Seattle City Council Budget Committee Session II 10/20/2020

Good afternoon, everyone.

Thank you again for joining the October 20th 2020 Select Budget Committee.

I'm Teresa Mosqueda, the chair of the Select Budget Committee, and the Reconvened Select Budget Committee is back in session.

Madam Clerk, could you please call the roll for us?

Councilmember Sawant?

Here.

Councilmember Strauss?

Present.

Councilmember Gonzalez?

Here.

Council Member Herbold.

Here.

Council Member Juarez.

Here.

Council Member Lewis.

Council Member Lewis.

Council Member Morales.

Here.

Council Member Peterson.

Here.

And Council Member Mosqueda.

Present, and if you could call Council Member Lewis one more time.

Council Member Lewis.

Sorry, Madam Clerk, I was away from the computer for just a moment.

I am present.

Thank you.

Nine present.

Thank you, Madam Clerk.

And thanks to all of you for rejoining the Select Budget Committee today.

Again, October 20th, 2020. The time is 2.03 p.m.

and we are going to continue on with our agenda as introduced and adopted this morning.

Madam Clerk, could you please read into the record item number three?

Police Department for briefing and discussion.

Well, that was perfect timing for that siren.

Thank you so much, Madam Clerk.

I appreciate all of you for joining us back again.

And we have with us Greg Doss, Lisa Kay, and I'm sure we have Ali Panucci here with us as well.

Greg, we will turn it over to you and a huge amount of appreciation for you and all of the information you provided in this robust memo, which we discussed prior to going on our short break here today.

Really appreciate all the work that you've done along with Lisa and the central staff team.

I'm looking forward to hearing the walkthrough this morning, this afternoon.

Thank you, Madam Chair and members of the committee.

Yes, it's a little long, but SPD is of high attention this year.

So I wanted to give you as much information as I could.

And the presentation will be a little long too, but I'll try to move as quickly as I can.

So I'm going to start out with the first slide.

Patty, if you'd switch it, please.

And so this is an overview of the entire department and the changes in the 2021 budget from the 2020 adopted.

And what I would point out with this particular table, of course, it's standard in all of our presentations, is that most of the changes that are made here are the result of the transfer of units out of SPD and into external entities.

And we'll be talking about that in some depth today.

There is a percent increase in leadership and administration, and that is a technical adjustment that is made by reallocating some of the SPD's internal service costs.

But just about all the negatives that you see here, in fact, all of the negatives that you see here have to do with moving functions out of the SPD and into other units, which we will be addressing.

And so I'm ready to go on unless someone wants to stop now.

I don't see any questions.

Thanks, Greg.

All right.

So, Patty, if you put the next one, please.

So I'm going to start out with a pie chart that you saw last June on June 10th.

And this is an overview of SPD's budget.

I think it's potentially instructive to go over it again, just so that you all in the public understands how the budget is put together and where the money is spent.

In terms of this particular budget, it is about Oh, it's about 200 and it's about 81% personnel costs, and that's a combination of both position costs and overtime so you see the 73.9% in the blue and then the 15. I'm sorry, the 6.9% in the orange.

So if you put those two things together, that gets you to 81% or about 291 million of the proposed budget.

And that is all spent on salaries and overtime to personnel, about 1,400 sworn and 384 civilian FTE.

The next largest budget category is the Interfund charges, and that's the 15.3% in the gray.

And that includes facility costs.

It includes costs that are allocated, collected by Seattle IT for the services they provide, by the Seattle Department of Human Resources for services they provide, and other basic facility costs.

This is another large portion of the budget.

And if you take the orange part, the gray part, and the blue part, you have now made up 96% of SPD's budget.

That leaves relatively little for discretionary purchases.

There's about 14 million left, about 4%.

You can see all those remaining slices at the top there.

And those are for things like fuel, equipment, and discretionary purchases.

And so with that as an overview, I would go ahead and move into the changes that's made in the 21 proposed.

And so the differences between the 2021 proposed and the 2020 adopted, I'll start out by talking about the position reductions.

There is, among the sworn staff, a 47 FTE reduction of positions.

And that goes from, as you can see in the bullet below, 1497 sworn positions.

which is what the department has historically had there, to 1,450 sworn positions.

While they are only reducing 47 positions, the mayor's office is also defunding another 50. So of the remaining positions, the 1,450, 1,400 are funded and 50 are unfunded.

There are no civilian position losses, but the mayor has defunded 40 positions, civilian positions.

And that ties into the next bullet, which is the reduction in salary.

And the first item you see there is the sworn salary reduction, and that's the 15.7 million that's associated with taking 1,497 positions down to 1,400 positions.

There is also a sworn overtime reduction, 2.7 million that we will talk about a little later.

I've identified that as an issue and that is for special events and also for emphasis patrols.

And then finally, there's a civilian salary reduction of $4.1 million to go along with the 40 positions that are unfunded.

So I'll stop there and ask if there's any questions on those high level changes.

Okay, I'll go ahead and move along then.

The next few items are, as I spoke about before, the transfer of different sections out of SPD and into new entities.

The first one is the parking enforcement transfer, which is into an existing entity.

It's the Seattle Department of Transportation, and you have about $15 million and 120 FTEs there.

What's notable about this one is that it includes 803,000 for special events that are normally worked by parking enforcement officers when they are directing traffic at either citywide events like Seafair or at sporting events like Seahawk games.

There's a transfer of the emergency management section into a separate executive department.

And that is $2.5 million and 15 FTE.

And then Patty, if you'd flip the slide again, then there's a transfer of the 911 call center out of SPD and into the new Seattle Emergency Communication Center.

And that's 18.5 million and 142 FTE.

And these last two transfers will be covered in some detail by my colleague, Lisa Kay, as we move towards the end of this presentation.

So if you have any questions about that, she's going to go into somewhat of a deep dive there.

Then the last two changes to SPD's budget, there was a civilian OPA investigator supervisor that was added for $167,000.

And there were also some overtime dollars added for automated enforcement, which is going to expand the enforcement by cameras to transit-only lanes.

stopping when traffic is obstructed, as you can read, crosswalks, and, of course, restricted lanes, including the Lower West Seattle Bridge during restricted hours.

And those are the changes in the 2021 budget.

So I'll stop again and see if there's any questions before we move into issue identification.

Wonderful.

Thank you very much, Greg.

I am wondering if you might be able to pull up the comparison document.

Colleagues, I really appreciated this information that Greg has summarized here on slides three and four.

And there's more detail, as you all know, in the memo that was provided to us.

the first three pages of the Central Staff Memo.

For comparison purposes, Greg has offered, or thank you, Greg, for compiling much of the information that is in the memo, but for a quick side-by-side to see how the 2020 adopted budget compares to what the 2021 proposed budget is and the percentage of change if we're able to do an apples-to-apples comparison.

I thought it would be helpful for us if we were able to see that chart.

So Greg, if you are able to share that, or Patty, that would be wonderful.

And we really appreciate your work on this.

I know the information is already within the memo.

You have just pulled it out, so it's easier for us to see.

So really appreciate you doing that.

Greg, I'll turn it back over to you.

Well, thank you.

And I did pull it out, and it is reflective of the functional changes for SPD's budget, as you can see.

Similar to the pie chart that we just went over, you've got the expenditure categories of personnel, overtime, inter-fund charges, discretionary purchases, professional services, travel and training, and other costs.

At the bottom line, you'll see that the 2020 adopted that was $409 million is now down to $359 million.

As I've pointed out, those changes are largely encompassed in the transfers of other functions out of SPD.

and then also of the sworn salary reductions and civilian salary reductions that the mayor has made.

So in terms of comparing the 2020 adopted to the 2021 proposed, it's difficult to track exactly what the changes are here.

Some of them are obvious.

You can see that That there's a change in inner fund charges and that really is apples to apples, but it's also not a whole lot.

It's only 40%.

But when you look at something like overtime, that, as you can see, is 17%.

We know that 803,000 of that overtime was transferred out to as part of the parking enforcement move.

I would imagine that some of the discretionary accounts, such as the purchase accounts that are now down by 12%, that some of that authority for those sections who had discretionary purchase budgets was moved along with the units.

So that may explain why some of those numbers are going down.

a programmatic or policy reduction so much as it is just a technical reduction of moving the dollars along with the sections that move to other places.

I'll give you a little favor.

Yeah.

Greg, thanks again for pulling this together.

Council members, are there any questions about this additional chart, which was obviously going to be made available for the public record, but wanted to give you this additional slide for you to be able to see in one spot.

OK.

Not seeing any additional questions.

Thank you, Greg, for highlighting this and if there's follow up questions, we are happy to come back to it as folks digest it.

Alright, so I'll ask Patty to go ahead and move to issue one, which is foreign staffing.

And oh yeah, actually issue identification well.

I don't think I went over these, so I'll go over these.

The first one being police staffing.

The second one being the overtime reductions that we talked about.

And then the third one being the 2020 mid-year reductions.

We'll talk a little bit about what happened in the middle of 2020 and how that relates to 2021. And then my colleague, Lisa, will talk about E911 dispatch and OEM and the transfers there.

So go ahead and move to the next slide.

≫ Thank you.

Real quick, Councilmember Herbold.

≫ Thank you.

You are going to address the issue related to the number of positions in the proposed 2021 budget, both funded and unfunded as relates to the new information that we have.

around separations and the fact that there may not be a need for, even from the executive's perspective, given the time it takes to hire for vacant positions, there may not be a need for the, the full 1450, 1400, 1450 positions, 1400 funded positions, given the fact that to fill the vacant positions that we're seeing now, they may not be able to spend all those dollars in 2021.

Yes, I will.

And you've already taken my punch line.

The 2021 proposed budget is based on 1400 funded FTE and the department won't get there.

They're going to get to about 1357, but we'll go into that a little bit later.

Yeah.

So Patty, if you flip to the next slide, please.

So this shows an eight-year history of the department's funding and hiring.

And just to walk you through this table a little bit, funded FTE, the column that is second to the right, or second to the left, sorry, includes fully trained officers, student officers, and recruits.

So that's everybody that would be part of the sworn hiring plan.

Then if you skip all the way to the end, fully trained officers are only those officers who have completed what SPD calls phase two field training.

And they can be independently deployed through the computer aided dispatch system as individual 911 responders.

And so that's when an officer becomes deployable and useful.

And so there's obviously a whole lot of time that happens from the time an officer is hired about a full year of training four or five months at the academy, and then phase one and phase two field training.

It takes about a full year before they become fully trained and usable by the department.

And so that's a statistic there at the end, fully trained, that's important to SPD because it denotes the number of folks that can be deployed.

And so sort of walking you through this table, what you can see is that over the last eight years, the city has steadily increased SPD's funded FTE in an effort to boost hiring and increase the department's number of fully trained officers.

Most recently, the city added 10 new FTEs in 2019 and 30 new FTEs in 2020. You can see that in the 2020 original plan.

row in the table.

These efforts have produced mixed results.

While the city has seen some increases in recruit hiring, it's also seen a large number of separations.

We'll talk about that a little bit later today.

The net effect has been a swing between small gains.

As you can see, there's a 16 net FTE gain in 2019 and some large losses, 41 net FTE loss in 2018. This year SPD has reduced its internal budget allocations for sworn FTE from 1497 to 1422. And you can see that in the mid 2020 line, which is called revised 2020. And that was an internal function that SPD, where they went from 1497, the historic level of funding, down to 1422. They did that for a couple reasons.

One, because SPD is hiring faster than it expected it would.

At least it was, I'm sorry, up until they instituted the freeze in August.

And then the second was because they needed to free up funding for fiscal issues, for the significant overtime costs that they incurred due to the George Floyd and Black Lives Matter demonstrations.

And so that is, that's reflected where you see the drop of 1497 to 1422. SBD's latest staffing projections, as Councilmember Herbold indicates, are not great.

They just came in about a day or two ago.

I think the public released on Friday, and they indicate that the department will incur a net hiring loss of 79 FTEs in 2020. These latest projections also show that SPD expects a significant increase in attrition, which will go from 91 separations, as you can see in the original projection, to 130 separations, which is the updated projection.

As Councilmember Herbold talked about, the increase in these separations is largely driven by a spike in last month's numbers.

There were 39 total separations.

This one month separation total approximated 43% of what the department normally experiences in an entire year.

SPD has done an analysis on these separations, and you can find that in Appendix E of the issue paper.

I'll summarize it for you.

What they found is that 75% of all of those separations are coming out of patrol positions.

They also found that of the separations, there are more resignations than there are retirements.

There's about 53 resignations and 50 retirements.

And unlike historic patterns, the resignations are disproportionately occurring among newer and younger officers.

In fact, about half of the resignations came from officers that were under five years of service.

And they included 14 FTEs that were either student officers or recruits.

Then another 23% were officers that were between five and 10 years.

Among all resignations, 25% were people of color.

So disproportionately younger folks.

I'm highlighting the September separations, not just because they're so high, but also that they show that the staffing plan we talk a lot about, or I talk a lot about, is only as good as the projections that are made by SPD staff.

The department makes these projections based on historical data and information that it's getting point in time from the SPD Human Resources Office.

Staff could not have reasonably predicted what was going to happen in September.

When creating the plan, they couldn't have foreseen 39 separations in one month.

I think the question now is what happens going forward.

The staffing model assumes in October, November, and December a return to normal attrition levels.

And that may not be what the department actually realizes when it comes to separation rates over the next few months, given what we've seen in the last month.

And so with that, I'll go ahead and start talking a little bit about the mayor's.

Let's pause there for a quick second.

I see Council Member Herbold and Council Member Sawant.

Council Member Herbold, please go ahead.

Thank you.

I just want to flag, I didn't see this in issue ID, and it is more related to 2020 and assumptions that we made in the 2020 rebalancing.

We did make assumptions in the 2020 rebalancing that we would see 30 more separations than the 90, 91 or 92 anticipated by the executive at the beginning of 2020. I believe for some reason, I can't remember why, we treated the separations that would occur through attrition, through vacancies, the same as we treated the budget action associated with the other reductions that we were seeking and we provisored them.

I guess we provisored it because it was for a different reason.

It wasn't something we had to bargain, but it was something that we couldn't be certain that we were actually going to receive the revenue associated with it.

So now that we have What does that mean for our 2020 budget?

So we know that the executive is very likely going to send us legislation to lift the provisos for the positions that would need to be bargained.

But for the positions that we are seeing near the number of vacancies that the council anticipated would be additional vacancies, can we expect to realize funds from that action that we took over the summer in 2020?

Well, that's a that's a great question.

Council member herbal.

I think the short answer is yes, the yes to everything you said the start of your the start of your question where you talked about the reason that it was provides the attrition as opposed to just taking the funding was because at the time.

There was no way to know that there were going to be 39 separations in one month.

Now that the department has seen 39 separations in one month and separations in advance of what they thought was going to occur, or in addition to what they thought was going to occur, there is additional salary funding in the SPD budget.

And so the question I think for the Council is what to do about that.

There are options for the Council.

One might be to not release the provisos.

And that is something that we could take a look at as staff and figure out whether or not the proviso release would need to happen or whether there would be sufficient funding in the department to allow the council to not lift the provisos.

Another option would be to leave the money in the department.

I think what we've seen lately from the department and Chief Diaz's moves to put more officers into patrol and into 911 response, we'll talk about later, the effort to focus on making sure that response times are held and that cars are available.

There might be a choice to leave the money in the budget for patrol augmentation so that officers could be backfilled on overtime.

But certainly there is money available and that's something that the council can discuss.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Councilmember Silva?

I believe the question I have is for a previous slide.

And I have to start by apologizing because I was away for a few minutes and I may have missed what you exactly said, Greg.

Let me go ahead and ask the question.

I mean, when my office looked at the SPD budget, it looked to us like there was like $18.4 million in genuine budget reductions for the SPD.

And by genuine, I mean not transfers, other technical changes, namely 15.7 million officer reductions and 2.7 million officer overtime reductions.

But I think you said there were no reductions other than the transfer side.

If you could just explain that again.

Sorry, I want to make sure I didn't misunderstand.

Yeah, sure.

I really they fall into 22 categories.

The changes made there were the transfers as you noted out of the department for the 3 different sections.

And then there were reductions made for sworn salaries, for civilian salaries, and then also for overtime.

And the overtime one we'll talk about a little bit later.

The sworn salary reduction came along with a reduction in FTE.

And that's on, I think, the first page of the issue paper and the first PowerPoint slide.

Thank you very much.

I don't see any additional questions at this time.

Okay.

So to talk a little bit more, well, start talking about the mayor's proposed budget.

So the mayor's proposed budget in 2021 would, as we just talked about, would reduce the number of funded FTE to 1400. And that can be seen in the second to the last line where you see proposed 2021, 1400. I want to note that while the funding is being reduced from a higher level this year to 1400, that's not going to result in fewer hires in 2021. In fact, as you can see there, the 2021 staffing plan projects a net hiring increase of 25 FTEs.

If you go to the far column that says net new officers, and if you carry that on all the way through 2022, you'll see that it's nine FTEs.

And the disparity exists here because that huge loss in 2020 moved SPD staffing levels below its funding levels.

Because we're in that situation now as a city, it allows some room for growth for the next two years.

Under the mayor's staffing plan, SPD's sworn staffing levels would eventually catch up with its funding levels and in the years beyond 2022, would probably require another funding boost to sustain increased officer salaries as officers move through the ranks from recruit to student officer to fully trained officer.

So as you can see, if you look down the far right column with the fully trained officers, the mayor's staffing plan eventually returns the department's number of fully trained officer to approximately within one or two of 2019 levels.

And that is certainly a reasonable path for a status quo budget that would reflect the same requirements and demands for SPD sworn services.

However, the council has expressed through its 2020 mid-year budget, council bill 119825, a policy preference for a smaller police force that provides fewer services and relies more on community providers to address issues of homelessness, mental illness, and other non-criminal matters.

So in that respect, the mayor's staffing plan, which attempts to get back to 2019 levels may conflict with the council's goals as articulated in the summer budget.

And my last point that I was going to make, Councilmember Herbold already made for me.

And that is that because the 2020 spike in attrition in September happened, the department is below its 1400 FTE level.

And therefore, there is going to be money in 2020. And that will roll forward into 2021. The mayor will not be able to use, the police department will not be able to use all of its police salary funding in 2021 either.

they're only going to reach 1,357 filled FTE and they're funded for 1,400.

That will also leave the council with an option to reduce funding in the 2021 budget to sink the salary budget with what the department is able to do from a hiring standpoint.

As is before, I would note that the department would their preference would be to leave some of that money in the department budget for overtime so that they could do patrol augmentation.

That would be opposed with a necessity that might be that Chief Diaz would have to move more officers from specialty functions into patrol if there wasn't overtime backfill money available.

So I'll stop there and ask if there's any more questions.

Thank you, Greg.

I am not seeing any hands or hearing any council members wanting to weigh in at this moment.

OK, so Patty, I'm going to ask you to flip two slides forward now to the chart of SPD sworn officers.

One more.

That one, thank you.

And so what you're seeing here is the, uh, an eight year history of the fully trained officers, similar to the table that you saw a second ago.

But this gives you a visual of the mayor's 2021 proposed budget, where you see, uh, starting in 2020 officers going from 1295 fully trained officers over the next two years, up to 1,329 officers.

And then I also asked the department to model a one-year hiring freeze as the council had expressed its policy preference for a smaller police department.

And I wanted to put this data out there, hopefully to help facilitate the discussion about how the size of the department might be reduced.

not to imply that any council member has asked for this, but just to show the effects of what a hiring pause might look like.

As you can see here, under the purple line, if there was a one-year hiring pause, the amount of fully trained officers goes from 1295 FTE down to 1260 FTE at the end of 2021, and then further drops to 1213 FTE, at the end of 2022. And this is a little counterintuitive.

The question being, why would it continue to drop for another full year if hiring picked up again in 2022, in January 1 of 2022?

And I talked earlier about how it takes a full year to train a police officer.

So if the department paused its hiring for one year just through 2021 and started hiring again on Jan 1 of 22, it would continue to incur attrition losses.

But those losses wouldn't be offset by new officers because the new officers, the fully trained ones, wouldn't come on board until 2023. And so a one-year hiring pause has the effect of losing two years of fully trained officers.

Hopefully that makes sense.

And I'll stop and ask if there's any questions there.

Council Member Herbold, please go ahead.

Not so much a question, just an observation from reading the staffing reports that we received from SPD.

Just wanna flag that fully trained officers is not the same as officers in service.

And at any given time, there is a pretty hefty chunk of officers who are fully trained, but are not in service for a variety of issues.

Yes, that's true.

Thank you.

Council member.

There are always going to be officers that are out on military leave or extended sick leave.

And that will that will decrease the department's ability to deploy.

Great.

Yeah, I'm sorry.

Please go ahead.

Did you have something else on this slide?

I just, I just wanted to say that the thing about a hiring freeze, if the council considers that is that the.

It seems kind of obvious, but the.

The way that the reduction would occur is by officers leaving through attrition.

And given what we've seen lately around newer, younger officers leaving, it seems reasonable that that those trends would continue.

If the council wanted to pursue different options to reduce the size of the force, but have a different effect on demographics, there are ways to pursue more targeted reductions.

Targeted reductions could be achieved through officer layoffs, as were contemplated in the 2020 mid-year budget.

Or incentive programs that offer cash buyouts or retirement benefits, such that they might include retirement retiree enrollee and city funded medical plans or or other kinds of incentives.

In terms of layoffs, I think the council is aware that there's a couple ways that that could happen.

The default would be PSCSC rule 15, which would be newer, younger officers, reverse seniority layoffs, the last in sort of first out.

And then there is also a provision in the public safety civil service rules that would allow for out of order layoffs.

as outlined in Rule 15B.

And I think as you all know, that was the preference that you had in Council Bill 119825. each kind of reduction scenario, whether a hiring freeze or an incentive-based program would create varying financial impacts for the city and would have different effects on the demographics of the officer that remain in the force.

So it would take more staff research to figure out what kind of reductions would most closely align with councilmember goals.

Councilmember's questions.

Okay, I'm seeing none.

Greg, I just want to ask, you know, I have seen a number of reports around the country that this is not a unique situation that Seattle is experiencing, that there have been not only chiefs that have been leaving various departments, but that there's been individual officers as well.

Do you have any of that comparison?

It doesn't have to be data, but have you seen similar reports?

I've seen similar reports, but I'd have to I'll get some data and share that with you all.

Sure.

That's helpful.

Thank you.

And it might also be helpful, and it doesn't have to be anytime soon.

Maybe we can flag this for one of our offices.

As I know, central staff is very busy as well.

But if we have time to look at the type of policies that other cities are looking at as it relates to sworn officer freezes, That may be helpful.

I'm familiar with what the city of Austin has done.

They, for example, have a hiring freeze on sworn officers, but not things like victim services.

So it might be informative to see what some other cities who have contemplated much larger scale transformational policies have put into place already as we think about how Seattle compares to other cities across the nation.

OK.

Excellent.

Thank you very much.

So move along with patrol staffing.

Patty, if you'd go back.

Let's hold for one more second.

Council Member Peterson, question on this slide.

Thank you.

And I, you know, it's, it's clear from this trend that, um, you know, there are different tools to reduce the size of the force.

Um, I didn't know if, if we're going to talk later about, you know, what is the optimal size and, and what should we be measuring that against?

Is it, is it response times to priority one calls, for example.

So I just want to flag that's an interest of mine is that, you know, as we see the number going down, you know, at what point does it become, alarming in that we're going to be losing something else that we might value, such as quick response to priority one calls.

We are going to transition into a topic with patrol staffing here that has a nexus with what you're talking about.

Shall I move on?

That'd be great.

Thank you.

All right.

Patty, would you go back to two slides, please?

Perfect.

That's fine.

Okay.

So this is the precinct staffing report as of the end of August.

And what this shows is the various job categories for patrol.

And when we talk about patrol, it really falls into sort of two categories.

One is the 911 response, which you see there in the first row.

And that's disproportionately higher than the rest.

The other are specialty patrol units that handle different kinds of problems.

The anti-crime team, the community police team, the beats line there is officers that are on foot peaks or bike beats.

They can be deployed by dispatch, but they don't have the CAD, obviously.

So they're not responding to 911 calls.

in the same way that the 911 folks are.

I point this out as you can see that the number of 911 responders at the end of August was 563. And I would go ahead and ask Patty to flip to the next slide.

This next one is at the end of September.

And so the reason I point this out is because this reflects the change that Chief Diaz made of 100 officers and moving 100 officers into patrol.

And what you can see here is that it boosts the patrol number or I'm sorry, the 9-1-1 responder number by about 105. But the overall patrol number, the grand total at the bottom, only goes up by 17. And that's because part of what the chief has done is he has moved the, he's eliminated the CPT altogether and has taken folks out of the other categories, the act and the beats, and moved them into 911 response.

And the reason that he's done this is because he has indicated both publicly and also in Q&A with the council's questions that improving response times to 911 calls is his top priority and that reducing the department's reliance on overtime pay and providing stress release to officers who are going from call to call is his top priority.

So When it comes to a hiring freeze that we've been talking about, his priority does not change.

He was asked by staff as to what would happen if there was the kind of drastic reduction that you saw in the prior charts where sworn officer counts went down.

And his response was that he would continue to do more of the same.

He would reduce specialty units, further reduce specialty units and backfill patrol losses in an effort to ensure that 911 response is as robust as it is today.

And so just taking that position.

and extrapolating if the hiring freeze were to happen and the patrol was held constant at 694, then what that would mean is you would be reducing, the chief would be reducing officers and specialty units by about 82 officers by the end of 2022. And so Councilor Peterson, I think that gets to your question about what happens around response times.

The answer is that they probably don't change, but measures of specialty units, whether it be SWAT or Harbor Patrol or K-9, those would be the units that would be impacted the most by a freeze of police hiring.

Council Member Morales and then Council Member Herbold.

Thank you.

Thank you, Greg.

This is all really helpful.

I'm not sure if we're on page eight of the memo with this chart, but I'm looking at page eight of the memo for the purpose of my questions.

So I want to make sure I understand this.

So I know that in your memo and in the conversations that we've had with interim chief Diaz, he has made clear that SPD prioritizes patrol and other interactions with the public over functions like investigation, detective work.

At least that's my understanding.

And it seems to me that It's not clear to me what metrics there are for determining how effective this is at preventing crime and protecting the public.

So do you know if there are, aside from 911 response time, if there are actual outcomes that demonstrate why patrol is a more effective use of our resources over detective or investigative work?

Council Member, I think what you're talking about there is really when you're getting into the world of community policing and the impact that community policing has on preventing crime, as opposed to responding to crime, that is something that Dr. Fisher would probably be more suited to answer.

And so I would probably get that question to him and then have him respond.

I guess what I'm trying to figure out is that if the need for more patrol officers is demonstrated or is determined by the need to maintain this response time measure, and I'm not sure why that is the measure of how we make those decisions.

Is that the metric that is used for determining how many patrol officers we need?

Yeah, that is actually one metric that the department looks at is response times.

They want to maintain response times where they are now.

And in the back of the memo, you'll find an appendix that has response times across the city.

And then also it has to do with the proactive time that an officer has available.

And so there it's not just about the response times, but it's about making sure that there are enough officers in patrol that they can achieve goals related to community policing.

And here again, that's interfacing with the community and doing problem solving to try and prevent crime.

And so SPD has historically had a measure where they hope to have 40% of patrol officers' time available for community policing, for interfacing with the community.

And that would be a measure that they're hoping for with the 911 officers.

The ACT, CPT, and BEATS obviously are more focused on community policing and community interaction.

But it's those metrics that are driving the numbers in patrol, yes.

Well, and I, sorry, Chair, if I can, I just have a couple more questions.

I'm trying to get clear on something because looking back at the 911 call analysis that we had, that we were talking about from July 8th, the top 15 types of calls received, as I understand it, at least the way they were finally classified, only four were classified as straight crimes, trespass, theft, or shoplifting, or other kinds of theft and assault.

And if I'm reading the graph right, this makes up about 11% of the 911 calls.

I'm sure you don't have this in front of you, but that's what I'm looking at and recalling from our July meeting.

And of those 15 types, Only one is a priority call if I know, if I understand this, assault is a priority one call.

And so the fact that we are using 911 call response time as a measure for how many patrol officers we need, but only 11% of the 911 calls are crimes anyway, doesn't make sense to me.

And it's possible that I'm not understanding this right.

But this is what I'm trying to figure out.

Why are we using that as a measure of how many officers we need when in fact what we've learned is that most of the 911 calls are disturbances, maybe it's trespassing or things that aren't categorized as priority one calls.

I completely understand.

That's where I'm getting stuck.

Sorry.

Go ahead.

I was going to say, I don't have the information in front of me.

I think from a technical standpoint, the only difference is that if you're looking at calls with a final determination, then they may have been dispatched under a different determination.

I know that there's some variance there.

But certainly I'm not meaning in any way, shape, or form to argue with, I think, what you're saying that are police the best response for calls that are not criminal?

Well, not only that, but why patrol instead of detectives who might be needed for human trafficking or theft rings or any of the other functions that the member of the force might serve?

What are the metrics for determining how many officers we need in those functions?

I'm just struggling with why so many, especially when community is saying that they want less, direct contact with the police for reasons of harm that could be caused.

And we know that there are other kinds of activity that certainly could use some additional resources.

I'm just not understanding how that decision-making serves the community best.

I understand it.

And that really is something that I think the chief would be in a better position to explain.

I know that there are specific measures for all of the various kinds of units that you mentioned, the dedicated units.

And he would be in a better position to explain why he would deploy in the manner he's choosing.

OK.

Thank you, Greg.

Thank you, Council Member Morales.

Council Member Harbaugh.

Thank you.

Just to wrap up on that last point from Council Member Morales before I ask my question.

I'm really supportive of the chief trying to redeploy to address what the greatest needs are of the department and of the city for public safety and even using 9-1-1 as a measure, but I would also ask that another level of analysis be included when redeploying for quicker 911 response, just as Council Member Morales is saying, it's just a recognition that all 911 calls are not equal.

And if we're trying to hit a number, a minute number on responding to a 911 call.

It may not need to be the same number of minutes for every kind of 911 call, and there may be some 911 calls that we shouldn't you know, think of this redeployment of patrol officers to 911 to answer necessarily more calls.

I mean, that's again, it's not clear to me whether or not the chief wants to just focus on answering those priority one calls more quickly, or if it's a combination of answering those priority one calls quickly, as well as other priority calls quickly, and maybe even answering calls that we're not answering now at all, that we're, you know, the 911 operators on the other line saying, sorry, this is a, you know, a prior three or four call, we're not gonna get to that call.

It's not clear to me what, Although, like I said, I support that lens, but it's not clear to me how it's being applied.

And again, whether or not we're just treating everything under 901 equally.

To my question, it's still on this topic, and I think it's perhaps out of the Umbrella of a budget issue, but Greg, because you have been talking to the department a lot about this, this topic of redeployment to to 911. I'm wondering whether or not.

in their redeployment from specialty units to patrol, whether or not you've had, to 911 patrol, whether or not you've had an opportunity to ask how they chose the specialty units that they chose.

I'm still, I'm confused as to, for instance, why they've reduced the domestic violence elder care specialty unit to only one person.

I'm confused as to why they didn't reduce specialty units that the council identified as priorities for reduction during the 2020 budget process.

need a horse patrol?

Why couldn't we have done some reductions in harbor patrol?

Where did the navigation team officers go?

It doesn't appear like that they've been redeployed to patrol, but we know they're not on the navigation team anymore.

That's, yeah, just wondering whether or not you've been able to have a chance to get into that level of detail about redeployments.

Councilmember, what I've heard is in the discussions that have happened with the chief that he's talked about returning to historic levels of staffing in some of those specialty units that he has done an analysis of caseloads to try to determine where there's capacity.

He's looked at folks that were on loan from other units and patrol really and return them.

These are the things that he said from a public safety perspective on why one unit was chosen over another.

I can't speculate.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmembers.

I will also Just flag here, and Greg, I'm sorry if this is throwing us a little off topic, but just in line with the conversation Council Member Morales and Herbold were having around how do we best deploy our resources for the number of calls that are coming into 911, I do want to highlight one of the things that I heard at the HealthONE Ride Along Tour was the simple act of having a registered nurse at the 911 call center could help address many of the calls that they receive and reduce the need for many of the patrol officers to be in the field.

Many of the calls that they receive are medical in nature and many of the calls that they receive are also people who are worried about something medically related and to be able to have somebody at 911 help answer that question I just want to throw that in there as possible future discussion for us in terms of answering what the right number is.

I think it depends on how many calls we're telling officers they need to respond to in person.

I don't have a form A in on that item, but do want to flag for folks that is something that I'm still interested in looking into the possibility of a registered nurse or ARNP, some way to offer a triage system like a consulting nurse behind the scenes.

And I have not done the research to see whether or not other cities have something similar, but we'll be continuing to look into that.

Okay, anything else on this slide before we go forward?

Seeing that, let's go ahead.

So, Patty, if you wouldn't mind taking me to the option slide for issue 1. And hopefully it's there.

My screen has now blacked out.

But the options that staff have identified here with the topic of sworn staffing, the first one, A, is to reduce SPD's budget to capture the unneeded funding in the mayor's proposed budget.

And that's the difference between the 1357 average FTE that they can fill and the $1,400 for which they are funded.

Option B would be to reduce the budget to reflect a one-year hiring freeze.

Option C is to reduce SPD's budget to reflect some sort of targeted demographic reduction that might come through a buyout or retirement incentive.

Such a targeted reduction might require separate legislation and bargaining.

And then D would be to reduce SPD's budget or more likely to proviso SPD's budget as was done in 2020 this year to restrict funding that might not be needed if layoffs are implemented in 2021. Layoffs that would occur either under the PSCSC rule that allows for out of order layoffs or the default which would be seniority based layoffs.

Option E, no action.

I see no questions on this.

Let's keep going.

Oh, Council Member Herbold, sorry, please go ahead.

Chair Mosqueda, I forget what we're supposed to be doing when central staff identifies options.

Do you want us to speak to them or just let them go through them and we follow up later?

I'm happy to have you speak to them.

What we have done, if you have an item that corresponds with what the central staff is articulating, I've been asking you to hold that for the Form A walkthrough.

But in the cases like this and in some of the previous presentations we've had, where central staff are identifying areas that don't have a council member name associated with one of the options, if you would like to chime in, we would very much appreciate that to hear where you might be coming from or other council members as well.

Thank you.

So I have, I wouldn't call it a corresponding option.

It's related, but under I think issue three or council identified action three, I have an intended reduction to, to abrogate positions and capture the funding associated with those positions that are vacant.

I see option A as kind of being a better version of that because of, I mean, as it relates to the salary savings.

I don't see any additional hands.

time reductions, the emphasis patrols and special events.

So, Patty, if you would move into issue two, please.

I'm going to assume you're there because I can't see the slide.

There's a $2.7 million reduction in overtime.

And this has to do with special events and emphasis patrols.

I believe the slide you're looking at is probably the overtime budget for SPD.

Is that the case?

Oh, yes, sorry.

Yes, that's what the slide shows.

Great.

So then what let me let me walk you through what you're looking at there.

It's the overtime budget as broken out by Bureau.

And you'll see all the various bureaus of SPD there and then there is a last column.

And I think that that is miscellaneous, if I remember right.

Oh, good, I have it back.

Yes, miscellaneous.

And so there you'll see courts, events, Seattle Center events, sporting events, unusual occurrences, emphasis patrols, executive security, and youth deployment.

And so those last several rows that I just read out are all subcategories of that miscellaneous category.

And the reason I highlight them is to show you that the emphasis patrol row is zeroed out and to let you know that the events at Seattle Center and sporting events amounts are approximately 1.3 million lower than they would have been had the executive not made the reduction.

What I think is important to recognize about the special events reduction is that it is based on the assumption that events will not happen at the same rate as they did in pre-COVID years.

That's important because this winds up being more of a technical reduction where SPD is reducing its overtime to match the demand it thinks it's going to have for events.

This is not an effort by the department to shrink its footprint at special events.

In other words, it's not that the department will deploy fewer people to events.

When events start happening again, they will deploy the same number of people in the same mix of people between PEOs and officers.

The only reason that there's a reduction here is because of COVID.

As you can see, SPD is planning on spending about $5.8 million in general events, and those are largely permitted events that include fun runs, parades, neighborhood festivals.

As you may be aware, the cost reimbursement on these kinds of events is not good.

A 2017 study by the auditor found that the cost for permitted events ranged around 27%.

This is in contrast to the cost recovery on sporting events, which for traffic reports is pretty much at near cost recovery.

There are some sporting events that don't have good costs or some costs around sporting events that don't recover.

And those have to do with public safety patrols that are in pioneer squares after the games or additional DUI patrols.

The Seahawks don't pay for, or the other sporting teams don't pay for those.

That's something that is a public safety function that comes at the department's expense.

And so would point out that those reductions are made, but that the department is doing its best to estimate what they think they'll need.

Obviously, it's a guess given what we all know about COVID.

And then, um, would transition the second half of this issue has to do with emphasis patrols.

As you can see, they're zeroed out.

Um, there's a 1.4 million reduction of that 2.7.

Uh, if the department hadn't made a reduction, you'd see 1.4 million in that emphasis patrol lines.

Uh, that emphasis patrols typically, um, come in two forms.

You have the, regular emphasis patrols that occur seasonally, like the patrolling of Alki during the summer, and the downtown patrols during the Christmas shopping season.

And then you have emphasis patrols that are done to reduce violence or gun crimes.

And those kind of emphasis, the latter kind, the chief has indicated that he is going to continue to do as much as possible using what the department calls direct patrol, which is pretty much just a.

a term of art for bringing in 9-1-1 responders, having your 9-1-1 responders go to that area and spend additional time in that area on regular time.

So not any additional emphasis per se other than the 9-1-1 responders that are in that area would spend special attention on sub areas that might have violent crime or gun crime.

And then I would Wrap up this section by by just talking a little bit about emphasis patrol advocates would posit that an additional police presence has a deterrent effect on crime and allows for officers to build better connections with the community to help prevent crime.

such as through community policing.

Opponents note that emphasis patrols are an example of how over-policing can typically result in the disproportionate targeting of people of color, and ultimately results as an entry into the criminal justice system that ruins lives, promotes economic injustice, and perpetuates structural racism.

A 2019 review of SPD stops and detention showed that officers more regularly stop and draw their weapons on people of color, even though guns are more likely to be found on white people that are stopped.

This data would seem to support a conclusion that emphasis patrols could disproportionately draw people of color into the criminal justice system.

And so these are considerations that the department may have made and the council may make around whether or not emphasis patrols should be restored.

Well said.

Thank you, Greg.

Council Member Morales.

Thank you.

So I'm glad to see that there is zero line item for 2020. But as you said, could mean that that type of emphasis patrol is just being done in a different way, Greg.

And so I am curious if you have data or if the department might have data that could help us understand what the outcomes were for 2019. As I understand, as you indicated in your memo, we had 20,000 hours of overtime that we paid $1.6 million last year just for the emphasis patrols.

And so I'd be very curious to hear what the outcomes were of that and would like to know what that bought us.

So if there's any information about changed rates of crime in the areas of emphasis or, you know, any way to determine what was prevented, I would be very interested in hearing that.

And the department has a lot of information on that.

They presented to the Public Safety Committee a number of output indicators.

The number of folks that were contacted the number of folks that were given infractions, the number of folks that were contacted but not given infractions.

I think you hit on the salient point, which is what is the outcome?

And that is something that the department could certainly tell us, but they would probably also tell us it's difficult to measure.

That would be something that I would ask Dr. Fisher to get back to you on.

Yeah.

And I think that's my point, right?

Like, I'm not really interested in how many widgets we're buying.

I'm interested in what kind of outcomes we're having for our community and for our neighbors.

So I'm happy to follow up with Dr. Fisher.

Thank you.

Yeah.

And I think, you know, one more thing I'd add to that is the department can also show crime changes.

over the course of the emphasis patrols in its micro community crime reporting.

But here again, it's difficult to draw a direct nexus to the effect of the emphasis patrols.

That's something that I would leave the public safety experts to talk about.

They may be able to more easily draw that nexus.

So I have some options for this section that I can move to.

One second.

Greg, I think Council Member Herbold has a question on this as well.

Comment.

Thank you.

And it might be actually covered in one of the options.

I have not memorized the memo as well as I should.

I'm sorry.

I'm confused a little bit about the size of the reduction for in overtime for the For the year for the amount of time that it's intended to cover it's if it's a under $3 million reduction in overtime for the whole of 2021. How is it that we were able to.

to get from the executive during our rebalancing a $8 million overtime reduction for just a few months of 2020. It seems like if we were able to get 8 million out of 20 for just four months of 2020, we should be able to get a bigger number.

than 2.7 out of all of 2021. Also, as it related to the decision of Chief Diaz to do the redeployment of officers and specialty units to patrol.

Sorry, going back to that issue.

One of the other benefits that Chief Diaz has said that this transfer to patrol, to 911, will help accomplish is a further reduction of overtime.

And I have asked for a projection or some sort of an analysis that would show how many fewer hours in overtime we would anticipate because of this transfer and have not yet received that information.

Don't know if you have Greg.

I haven't council member are bold.

Um, and, uh, I certainly take your point on the overtime reduction, uh, around special events.

Um, as I say here, it's at 1.3 million.

It may be that the department is trying to reserve, um, to be conservative in its estimate, uh, in case events start up earlier, but, but you're right.

They do seem disproportionate.

Thank you.

Okay, I'm not seeing additional questions.

Great.

Okay, so the options for this particular issue.

Consistent with the council's option A, consistent with the council's stated policy intent to reduce the size of the police force, further reduce SPD's overtime budget for special events, either because of what council member Herbold just mentioned, because there might be more room for reduction, or because the council would want to shrink the size of the footprint of the department at special events.

And then lastly, maybe to improve cost recovery.

Obviously, if there's fewer folks deployed, there's a good chance that cost recovery goes up.

Option B would be to increase SPD's overtime budget for emphasis patrols to reinstate the seasonal patrols around Alki or downtown at Christmas, or for targeted anti-violence or gun violence.

And option C is no action.

Okay, any questions or additions?

Customer Herbold.

Just flagging that I do have a budget action that relates to annualizing the council's budget actions from 2020 and carrying them forward to 2021. It does not cover this issue of overtime because I don't think the council took action on overtime.

We didn't do any further reductions because the executive had proposed a significant, I think, satisfactory for that moment in time.

I would like to look at what the assumptions were for 2020 and look at annualizing those assumptions over 2021 to realize some additional savings in the overtime budget.

I would also like to find out from chief Diaz what his assumptions are around the reduction in overtime associated with his

Thank you for flagging that.

I'm looking forward to that conversation as well about the four A's that you have brought forward to help address overtime in general.

So thank you.

I don't have any four A's about this issue.

Let me rephrase that.

The one that you are bringing forward to address traffic patrol officers and the use of traffic officers in a way that I think is triggering more overtime usage, I think that's going to be helpful.

Is that fair?

Um, I'm not sure.

Okay, we'll get to it.

Well, we'll talk about that after you see my formation.

Sounds good.

So I should I move on here to the 2020 mid year reductions, which is issue three.

And of course, what you're seeing here is the table of personnel reductions that were made.

In July of 2020, the council made approximately 3 million in reductions to the police department's budget, some of which were personnel related that you're seeing here on the screen and some not.

Some of these reductions were made through direct cuts and others were made through provisos that restricted SPD's ability to spend appropriations without further authorization.

And in some cases, council members indicated that the cuts may be annualized and continued in the 2021 budget, which is why I've identified this as a particular issue.

As part of the cuts in 2020, the council expressed its interest to eliminate 100 sworn positions through layoffs and targeted specific units or personnel, 38 positions in total, general layoffs into patrol or just in general, and those were 32 positions in total.

and an assumption that attrition would exceed executive projections and that was for another 30 positions.

Obviously that last one has happened.

The 2020 reductions were made via proviso in council bill 119825 that restricted spending authority until future council authorization.

The council took that approach instead of a direct cut in recognition of the possibility that the layoffs may not occur in 2020 due to timing and process considerations around layoffs, particularly around bargaining.

As it turns out, this is exactly what happens.

And as most folks are aware, these layoffs are not going to happen in 2020. And because the layoffs are not happening in 2020, the mayor has indicated that it is her intent to transmit proposed legislation that would lift the provisos that the council put in place.

The value of the salary and benefits that you see in the table is based on the assumption that layoffs would be consistent with PSCSC rule 15A, which I've already mentioned is sort of the default when layoffs are made at the department, and that occurs through reverse seniority order.

However, the council did preference or make a preference for out-of-order layoffs, which is allowed by PSCSC rule 15B, and that would allow the chief to make out-of-order layoffs for reasons of efficient operations of the department.

And that is reflected in the provisos in CB 119825. Other mid-summer budget changes included more direct appropriation cuts.

There was an $800,000 reduction to the city's recruitment and retention initiative.

That included $200,000 for hiring bonuses that were in the 2021 budget that staff was told would not be needed until 2021. A $50,000 reduction to the department's travel budget.

A $345,000 reduction to command staff salaries, which was, or elsewhere, the department could make that choice, and that was via a budget proviso.

$80,000 reduction to free up funding for a Green New Deal Oversight Board, and then $378,000, which was to transfer the victim advocates from SPD to the Human Services Department.

And so with that as a summary, I'll stop and go to the options and ask if there's any questions.

I'm not seeing any.

Thank you, Greg.

Oh, Council Member Hurdle, please go ahead.

Don't be shy.

Sorry, I had to try to remember whether or not my question is relevant to 2021. My recollection is that for some of these specialty unit reductions, there were already vacancies in those units.

Is that your recollection, Greg?

Yes, there were already vacancies in some of these units.

Yes, there were.

These particular positions that were being reduced would cause layoffs, but there were already vacancies that the department had allocated to quite a few of these units.

So these reductions would cause layoffs, but could we, as an alternative to that, given that these units, many of them have vacancies, take the savings through the vacancies?

Or perhaps the budget already proposes to do that.

Well, I think I think the latter is true.

The reason that the layoffs were happening in 2020 instead of taking salary savings from the vacancies is because the mayor had already reduced the salary savings from the vacancies and captured that as part of the COVID relief savings measures.

I believe the same is probably true here that the sworn civilian or sworn salary savings reduction is probably, probably would leave the council limited in the same ways.

That's something that I could find out more about, but I would venture to say that that's something that you'd want to look into.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I'm not seeing additional questions.

So Patty, go ahead and flip to the option slide if you would, please.

which is, again, these options are developed to assist the council with its stated policy of reducing the size of the police department.

Option A, enacting provisos or cuts in the 2021 budget that mirrors the approaches taken in the midsummer budget.

The first one being to cut the SPD budget with the assumption that attrition will occur, attrition beyond what the staffing model is proposing.

As we've already discussed, there's a cut that can be made without assuming any additional attrition just because so many folks have left in 2020. If the council wanted to, it could assume additional attrition and take more.

Option two is more around layoffs, that the layoffs that were sought in 2020 could be moved into 2021. And that could be done either by specifying out-of-order layoffs or specifying reverse seniority layoffs.

Either way, staff would probably once again recommend a proviso, as it would be difficult to determine how and when those would happen.

Option B is reducing the travel budget and the professional services budget to annualize or expand the cuts that were made in the summer.

Option C is reducing command staff salaries to annualize the cut that was made in the summer.

And then option D is no action.

Council members, any comments about these options?

Okay.

I'm seeing none for right now.

Thank you, Greg.

Well, I think that this is where I will turn it over to my colleague, Lisa Kay, to walk you through some background and some issues that she's identified on the 911 call center.

might end by saying didn't mean to be evasive on whether or not the public safety goals that the council is seeking to achieve could be met through the changes in the 2021 budget.

I think that is something that the mayor is looking to dig into with the task force.

that she's putting together and how the council wants to proceed with that, whether they want to wait for that task force or whether they want to make some assumptions and start moving forward themselves is a policy call.

Certainly, it would be The council's purview to ask the chief to answer some of those questions about public safety.

And I can seek answers from the chief about deployment and public safety and hopefully provide you with some information.

So with that, I would turn it over to Lisa.

Just a quick question on that, and I defer to my colleagues who've been tracking this issue more closely.

I thought that the earlier comments that were made, though, about the task force was really about where the allocation of potential funding goes.

There was the four buckets identified, and I think the question had been put to the community members who are participants of the task force on how those dollars should be allocated.

It seemed like it was off the table where the reductions should come from.

Is that also part of what the task force is intending to look at at this point?

Well, I don't know if the task force is intending to look at reductions per se.

I know that they are interested in working more on what Dr. Fisher presented to you last summer, and that is what kind of calls could receive a different response than a police officer, much like what Council Member Morales was saying during the issue identification section.

really working to provide public safety services differently.

I know that's a question that the task force, one of the task force is looking at.

I know there's several.

And so that's something that's ongoing now.

Thank you very much, Greg.

And we will turn it over to Lisa.

Thank you.

Can you hear me, Council Member?

Yes just try to speak up a little bit more if you can.

Okay.

Yes I will.

Yes I have to switch technology again.

Anyhow thank you Greg.

I'm Lisa Kay with central staff for the record.

I'll be talking to you first about the proposed new Seattle Emergency Communications Center.

As you can see on the slide the proposed 2021 budget would transfer about 18 and a half million dollars in appropriations and 142 FTEs from the police 911 call center to a new Seattle Emergency Communications Center.

Council Bill 119935 would create the new entity and the 2021 budget ordinance itself would make the appropriation and position changes.

The SECC ordinance establishes that the mayor would propose and council would confirm the director of the new center.

The ordinance does state that the transfer will begin once the city obtains a new originating agency identifier number from federal government, I think through the state, it's required of all criminal justice agencies or agencies supporting a criminal justice agency.

This means that the transfer may not be effective exactly on January 1st, 2021, depending on how quickly the city receives this identifier number.

I am working with legal staff about whether the proposed legislation needs a technical amendment in light of the need for this, for us to have this new number before the new center can be fully operational.

So I'll keep you posted on that.

Lisa, one second.

Let me just do a sound check.

Can folks hear Lisa OK?

OK.

It's a mixed response.

Just try to enunciate a little bit more.

There's a little bit of an echo, Lisa.

Sorry about that.

Yeah, I'm not using my optimal sound system.

So I'm sorry.

That sounded a little better, you know?

OK.

Well, I will try to enunciate.

That helps.

So I have flagged one potential policy issue for your consideration.

Next slide please Patty.

With your permission Madam Chair I'll provide a little bit of context for the issue of economies of scale for this for the 9-1-1 dispatch center.

Seattle currently has two dispatch centers also known as public safety answering points or if you want to be very jargony PSAPs.

One is within Seattle Police and one is within Seattle Fire.

The Police Department's call center is the primary call center, which means that all calls that are placed within the city of Seattle go first to SPD.

Then if an emergency requires a fire or medical response, SPD forwards that call to the Seattle Fire Department.

The city's two dispatch centers are actually part of a countywide 911 system, which includes a total of 12 public safety answering points or PSAPs.

Seattle a few years ago participated in creating a regional 9-1-1 strategic plan that was published in December of 2017 that found that the regional system is facing significant fiscal challenges in adapting the system to next generation technology.

So both the state and the county have periodically discussed the value of consolidating some of the PSAPs to achieve cost savings.

Those discussions have been relatively controversial with different parties.

I would note that the mayor has asked her new interdepartmental team for community safety to make recommendations about a long-term vision of creating a unified emergency communications dispatch and information service referral center.

So the options that are shown here on the slide that you're seeing would provide a more definitive timeline for consideration of this issue.

Option A would simply require a report back by a date certain on potential economies of scale and other costs and benefits associated with either merging or co-locating the SPD and SFD dispatch centers in this independent new communication center.

Option B would go a step farther and require the executive to establish a date certain, or by a date certain, a timeline by which the two call centers would be co-located or merged.

And then option C would adopt the ordinance as proposed.

There is one budget action that has been submitted relative to this legislation from Council Member Herbold.

I think you talked about it a little bit during the SDOT presentation this morning, which would be expansion of the function and renaming the Seattle Emergency Communications Center by adding the parking enforcement officers.

Thank you, Lisa.

I'm just checking here.

Council Member Mosqueda stepped away.

Is there anybody who has a question or a comment around issue four?

And I am scrolling through here.

I'm not seeing any raised hands.

I just would like to flag my interest in in one of these options.

I'm not quite sure which yet.

I think the question of potential economies of scale is a good one, and it's not something I thought of myself independently.

So thank you, Lisa.

And I'll get back to you about which of these options, A or B, look better.

With that, would you like me to go ahead and proceed then to issue five, which is Office of Emergency Management?

Please do.

And I will note that there are no form A's on this.

We didn't receive any budget proposals relative to changes to the OEM presentation.

So I'll be very quick about what my analysis turned up here.

So as you are aware, the 2021 budget would transfer, as you can see on the screen, about $2.5 million again and 15 FTEs from Seattle Police Department to create an independent office of emergency management within the executive branch.

The Council Bill 119933 would create the independent office and the 2021 budget ordinance would make the appropriation and position changes.

The mayor would propose and the council would confirm the director.

That position has been vacant since Barb Graf resigned about a year ago now.

and the executive anticipates filling that position by the end of this year.

So the options on the next slide would align the new ordinance with existing policy and municipal code language.

I just wanted, I'll just do this quickly.

It's just for your future consideration.

Option A would address the office's statutory authority in four specific areas and remove reference to internal operating policies.

So it would maintain, so basically it's realigning the new ordinance with the existing municipal code language.

So this amendment, if you chose option A, would maintain council review and approval over the comprehensive emergency management plan.

It currently comes to council, but wouldn't under the new ordinance.

It would maintain an annual report to council on activity in the emergency management sub fund.

That's where you'll see a lot of state and federal grants that we get pertaining to emergency management.

And it would do a little bit of housekeeping on cleaning up language around hazard mitigation and training functions.

Option B is basically the same as option A, but it would keep in the language that the department or that the office asked to have that requires compliance with the emergency management accreditation program standards.

So as you may recall, OEM was the first Northwest city to get this accreditation, but the law department has recommended keeping internal policies such as compliance with external accreditation standards out of the code, just so that you don't have to update the code as frequently when standards change by some other entity.

So, and then option C would pass the ordinance as proposed.

I'd be happy to take any questions, but that's all I have.

Alex, I know that there was some interest in a independent, to ensure greater independence.

Are there any comments here?

Council Member Herbold, please go ahead.

want to say that I defer to Lisa's good advice on the amendments necessary to the proposed ordinance to make sure that OEM is able to continue operating as envisioned and with the high level of accreditation that it receives and would definitely support amendments that would accomplish that.

Agreed, thank you.

I'm not seeing any other hands, Lisa.

All right.

And I think we talked briefly, I mentioned briefly that there was the SECC amendment from Council Member Herbold.

So there, and there were no budget actions proposed relative to OEM.

I think it might go back to Greg at this point if there is more discussion on budget actions for SPD.

Thank you very much.

All right, so before I get going, I want to clarify.

Council Member Muscata, Madam Chair, you were right.

I misspoke when I was talking about a task force to look at the role of reimagining public safety that the mayor had put together.

It's not the task force, it's the community safety work group that is looking at reimagining public safety and determining how officers get deployed and to what calls.

the kinds of issues that Council Member Morales has brought up.

So I messed up the name there, so I apologize for that.

That's okay.

There's a lot of floating bodies with new names out there.

The body that you're referring to, the Community Safety Work Group, is that what's also being referred to as the IDT, Interdepartmental Task Force?

I think so, but I don't want to get myself in more trouble.

Okay.

I see council member Morales.

Maybe has clarification on that council member Morales.

They're 2 separate entities.

Okay.

Okay.

So.

As we move forward, we may want to do some matrix to show the various entities and I know Council President Gonzalez was also thinking through some matrices as well.

And so we will endeavor to help clarify this for our colleagues in the viewing public as well.

And I can tell you that My colleague, Asha, tomorrow has a matrix put together that shows these task forces and breaks it out for council members.

I'm just not remembering it right now at the moment, but she has that ready for you tomorrow.

We appreciate it.

Thank you for helping to offer that clarification this afternoon.

Okay, let's get into the fun part here.

Walking through the various budget actions, statements of legislative intent as proposed by council members in four minutes.

Is that where we're at, Greg, page 16 of your memo?

Move to the next slide, Patty.

So page 16 of the central staff memo, if folks are also following along in their budget packets with that information or for the viewing public, that's the slide that corresponds with where we're at in the memo.

Okay, Patty, if you'd flip to the next slide, please.

So SPD overtime spending by Council Member Herbold.

And just for speed here, I'll read the title and if there's any summary that makes sense, I'll give it real quick, but probably we'll just turn it over to council members to summarize their own proposals.

So Council Member Herbold.

Yeah, so this this is just a reporting action.

So this just asks that SPD report on overtime spending to counsel on a monthly basis.

It doesn't get to the issue that we talked about earlier, which is I'm actually seeking a further reduction, but I think this is important moving forward as a way of highlighting the Council's interest in having some certainty that the executive is working to get better controls over time, consistent with the 2016 city auditor recommendations.

So the number three is also, oh, I'm sorry.

Questions?

That's it.

I don't see any.

Thanks.

So number three reduction in SPD vacancies and unfilled positions.

This is a misprint on behalf of staff.

Councilmember Herbold has expressed intent to reduce vacancies, but the narrative here does not match and so I'll let her express her intent and then we will seek to correct the record with an updated staff report.

Sounds good.

Councilmember Herbold.

So yeah, this proposal is accurate in every way except for in the narrative description in the memo, it suggests that I'm uninterested in capturing the funding.

I'm interested not only in abrogating these 16 vacant positions and 17 unfunded vacant positions, but I'm also interested in capturing the funding related to those positions.

the recognition that the total position of funding and authority in the 2021 proposed budget is likely to be a mismatch given the recent reductions in staff, the separations in 2020, and the fact that they are unlikely to be able to fill the positions that are in the 2021 proposed budget, I might want to consider scrapping this proposal for the option that Greg recommends, because it accomplishes, I think, what the goal is in Budget Action 3 plus more.

Excellent.

Thank you very much.

Questions on that?

Okay.

So number four is increasing the OPA's independence, and via a proviso, it would seek to transfer the OPA out of the Seattle Police Department, and that's brought by Councilmember Peterson.

Councilmember Peterson, please go ahead.

Thank you.

So as we know, we have a relatively new police accountability system.

It's been dramatically tested and stretched during the racial reckoning and the protests following the wrongful killing of George Floyd.

and countless other black, indigenous, and other people of color.

As we know, this accountability system includes the Community Police Commission, the Office of Inspector General, and the Office of Police Accountability.

So one of the concerns I've heard expressed recently is that OPA, while run by civilians, is still housed within the Seattle Police Department.

So this budget action tries to take steps toward making OPA fully independent.

So while work needs to be done overall on the police contract with the Seattle Police Officers Guild.

pushing forward to make OPA fully independent from the police department will help to improve, build upon those reforms already in place.

Because OPA investigates potential police misconduct and allegations have increased during the recent protests, the idea is to spur this action.

I would look to central staff to recommend how best to, you know, what budget tools we have, whether we should use a statement of legislative intent or a budget proviso to see that this happens soon so that we know the full steps required to make OPA independent.

I understand one of the concerns is they, one of the reasons it's housed within the police department is to have access, instant access to the data needed to do their investigations, but there must be some way to give them greater independence, but also access to that data.

Okay, questions folks Councilmember herbal.

I just want to flag that this was an idea that the, the mayor had raised when we first started talking about.

re-envisioning public safety and having a conversation about which units would be appropriate to transfer out of SPD.

The mayor had, in early days, identified OPA as one such entity that might be best served being transferred out of SPD.

There was a lot of concern from Director Meyerberg about that.

And that's part of, I believe, why that hasn't happened.

And I just really encourage a conversation with Director Meyerberg about the purpose of being sort of not literally housed, but organizationally under SPD and the the difficulty that that might provide in the short term, whereas maybe perhaps over a longer term period, it might be a good thing to do.

But if you're talking about a proviso, that's, you know, obvious, often something that is implemented in a way that's punitive until the objective is accomplished.

And so I'd be really worried about using that as the mechanism.

Thank you, Council Member Herbold.

And so as chair of our public safety committee, I would defer to your wisdom on this.

And so I can work with Greg to reframe it as a slide and just get more information move forward as we move forward.

I think that would be fantastic.

Thank you.

All right, good work.

Thanks, folks.

Let's move to item number five.

So that one is report on using non SPD officers for special event traffic control.

As many council members know, parking enforcement officers are used.

In some situations, the traffic control, and in other situations, specifically that where lights are being redirected, it's SPD officers that do that work.

And this particular proposal would seek to identify the cost savings if PEOs were used instead of officers, if I've said that right, Council Member Peterson.

Thank you, Greg.

And this one is the one I think I was getting confused with Councilmember Herbold, so I apologize for that.

Councilmember Peterson, please help us understand more.

And I think there is some common ground here with Councilmember Herbold on what she's seeking to do.

I think she's seeking to do even more.

You know, some of these form A's, we put them together, you know, not having the benefit of talking to all eight of our colleagues beforehand.

So this is some common ground with Councilmember Herbold.

I think also Greg's chart where he talks about the overtime costs for sporting events and how he filled in some of the information with what's reimbursed, what's not.

So really this is meant to just be useful.

Can we find ways to save money?

Will we be saving money by having the these professionals go from the police department to either SDOT or what Council Member Herbold's suggesting.

I'm just sort of trying to find out a way to save money so that we can take the money and redeploy it to community.

And so, Greg, looking to you, if you think that's gonna be useful to help us find out how much money we can save, then I would proceed with this.

Otherwise, I can just defer to Council Member Herbold's option.

Councilmember Herbold, do you have anything else to add to that?

So I think Councilmember Peterson is correct in that I am looking not only to hopefully get savings related to PEOs doing this work.

But it's, I think it's beyond, there's this question of traffic control when there is a traffic, control device and when there's not a traffic control device.

And this is probably, I'm getting myself in trouble by trying to remember the differences here.

But there's this question of whether or not PEOs can be flaggers in both instances.

both when there is a traffic control device and when it's a free intersection.

But I am definitely supportive of getting a report, but I'm also interested in figuring out what we need to do to authorize PEOs to Do this work for special events in both instances, and I know there is there is a piece of legislation related to this issue.

And I'm just, as I mentioned earlier, interested to know whether or not we can.

either under the current title or by reintroducing with a new title work to broaden the authorization for PEOs to do this kind of work in more instances.

So I'll work with Greg Das on this.

Basically, just want it to be a useful tool to see where we can save money.

This seemed to be some lower hanging fruit on how to save money and redeploy it to community.

So I'll talk with Greg offline, whether we can combine it with another report that we're getting or not.

Great.

And I'll just add to that, to the extent that or able to just act upon it without a report, that's something I'm also interested in.

Okay, let's go ahead, item number six.

All right, thank you, Madam Chair.

Item number six, impact on response times by Council Member Peterson, a proposal that would request a report on response times after expected officer attrition in 2020 and 2021. and relative to deployment changes in the fourth quarter of this year.

Thank you, Council Member Peterson.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

Thanks, Greg.

So this report is consistent with the information we asked for when we passed Council Bill 119825. But that bill just applies to reporting in 2020. So this would be additional reporting through 2021 on impact, predicted impacts to response times.

But focusing on just the priority one and priority two calls, I agree with my colleagues earlier who were noting that, you know, really don't need to measure the response time to the lower priority calls.

In fact, I believe the seven-minute benchmark, isn't that just for priority one calls, Greg, that's typically used as a benchmark?

Actually, I think it's closer to nine minutes.

It's in the appendix of your paper.

I'd have to scroll forward, but nine minutes.

So I definitely support ramping up 911 alternatives, such as the CAHOOTS model and expanding health one led by our firefighters.

And I just think we can continue to benefit from information on the response times to the priority one and priority two calls as we see the police force numbers in patrol changing over time.

Thank you, Council Member Peterson.

I'm not seeing additional hands.

I would like to, oh, Council Member Herbold, go ahead.

Go ahead, okay, I'll go ahead.

I would like to explore with you the concept of evaluating how many of these calls could be handled by a consulting nurse.

I know that in the past, I understand from the Council President as well, this is an issue that has also been put forward at various points.

But it seems like with the data that we now have and the lived experience of members from HealthONE, and I think, you know, a reckoning, a reawakening of how we can better utilize our public services and respond to public safety matters.

Maybe there's more interest now in figuring out how some of these calls could be handled by a nurse on the other end of the phone versus deploying someone.

Is that something that you'd be interested in adding into the report as well?

Absolutely.

Great.

Council Member Herbold, please go ahead.

Thank you.

Two things.

One, as it relates to the number of reports that we had requested as part of our, the council bill, I can't remember the number for it, but that we passed during rebalancing.

We do have a.

request in to SPD through SharePoint, whether or not they intend to respond to those reports.

And it may, I understand that this is, you're focused on 2021, but it may, if they are working on those reports, it may, Make it not as necessary to do another another sly action, but this is definitely information that we have to have in order to to begin taking steps on this on this transition and.

I am feeling very anxious about the fact that it doesn't appear that any work is being done on this area of the council's stated interest.

I also wanna flag that as it relates to the fire department's expansion of Health One, I think it would be really important for us to get, if we don't already have it, an estimate from police and fire, whether or not they anticipate a further reduction in the need for response to 911 calls that would accompany the mayor's proposed expansion of HealthONE to add a second team.

Um, as we're thinking of things that, um, we are, we want to do, we should be, uh, to, to reduce, uh, the reliance on the police department to respond on, on to SPD and one calls.

We should also be thinking about, um, you know, again.

what systems we already have in place to take some of these calls, whether or not it is a system that's already hooked up to 911, like HealthONE, or folks who have ability to do crisis response, but may not be hooked up to the system, like our LEAD program.

So this is, you know, again, an area that is so critical for us to be doing analysis and proposing solutions on now.

And it's just, I'm just hoping that we don't find ourselves halfway into the year, next year, and still not having the answers to some of these questions.

Well, you raised a really important point.

We already have asked a number of these questions already.

We really need this data to be able to both invest appropriately and to ensure that we're responding to the public's concern about both public safety and making sure that the right folks are showing up when 9-1-1 is called, if there's deployment.

I'm wondering if central staff, can you elaborate on that?

Ali, I see you on the screen as well.

Is there any indication of whether or not the executive is responding to those requests?

And do we have any update on when we can anticipate that information?

Because Council Member Herbold is correct.

We have to have it to move forward.

Council Member Peterson's piece is absolutely right.

We want to have these answers, but we have made these requests before.

Any update on where we are at with getting that info?

I would ask Greg to respond if he has any information about whether or not the he has heard the executive is intending to respond to these specific report request.

I'll just know in general, the because of the The veto action and then the vote to override the veto the actual effective date of the legislation where these report reports were requested.

Is october 22nd.

So I think it is a open question in a general way of whether or not they will be fulfilling that request and greg may have additional information.

Um, if he's in more direct contact with the um with the departments and with the budget office analysts who staff these departments, I will also just know in terms of making a request for a slide that may, if they do respond in a more timely manner, may not be necessary.

The council does, through the budget, adopt statements of legislative intent, requesting information, and then affirms those requests by resolution in the following year.

And we welcome an opportunity to reduce the number of requests on that list when we adopt that resolution.

So there will be an opportunity to eliminate them if they are no longer necessary, which would be a happy outcome.

And following up, Alia, what I would say is what I've heard from the executive from CBO is that they are taking the work of many of those reports and specifically finding the alternative public safety responses and rolling that into, let's see if I get it right now.

I think it's the IDT work that is supporting the community safety work group.

They are rolling it into that process.

And that's what I've heard in terms of their efforts around that work, Council Member Herbold.

Barbara Herbold, please go ahead.

Yeah, and so, Ali, I missed a little bit of what you were saying.

You were saying that one of these reports isn't due until October 20-something?

Council Member Herbold, thanks for the question.

I was saying that the The legislation that included this request doesn't actually go technically go into effect until October 22nd.

So it's a little awkward because the dates for the requested reports.

Sort of proceed like come before when the bill is actually in effect.

So, um, yeah, I remember one of the one of the reports that I'm thinking of now and it may be this one.

It was is due on on September 30 or was due on September 30 so we know we didn't get that one.

And I also remember hearing Director Noble saying that this work is going to be rolled into this IDT.

And I just, I don't, what are our options, central staff, when council is asking for analysis and work to be done, and we're asking according to in a way, legislatively, right?

And in this case, via ordinance.

And we have the executive saying, no, we're not gonna do that.

We're gonna roll it out on our own timeline through our own process.

I just don't know what other options we have under that scenario because it doesn't align with how we wanna move this work forward.

Allie, I don't know if you want to respond to that, but there are other options.

You made the request in the legislation that becomes effective on the 22nd.

And Council Member, I believe some of the reports that you're talking about were due on the 15th.

So we knew that we didn't get those either.

In terms of other options that the Council might have to make a stronger request via proviso or other action, Council staff can advise you on that.

Thank you.

very important.

Thank you.

And it also makes it even more important that we understand how all of these requests that are already in statute are filtering into whatever the proposed matrix is that hopefully we'll have a visual of soon.

And then again, back to this item number six here, wanting to make sure that we also keep our finger on the knee or sorry, keep pushing on the need to have this information if it needs to remain in this budget for them to us.

potentially to address by taking it out early next year, as Allie noted, we can do that as well.

So thank you, Council Member Peterson, for flagging this because I think it does dovetail into many other council members' areas of interest.

And a good reminder from central staff, thank you about what we had already put into statute and what we expect in terms of report backs.

And thank you for working with the colleagues here to further identify how we can push to get that information so we can make these informed decisions as we plan.

Okay.

Number seven?

Number seven is reducing costs in the Seattle Police Department Officers Guild contract costs that are specifically associated with salary premium pays and specialty pays brought by Council Member Peterson.

Thank you.

Thanks, Chair Mosqueda.

Thanks, Greg.

So this one is Basically, we're in budget season.

So we're talking about dollars here.

And we just, I think we want to, it'll be a benefit to the public and do policymakers to quantify and shine a light on the most expensive cost drivers in the current contract with the police union, such as excessive overtime, extra pay to wear body cameras, generous vacations, taxpayer contributions to the union's deferred comp program, just quantifying and daylighting.

You know, when you look at the 100-page contract, it's hard to know, well, how much does each one of these things cost?

What's really driving the excessive costs from the contract?

So I think to be sensitive to the comments that were raised earlier this morning, talking about the labor relations issues, I would probably reword this so that it's really just instead of looking where to reduce the cost, it would just be quantifying the different cost drivers within the contract.

So sort of a neutral look at the contract and where it's costing the most money on each of these line items.

And this would be a slot statement of legislative intent.

Thank you for that clarification.

Any questions on this?

Council Member Peterson, I'm not seeing any, look forward to learning more on this item.

Okay, before we go on, Greg, to number seven, if you'll indulge me, I think we may have skipped over number one and it could have been part of Lisa's summary and I just missed it, but just for the purposes of transparency with the public and with us, can we go back to item number one, which is expand the function and rename the Seattle Emergency Communications Center.

Council Member Herbold, it sounds self-explanatory, but wanted to give you a chance to also address it as well.

Lisa, I'm sorry if you had already included that in your summary, but let's do that real quick.

Thank you.

You did talk about this a little bit at the SDOT meeting this morning.

It would expand the function of and rename the Seattle Emergency Communications Center It would add parking enforcement officers and then rename the Emergency Communication Center, the Seattle Community Safety and Communication Center.

Thank you.

Council Member Herbold, anything to add?

Yeah, thank you so much.

We did talk about this a bit during the SDOT presentation this morning.

I identified at that time the number of functions that the Police Officers Guild, I'm sorry, the Parking Enforcement Officers Guild is interested in taking on that would require bargaining.

I think the one point I would like to take the opportunity to highlight now relates specifically to the name change.

I think if we are looking at fulfilling the request of the parking enforcement officers to not be transferred to SDOT, but instead to be transferred to the new department, then if that is the case, if we do take that action as a council, that department should not be named Seattle Emergency Communication Center because by moving the parking enforcement officers, I believe it makes to that department, it is broader than emergency communications.

And so that's why I'm suggesting something like the Seattle Community Safety and Communication Center.

Thank you for that summary.

Any questions on number one as we have just heard a quick summary?

Okay, thanks so much, folks.

I appreciate you going back to that, Council Member Herbold.

I appreciate you putting that on our radar.

All right, let's resume again on number eight.

And for the viewing public, we are on slide 17. I'm sorry, we're on page 17 in the memo, slide 24.

All right, thank you, Council Member.

Number eight is reducing SPD's budget, specifically overtime personnel or other discretionary expenditures to invest in BIPOC communities.

And it's brought by Council Member Morales.

Great, Council Member Morales.

Thank you, Greg.

Thanks, Chair Mosqueda.

So I want to preface this by saying that I am interested in working with Council Member Herbold to find ways to reduce staffing and work with her on her form A's.

I think it's really important, you know, if we want to decrease police violence, which is what all these protests have been about, We need to reduce contacts with police.

That's why we are ending police role on the NAF team.

That's why we're investing in programs like community passageways and choose 180. You know, given the research that decreasing contact between the public and the police is the best way to reduce police violence, given that most of the 911 calls that are made are, in fact, not for crimes, but for nuisance calls and things like that, and that we can't really demonstrate that random patrols actually prevent crime or protect the public, I'm not inclined to prioritize maintaining a staffing level that's based on what seems like arbitrary metrics.

And we know that we have, most of us have made a commitment to reduce the size of the force, to reduce the budget by 50%.

So I'm interested in working with my colleagues to get us there.

And I've been working with King County Equity Now and other groups to develop a plan for the participatory budgeting process.

We will be submitting a form B for establishing that process, and I'm happy to answer questions or to work with any of my colleagues who want to make sure that we move that forward well.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Questions on this item, colleagues?

OK, moving on.

Number nine.

Number nine, Madam Chair, is transferring the Community Service Officer program out of SPD and into the Department of Neighborhoods, and it's brought by Councilmember Sawant.

Great, do we have Councilmember Sawant with us?

Hi there, Councilmember Sawant, please go ahead.

Thank you.

This budget amendment would move the community service officer program as Greg said out of the police department and into the department of neighborhoods.

I just want to remind councilmembers the community service officers are not police officers.

They do not carry weapons.

And as we know, there are many situations that police are sent to where a social worker would be far more effective and non-harmful.

And the community service officers program tries to pilot that approach.

The community service officers themselves, many of whom I have discussed personally with my office, They are dedicated members of the community who do extremely good work.

But they have determined that operating under the command structure of the police department has made it far more difficult for them to serve their communities.

And they have gotten organized and are requesting to be moved out of the police department and into the Department of Neighborhoods, which is what this budget amendment would do.

Thank you, Council Member Sawant.

Any questions?

OK.

I'm seeing.

I have a question, Madam Chair.

Please go ahead.

And I appreciate Council Member Sma bringing this forward.

Have you discussed this at all with the Teamsters who I know organize the community service officers?

I know they've been interested in pursuing to move the CSO's to.

And I think this is definitely an intriguing option.

I'm just curious if when you said that they've been getting organized, if that was potentially a reference to talking to the Teamsters about this as well.

I think, yes.

Thank you for bringing that up Council Member Lewis.

And I will confirm in the background and update Council Members in a future committee.

My understanding is that it does not, when I say organized, it does not only imply that they have been talking to the teamsters, which I know that they have, but also they've been talking amongst one another and they're sort of getting organized amongst themselves.

And as a group, they have been talking to my office.

I know that my staff have been reaching out to the teamsters in the meanwhile to also see how involved they are and how we can proceed on this matter.

Thank you, Councilmember Swan.

I'm not seeing additional questions.

Councilmember Herbold, did you have anything on this?

Yeah, I would definitely be interested to benefit from the conversations that you've been having with CSO employees.

This is the first full year that they've been working for the city since it's been reinstituted.

I'm not committed to them being housed at SPD.

And if they have concerns about from where they are deployed, and think that another department would be a better fit, I would welcome the chance to benefit from those conversations as well.

If I might very quickly respond to that.

Yes, thank you Council Member Herbold.

I totally agree that I think the council will as a whole benefit from having more information.

And I will absolutely make sure that we share at least on email if we don't have a chance immediately tomorrow to come back to this, given all our other agenda items, I will make sure that at least on email, we share all of this.

And then of course, I welcome your staff members or yourselves also as part of the discussions we're having.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Any additional comments on this?

Okay.

Great, let's move on to item number 10.

All right, thank you.

Item number 10 is transferring some of the Harbor Patrol functions to the Seattle Fire Department, and it is brought by Councilmember Herbold.

Please go ahead, Councilmember Herbold.

Thank you.

I was just trying to track down.

what the resolution 31962 said.

I just don't, I want to be careful not to get the cart before the horse.

I am interested in determining what functions might be able to be transferred.

I'm not necessarily assuming that those functions can be transferred.

I've been told that there is a lot of overlap.

I've also been told that there's an MOA that defines what the fire department and the police department do as it relates to responding to emergencies in the water.

In the next iteration of this, I think I want to make sure that we speak to this understanding that there is this MOA that would probably have to come first.

If Greg agrees that my recollection is correct, that the last time this issue came up, there was a lot of controversy about it.

Rather than making the decision rather than the policymakers, making the decisions.

Everybody sat down at a table and figured out who would who would do what.

after many years since that agreement was negotiated.

Again, I'm hearing that there is a need to return to that agreement because there is a duplication of activities, things that the fire department is doing that the, I'm sorry, the things that the police department is doing that it would be better for a fire to do.

Council Member Hergold, you asked me to weigh in and say, yes, there is an MOU that defines roles.

I believe it's specifically around divers, but maybe some other things too.

And as this is drafted now, I think it assumes a lot more simplicity than then it's possible.

Is that correct?

We can't just transfer Harbor Patrol functions to the fire department in our budget action.

That would be, again, something that would, some of it would have to be negotiated as part of this MOU and some of it might have to be bargained.

Is that correct?

Yeah, that's true.

Anytime there's a body of work that's owned by one union that would potentially move to another, it needs to be negotiated.

Thank you.

Thank you very much Councilmember Herbold.

Councilmember Peterson, please go ahead.

I just want to thank Councilmember Herbold for being sensitive to the past situations with this, because on my ride along with Harbor Patrol, you know, part of it's the geography of it, where Harbor Patrol is more in Lake Union and Lake Washington.

I think the fire department, you probably see them a lot more in Elliott Bay and West Seattle.

I'd be curious as to what the cost savings would be, because right now you don't have the fire department on Lake Union, but you have the police department there.

And so if you're just moving a department there, I don't know.

be curious as to what the benefits would be of that.

So I look forward to learning more about this one.

Thank you.

Great, thank you.

And I also appreciate you bringing this forward Council Member Herbold.

One of the things I want to look into as this item potentially moves forward is how we ensure safety for onshore activity that can only be accessed from the water.

That's something that I've heard from the maritime industry is the biggest area of concern for them.

So I appreciate you bringing this forward and look forward to learning more as we go forward.

I know this is the area of interest to many council members.

Council Member Strauss, did you have something as well?

Please go ahead.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

Thank you, Council Member Herbold and Peterson and Greg for bringing this forward.

Greg, as We've been in long conversations regarding this, and I'll probably be speaking to this in Form Bs.

I think one point to note that is very important to me is that currently Harbor Patrol has a proactive patrolling of our fresh waters.

And that would be something that I would like to continue to see if this was transferred to another department, understanding that there are, and I think that it will be important to understand what level of patrol is needed by sworn officers as compared to medical professionals, the MOU regarding dive teams, et cetera.

There's a lot to unpack here, and I look forward to investigating that with you.

Thank you, Chair.

Great, thank you.

Okay, I think we are on number 11.

Right, number 11, defunding SPD's budget by 50%, Council Member Sawant.

Great, Council Member Sawant, please go ahead.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

This is the budget amendment to defund the police by 50% as seven of the nine council members, including myself, promised to do earlier in the summer during the height of the Justice for George Floyd protest movement.

Throughout this budget, the mayor has done massive cuts to other departments, including layoffs, and there's no legal reason why that cannot be done in the police department instead of those other departments.

Reducing the funding and therefore the size of the police department would mean that the police would not have the resources to continue to overstaff and abuse Black Lives Matter protests, and not to mention the chronic targeting they do of homeless neighbors.

They would have less time to harass communities of color as a whole, but they would still have a massive $188 million left over for their budget.

I want to be clear that when genuine community organizers demanded to defund the police, this is what they were talking about actually reducing the forces of repression in society.

That's different from many of the accounting gimmicks that the mayor's office has used.

In the mayor's proposed budget, there are tens of millions of dollars transferred out of the police department into other departmental budgets with no tangible change in real terms.

That is not what the community is talking about.

There are also some genuine reductions in police spending, which is partially because of the impact of the movement.

However, these genuine reductions are far, far, far from 50%.

To calculate what is needed to defund the police by 50% in real terms, my office took last year's budget and made technical adjustments and accounted for the slights of hand, like the transfers to other departments.

Then we divided the remainder in half, subtracted the genuine reductions in the mayor's police budget.

and what is left is the 170 million dollars that still need to be defunded which is what this budget amendment would do.

That's of course a lot of calculations to describe verbally and I would be happy to share the worksheets that my office produced with any council member who are interested but I do think that it is essential that we understand that the reason this is so complicated is because of the layering and other tricks, accounting tricks that have been used to try to deflect thousands of people from really understanding what the budget represents.

And we're talking about tens of thousands of people in the city who still come into public testimony demanding the defunding of the SPD.

Council members have a real option to follow through on the commitment expressed all year to defund repressive policing and to instead put those funds in genuinely uplifting our communities over the summer.

We heard many things from the city council that it is complicated, that it would take months to defund the police.

And I did say at that time that that was an excuse in my view, but regardless, now it is very simple and it's been months since the promises were made.

And I would really urge council members to co-sponsor this and vote in favor of this amendment and understand that this is not a technical question, but it's a question of whether politically we want to do this or not.

Thank you, Council Member Sawant.

Any additional comments or questions?

Council Member Herbold.

I just remember from the 2020 rebalancing exercise, well, it was more than an exercise, it was a vote, that central staff did some analysis around what a 50% cut would be, and I think it would result in A reduction in something by like something like 700 officers.

Does that does that.

Yeah, I, I don't remember the exact number, but it was many hundreds.

Yeah.

Um, and, and would a 50% reduction in.

July have the same relative, same impact as a 50% cut in a annual budget at the beginning of the year?

Still would be around that same number of officers?

It would have a different impact, but it would be obviously drastic.

You've got right now just under 1,400 FTE and 384 civilians.

So you can imagine that a 50% reduction would, and given the personnel costs that I talked about at the front of the presentation, yeah, hundreds.

And can you speak to the risks of making this size of a cut without bargaining it and spending those dollars in a higher priority area that the council might identify?

Well, I think as central staff noted last summer that any layoff would require bargaining, whether it be impact bargaining or decision bargaining.

And it would be the case that an attempt by the council to cut the dollars and initiate layoffs might be a problem later if the union winds up challenging those layoffs and can successfully challenge it to the point where the funding couldn't be realized in the 2021 budget.

It would essentially mean that mid-year, the council would have to come back and figure out how to fix the hole, so to speak.

So that would be the primary risk associated.

So having in this in this in the case of this proposal, having to find an additional hundred and seventy three million dollars.

Potentially, depending on hundred seventy point three.

Yeah.

And then.

I think.

This issue, to be fair to Council Member Sawant, I think this is an issue that might impact many different variations of decisions that we might consider making around staffing reductions.

But Greg, can you speak briefly to the issue that has been raised around The consent decree and the monitors position on staffing cuts.

I think the only thing that I'm comfortable saying on that is that the monitor has suggested that staffing cuts be reviewed by DOJ to make sure that they would not put the department in a position where it was out of compliance with any of the particular DOJ mandates around things like span of control and other staffing based requirements.

Thank you.

Councilmember, thank you very much for your questions.

Councilmember Sawant, to close us out on this item, would you like to add any additional comments?

Yeah, just to say that, yeah, the estimate that Greg had about hundreds and around 700, that's accurate because it's 1,400 odd officers.

And I would also just also take the attention back to one of the graphs that Greg had, which we have known, of course, for a while that over 80% of the budget is salaries and overtime.

So it has to come from, this source, otherwise you cannot, you know, technically it is not possible to do defunding.

And also as many of the council members have stated today, it's a whole point is reducing contact between police officers and community members and that social workers and nurses, as you said, Chair Mosqueda and others should be performing many of those duties to reduce a tremendous harm, including loss of life.

As we have seen for eight people actually under Mayor Durkin's reign, when they come into contact with the police.

So I think that from everything that we have seen and the largest ever street protest in US history with over 20 million people going out in multiracial solidarity during Justice for George Floyd, this has been the theme.

And not a single city has delivered on this actually, despite many, many politicians making promises.

But as far as the, Bargaining is concerned, of course, we're not, we're not saying we shouldn't be bargaining that as that's a necessary process, of course, but the city as the legislative body.

Has budgeting authority and the effects need to be bargained.

We've had these discussions before and I mean, I would just also add 1 last point as a member of.

a labor union myself that absolutely the right to right of every union to bargain for the best possible outcomes of living standards for their members is something that I will always fight for.

But at the same time, we have to understand that the police union has not played the same role as labor union in general.

Injury to one is an injury to all.

That's the philosophy on which the labor movement has to be based on.

And that was the underlying sort of analysis through which the MLK Labor Council members voted to remove the Seattle Police Officers Guild from the Labor Council, not because they don't think that they have the right to the union, but because the way the Police Officers Guild has reacted and You know, being an obstacle to real police reform.

This is not something that is in the interest of ordinary people or workers or union members in general, but just in, I would say, yeah, we do have budgeting authority and we should take that authority.

We should do it and bargain defects.

Okay, thank you very much.

I want to keep us moving along item number 12. We do have about eight more items left.

If we spend about three minutes on each one, we will be done exactly on time.

So I'm going to put that timer on for our future discussions just to try to keep us moving along, but I really appreciate the robust discussion.

Let's go ahead.

Item number 12, reintroducing the reductions that were made to the SPD budget during the 2020 mid-budget process brought by Council Member Herpel.

We've talked a lot about this one.

Let's just save you three minutes.

I have nothing more to add.

Are there any questions?

Okay.

Let's keep going then.

Number 13. All right.

Number 13 is transferring the SPD performance analytics and research PAR unit from the SPD to the inspector general for public safety.

And this one is brought by council member Gonzalez.

Council President, thank you so much for being with us today.

Anything to add to these?

Just really quickly, the Performance Analytics and Research Unit is one that really focuses on much of the research that drives many of the policing strategies and public safety strategies.

at the Seattle Police Department.

So this particular item is, I think, consistent with other proposals and actions to civilianize certain functions by transferring various units out of the Seattle Police Department.

And this proposal would place, again, the highly analytical and research-oriented PAR unit in the Office of Inspector General for Public Safety.

The mission and skill set of the PAR unit closely aligns with the analysis and auditing functions of the OIG, which is my primary motivator for suggesting that we explore this possible transfer.

We are continuing to explore the logistical implications of this proposed transfer, but based on the substantive body of work, of this unit, I think it would be productive for us to pursue this potential unit under the leadership and supervision of the Office of Inspector General.

I would say that in a Form B context, We are looking at potentially revising this to allow for the opportunity to perhaps make this a function-based transfer as opposed to a complete 100% unit transfer.

So it might make sense to leave some of these functions within the Seattle Police Department in acknowledgement that accountability is important within the department, not just outside of the department, and still sort of create a pathway for some of the functions to transfer over to OIG.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Madam President.

Any questions on this?

I am not seeing any questions.

Thank you for flagging the possible change in the form B.

Looking forward to hearing more about that item as it evolves.

Appreciate it.

Council members, we are on item number 14, page 18 of the memo.

Item number 14 is eliminating the unfunded sworn positions.

It's brought by Council President Gonzales.

And you'll recall that at the top of the presentation, I mentioned that there are 50 remaining unfunded positions that are not needed in the 2021 staffing plan.

This proposal would abrogate those positions by Council President Gonzales.

Thank you very much.

Council President Gonzales, any additional comments?

Yeah, I think Greg covered it really well.

I don't have any additional comments.

Okay, great.

Any questions for Council President or for Greg on this item?

I'm not seeing any.

Great, let's go to number 15.

Number 15 is eliminating the funded sworn positions that are unneeded in the SPD staffing plan.

You'll recall that earlier in the presentation, I talked about in the 2021 budget, there are 1,400 FTEs that are funded, and it is not expected, according to the staffing plan, that SPD will be able to fill all of those positions.

This proposal would reduce the positions that they could not fill.

Thank you, Council President Gonzalez.

Sorry.

Thank you, Council President.

Any additional comments on this one?

I think Greg covered it well.

No additional comments.

Council President, any questions or comments from our colleagues?

Okay, I'm seeing none.

Thank you very much.

Let's move on to item number, where are we at, Greg?

15 or 16?

16 is prohibiting SPD from removing encampments unless certain conditions are satisfied.

And it's brought by Council Member Sawant.

Sorry about that.

Thank you.

Council Member Sawant, please go ahead.

Thank you.

Chair Mosqueda.

This proposal would place a proviso on the budget of the Seattle Police Department that I'll just quickly say what it states.

No funds in the budget of the Seattle Police Department may be used to support the removal of unauthorized encampments until all residents of the encampment either have accepted placement in shelter or housing or have been clearly directed to a different location no farther than a half a mile away where the residents can reestablish unauthorized encampment with reduced harm to themselves and other community members or at a city-sanctioned encampment with garbage removal and portable toilets.

No funds in the budget of the Seattle Police Department may be used to support the removal of unauthorized encampments whose residents have been directed to that location during a previous encampment removal without the authorization of further council action.

So in other words, this budget amendment is intended to work.

in conjunction with all the budget amendments to remove resources away from the navigation team, sweeps towards homeless outreach and services like what is provided by REACH.

For years, the People's Budget Movement has been demanding an end to inhumane and ineffective sweeps of homeless people.

We have seen more and more people understanding that this is not working, and it is inhumane on top of that.

The sweeps do not help people find housing, and in reality, have a terrible track record of even getting people into shelter.

I mean, we have seen this over and over again in endless presentations in the last years.

Overwhelmingly, the sweeps move people from one street corner to the next only to become more desperate.

And I remember a real change vendor testifying in public comment a couple of years ago that he had been swept eight times that year with no solution to his condition.

When the mayor's office talks about sweeps, they paint a picture of a beneficent navigation team that helps houseless people move off the streets and get the services they need.

But this is far from what actually happens and what the data shows.

In reality, many times sweeps do not even include a navigation team.

Often police officers will just make people move along.

We've seen this a lot, Cal Anderson Park, and this is what the provisor is intended to address.

If a police officer tells someone they have to move along, They cannot have their tent somewhere.

They must offer another location nearby that would be less harmful, safer for the tent's resident, and less of an impediment to traffic, and so on and so forth, and all the considerations that go into whether or not somebody should be moved.

This does not mean giving a flyer for a shelter that may not even have an open bed.

It means concrete solutions.

Obviously, this proviso is about harm reduction.

What we really need is affordable housing, tiny house villages and other services that are far better than for people to sleep unsheltered.

But while our movement fights to expand affordable housing and also expand much better interim solutions like tiny home villages.

We also need a humane policy with regard to sweeps and we need to have the city stop doing the harm.

And by choosing locations where people's encampments will not be swept, we can focus the city's resources on actually providing housing and or services.

Thank you, Council Member Salon.

Council colleagues, any questions or comments?

Councilmember, just a few questions for clarification.

I think the language that you have outlined here is helpful, a helpful example of the situations in which individuals may be asked to move, but the conditions under which those individuals would have the authority to ask people to move.

And I think you've outlined it well.

I think this helps get at the question that folks have asked about, what about issues where there's an unsafe area or a true hazard?

So could you comment about how this language helps to address those two concerns that have been brought up?

I think that's a very important point.

And I feel that that's language that needs to be added to the existing language in this proviso because we have tried to incorporate all the conditions, but hazardous location is maybe we can just add hazardous locations, or if you have some suggested language we can add to this, we're happy to add to it.

But the main thing is what this is, what we attempted to do with this proviso language is to take into account the fact that there are real situations in which it is not ideal for our homeless neighbors to be situated in that, wherever they're situated, whether it's harmful to themselves, harmful to other community members and overall question of public safety.

but that it cannot be done in such a way that people are just moved and shunted from one spot to another with no solutions and no future.

So we feel that this language, if it is fully encapsulating the conditions as you highlighted, it will be something that's useful.

And so if you are open to it, I'd like to work with you on just making sure we include all the language that's necessary.

Thank you.

And thanks for offering that clarification.

Any additional questions or comments?

Okay.

Thank you, Council Member Sawant.

Last three items here, folks.

We are doing well on time.

Item number 17.

Item number 17 is a proposal that the fire department snuck into the police paper.

I'm just kidding.

This is a proposal that Council Member Herbold brought forward during the fire.

issue paper and it is one that staff inadvertently left out.

It is the reinstatement of council funding that would reverse the cut of fire exams and would reverse the cut of 20 firefighters from the SFD recruit class.

And so I guess this is getting on the record council member Herbold's proposal and apologies by staff that it wasn't in the fire paper.

Council Member Herbold.

We already talked about it during the fire presentation because Greg was so helpful in making sure that there was a budget, there was a presentation slide for this, even though it didn't get in the paper.

So thank you.

That's right.

Thank you.

And I appreciate Council Member Herbold, you bringing this forward as we talked about before.

And thank you very much, Greg, for making sure it was reflected in the materials for record keeping purposes.

Thank you.

All right.

Last two are from our Council President.

Item 18 is adding funding, potentially adding funding or FTE to expand the office of the OIG if needed to audit the new public safety entities.

As we've talked about, there were functions of SPD, public safety functions that were moved into other departments or established as their own entity.

And this proposal would look at whether or not additional FTE or funding are needed on behalf of the OIG to fulfill its mission.

to audit public safety functions that are being performed by city entities.

So, Council President Gonzalez.

Thank you very much.

Greg covered it.

Nothing to add.

Great.

Thank you.

Any questions, colleagues?

Okay.

Seeing none.

Excellent.

Thank you, Council President.

And the last one, number 19.

Last one, number 19, is a potential proviso on SPD's 2021 budget to ensure that officers are receiving training on how to appropriately engage with sex workers.

There was in the 2020 budget a $200,000 proviso for this kind of training, and staff have not yet been able to determine whether this training was delivered.

And so I think this particular proposal was in advance of to make sure that that training is getting delivered, if not in 2020, but in 2021. Hopefully I've said that right, Council President Gonzalez.

Council President, anything to add?

Just really quickly, consistent with what Greg said, I understand that these funds were cut in the rebalancing of the 2020 budget.

And I still remain interested in this body of work.

And I'm also interested in potential intersection of the ongoing conversations regarding the current contract with King County Jail for jail services.

And how that will be reassessed and how those funds are to be used moving forward.

I just appreciate being able to make sure we don't lose sight of this body of work that was really important to the council last year.

And if those dollars haven't been used and we track them down, I think there's an opportunity for council to either encourage the training as we envisioned or to capture those dollars as savings to fund council priorities.

Thank you very much, Council President.

Any questions or comments, colleagues?

I will make a quick comment.

I really appreciate you flagging that both it's a question about whether or not these dollars have been used and whether or not that training has occurred.

And also the continued interest in making sure that this type of engagement and retraining happens with our officers.

for folks who weren't on council.

It was a pretty telling moment in late last year when we did have a presentation from members of the police department and some of the ways in which I think many members in the community would have wished the engagement with sex workers had been done differently.

And so I am also concerned that this hasn't been deployed or if it has, that's good.

But if not, let's continue to keep our our pressure up about making sure that this type of training or similar work occurs in the future.

So thank you, Council President, for flagging this.

And Greg, anything else to add to that item?

Nothing.

Okay.

I am very appreciative of all of your time this afternoon.

Greg, you walked us through almost three hours of a presentation.

Thanks as well to Lisa and to Ali.

for your work on this section of the budget.

Obviously there are many form A ideas that have been put forward and I want to thank you as well for all of the issues you have identified that were not corresponding with certain council member areas.

We're going to go back and take a look at all of those issues that central staff have identified and council members have identified and look forward to working with all of you on this important component of our budget given the large dollar figure that it has and also the community call for action on this.

Any additional comments for the good of the order on this?

I'm seeing none from our central staff.

So again, thank you very much, Greg, Allie, Lisa, everybody who presented today.

This does summarize the end of our agenda for Tuesday, October 20th.

Tomorrow we will meet again, October 21st.

We start at 9.30 a.m.

and we will have public comment in the morning.

Please do sign up, public comment start Sign-up sheet starts at 7.30 a.m.

We will have the first half an hour devoted to public comments.

And then we will get into our final day of deliberations and discussions, absorbing information on central staff, issue identification, and we will have a presentation on the issue IDs, the Form A's that have been submitted by our council colleagues, specific to the areas of human services, homelessness, and the COVID response throughout the day tomorrow.

I wanna also remind you that our Form B deadlines are due Thursday, October 22nd at 5 p.m.

If you have them ready, please do turn those in early.

If you have any questions or wanna bat around ideas, Central Staff Team is here to help formulate those Form Bs with all of you.

And the earlier you get them in, the more feedback you can get on those.

So please do get those turned in by 5 p.m.

on Thursday.

With that, if there's nothing else for the good of the order, a wonderful evening, and we will see you all at 9.30 tomorrow morning.

Thanks to everyone.

As per usual, we'll see you in just a few hours.

Take care, everybody.

Bye.

Thank you.