, uh, use this payroll expense tax though, um, we have had a structural budget issue for well over a decade.

Um, I remember asking people in the budget office over 10 years ago, what some of the challenges were.

So, um, I know that this has been a longstanding problem and it's something that we can't wait to resolve in, in four years from now.

Um, I believe we should have been grappling with this all year rather than assume that the payroll expense tax was going to solve our issue for us indefinitely.

Clearly, it is not.

We still need other sources or we will be back here facing a deficit in a couple of years.

I do appreciate Council Member Moore calling the question with her bill to create a capital gains tax, and I have two slides that we'll be adding to the discussion later.

So this amendment would acknowledge the need for additional general fund, additional support for the general fund by allocating 20% of payroll expense tax revenue starting in 2027. So it would maintain the transfer for this biennium.

which would, I think, estimated be about $88 million.

I do want to clarify that my amendment also does intend to have a 10% reserve.

That's not clear in the memo that we have here.

But it also acknowledges that what we heard from hundreds of people last night is that housing and community development and small business investments from the payroll expense tax are part of the solution to our homelessness and housing and public safety crises.

And what we can't ignore is that whether it's $100 million or $200 million deficit in the next coming years, that's not the point.

The point is that we need new revenue to address basic city services.

So the proposed shift of more than 50% of general fund to general fund for this biennium, I believe should be temporary.

And while I understand that this council may have different priorities for how this revenue source should be spent, Any permanent changes should be done through a public process, just like we do for other major revenue streams, like our levies and like we did for this very source.

We should start that discussion now.

And so that's part of the reason I appreciate, again, Council Member Moore raising the question.

Finally, as Ben mentioned, it does restore the oversight committee.

This is an accountability measure.

It is a measure that we have for all of our other major revenue sources.

Our levies in particular each have one.

I don't understand what the resistance is. to sitting this body and convening it to help us understand how this is working, where we might need tweaks, and particularly given that these taxes are collected from our local businesses, I would think that an oversight committee would be welcome.

So this is, again, as we have said all morning, a chance for us to really begin the discussion of how we're going to plug the hole.

I don't think we can wait for four years to start having serious conversations about how we address this, because in four years we could be in even worse shape if we don't start addressing it now and figuring out how we're going to fill the gap that we have in the city.

Thank you, Chair.

SPEAKER_09

Thank you.

Colleagues, any questions, comments on these amendments?

I will just say, Council Member Morales, I completely agree the level of funding that we have used from Jumpstart in the general fund that we used this year is not something that is sustainable.

We were responding to the issues that we had at hand.

I will...

politely push back and saying that we're not starting the conversation in four years.

We started the conversation earlier this year.

We're having the conversation this year.

We're going to have it again in two years.

We're doing that work now.

No one else has anything to say?

You've got last word if you'd like it.

Fantastic.

Council Member Rivera, do you have on this?

Okay.

And then Council Member Morales, you'll have last word.

SPEAKER_25

Thank you, Chair.

I just want to Agree with your point that you just made there and I do think that every budget year is an opportunity to have the conversation again because ultimately We're the ones that the mayor sends a budget down we decide what to do with it we make ads based on what our priorities and what our constituents priorities and and the city's needs are.

So every year is an opportunity to revisit everything, really.

And so I just wanted to underscore that important point.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you.

Council Member Morales, anything else?

Nope.

SPEAKER_09

Moving back to you, Director Noble.

SPEAKER_02

Okay, there is a third proposed amendment.

This one from Council Member Moore.

We take a slightly different approach to defining the priorities for the use of the Jump Start funds.

In particular, it would limit the general fund support to 45% of the total proceeds and then allocate the remaining resources exclusively for affordable housing.

So again, using comparable math as I went through before, in 2027, that would mean $266 million for Jump Start funding for affordable housing.

There's a bullet that I meant to add here that I'm going to get you at the end.

I apologize for this.

So the funding for the revenue stabilization account, I'm having trouble with that today, would be provided by both the automatic year-end transfer, but then also transfers from the general fund, so not from the payroll expense tax resources themselves.

Of the funds that are transferred to the general fund, the intent, and this is the bullet I meant to add, would put priority on the original jumpstart priorities themselves.

So again, there'd be significant resource available to the general fund, but of that resource, the priority would be the jumpstart categories, presumably other than affordable housing, because that would be addressed here.

So the implication here, again, is significant additional funding for affordable housing.

The implications for the deficit are small.

It's about an additional $16 million.

So other things being equal, the transfer of the general fund anticipated in 2027 is just over 45%.

So this small adjustment doesn't have a big impact on the deficit.

And just to speak to more directly, but the general implication here is that affordable housing is elevated as the key priority for the jumpstart resources.

THE FUNDS THAT ARE AVAILABLE TO TRANSFER THE GENERAL FUND CAN SUPPORT BASIC CITY SERVICES, BUT ALSO WITH A PRIORITY AROUND THE ORIGINAL JUMP START CATEGORIES.

SPEAKER_09

COUNCIL MEMBER MOORE HAS SPONSORED THE AMENDMENT.

YOU ARE RECOGNIZED.

SPEAKER_23

Thank you very much chair and I too want to say thank you very much Ben for doing this and noting that the slide doesn't represent the last point that Ben made because that came about this morning and this is still a work in progress and I appreciate the flexibility.

So I guess nobody should be surprised that I would be bringing something about affordable housing and I appreciate that the Mayor began this conversation.

I also appreciate, Chair, that you're following up with the conversation and really trying to walk a fine line there.

But I also very much support and appreciate Councilmember Rivera's comments that as much as I would love to think that we're going to be out of this mess in four years, I really don't think we are.

We have a new reality.

And I keep harking back to what happened.

God, I don't even want to think about it.

But anyway, the national scene.

And we need to have the flexibility to address the priorities, as Chair has pointed out.

And as Council President has pointed out, we are trying to address...

an addiction crisis through the general fund, but we don't have that listed as a priority.

We had youth mental health come up as a priority, and so we had to make another box.

And in some ways, I think that we are setting up sort of a way of disappointing people every time we come to them because we are going to be in this position where we have to continue to utilize payroll expense money.

for general fund.

We've done it throughout the history.

It's always just been a question of how much.

So maybe let's just bite the bullet now and decide that we are going to set aside a certain percentage at 45% and then set the rest at 55 for affordable housing.

The reason I choose that category to designate that that is required percentage, it's not, you know, should we be able to, but it's designated is because of all of those priorities, and they are all critically important.

It is the one where we have a legal obligation to fulfill under the Growth Management Act.

The others are not a legal obligation.

And so to me, that is a compelling reason to make this a mandatory percentage that's set aside.

Obviously, we can always go above, and that would be the goal, the hope, that we would have enough money to spend more than 55%.

But I think we need to set a floor.

And in terms of, but I did also want to carry forth the values and priorities that were articulated in Jump Start.

I think that that's important for us to state that those are priorities in the general fund so that we do not lose track of those priorities that were articulated by prior councils and that have been continued to be articulated by people who have come here although noting that again those priorities were set by smaller groups of people who tend to be more politically active and so there is a broader base interest which I think we hear loudly and clearly from the Seattle residents and as a whole public safety and is the number one priority, and that's a general fund requirement, and housing and homelessness.

We hear those repeatedly, and the pieces that are corollary to all of that.

So again, I think being forthright about the need to have continuing access to the money through general fund to support those general fund priorities, but also making sure that we commit ourselves to a particular level of affordable housing is why I've brought this.

Thank you.

SPEAKER_09

Thank you, Council Member Moore.

Colleagues, any questions, comments on Council Member Moore's proposal?

I'm seeing none.

Council Member Moore, any last words?

SPEAKER_23

No, thank you.

SPEAKER_09

Okay, fantastic.

We will move on to the next item.

Back to you, Ben, and I know that we are moving into the proposed consent calendar.

Again, colleagues, a couple different consent calendars we're using.

This is for ordinances on the budget.

We'll get to the...

We should probably use a different word for Group A, which is consent of amendments.

But this is consent calendar of legislation enacting our budget.

SPEAKER_02

I'm going to, in the next few minutes here, try to definitely move you through 36 pieces of legislation.

For what it's worth, this is not particularly unusual.

When the mayor sends down the budget, you might think of that as being the budget ordinance, but in fact, there are a series of ordinances that are needed to fully implement the budget, and these are among them.

My goal, given time constraints, is to give you essentially a one-sentence summary of each.

I have developed the working knowledge of them over the last couple of days.

I have access to some additional information, so if there are more specific questions, I might be able to handle them here, but also potentially offline.

And again, the goal here is that ultimately you will be casting a single vote to approve all of these as a group, again, just really to expedite your total actions.

I would add that central staff has reviewed each of these in more detail.

My working knowledge is not our full knowledge, And at the stage when we were doing the policy considerations, we provided you a summary of each department's budget, and at the end of that, there was a section on legislation.

So if you were curious, you hadn't already seen that, there was some write-up of each of these that was completed.

So, with that introduction, the first bill, and I'm just going to go down this list, is actually a 2024 appropriations bill.

It completes the allocation of money to address the wage increases that were adopted as part of legislation that you supported earlier this year.

The second piece is an ordinance that establishes new fees for Seattle Center's facilities.

They rent out various rooms and arena, not the arena, but smaller facilities.

There's some theaters.

There's a range for each of those, and the director has significant discretion about the exact rental rates depending on the use and the scale of the use.

The next item is an Interfund loan for Memorial Stadium.

Realizing this concept may be relatively new to some of you, the city uses Interfund loans as a cash management tool.

The city has balances in various funds and can lend them.

In this case, what's happening is that there's a planned debt issuance in 2026 of long-term debt to help pay for the cost of redeveloping Memorial Stadium.

This Interfund loan will give Sandal Center access to that money essentially ahead of time.

And the issue here is we don't really know exactly how much money is going to be needed next year as the project moves forward.

And this means we can wait until we have a better sense of that to issue the actual debt.

And once you do that, there are legal and financial constraints on debt.

This way, it's essentially a convenience.

We'll be able to move the project forward.

That debt issuance for 2026 is in the endorsed budget, and there are resources allocated to pay off that debt.

Next one is Seattle Center parking rates.

Again, the various parking garages at Seattle Center, this revises the range of rates that can be charged for those facilities.

Again, matching both adjustments for inflation and market conditions as well.

Next one is a policy change, but essentially an internal reorganization for the city.

Currently, the exams for both police and fire are run from SDHR, from the HR department, in coordination with the Civil Service Commission.

This would essentially, in an effort to streamline and make that more efficient, transfer the exam function into the Civil Service Commission.

Next one is animal shelter fees.

Again, there are adjustments in these fees.

Interestingly, because I looked, some of them are increasing modestly, essentially, for inflation.

Others actually decrease, reflecting, essentially, if you will, market pressure.

So adoption fees go down, spay and neuter fees go up a little bit.

Next one, again, is a fee that FAS charges for companies that engage in recycling and better aligning that with the cost of actually reviewing those.

And it's a minor one.

Next one is...

I love this acronym.

HXM is the hearing examiner.

So this is a fee that the hearing examiner charges for some of its reviews.

That's an initial filing fee.

Hasn't been changed since 2012. There's documentation that indicates that it's well in line with what other cities' hearing examiners charge for comparable services.

The next one is really obscure, the OCF HCMS Interfund Loan.

This one, you are probably aware of the upgrade in the city's payroll system, Workday, that was rolled out this year.

That is part of a more comprehensive update of the city's HR systems, so the computer systems that keep personnel records and track leave and all those sorts of things.

That system is more than 20 years old and is in the process of being updated.

Again, this is a similar situation.

There's a debt issuance anticipated for next year.

This gets them cash ahead of that.

And as a side note, recognizing that those computer systems aren't designed to last 20 years, the term of the debt associated with the paying for that are much shorter, more like eight years.

The next two items are resolutions related to the city's retirement system.

One establishes the ARC, which is the Actuarial Recommended Contribution.

So the city is trying to maintain the financial health of its retirement system.

Actually, post the Great Recession and the market crash associated, the system fell to a situation of being underfunded.

So the city set itself on a fixed-year path to restore full funding, and this continues us on that path.

The next one, again, related is the interest rate that is essentially nominally paid to city employees.

If you don't stay all the way through the retirement, you can choose to pull out the money that you contributed and you earn an interest rate on that.

This sets that interest rate.

It fluctuates some essentially with the Fed rate.

It's a low, relatively secure guaranteed rate.

Next item would transfer oversight and administration of the city's deferred compensation program from SDHR to the retirement system.

Again, looking for efficiencies in the way the city operates and giving employees a comprehensive place to work with the city on retirement.

The next two ordinances impose inflationary increases for the fees charged at SDCI.

There's one for 2025 and then one anticipating the 2026. There's a little bit of catch-up here.

We had a very high inflationary period.

They didn't raise rates by that much in any given year, but then sold a little bit of catch-up here, so increases of, I think, 6%.

Similarly, the next item, the street use fee schedule, this is fees that are charged particularly for construction activities that occupy the right-of-way.

Property owners, builders are charged an increasing fee.

It increases through time to incentivize them to not stay in the right-of-way, but again, updating those fees.

SDOT.

As the COVID pandemic hit, it had a dramatic impact on some of the transportation-specific revenue streams, particularly commercial parking tax, as an example.

Decision was made at that time not to backfill that all with general fund, but to allow SDOT to take an inter-fund loan with the idea that these transportation-specific revenue sources would come back after the pandemic and that, therefore, we'd be able to essentially smooth out those transportation-specific revenue streams, taking advantage of the Interfund loan to use some of them in 2020 and 2021, knowing that we could repay that.

And this extends that loan to the end of next year, and we have reviewed a payment schedule that will confirm that payment will be complete by the end of next year, as is required.

Next one lists a proviso on Seattle transportation measure.

This is the 0.15% voter-approved sales tax that's dedicated to transit.

There was a proviso imposed either last year or the year before requiring that a percentage or an absolute amount of that money be directed towards bridge maintenance projects.

And SDOT has run into essentially the limit of transit eligible maintenance projects.

And knowing that the levy, which just recently passed, includes significant funding for bridge maintenance, the underlying policy need has seemingly been addressed.

Continuing, so the fire department charges permit fees as well.

They do inspections of electrical plans and fire escape routes and the like.

So those again, modest changes there.

This next item was one that was discussed actually during the policy consideration phase.

It would allow the fire department to charge in situations where it provided BLS transport services, so basic.

TRANSPORT SERVICES RATHER THAN LIFE-THREATENING.

NEXT ONE IS SMC FEES.

AGAIN, CHANGING THERE.

NEXT, NUMBER 26 IS SPD ELIMINATING OR CLEANING UP THEIR FEE SCHEDULE.

AGAIN, I LOOKED AT THIS ONE.

THERE WAS A FEE FOR A POLAROID IDENTIFICATION SYSTEM THAT CLEARLY IS NO LONGER IN USE.

NEXT ONE IS SEATTLE PARKS DEPARTMENT CHANGES IN THEIR FEES AND CHARGES.

AGAIN, THOSE ARE BOTH A VARIETY OF SERVICES.

CHANGES ARE RELATIVELY MODEST AND, AGAIN, THE DOCUMENTATION HIGHLIGHTS THAT THEY ARE IN LINE WITH THAT CHARGE IN NEARBY AREAS.

This is the rate ordinance, so this increases the rates charged by City Light for 25 and 26. This was discussed at the relevant committee, essentially ran out of meeting times in September, so this legislation was bumped to the budget committee for final action, but was reviewed at committee.

Next item would exempt raffles and bingos from the city's 5% tax on gambling.

I think the major impact here, as I understand it, is on the 50-50 raffles that have become common, I personally know, at both hockey games and baseball games.

Currently, they're called 50-50, but somewhere in that, there's 5% lost to the city.

So this would make them a clean 50-50 deal.

The next item is actually one that we worked on with the budget office, we being central staff.

Actually, while she was here.

We're cleaning up some reporting requirements.

The council has appropriately established reporting requirements over time for various actions.

But sometimes those things evolve, and we don't do a great job of cleaning up reports that really aren't necessary anymore.

So that's really what this is doing, trying to align those more towards the real needs in terms of oversight and transparency.

But again, that's one that we worked on directly with them.

Next one is the TNC tax spending plan.

This is a resolution.

So this is just, again, the TNC revenues are deposited in the general fund and can be available for general uses.

There had been a restriction previously under a resolution.

This extends the period of allowing flexible use.

Next item.

three items are bonds.

So the city issues debt on a regular basis.

There's classically an issuance every year or every other year for the general fund.

And then each of the utilities, and they're actually recognizing it's Seattle Public Utilities, actually three separate utilities that issue debt separately.

So these all kind of bond issuances go through something called the debt policy management or administrative impact.

So there's an internal review within the city.

Central staff are represented on that committee.

And each of the utilities have representatives.

I participated in the past.

There's a really good back and forth Why do you guys need this?

Do you need a decent amount?

What are the particular uses?

So again, these have been reviewed in that way.

So that's items 32, 33, and 34. 35 is the year-end supplemental ordinance.

So that is balancing 2024 out again, making some appropriations to address new needs and the like.

Again, that has been reviewed by central staff.

associated with that is the year-end grant acceptance ordinance so there are additional grants that have the city has earned or landed if you will since the mid-year supplemental was considered in July and There's then also a comparable grant acceptance ordinance for 2025. So we accept ordinances mid-year, but also ahead of time.

The departments know with a high degree of certainty about certain grants that they will receive in 2025. Those have been assumed in the budget, assumed in our revenues, but this then formally adopts those.

The last two items are what you might classically think of as the budget documents or the budget ordinances, the proposed ordinance itself, which is a clerk file.

As you make your amendments, they will be added to that clerk file.

Then the capital improvement program, which you'll hear vernacularly described as the CIP.

Again, similarly, it is documented in the CIP book, but if there are changes that you make, those will be added to that clerk file.

So with a deep breath, that's just a full set of budget legislation that's intended for the consent agenda.

So that would be a single vote tomorrow on this collective.

If you have questions now, happy to answer them, but also happy to answer them offline later today and early tomorrow.

SPEAKER_09

Thank you.

I'll just clarify.

The last items 38 and 39 are the Kirk files that are associated with the council bills.

For item 38, the associated council bill is Council Bill 120905.

SPEAKER_13

Actually, I wanted to clarify.

SPEAKER_09

Please.

SPEAKER_13

I think those are actually the proposed budget.

So it is...

Yeah, that's the mayor's transmittal.

So that's why they're on the consent calendar because what we will be adopting is a separate clerk file on the 19th.

So these two are just the mayor's proposed.

SPEAKER_09

Wonderful.

Clarifying that we will be making amendments to Council Bill 120905, which is not on this list.

Ben, I had one question for you about the raffles, clarifying that these are 50-50 raffles for nonprofit organizations that provide proceeds to nonprofits that provide services.

Yes.

It's not the bar down the street doing a 50-50 raffle and somebody's making money.

SPEAKER_02

Exactly.

And the ones that are hosted at the sports facilities are for nonprofits.

They're just using that as the venue to raise the money, if you will.

SPEAKER_09

For the organizations that are being funded.

Okay.

Thanks.

Colleagues, any questions on this?

I will tell you I have spent hours on some of these bills.

I know central staff has.

Happy to read you in, but maybe not on the record because we have 46 individual items just in groups C and D.

Seeing no further questions, let's move on.

I did receive a...

Oh.

Oh.

Council Member Saucon.

SPEAKER_03

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Just a quick question here for central staff.

Can you help me better understand, for purposes of voting and, like, the grouping and, like, how these proposed consent calendar implementing pieces of legislation, how they...

SPEAKER_02

differ from the proposed consent amendment package items in like those groupings in A and C.

The idea is that the voting process itself can be time consuming and at some level potentially unnecessarily so.

So we've looked to group things that are somewhat alike.

So this is the alike set of, I'm going to use a phrase you may regret, routine budget legislation.

I mean, there are significant actions here, just to be clear.

So the idea is that these fit as a group as the base legislation.

The other groups, one of them is the balancing package, which is a defined concept.

And then there's a set of, in addition to the balancing package, there's a set of amendments that you all have been individually working on that chair sense working with us are likely mutually agreeable.

And again, for efficiency, you could vote on them as a group.

To be clear, you will have the prerogative of pulling out any individual item that you see is worthy of further and separate discussion.

SPEAKER_03

No, thank you.

I think I understand that part.

I guess what's less clear right now is do any of these proposed consent calendar items, these are completely separate and apart from all the groupings A, B, C, D, so it's separate, and then, which I'm seeing Yolanda nod her head yes, and when are we going to vote on this, or when is the anticipated vote date for these items?

The intent is to vote this tomorrow.

Okay, got it.

SPEAKER_09

Thank you.

Thank you.

And if you have concerns with these bills, please let me know and we can push them until next Tuesday.

This is where in the past we have taken voice votes on each of these items.

And so it was about an hour, hour and a half of everyone saying yes, which is why we're just putting them on a consent calendar.

The amendments in the groups are all amendments to council bill 120905, which is not a council bill within the consent calendar.

SPEAKER_13

That is correct.

So the consent calendar is legislation, individual pieces of legislation, as you see in the right column, and the packages are packages of amendments to the budget adoption ordinance.

So that's just a just a slight nuance there.

The consent calendar is also familiar to you all with the city council meetings where there is the consent calendar of legislation.

So that's just a minor point of clarification around the language we use on these various means by which we try to help expedite the voting process.

SPEAKER_09

Great.

Well, we are on item 39. I'd love for us to get at least through item 41, if not group A within item 42. So let's continue on.

SPEAKER_28

Good afternoon, council members.

Calvin Chow with council central staff.

Item 40 is council bill 120887. It is legislation that would have been in the consent PAC calendar, but we had to pull it out because of a technical amendment that's necessary for it.

The legislation allows for spending of the Seattle transit measure to be spent on PERSONNEL TO WORK ON THE SOUND TRANSIT 3 PROJECTS AS WELL AS POTENTIALLY FOR THIRD PARTY PARTNERSHIPS IN SUPPORT OF ST3 PROJECTS.

THE PROPOSED BUDGET DOES INCLUDE PERSONNEL WORKING ON THE PROJECT BUT DOES NOT INCLUDE ANY PARTNERSHIP.

THE TECHNICAL AMENDMENT IS THAT THERE WAS A REFERENCE, ERRONEOUS REFERENCE RELATED TO A SEPARATE PUBLIC HEARING FOR THE STBD THAT WAS NOT NECESSARY AND WE DID NOT HOLD ONE SO WE'RE REMOVING THAT REFERENCE.

SPEAKER_09

THANK YOU, CAL.

QUESTIONS, COMMENTS?

Let's move on to CBO Participatory Budgeting Implementation Ordinance, Council Bill 120893.

SPEAKER_06

Good afternoon, Chair, members of the committee, Tommaso Johnson, Council Central staff.

Agenda item 41 is the Participatory Budgeting Implementation Ordinance.

You were briefed on this earlier during the budget process.

The underlying ordinance would allocate $27.3 million that has been held over in finance general since it was appropriated in 2021. and it would move that money to various departments to implement elements, different projects of the participatory budgeting selected during the participatory budgeting process.

There are four amendments to this ordinance, all proposed by Council Member Hollingsworth and co-sponsored by Council Members Moore, The first amendment is a version two that was revised.

You have that in your receipt.

This amendment would appropriate $4.7 million to the Office of Arts and Culture to provide grants to support arts and cultural preservations focusing on historically marginalized communities such as the black community.

The amendment would also appropriate $315,000 to the Human Services Department for contracted youth activities for specifically identified entities in 2025. Just to note, this part of the amendment would render another CBA HSD 35A moot.

So if this passes, my understanding is that the council member Hollingsworth intends to withdraw HSD 35. This amendment would fund these new programs by decreasing the participatory budgeting appropriations to the Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation by $5 million.

The original proposal would have directed $7.2 million to parks to implement a public restroom access project involving purchase of mobile restroom units and staffing at new and existing facilities.

This amendment would appropriate $2.2 million to SPR for this purpose to implement an alternate or scaled-down version of public restroom improvements.

Amendment 2 would appropriate $3 million to the Office of Housing to provide funding for outreach and engagement, homeowner stabilization services, to increase home ownership retention in communities at high risk of displacement.

This would be accomplished via a mix of work that the Office of Housing would do, as well as contracts with community-based organizations who have experience providing these services.

This project would be funded via a decrease to the participatory budgeting appropriations intended for the Department of Neighborhoods, or DON.

That's decreased by the same amount, $3 million.

The original proposal, participatory budgeting proposal, would have appropriated $7 million to DON for urban food and farming projects.

This amendment would retain $4 million to implement a scaled down version of that same project.

Amendment 3 would proviso $2 million of the participatory budgeting funds in the Human Services Department to fund a young adult day shelter, excuse me, a young adult day center in the Central District.

This amendment would also proviso the remaining $1.9 million of participatory budgeting funds in HST to be used for youth and young adult shelter capital improvements.

Once again, the original participatory budgeting proposal related to HST would have funded two projects at a total of $3.9 million.

The first project at $2 million would be for enhanced homeless navigation services.

And the second proposal, 1.9 for youth shelter capital improvements.

So this amendment retains the 1.9 for youth capital shelter improvements that was included in the original proposal.

and substitutes a different project for the $2.0 million, which would be the Young Adult Day Center.

The Fourth Amendment simply amends the recitals to reflect a statement of council intent regarding the new funding priorities.

SPEAKER_09

Thank you, Tommaso.

Council Member Hollingsworth is sponsor of the amendments.

The floor is yours.

And a practice I'm going to start implementing moving forward for the rest of the day and the rest of our budget cycle is if you are a co-sponsor, you will be second in priority and then for everyone else.

So Council Member Hollingsworth.

SPEAKER_01

Floor is yours.

Thank you, Chair Strauss.

Thank you, colleagues, for your consideration on these amendments to the participatory budget bringing forward to you today.

I definitely want to thank some of the co-sponsors that are on some of these bills, Councilmember Moore and Councilmember Wu.

I also have Councilmember, or excuse me, Council President Sarah Nelson on some of these amendments as well and particularly for the proviso for the youth development piece and so I just want to thank you all for your support on that really really grateful and The original intentions, oh, I also want to thank central staff, Tommaso and Tracy for dealing with me.

I know that you all didn't have a choice, so I just want to thank you.

Point of order, counselor.

SPEAKER_09

You are a joy to work with.

SPEAKER_01

Oh, okay.

Is that a dad joke?

That was a good one, thank you.

The original intentions of the participatory budget was to ensure that black communities were impacted.

We all saw this during 2020, murder of George Floyd and the budget, how this all arise from wanting to make sure that communities that have been historically excluded were impacted.

How it came about was we had community members that were concerned about some of the outcomes and some of the buckets and how they were reflected in some of the spending so it could impact our community.

And I listened with them, connected with them, and came up with a lot of these amendments.

You heard yesterday some of the five points of progress for black community is home ownership and land, economic mobility through small business, health and wellness.

education, and we also pair that with the arts.

So often we think of education K through 12 as being the only education for our kids, but for black community, a lot of it is the arts because of our storytelling, because of dance, music, health, all these great things that come with that piece of education as well.

And then also workforce development and the trades.

Just some stats here that I want to share with my colleagues.

Homeownership Peace so the first one of five points of progress today 31% of black households own their home in 1970 it was 50% in the city of Seattle economic mobility and small business 1% of black owned businesses 1% of the overall businesses in the city of Seattle are black and they only equate for 1% of the overall revenue health and wellness 32% of black households are food insecure education and the arts 40% of black students are ready for kindergarten compared to their counterpart at 58% and then workforce development and the trades and jobs the medium salary for black workers in the City of Seattle is $41,000 So we carefully crafted this with community at heart and at the table to figure out how are we able to have this meaningful impact to our community.

And you heard from Mr. Johnson today about Tommaso.

Sorry, I said Mr. Johnson.

Is that okay?

Tommaso.

Johnson, today about the amendments that we're bringing forward to you today.

The first one is through arts and culture.

This would be able for individuals, organizations, nonprofits, like you heard Langston, you heard you have Urban League, you have Africa Land Trust, we have the Goodfoot, you have Color Girl Gardens Club, you have all these great...

folks that would be able to bring arts and culture into the city of Seattle through some of their events that they do some of Maybe they want to have a speaker come to their classroom They want to bring a national, you know a big person to come into the city of Seattle to be able to continue the beautiful arts and culture for a black community.

So that's really key.

The second is the appropriation for home ownership and retention.

And we really pushed on this to make sure that we had the proper outreach for this as well.

In the last three months, or excuse me, the last eight months, I've had three really great friends lose their home in the CD in the South End to different conditions.

whether it's taxes, whether it's reverse mortgage, whether a house was passed down, they did not know about what, what do you call it, probate was, right?

These things are really important to our community and not knowing that, and so this money would be able to help with the outreach to that.

A lot of times, a lot of people we have the programs, we have the money.

These people go door to door to talk to people and connect with folks so they can understand, you know, they don't, there's a lot of shame that goes in when people lose their home or they have high taxes.

And so, you know, having the right people that are at their door that like, hey, it's okay, come with me.

Let's be able to navigate you through this, I think is incredibly important.

Third one, the proviso for HSD for a young adult center.

We have a public safety crisis in this city.

Kids are graduating high school, and then between the ages of 18 and 25, we have seen gun violence at unprecedented numbers in our city of Seattle, particularly for black males.

And so with this piece, and we don't know if it would potentially be in the Central District where we've seen a ton of gun violence, or Potentially in district 2 as well as where some properties are being looked at This would be a day center for youth between 18 to 25 8 a.m.

To 8 p.m.

It's a already It's already a structure that has been stood up.

They just need the funding to continue to do some of the work Workforce trades they'd also have people to help them do their resume connecting resources health and wellness just get a hot meal and for some of our kids that are on the brink of breaking down and being able to have someplace to go, which I think is incredibly important.

Last and not least, this bill also modifies to be able to recite and reflect what the original intent of this budget was to make sure that we are impacting black communities.

for the resources that best are utilized for them to have the health and wellness, the education, the arts, the workforce development, the home ownership and economic mobility.

We've also identified 12 organizations as well.

I want to thank Council President Nelson for co-sponsoring this with me.

We have identified 12 organizations.

One of her bills that came down that made it into the balancing package was supporting our our cd panthers so thinking about when we are looking at you know prevention intervention and enforcement that we are funding at the levels as we're also doing enforcement okay with our spd and you know all these things that we're also funding the preventative piece that is so important that we balance that out you know from council we have made a lot of um A lot of bills come down for enforcement, which is important, and I've voted for it, I agree with, but I also agree with the preventative piece as well.

So, you know, people aren't getting to that enforcement piece.

So that's why the preventative piece is important.

Funding groups that do youth development, that set them on the path, you know, so they are successful, and then also Council President made a comment, too, which I want to highlight is the food piece that a lot of these kids are hungry and then they get to be angry so they're hangry and they don't have the food and most people don't know a lot of times a lot of these things happen because they don't have food over the weekend and then monday tuesday it's just a hot mess because they haven't eaten over the weekend.

And so a lot of these issues come up because they're hungry.

So these groups that we've identified also do food insecurity stuff and they do a lot of programming for youth.

So anyways, with that, I'll stop.

I wanna thank central staff for us to being able to carefully craft a lot of this stuff.

I want to thank some of the community members that showed up last night in person and on virtual and then have sent emails regarding supporting these changes because I do believe that these really, number one, will impact community for the better, but also the intended outcomes, which is important for this participatory budget, which was the original spirit of this.

I think this really aligns with what people really want.

And last but not least, even though there is a food bucket...

That we have tick taken from to be able to allocate for homeownership.

There's still those projects that are going to be done where they're just gonna be scaled back, but we've also and I got a double check with central staff to see if we've added language for Expanding some of their scope of work with Department of Neighborhood and so forth.

So anyways, thank you.

Mr. Chair.

That is my Long explanation for this participatory budget.

Thank you.

Thank you councilmember Hollingsworth councilmember.

Woo.

SPEAKER_99

I

SPEAKER_11

I want to really quickly also add, thank you, Joy, for your leadership on this.

Like you said, there are many community members who have scheduled meetings and came up to us with this concern.

And as we heard last night during public comment, this sounds like a good solution to address many of the concerns we're hearing in our office.

Thank you.

SPEAKER_09

Thank you.

Council Member Moore.

SPEAKER_23

Thank you very much, Chair.

Yeah, I just wanted to say thank you very much, Councilmember Hollingsworth, for pursuing this and also for maintaining the funding for the Duwamish, which was critically important as well.

But this is going to be a phenomenal boost to the community, thank you.

SPEAKER_09

Thank you.

That does bring up the one question I had.

I'm going to interject here just for process of facilitation.

This slide references the modifications to participatory budgeting.

Can you, Tommaso, share what aspects of the bill that we've been briefed on before are retained?

And I believe that...

I know the answer, but I just want to have it on the record, please.

SPEAKER_06

Yeah, absolutely.

So the elements of the participatory budgeting proposal in the underlying bill that are not modified are $2 million one time for care team expansion in 2025. AS I MENTIONED WHEN WE DISCUSSED THIS BEFORE, THE MAYOR'S BUDGET BUILDS IN THE ASSUMPTION THAT THE PB ORDINANCE, PARTICIPATORY BUDGETING ORDINANCE WILL FUND CARE TEAM EXPANSION, THE INITIAL PHASE IN 2025 AT $2 MILLION.

THAT'S RETAINED.

PUBLIC RESTROOM ACCESS, AS I MENTIONED BEFORE, IS REDUCED FROM 7.2 TO 2.2, AND THE DEPARTMENT AND CBO HAVE INDICATED THAT THE Parks Department will be able to implement a scaled down version of that project.

That project will be able to scale to that amount.

Urban Food and Farming at Department of Neighborhoods reduced from $7 million to $4 million.

Same story there.

The department has indicated that they will be able to implement a scaled down version of that project, and Council Member Hollingsworth, they have indicated that they are interested and favorable in expanding the scope in the way you described in the minor way, and they don't need additional authority to do that.

They're on board with that.

As you mentioned, the Native Youth Past, Present, and Future Duwamish Native Youth Center is retained at the original $7.2 million amount.

The enhanced homeless navigation, $2 million, which would have been implemented by KCRHA via a pass through from HSD.

That is a project that has been removed in favor of the day center.

And then youth and young adult shelter capital improvements in the realm of $1.9 million has been retained from the original proposal.

I SHOULD ALSO SAY THAT THE AMENDMENTS ALL ADD CARRY FORWARD LANGUAGE TO ENSURE THAT THE PROJECTS CAN BE IMPLEMENTED AS DESIGNED IN 2025 AND BEYOND.

SPEAKER_09

THANK YOU, TOMASO.

COUNCILMEMBER HOLLINGSWORTH, I SEE YOUR HAND AGAIN.

YOU ALSO HAVE LAST WORD.

OLD HAND.

I APOLOGIZE.

SPEAKER_01

THANK YOU.

SPEAKER_09

COUNCILMEMBER SACA, THEN COUNCILMEMBER KETTLE.

SPEAKER_03

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and so thank you, Tommaso, for clarifying that.

The important features and specific elements that have been changed, retained, or modified in any way, that really...

I would like to clarify my uncertainty and confusion that I had about its impact on those original items that were originally proposed in the mayor's original proposed participatory The $7.2 million for the Duwamish Longhouse project is retained.

It's in my district.

It's been promised and committed to that community years ago, and it's important that we actually finally deliver.

And so I'm thankful that this—well, first off, for the leadership, thank you, Councilmember Hollingsworth, for championing this.

Really important.

you know collective holistic approach that still allows us as a city to live up to some of those original commitments to the black community.

And also I think your co-sponsors as well Councilmembers Moore and Wu for for you know allow us to get this point I strongly support this bill as amended for the reasons that I mentioned and thank you again for bringing it.

SPEAKER_09

Thank you Councilmember Saka Councilmember Kettle followed by Councilmember Rivera and Nelson.

SPEAKER_04

Chair Strauss, thank you very much.

I just wanted to say just a few things.

One, I wanted to thank Council Member Hollingsworth's leadership on this issue.

It's so very needed and it's key.

I also want to thank Council Member Hollingsworth for being a trusted advisor in this area for me.

Her insight, her lived experience, everything that she brings to this is very important as I look at these issues and the budget and just in general.

And so I look at her as a trusted advisor, and I think she has also been a key link for me to individuals and organizations, many of whom we saw and heard from last night, so I thank her for that.

And I also thank them for coming last night and speaking on behalf of their groups and constituencies.

Looking at the original legislation and where we're going, I'd also think that Councilmember Hollingsworth would probably be a great link to the executive as they look to work up next year's program for HSD, DON, and other key departments.

The last thing I wanted to say, and Councilmember Hollingsworth brings up a very important point.

I think right now is a fantastic time to expand on it, and that is the preventative aspect.

So many times in committee, the public safety committee, I talk about leading with compassion, having empathy for those individuals that are in crisis and similar conditions, but then having the wisdom to look at for the fuller community and the neighborhoods involved.

I also talk about you can't succeed in public safety without also succeeding in public health.

But as we've gotten to the end of this first year and working all the points as Council Member Hollingsworth talked about on the public safety side, it is important to have the human services in a more general context from what I said, to have that piece there.

And this is important for, like example with our soap bill, which I believe now is engendered a great increase in terms of resources for the women and girls that have been affected in that piece.

But it's also here, too, something where we can help those individuals, particularly the youth and young adults, which is so key, and it's not really been a main focus for the Public Safety Committee, but it is something that is vital in terms of that balance with the public safety and then the human services as represented by Council Members Moore's Housing and Human Services Committee to ensure that we're helping those in need.

And as many people said it last night, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

And this is an area that that can really be so important.

So I think it's important to highlight this preventative piece, the human services piece, the public health piece, and those angles in terms of their companion kind of efforts to what we've been doing on public safety.

So again, thank you, Council Member Hollingsworth, and for the co-sponsors and for those that are supporting.

I appreciate it.

SPEAKER_09

Thank you, Council Member Kettle, Council Member Rivera, and then Nelson.

SPEAKER_25

Thank you, Chair.

I just want to also lend my voice of gratitude to Council Member Hollingsworth for doing the work and working with community to fulfill the commitment to community.

I know Mayor had sent down the package.

I very much appreciate his doing so and then also Just appreciate councilmember Hollingsworth for like I said working with community to fine-tune The proposal because I know that she did work with community To put this forward and we know that this is what is needed in community and we heard last night These items are what community supports And I want to particularly underscore my appreciation for, you know, the youth.

That is a big piece of these amendments.

And then also on the homeownership side, you know, our older community, because we know that a lot of the folks that are in danger of losing their homes, our folks are our older folks who now are living on fixed incomes.

And then when their property taxes go up, they don't have resources from which to pull from to be able to keep their homes.

And so I very much appreciate the attention to both on the youth end and our older folks.

Because I don't think personally we do enough to support our seniors and older folks in community across the United States.

So I very much appreciate your putting this forward.

And I very much support all the work that went into this.

And I very much support this.

So thank you, Council Member Hollingsworth, for really lending your part.

along with the mayors and the various folks, and really many of us here for, all of us here, for really highlighting the importance of keeping their promises to community.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council President.

SPEAKER_10

Thank you, Councilmember Hollingsworth.

If you didn't already have two co-sponsors, I would request to be a co-sponsor.

So let that be on the record that I fully support this.

And I thank you for doing the work.

You stepped into a project that had been sitting on the books for a long time and was almost to the point of being wrapped up with a bow.

and then came in and made some important changes.

And I do appreciate that your changes also keep in mind some of our expressed, not necessarily concern, but wish that what we're funding does have an ending date so that we make sure the community understands how to take it forward.

And last but not least, Thank you very much to the Office of Civil Rights.

This has been on their books for a long time, and I just want to express appreciation for that.

Yes, King County also did a participatory budgeting project, but it was $5 million, I believe, or $3 million.

And it's a lot easier to give away a small amount of money than it is to delegate $27 million.

million because of because the stakes are so high.

So everybody within the executive that worked on this also, I just wanted to extend thank you and congratulations and also to Councilmember Morales, who's been with this for a really long time.

Thank you.

SPEAKER_09

Other colleagues?

I'll share my comments and then I'll pass it over to Councilmember Hollingsworth for a last word.

I want to thank the staff in OCR for delivering this program.

It was not an easy pathway forward and clearly your work has delivered because all of the programs are still being funded despite some changes at different levels.

My reflection is a fact that the black community is not a monolith.

And what I reflect on from last night is that we heard a united voice, and that was really important.

I'll say the one thing that I said the last time this was before us, adding funding to black organizations and indigenous organizations, allocating money, funding, and resources to these types of organizations should not be a one-time action or a moment in time.

What we have before us is a reaction to the murder of George Floyd, and this can't be a one-time practice or a moment in time.

Council Member, and thank you, Council Member Hollingsworth for all your work.

Over to you for last word.

SPEAKER_01

Easy last words.

Thank you, Chair Strauss.

I'm so glad that you all brought it up.

I want to thank Office of Civil Rights Director Derek Wheeler-Smith for his work on this.

I know that he stepped in on the tail end of it and continued the process, so thank you so much.

Also want to recognize the Executive Office.

We were talking to them during this process to make sure that we were kind of aligned with a lot of the values that they have expressed as well.

So definitely want to thank our Executive Office.

And then I also want to thank obviously our central staff for all their help.

And then also the other city departments that had been allocated money.

And, you know, for us to come and say, hey, would you be okay with this?

And would you be okay with that?

And them talking about those things with our central staff and really being open to this as we know that it was already kind of baked and, you know, put the bow on it.

And I'm actually going to go down the line and thank all of you.

Thank you, Council.

for your early support on this and leadership.

Councilmember Saca, thank you for supporting the Duwamish piece and saying, hey, how important that is for your district and making sure that we're making the promise, we're keeping our promise.

I think it's incredibly important.

Thank you, Councilmember Rivera.

I know you've spent a lot of time on the phones from different people in the community who have expressed their support You know, support for this, but also, you know, had tough conversations with folks about things.

So just thank you.

Council Member Morales, you started this.

And I just, no, I'm serious.

You started this ball.

That is incredibly important.

And just want to thank you for actually starting the ball for us to get here.

You know, I'm just trying to run through the end zone with it.

You know, you can be Russell Wilson, whatever you want.

Well, Russell Wilson didn't hand it off to Marshawn Lynch, so don't pass it.

you know, whatever it is, okay?

We'll just talk about this as maybe a first down.

Thank you, Council Chair, Dan Strauss for your leadership, but also your advice about how to navigate things and how to move through stuff.

And, you know, just really, really the insight that you have is, has been incredible.

Council member Moore, thank you.

You've been incredibly supportive since day one and, and you know, your leadership as well, like just incredible.

So thank you.

And your sponsorship.

Council member Kettle, thank you.

You can't, you come with me into places that, you know, a lot of people don't look like you, you know, Those are hard to find in the city, but you come in those places and you listen to people and they give you the feedback, whether it's tough or it's not, you know, and you listen and you take it.

And I really appreciate you absorbing that.

And thank you, Council Member Wu, for your support on this and your sponsorship and just being like, hey, whatever you, you know, whatever the community wants.

Thank you for that.

Okay.

So anyways, with that being said, thank you.

I hope we can earn your support on this for the participatory budget.

And, um, that is all I have.

So thank you chair.

And hopefully I didn't forget to thank anyone.

So thank you.

SPEAKER_09

Thank you.

Council member Hollingsworth for the record.

I am missing Pete Carroll this year and don't pass the ball in the end zone.

Run it, run it, run it, run it.

With that, colleagues, I'm going to do a little bit of a time check for us.

We're going to go on lunch recess for 30 minutes coming back at 1.30.

What we have before us are 118 items in A.

Not all of them will be...

deep dives, that's two hours where if every one of those items only takes one minute, which it will take longer, that's two hours.

We then have 46 items in Groups C and D.

We only have one item in Group B, so I'm just not talking about it.

If we spend one minute on each of the items in Group C and D, that is 46 minutes.

I know central staff will take a minute and I know that each of us will take longer than a minute.

So let's give it two.

If with running that math, that's 90 minutes.

So we will come back at 1.30.

If we, the earliest we will get out is 4.15 on this projection.

If we go longer than, if we hit the two minutes per item in C and D, we will be out at 5 p.m.

sharp, which makes council member more late.

It makes me late.

If we go over two minutes, I can't tell you how long we're going to be here.

We will be here until 6 p.m.

at the latest.

So that is where we are.

Any questions or comments, we will be returning.

And I am so serious it's not funny be here at 1.30 because this is a really tight ship right now.

We are right barely on time.

Any questions, comments, concerns?

Seeing none, if there's no objection, the Select Budget Committee meeting will be in recess until 1.30 p.m.

Hearing no objection, we are in recess until 1.30 p.m.