Seattle City Council Public Safety & Human Services Committee 8/10/21

meeting of the Public Safety and Human Services Committee will come to order.

It is 9.31 a.m.

I'm Lisa Herbold, chair of the committee.

Council Member Sawant's office let me know this morning that she will not be able to attend today's committee meetings.

She is excused.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Council President Gonzalez?

Aye.

Council Member Lewis?

Present.

Council Member Morales?

Here.

Council Member Herbold.

Here.

For present.

And I believe Council Member Mosqueda is joining us today as well.

She's already with us, so thank you for joining us.

Good morning.

Thank you so much.

And on today's committee agenda, we will hear three items.

The first will be a discussion and vote on a bill to transfer the parking enforcement unit out of the Seattle Police Department.

The second is a briefing from the Human Services Department on the process and outcomes of the community safety capacity building request for proposals funded with $12 million provided by the city council in part in last year's summer budget adjustment with the council then increasing the funding in 2021 when that 2020 funding was vetoed by the mayor and not allocated in 2020. I know we are also glad to see that the human services department has And then finally, we'll be hearing a report from central staff on the Seattle Police Department's quarterly finance and staffing reports.

I will be working with the Seattle police department and will focus on their budget proposal and as well as discussion of several public safety investments that I and other councilmembers have been working to propose funding in a different set of conversations in With that, we will move on to approval of the agenda for today's committee meeting.

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

Hearing no objection, today's agenda is adopted.

At this time, we'll transition into public comment.

I will moderate the public comment period in the following manner.

Each speaker will be given, well, there are 39 speakers, 40 speakers.

I think we should reduce public comment period speaking for one minute for each speaker.

It will require us to also make an adjustment in the time allotted for public comment on the agenda.

I will call on each speaker by name and in the order in which they registered on the council's website.

If you have not yet registered to speak but would like to do so, you can sign up before the end of the public hearing by going to the council's website.

The link is also listed on today's agenda.

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

Once you hear that prompt, you must press star six to unmute yourself.

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

The speakers will hear chime when 10 seconds are left of the allotted time.

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

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

Once you complete your public comment, we ask that you please disconnect from the line.

And you can continue to follow the meeting via the Seattle panel or on the listening options listed on the agenda itself.

Many more people signed up for public comment than we could accommodate in the normal 20-minute public comment period.

And so in order to allow as many people to speak as possible, potentially everybody, if there are no objections, I will suspend the rules to allow an additional 20 minutes of public comment, extending public comment to be a total of 40 minutes.

And hearing no objections, the comment period has been extended from 20 minutes to 40 minutes.

Thank you.

And so we'll move right in to the public comment period.

I will call out names two at a time.

And again, to remember to hit the text.

So we'll start with Howard Gale, followed by Jason Reed.

Howard, good morning.

Good morning, Howard Gale.

Yesterday, thanks to the reporting of Carolyn Bick at the South Seattle Emerald, we got a closer look at the inner workings of our failed and corrupt police accountability system.

We learned just how self-serving, self-reinforcing, bureaucratic, and paternalistic this nine-plus-million-dollar system is, protecting both itself and the SBB from the community.

Bick's article reveals a complete dereliction of duty by the heads of both the OPA and the OIG, along with possible criminal acts committed by OPA Director Andrew Meyerberg.

bix article reveals that in an opi investigation of one of the more horrendous assaults against protesters last year described by ko w as quote this woman died three times after she had a police hit her with a blast wall and quote the opiate attempts to blame the victim and criminally release your private health records in defending the s p d precisely the opposite of the opiate shot this complete betrayal of victims of the entire seattle community demonstrates urgent need for us to have full civilian community control over police policy, misconduct investigations, and discipline.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Jason Reeves, followed by Peter Condit.

Jason.

Remember to press star six, Jason.

Thank you, Alex.

Jason, we're still staying on mute.

We need you to hit star six.

One more time, if you can hear us.

Jason, we need you to hit star six so we can hear you.

All right, we're going to have to move on to Peter Condit, followed by BJ Last.

We'll come back up to Jason towards the end of public comment.

Hi, thank you.

My name is Peter Condit.

I'm a District 6 resident.

I'm writing to ask you to transfer all 15 plus million in salary savings out of the Seattle Police Department.

SUD's supposed needs that they will present today raise many questions, particularly regarding the more than $2 million that would be spent on cop technology.

Cops don't need new tech.

One of those items is a capacity planning tool.

Accenture, who sells the product, writes that it is to be used to solve the problem of when, quote, the chief of police cannot currently defend with evidence her request for additional budget, end quote.

Is SPD asking for technology designed to fabricate evidence of budgetary need that doesn't otherwise exist?

I think so.

On the other hand, community already has evidence of its budgetary need through the 78 community orgs that apply to the HSD capacity building grants.

Keeping salary savings within SPD does not get us closer to true public safety for all.

SPD is a violent, destructive, extortionary force in our city that employs literal,

Thank you, Peter.

Our next speaker is B.J.

Last, followed by Sebron Page.

B.J.?

Hello.

My name is B.J.

Last.

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

I'm calling to ask you to transfer all $15 million plus in salary savings out of SPD.

The mayor and SPD recently put forth a proposal for allocating $15.3 million of SPD salary savings.

Not surprisingly, they're directing almost all of those dollars back into SPD, which raises many questions.

A recent report by the National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform, which was commissioned by SPD, says that three quarters of all calls for service could be handled exclusively or primarily by a community emergency response network.

What steps are being taken to create this network?

How could the $15.3 million be used towards this recommendation?

What is the basis for the decision to spend on hiring bonuses that will increase SPD's number of sworn officers instead of spending on non-officer alternatives?

Seattle is in a crucial period of transitioning public safety from SPD to a community-centered and led approach.

Keeping salary savings within SPD does not get us closer to true public safety for all.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Sebron Page followed by Becca Rose.

Sebron.

My name is C.

Brian Page.

I'm a gig worker who does Uber and Uber Eats.

I'm here to speak about why we need Seattle Council to pass the payoff policy.

As an independent contractor, I incur all of the expenses of doing this work, of course.

A single accident can take away your ability to do this work.

There aren't any protections for gig workers, especially if you get hurt or have an accident.

I'm a very good driver, but life happens, accidents happen.

I happen to pull back on doing this because of the expensive wear and tear and mileage on my car that the job incurs.

Due to a mistake, I have not been able to do airport runs since April.

I have not done any Uber rideshare runs since June 17th.

It's obvious that the gig worker is something that you cannot rely on.

and you surely cannot retire from this type of work.

But that can change.

We need us as workers.

Standards must be set in place before whole new generations of people.

Thank you so much.

Our next speaker is Becca Rose.

Becca will be followed by Terry Herstadt.

Hello, my name is Becca Rose.

I'm a district two resident.

I'm calling today because I'm very concerned about SPD's request to allocate their salary savings back into their budget when the council is already committed to utilizing resources to build true public safety outside of SPD.

This is the council's opportunity to walk your talk.

The mayor's new budget request for SPD raises many questions.

One of them is as part of the technology funding, SPD is asking the city to fund an early intervention system The system supposedly catches bad cops before they do bad things.

There is zero evidence, however, that EIS even works.

The DOJ has previously declared the early intervention system to be a failed program.

Why would the city spend on police technology that is already proven to fail in preventing police violence when we know there are alternatives out there as demonstrated through the project with all of the community organizations that can solve public safety outside of SPD?

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Terri Herstad, followed by Jacob Scheer.

Terri?

Hi, are you able to hear me?

Yes, we can.

Thank you.

Okay, great.

So I'm Terri Herstad, and I'm a gig worker cleaning houses through the Handy app.

I used to work primarily on Instacart, but I was deactivated in late 2019, and they did not disclose the infraction.

that led to my deactivation.

And I'm here today because it's possible to be a gig worker and have a respectable and balanced relationship with app companies.

Unfortunately, not all app companies play fair and continuously harm worker profits.

Handy determines pay rates for independent businesses, and I'm expected to cover expenses, including my taxes, my bonding, my insurance, and yet the clients are considered customers of Handy and not my personal clients.

As a first priority, we need to be careful to focus on adequate compensation for expenses and labor.

From there, we need standards to prevent unfair deactivations and protect our flexibility from apps.

Thank you so much.

Our next speaker is Jacob Fear, followed by Tracy Patton.

Jacob.

Thank you.

My name is Jacob Shearer.

I'm an advocacy organizer for Real Change.

I'm calling in today on behalf of Real Change to ask council to transfer all $15 million of SPD salary savings into participatory budgeting and community safety programs and to reject SPD's attempt to waste this money on unnecessary technology requests and hiring bonuses for police we don't need.

As an organization that works with low-income and unhoused communities, we know the threat that SPD poses to our vendors through criminalizing poverty, displacing and traumatizing people through encampments we and sustained racist violence.

We reject the idea that SPD exists to provide public safety and demand that council follow through on their commitment to transform public safety in Seattle.

That begins with supporting and investing in programs that meet basic needs and respond to structural causes of poverty and inequality.

The precise opposite of what the Seattle Police Department does.

Our unhoused neighbors don't need police and incarceration.

They need housing and services that meet their specific needs.

That is what true public safety is and everyone living in our city deserves it.

The demand from your community remains the same.

Defund SPD and invest in true public safety.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Tracy Patton, and Tracy will be followed by James Thomas.

Tracy.

Okay.

Hi.

My name's Tracy Patton, and I am calling in to talk about gig worker policy.

I'm a long-time freelance writer and marketing consultant.

So I'm in a little bit of a different position than the type of gig workers that I think you're focused on today.

However, I wanted to emphasize the overlap and some of the shared concerns among all gig workers.

As a writer, I do have gaps in my contracts here and there.

And so a couple of years ago, I signed up to be a Lyft driver, thinking that would help even out the income.

I was shocked.

at how little I was paid.

I was expecting to get about $20 an hour and after all expenses, I mean, it was just ridiculous.

I think I might've made like $4 an hour.

Anyway, so today I'm asking for just the basics, like basic minimum wage and transparency and fees for all gig workers.

Thank you so much.

Our next speaker is James Thomas followed by Penny O'Grady.

James?

You have to hit star 6 if you haven't done so already.

You're still on mute.

James, I don't know if you can hear us, but we need you to hit star 6 so we can hear you.

And one more time, James, Thomas, can you please hit star six?

There you go.

I've hit star six.

Am I there?

Yes.

Perfect.

Thank you.

I apologize.

No problem.

Okay.

It's easy to see that gig companies want to fool and rule an entire class of people who are and shall be providing service years from now while collecting servitude compensations for doing the step and fetch for the masses who use these services.

We are here from working Washington payoffs.

We need Seattle to progressively show that it's time to stop the tomfoolery, the nonsensical lying, and bamboozling people of color and immigration status.

We want and need traditional equities for the hundreds of thousands of hardworking people who provide all of the power, energy, and expenses that make the gig process work.

We need standards set now.

We are the link.

Without the driver and their vehicles, nothing moves.

Last week, the base pay for DoorDash went from $3 to $2.75 with no explanation.

This was authorized by Tony Zhu, CEO of DoorDash, who made $414 million.

Thank you, James.

Our next speaker is Penny O'Grady.

And Penny will be followed by Cephas Kiplimo.

Penny?

Hello.

My name is Penny O'Grady, and I'm a Green Lake resident.

I'm calling to ask you to follow through on your commitment and transfer all $15 million in salary savings out of the Seattle Police Department.

What is the basis for keeping community service officers and other non-sworn responders in SCD now that there is an independent community safety communication center?

Councils should provide zero funding for CSOs until they're moved to the new CSDC.

To quote from yesterday's ACLU post, Reductions in SPD's budget can and should occur.

The consent decree is not to the cause of the ongoing problems with policing in Seattle.

It should not be used to distract from the real problems that exist and finding solutions to them.

The city must do more to address SPD violence.

At the same time, community voices urging changes that could achieve public safety for all should be heeded.

Thank you.

Thank you, Penny.

Our next speaker, Cephas Kiplimo, is noted as not present.

So, if that changes, we will go back to Cephas.

And so, with that, we'll move on to Trayvonna Thompson-Wiley, followed by Alice Lockhart.

Trayvonna?

Hi.

My name is Trayvonna, and I'm calling to ask for the city council to follow through with their commitment to transfer all $15 million of salary savings out of the Seattle Police Department.

The mayor's new budget request for SPD raises many questions.

This is one of them.

A report by the Center for Police and Equity, which was commissioned by SPD and recently published, says that black people were subject to force, first at per capita rate, more than seven times the rate for white people.

Native people were stopped nearly nine times as much as White people and Black people were stopped as much as five times as much as White people.

Given this data why should we continue to put more money into SPD especially they have harmful practices rather than investing in community safety initiatives that create true public health and safety.

Seattle is in a crucial period of transitioning public safety from SPD to a community-centered led approach.

Keeping salary savings within SPD does not give us does not get us closer to true public health and safety.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Alice Lockhart, followed by Ed Falsang.

Good morning, Council.

I'm Alice Lockhart.

I live in D5, where SPD wastes an apparently incredible amount of taxpayer money on so-called suspicious person calls.

Given that only 6.1% of calls for service by SPD are for felonies, that only 12.9% of officer response time is spent on felonies, and that the National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform recommends having a community response to three quarters of all calls for service.

What possible basis could there be to invest budget in increasing SPD sworn officers through hiring bonuses instead of investing in non-officer alternatives to response to the majority of calls?

If the answer is none, the only fiscally responsible alternative is to invest the entire $15 million in real community safety, not SPD.

Thank you.

Thank you, Alice.

Our next speaker is Ed Solsang, followed by Madison Swain Bowden.

Ed?

Good morning, Council.

My name is Ed Solsang and I'm a caregiver in Seattle with SEIU 775, where I serve on the executive board.

I want to tell you why the push for the Pay Up initiative is so important to us.

In a trendy name, on the piecework offered by food delivery services, and you still have the same old low wage, no benefits, no protection jobs we fought against for years.

Food delivery driver that I know joked that if he ended up living in his car, he could at least tell people he was working from home during the pandemic.

You may hear that workers worry about regulations reducing the scheduling accessibility that they need.

What you may not hear is that we need that flexibility to juggle the demands of working two or three low-wage jobs.

Truth is, my caregiving schedule is as flexible as it was 20 years ago, but now it's flexible with affordable health care, paid time off, and union representation.

It took 775 a generation to lift caregivers out of poverty, and that sliver of stability has meant that many of our children are on a path to become doctors and engineers.

We can't waste a generation of gig workers' children waiting for lunch to be delivered.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Madison Swain-Bowden followed by Clark Allen.

Hi, can you hear me?

Yes.

Hello, my name is Madison and I am a District 5 resident and a member of the Democratic Socialists of America.

I'm addressing the SPD budget today.

I'm calling to ask that you follow through on your commitment and transfer all $15 million in salary savings out of the Seattle Police Department.

These ongoing salary savings were supposed to go to true safety solutions.

This proposal for money for SPD was blocked by the city three times while they listened to research and the community.

This new attempt by SPD and Mayor Durkin is an insult to the community, which has pushed for community-led resources and harm reduction programs.

Cops do not stop violence.

Last Thursday, members of SPD's Gun Violence Protection Task Force used their own guns and murdered a member of our community.

We cannot continue to reward this behavior with whatever outlandish budgetary acts SPD has.

As a trans woman, the police do not make me feel safe.

They must be defunded.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Clark Allen, followed by Carmen Agueroa.

Clark?

Hello, I'm Clark Allen.

I'm a gig worker with Uber Eats in DoorDash and a member of the Pay Up campaign.

I'm here to support the passage of the Pay Up policy.

I started with Uber Eats back in October as just an extra part-time work while working at Whole Foods.

The wages were actually really good, so I left Whole Foods to pursue Uber full-time.

Unfortunately, in recent months, the wages have dropped so significantly that I'm now struggling to pay my rent.

So I just really hope the Seattle Council passes the payoff policy, just to give some stability to gig workers like me.

It would be really great to have a minimum wage or a floor for wages.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Carmen Figueroa, followed by Johan James.

Carmen.

And Carmen, if you are not already unmuted, we need to hit star.

You are.

Can you hear me now?

Yes, we can.

Thank you.

Hi.

Good morning.

This is Carmen Figueroa.

I am an on-demand gig worker, and I need lawmakers to standardize pay and set standards for the gig industry by passing the payout policy this legislative year.

I had a serious back injury four years ago, that has now become a partial disability.

There are thousands of people with hidden disabilities who financially support themselves by becoming gig workers.

Gig work becomes our only source of income.

The gig industry is the only industry that allows me the flexibility to set my own work hours while working at a pace and intensity that I am physically comfortable with.

The gig industry advertises flexibility and being your own boss.

However, they control our hours and gigs.

We need lawmakers to pass the payout policy this legislative year because a living wage with flexibility is essential for disabled workers.

We are not disposable and should not be exploited.

Thank you for your time and support.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Yoan James followed by Coco Weber.

Yoan?

Hi, my name is Joanne James.

I'm an Instacart shopper and a US Navy sailor.

Due to lack of transparency, we can only guess how these shoppers actually make our money.

The rating system is set up to make people less money.

If you don't get a five-star rating, you'll get offered less profitable batches.

It's a way of self-control by the company.

In the beginning, I found this work to be easy and enjoyable.

After a bit of time, the pay was drastically cut by $10 per batch.

I had to increase my hours if I wanted to maintain my goals.

I cannot afford to continue to do Instacart, especially when low-paying batches are the only batches I'm able to view on my phone.

Why should I have to take the orders and batches another person wouldn't even consider taking?

Because I have witnessed the decline of decent pay, I believe that standards need to be set in place in order to make pay equitable.

Everyone who works as a shopper should be paid fairly.

Seattle City Council can make this happen by passing the pay up policy in 2020.

Thank you.

I really appreciate it.

Next speaker is Coco Weber followed by Jack Sorensen.

Coco.

Hello, my name is Coco and I'm an educator and D4 resident and I'm calling to encourage the council to resist Durkin and SPD's backhanded grab at the $15 million that the council has already denied them in another committee.

In 2015 Seattle's Human Services Department released a Seattle youth violence prevention needs assessment.

The report found that quote the city's current approach to youth violence lacks an overarching strategy that recognizes the complexity and multifaceted nature of youth violence.

A substantial body of research recommends viewing youth violence through a public health lens which posits youth violence can be prevented before it occurs end quote.

The study offered 27 opportunities for action, primary prevention to stop problems from developing, secondary prevention for early detection and response, and tertiary prevention opportunities of rehabilitation and reintegration.

These recommendations set around resourcing families, and they should be followed.

We seek resource community, not the police.

Thank you.

I yield my time.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Jack Sorensen, and we're followed by Mary Lucchesi.

Jack?

Good morning.

My name is Jack Sorensen.

I'm calling on behalf of Civic Ventures to share our support for upcoming payoff legislation.

The pandemic was a boom time for gig companies, but while their workers were a literal lifeline for so many, the companies they deliver for were raking in profits while paying sub-minimum wages.

Not only is this morally reprehensible, it's also terrible for our city's economy and our economic recovery.

Well, those who could afford to try to do our part, ordering takeout and deliveries that kept cash flowing the local businesses, gig companies have effectively siphoned money out of our economy and delivered it to their CEOs and shareholders.

For every dollar these companies deny people who work for them, that's $1 less spent at restaurants and other local businesses.

It's at the expense of workers and families, as well as small businesses throughout the city.

Seattle can be a national leader by ensuring that if you operate in our city, then you pay our minimum wage.

It's the right thing to do for workers and the smart thing to do for our economy.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Mary Luchese, and Mary will be followed by Michelle Balzer.

And we're going to increase the time for Ms. Luchese to provide for interpretation services.

Thank you.

Hello there.

Is there a way we could get a little bit more volume?

I'm sorry.

Yep.

I'm a deaf woman and I'm a gig worker through Instacart.

When I started working for Instacart in 2015, I noticed that it was easy to make money.

But as I went on, it became harder and harder.

The work became heavy loads with many things that I had to fit in my car.

About two years ago, they cut the pay for Instacart workers, and I noticed that every day the batches would get less and less.

So I had to work more hours, and I couldn't because I already had another part-time job.

And I noticed that sometimes, you know, our load is very high, so we should be paid fair wages for that.

And there's more expenses that we have to incur.

I believe we should pass this policy because our skills are something that we should be cherished for and we deserve that pay.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Michelle Balzer and Michelle will be followed by Rich Morris.

Hi, my name is Michelle and I am a gig worker for Instacart and I am Concerned with the lack of transparency, we really have no idea what we're making or why we're making it.

And more than that, we don't have anyone we can contact.

I don't know about anybody else, but in most companies I've worked, I've had someone I could talk to about payroll or HR.

And the fact that you could ask 5,000 of us what we make or why we make it or who we contact with an issue, not one of us would be able to tell you because it's nowhere to be found.

And that's the problem.

There's that lack of support.

The decrease in pay, I mean, by the time we get done with an order, we're maybe making $4 or $5 an hour.

We are a sweatshop on wheels.

And my biggest issue is that in Seattle, we have a homeless problem.

And if we don't get some kind of standard of pay, there's going to be a big portion of new homeless that are going to come out on the street because we're not going to be able to pay our mortgage.

We're not going to be able to pay our rent.

And that's just not OK in today's, you know.

There's plenty of money coming in, and we should be giving people standards.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Rich Morris, and Rich will be followed by Kim Wolfe.

Rich?

Good morning.

My name is Rich Morris.

I'm currently working for DoorDash.

I was deactivated from Postmates for unspecified reasons.

No one would tell me what policy violation that I did.

I was working for them for over six years.

I can't work a nine-to-five job.

A stroke left me partially paralyzed 11 years ago.

The flexibility as a gig worker allows me to set my own hours.

I can work when health allows me and for as long as I can.

My endurance has all but disappeared.

I'm considered a pretty high fall risk patient.

I fell in front of a customer about five years ago and she was unable to assist me because I'm such a big guy.

But I rely on being a gig worker because I don't make enough on disability to survive.

Random deactivations are a huge problem for those of us who work.

The lack of transparency is a hazard for workers when you don't get pertinent information about what you're picking up.

Thank you, Rick.

Our next speaker is Kim Wolfe, and Kim will be followed by Tony Rumanair.

Kimberly Wolfe.

You've heard a myriad of ways in which app-based workers are unprotected.

The most immediate and egregious ones being adequate compensation, transparency, deactivation protections, anti-discrimination, and reasonable accommodations.

But there's more going on than we've covered.

That is why a standards board is crucial to pick up where this legislation leaves off and address other issues that still need to be dealt with after these basic protections go through.

The advisory board we need would provide a forum for gig workers to advise the OLS and city council on protections, working conditions, and other standards.

And the board would make recommendations regarding both implementation of existing city law, as well as proposals for new legislation.

Look, it's no surprise that in the absence of regulation, there'll be bad actors and unethical practices wearing their ugly heads.

To stay ahead of this bad behavior, a standards board can swiftly address both current issues beyond the basics now in motion and future issues that may arrive.

App-based workers need more of a voice and the power to drive needed change.

An advisory board would give them that voice.

Thank you.

Thank you, Kim.

Our next speaker is Tony Roumanier, followed by Katie Dichter.

Tony?

Hi, I am Dr. Tony Roumanier.

I'm a psychologist in the Green Lake area of Seattle, clinical faculty at the University of Washington, and author of a series of books on psychotherapy.

I'm speaking today to urge the Seattle City Council to adopt the ordinance to decriminalize psychedelic medicines and to do it now, before the budget deliberations of September, as is a very timely manner.

Our city is experiencing a severe shortage of mental health services, made even more acute by COVID, and it just does not make sense to keep medicines outlawed, especially medicines that have such strong research support.

Forward-thinking cities across the U.S. have already decriminalized possession and cultivation of pathogens, such as Oakland, Denver, Washington, D.C., and others.

There's a large body of research showing that these medicines are very helpful for addictions and other issues.

I urge the city council to make these natural medicines available to Seattle citizens.

Please act to pass this ordinance now before the budget deliberations.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Katie Dichter followed by Julia Buck.

Katie?

Hi, my name is Katie Dichter.

I'm a D6 resident.

I'm calling to ask you to transfer all salary savings out of the Seattle Police Department budget.

We saw last summer and we see every day that police do not keep our BIPOC community safe.

So why would you keep pumping money into a broken system that continually fails us?

The mayor's new budget request for SPD raises many questions.

Here's one.

The supplemental budget is supposed to be for unforeseen budget items.

The technology demands that SPD is making should all have been planned for and included in their 2021 budget.

Why would council fund these tech demands through a supplemental budget rather than expecting SPD to work within their planned budget like every other department?

Seattle's in a crucial period of transitioning public safety from SPD to a community-centered approach.

This is what we need.

Keeping salary savings within SPD does not get us closer to true public safety for all.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Julia Buck followed by Michael Mellini.

Julia.

Good morning, Council.

I'm ready to provide comment.

My name is Julia Buck.

I'm a resident of District 6 in Seattle.

I am also calling to ask the City Council to please keep the $15.3 million in SPD salary savings and invest those towards community-based safety options that work.

One of SPD's requests is to fund an early intervention system.

That early intervention system is supposed to catch bad cops before they do bad things.

There is no evidence that EIS is actually effective.

And in fact, when SPD catches cops doing bad things, The response is basically to ignore anything OPA has said and do nothing.

So I don't understand this request for additional technology in order to keep not acting on a longstanding problem.

Also, I'd like to encourage council to pass the DoorDash and gig worker transparency laws.

Our next speaker is Michael Malini followed by paid S, Michael.

Hi, I'm a renter in district three and I'm calling for the council to follow through on your commitment and use the upcoming budget adjustments to transfer all $15 million in salary savings out of SPD and its participatory budget and HSP community safety capacity building grants.

I'm also calling for the council to pass the payoff resolution.

Thank you, I yield my time.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Paige S.

followed by Matthew Offenbacher.

Paige.

Hi there.

I am calling to ask the council to please follow through on your commitment and transfer all $15 million in salary savings out of SPD into the community.

Five days ago, the Seattle Police Department murdered one of your constituents.

They killed them.

One of your constituents is dead because of SPD.

They have every possible tool to protect themselves, millions in equipment, and they use it to murder one of our neighbors.

SPD does not need more funding.

They already have all of it.

Also, please pass the gig worker legislation.

I yield my time.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Matthew Offenbacher, followed by Linda Laban.

Hi council members.

Excuse me.

My name is Matthew Offenbacher.

I'm a resident on Capitol Hill and I'm calling you today to urge you to transfer the salary savings out of the police budget into areas that promote a true community centered public safety.

SPD's request for funding for new technology raises so many questions.

SPD will tell you today that they need almost a million dollars to expand their data analytics platform technology and that this will support real-time analytics for optimizing 911 response.

What I'm wondering is why is this technology not being moved to the Community Safety Communication Center along with 911 dispatch operations?

As we transition public safety from the police department to community-centered approaches, I urge you to be skeptical and vigilant of SPD's attempts to fill their coffers with funds for technologies they do not need for functions which are in the process of being moved out of their department and which in no way advance true public safety.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Linda Lieben followed by Aiden Carroll.

Linda.

Hi, I'm Linda.

I'm a District 5 resident and I'm calling because we've asked repeatedly for you to defund SPD.

And so I'm calling to urge you to stick to that.

The current demands by SPD are either ineffective or would be more appropriate outside of SPD, such as in the independent community safety communication center.

One of these things is the community service officers and other non sworn officers.

They should be in either CSCC or another community based organization and not in the anti-black anti-indigenous violent SPD organization.

And I urge you not to hire any more until it is moved outside of that organization.

Uh, the early identification system, as many have, have talked about, it does not work in the United States.

Department of justice has declared it to be a failed program and we should not be spending money on that.

That doesn't help the people.

The community is still waiting for funds from the bloated police budget.

So please vote down these requests and defund SPD.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Aiden Carroll, followed by Ike Phoenix.

Aiden?

Hi, this is Aiden.

I'm calling to ask you once again to please transfer all $15 million to us.

We're asking you to please tell them no once again, because as many have mentioned supplemental budget is supposed to be for unforeseen needs and they're asking for, you know, over $2.2 million in technology that somehow is unforeseen.

Um, I also want to amplify the call for the pay up ordinance.

A former gig worker who was terminated from Postmates when I had a flat tire on my bike.

And one of the questions worth amplifying here is, what's the basis for spending on hiring bonuses that will increase toward officers instead of spending on community alternatives?

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Ike Phoenix, followed by Valerie Schreit.

Hey there, can you hear me?

Yes, we can, thank you.

Okay, first off, I would like to address Phoenix District 2. First off, you're on stolen indigenous land through theft, murder, genocide, conquest.

Also, I would like to also pay attention to Charlene Lyles and her unborn child who was murdered on 2017 by Seattle PD.

Furthermore, why are we giving the largest contingent of domestic terrorists money uh...

for a fifteen million dollar budget for seattle pd when they were the largest contingent of uh...

fascist thugs that were on the steps of the cap capital on january six also a lot of officers quitting on their exit reviews are noticing that well they're getting uh...

scrutinized by okay well they're beating up and killing people uh...

also can we also look at Why for the Center for Policing and Equity Report, which is a 54-page document on July 26th, 31 to 35% of all stops are black people, Black Lives Matter, no funding for police.

I yield my time.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Valerie Schleret, followed by Alexander Ayato.

Good morning, Valerie Schleret from District 2. A whistleblower has filed a complaint with the city about the OIG subverting attempts at oversight of the Office of Police Accountability.

The details of the complaint, as reported in the South Seattle Emerald, reveal that our police accountability system is rotten to the core.

The OPA and the OIG merely uphold the policing status quo.

The people of Seattle shouldn't have to pay $9 million a year for fake accountability.

we could create a genuine accountability system, as is happening in other cities.

Go to seattlestops.org for more details.

Thank you, Valerie.

Alexander Aito is showing is not present.

We will check in a moment to see if that has changed.

In the meantime, we'll move down to Jason Sykes, followed by Cody Zalewski.

Jason.

Hi, my name is Jason Sykes.

I'm also calling about the Seattle Emeralds report of a whistleblower complaint to the OIG.

It shows two things.

One, that the OPA is misleading people in its factual investigations of Seattle police wrongdoing.

And two, more importantly, that the OIG, the group that we have in place to monitor the OPA, is covering up for the OPA and is doing so in a way that is designed to evade public review.

These are serious allegations.

I would like this committee to investigate them.

I would like them to call the Inspector General Lisa Judge and the Deputy Inspector General Amy Tsai before this committee to answer questions about the serious issues raised in this report.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next speaker is Cody Bluski followed by William Board.

Cody.

Hi my name is Cody Bluski with Decriminalize Nature Seattle.

Out of respect for the council's time and pressing issues I will keep my comments short.

Please decriminalize psychedelic medicine in the city of Seattle by listing it as low as the law enforcement priority.

Thank you and I cede my time.

Thank you Cody.

William Board is showing is not present so we'll move down to Equinox Equinox.

Hi, my name is Equinox.

I'm a resident of Capitol Hill.

I'm calling today once again for what, the fourth time?

To strongly urge council to follow through on the commitment you made last year to transfer all $15 million into participatory budgeting and into community grants and resources.

According to this new budget, only $1.5 million of non-SPD entities, and that is beyond unacceptable.

SPD murdered someone not even a week ago, and yet have the audacity to ask for more funding for new technology.

They have proven time and time again that they are incapable of unbiased and lawful policing.

Officers consistently and without hesitation are disproportionately arresting and using force against black, brown, indigenous, and other people of color at alarming rates.

Police don't stop violence.

They respond to violence.

They do not keep us safe.

They can't even do the bare minimum to keep the general community safe.

Officers were repeatedly documented ignoring the mask mandate over the last year.

And yesterday, Mike Sullen cried that the city worker vaccine mandate is going to harm police staffing.

Black Lives Matter, we're on selling land.

Fire Mike Sullen, the OPA is a joke.

Thank you.

So we're going to go back to a couple of folks we didn't get on before.

Jason Reeves, you're still showing as present.

Hopefully you can get on with us now.

Hello, can you hear me?

Yes, we can.

Awesome.

My name is Jason Reams.

I've been a gig worker for five years, and I'm here to talk to you about the Pay Up campaign, which I've been a part of for three years.

We need a pay floor.

We need a pay floor and transparency for gig workers.

Without pay standards, the gig industry is in a race to the bottom with pay.

Gig workers, they're driving further for less money, and every day there is not pay standards.

Companies are figuring out more and more ways to get more and more money out of our pockets paying the most right now we're making decisions like paying for the most important repairs or forgoing repairs altogether in hopes that unexpected repairs won't push us into a financial hole which i've spent the last two years trying to get out of Transparency will allow us to allow drivers to decide which orders are best for them to protect themselves and maximize earnings.

These are simple things.

Let's do this.

Bang it out.

Black lives matter.

Thank you so much.

And with that, we will conclude our public comment for today.

We had three additional speakers, but they are still showing as not present.

Thank you, everybody who was able to join us.

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

Agenda item number one, council bill 120148, an ordinance relating to parking enforcement, amending ordinance 126, which adopted the 2021 budget, transferring positions out of the Seattle Police Department, and ratifying and confirming certain prior acts.

Thank you so much.

I'm going to hold my opening remarks and hand it right over to Lisa Kay from Council Central staff, who is going to, after introducing herself, provide a brief overview of the bill and the steps that have brought us to where we are today.

Lisa.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Can you hear me?

Yes, we can.

Oh, good.

Okay, well, at the end of my presentation, I'll go ahead and share my screen to post the council bill that's before you today.

So the bill we're talking about is council bill 120-148.

My staff report is on page 20 of your agenda packet.

This bill would transfer the city's parking enforcement officers from the police department to the new community safety and communication center.

Section one of the bill would transfer the 120 positions Section two provides a ratify and confirm clause, since the effective date would be after the September 1 deadline in the budget proviso that I will talk about in a few minutes.

And section three makes the bill effective 30 days after the mayor's approval.

During last fall's budget deliberations, you'll recall that Council passed Ordinance 126-233, which created the Community Safety and Communications Center with two initial functions to be transferred out of the Police Department by June 1st, 2021. Those functions were the Police 911 Call Center and Parking Enforcement Services.

This ordinance differed from the mayor's proposed budget, which would have instead transferred the parking enforcement officers to the Seattle Department of Transportation to integrate with that department's existing right-of-way management operations.

At that time, the two bargaining units within the parking enforcement officers unit disagreed on where they should be moved.

The Parking Enforcement Officers Guild supported a move to the new communications center, which they perceived as offering a better path to a larger public safety role.

The management team, represented by a different union, supported moving to SDOT as a better fit because of the SDOT's current right-of-way management responsibilities.

Last May, then, Council passed Ordinance 126353, which transferred SPD's 911 call center positions to the Community Safety and Communications Center, but delayed a decision on transferring the parking enforcement positions.

The proviso extension approved by council also in May, through passage of ordinance 125-350, essentially allowed the parking enforcement officers to remain in the police department through September 1st of this year.

If council does not act by September 1st, the parking enforcement positions would remain at SPD, but the appropriation authority to fund the positions would remain at the Community Safety Center.

As a result, the executive would need to take additional action to meet the payroll for these positions after September 1st.

In addition to the bill before you today, the agenda materials also include Amendment 1, which would transfer the PEOs to SDOT instead of to the Community Safety and Communications Center.

So in sum, as shown in my staff memo, the committee has three options today.

The first would be to pass Council Bill 120.148 to transfer the PEO positions to the Community Safety and Communication Center.

Option two would be to pass Amendment 1 to transfer the PEO positions to SDOT.

Or option three would be to take no action.

As described in my staff memo, both Council Bill 120.148 and Amendment 1 would continue reframing how the city provides for community safety.

Passage of Council Bill 120.148 would also respond to the Council's interest in exploring expanded duties for the PEOs as part of the Community Safety and Communications Center.

Alternately, passage of Amendment 1 would transfer the PEOs to SDOT and would align a potentially expanded PEO role in traffic safety with SDOT's mission and existing operations.

That completes my report, Madam Chair.

Thank you so much, Lisa.

That was perfect.

So I'm going to say a few words.

But before I move into that, I just want to see whether or not there are any specific questions.

I'll ask for questions afterwards.

Just a little bit of a finer point on what I hope we can accomplish here today.

Excuse me.

If you recall, back in May, when we were considering moving the PEOs into the Community Service, I'm sorry, Community Safety and Communications Center, There was not alignment on the part of the council that that is the action that we should take, despite the fact that in the budget process, we had unanimously passed an ordinance that expressed our intent.

So I don't want to replicate what happened back in May.

In May, we were really hoping to gather additional information, see if the frontline PEOs and the supervisors, frontline PEOs being represented by SPEOG.

the Park Enforcement Officers Guild, and the supervisors being represented by ProTech.

We were really hoping that they could come together and work on an agreement on which department they could agree that the unit would move to.

The bill before us has a flexible title in case we decide today to not move forward with a transfer to the CSCC as originally opposed.

And I can report back to folks that There have been some limited conversations between SPIOG and PROTEC, though I understand that both units – the unit represented – that represents the PEOs, the frontline PEOs, SPIOG, and the unit that represents the supervisors, PROTEC, that there is still not agreement and they are maintaining their current positions on these issues, their current and past positions on these issues.

And so, you know, given the fact that we need to take some sort of an action, before September, and that we have a single council meeting, full council meeting, in order to move this legislation forward.

I have proposed Amendment 1, which instead moves the PEO unit to SDOT, as the position of protect and the position of mayor and SDOT, and the position of, I believe, a majority of the council at this point, despite the position that was taken last fall.

So I'm prepared to move amendment one.

to move the unit to SDOT in order to avoid a do not pass recommendation from this committee going to full council on Monday.

So with that, just want to hear from folks whether or not that is a acceptable approach forward.

And just we'll take a pause here and see if I see any raised hands.

Seeing you're off camera, would you?

Yes.

Yeah.

So I'm wondering if we can talk a little bit about what the options are then.

My understanding is that the rank and file really is interested in expansion of their responsibilities and eager to be able to provide more community based security and response, and so if they are going to SDOT, what is the way forward for them to be able to have the kind of expansion and responsibilities that they're seeking?

I will say a couple words, but I think Lisa K.

might have some additional thoughts here from what SDOT has told us.

But there are opportunities within SDOT to take on more of a street management right of way set of responsibilities, very similar to the conversation that we've been having here on the council about having more PEOs take on some of the traffic management responsibilities that Seattle Police Department sworn officers take on as part of overtime and staffing events.

That kind of expansion would still absolutely be possible if they were transferred to SDOT, precisely because so many of the things that the PEOs do and could do in the future specifically relate to right-of-way management.

Lisa?

Yes, and I don't have too much to add to your great explanation, Council Member Herbold, other than that the materials that I believe the executive has used to advocate for moving the group to SDOT have summarized the issues that Council Member Herbold mentioned, that SDOT is interested in providing opportunities for growth for the PEOs.

I would note that regardless of where the PEOs move, the expansion of PEO duties is subject to bargaining.

lots of bargaining with lots of different unions on lots of issues, including interpretations of state law.

So it's a complex issue, but SDOT has indicated an interest in trying to help people find those career opportunities.

Thank you.

Council President Gonzalez.

Hi, sorry, I'm off camera, but I'm at home with a sick toddler.

I just want to signal my support for Amendment 1. I was one of the committee members here who signaled my interest in wanting to see this function go to SDOT.

And I think the assurances of knowing that the scope and functions, the body of work, if you will, can be modified in a way that is still consistent with the underlying intent of why we were wanting to move And I think that that for me is really, really important.

And so, so I'm, I'm prepared to support amendment one.

If there is a motion, which I hope there will be.

I would be happy to support that.

That particular position.

Thank you.

feedback from committee members watching both the virtual hand-raising and the real hand-raising.

Council Member Pierson, I see you coming off.

Sorry, I did not even realize that you were with us.

Welcome.

Thank you, Chair Herbold.

I just wanted to thank you for putting forward this amendment.

And I understand, even though I'm an alternate on the committee, I think I'm able to vote now because there is one absence on the committee today.

So I just wanted to join and offer my support for your amendment.

Thank you, Council Member Peterson.

My apologies for not recognizing that you had joined us earlier.

Okay, well, I'm not seeing any other hands raised.

No other people coming on camera.

So I'm going to first work to get the bill before the committee.

I move 120148. Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you.

And again, in the interest of not repeating the effort from last May and risking sending piece of legislation from this committee with a do-not-pass recommendation, which was the case last May when we had two council members in favor, two abstaining, and one opposed.

Thankfully, when we sent that bill to the full council, we instead extended the proviso to give us this additional time.

But again, wishing to move this forward and ensure that the PEOs get paid in September, I move amendment one as listed on the agenda.

Is there a second?

Second.

Second.

Thank you.

Is there any additional discussion on the amendment?

Okay.

Seeing no additional discussion, will the clerk please call the roll?

Council President Gonzales.

Aye.

Council Member Lewis.

Aye.

Council Member Morales.

Yes.

Council Member Peterson.

Yes.

Chair Herbold.

Yes.

That's five in favor, none opposed.

Thank you.

I move Council Bill 12-0148 as amended.

Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you.

Clerk, call the roll.

Council President Gonzales.

Aye.

Council Member Lewis.

Aye.

Council Member Morales.

Yes.

Council Member Peterson.

Yes.

Chair Herbold.

Yes.

Five in favor, none opposed.

Thank you so much.

The bill will move forward to the August 16th full council meeting.

Moving on to agenda item number two.

Will the clerk please read in the next agenda item.

And item number two, community safety capacity building RFP presentation and discussion.

Thank you so much, Alex.

So now we're going to have a presentation from the Human Services Department on community safety capacity building RFP.

I'm sure my fellow committee members will remember the key $12 million investment for the interested public.

The council intended these funds to build capacity in community safety organizations that provide alternatives to policing and the traditional criminal legal system for both violent and nonviolent crime.

So first provided a million in funding for this work during last summer's budget rebalancing process and increased it 12 million from a million in 2021 when the work did not occur and the funding was not released as planned in 2020. This funding was a very high priority and a key request of the decriminalized Seattle and Seattle King County Equity Now coalitions.

And because this has been such a high priority for council, this committee has previously touched on this effort multiple times throughout 2021. So far, we've received a briefing from HSD on the RFP process in January.

Following that presentation, Human Services Director Howe responded more fully to questions coming out of that committee meeting from January and shared with us a follow-up in February.

HSD released the RFP funds on March 1st, and in March, my office sent committee members information from Director Powell with more details about the work they were doing or that they had done leading up to and creating the RFP.

At the March 9th committee meeting, we received a presentation from the Mayor's Office and the Human Services Department about the Department's Community Engagement Process Learning Spend Plan and the contents of the RFP itself.

And following that presentation, committee members and then full council approved legislation that lifted the proviso on these funds.

The council had passed a proviso limiting the spending of these funds until these prior steps occurred.

The Human Services Department provided a process memo on June 16th, which my office circulated to committee members because I know people on the council, council members were very eager to learn about the process and about the progress on the process precisely because of concerns about increased public safety vulnerability coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic, increased violence associated with shadow pandemic.

In July, HSD announced that they are recommending awards to 3370 proposals that they had received.

Projects will be funded as of July 15th, and funding runs for 18 months through the end of 2022. I'm really excited to have with us today Tanya Sim, Natalie Thompson, and Rex Brown from the Human Services Department to present on the results of the Community Safety Capacity Building RFP.

And with that, I'd like to turn it over for introductions.

And you guys, your friends from HSD, you've been running the show.

Thank you.

Great, thank you.

Tonya Kim, Human Services Department, Deputy Director.

And I'm Rex Brown, Division Director for the Safe and Thriving Communities.

Good morning, Natalie Thompson, Out-of-Class Youth and Family Empowerment Division Director.

And so the three of us are from the Human Services Department.

We represent the department as well as various divisions internally.

And we're just, as Council Member Herbold said, so happy to be here.

So we can follow up and really discuss, provide an overview again of the process.

making sure that we are able to share what the results are as well.

And so on the next slide, which is the overview, we will review the request for proposal, just recap that for folks here.

Part of that RFP that we'll use that term is also discussing the rating process itself.

So you understand how we got here.

We will discuss the organizations that applied as well as the organizations that we have awarded.

And we will discuss a little bit more about a summary of the awardees themselves.

And time permitting, have a question and answer.

And as always, we'll be happy to follow up with anything that we're unable to respond to today.

The reason why we're showing up as a three of us is because And we're also pleased to introduce Rex Brown, who is the new Division Director over the Safe and Thriving Communities Division.

And just as a reminder, we're consolidating all of our safety-related investments under Rex's leadership because we, you know, for many different reasons, but in particular, we want to make sure that there's alignment.

We have the dedicated leadership to really focus on this body of work.

And also, this is a good opportunity for us to work more closely with our mayor's office on domestic violence and sexual assault, with our community safety work, and our direct services that we're providing for our victim advocates, and our volunteers that we work with, all under one shop.

And we have been to committee multiple times to discuss those various components.

So that said, Rex is new, so we're happy to introduce him.

But Natalie is not as new and has been carrying the work while we've been standing up not only the division, but making sure that we can get these investments out into the community in a timely manner.

And so together we're going to team to give you an update on where we're at.

and where we're going to be.

A quick note before I hand it over to Natalie is that the RFP has concluded.

We have sent out the announcements to the applicants.

And so Natalie is going to do a deeper dive, but you should know that we are actively currently negotiating contracts because we are on a timeline and people want to start their work as soon as possible.

With that, I'm going to hand it over to Natalie, who will review the RFP itself.

Thank you, Tanya.

So there was tremendous interest in this request for proposal process from the community.

And as a reminder, we did solicit proposals from community-led groups.

working to end violence and to reimagine safety in Black, Indigenous, and people of color-led communities with a specific focus on Black, Indigenous, Latinx, Pacific Islander, and immigrant and refugee communities.

And of course, as the Council Chair mentioned, the purpose of this funding was to build the capacity of groups working toward community-led solutions to increase safety.

And so, as a reminder, HSD conducted 36 listening circles from January through February of 2021. The sessions were small group conversations comprised of community members with lived experience of harm from the criminal legal system and gender-based violence, as well as staff at community-based organizations doing community safety work.

many of whom had lived experiences themselves.

Each session averaged about one hour, but more time was allotted if community members had more to share, which many did.

The key themes from those community engagement sessions, which did inform the RFP, were that the definition of community safety must be holistic and inclusive, There's an aspect to community safety, which involves healing from systems of oppression, like the criminal legal system, as well as feelings of hope and self-determination that must also be woven into the guidelines and application, and that there must be community-led and community-centered solutions to safety.

So next slide.

So again, as a reminder, the purpose was to build capacity for community-led solutions to end violence and increase safety, and the guidelines were to fund projects that were community-led.

We did decide, again, based on community engagements, that the organizations themselves would define the safety issue that they wanted to address, how they measured success, in other words, their solutions.

And rather than earmark or prescribe specific allocations or specific methodology, we thought that we wanted the organizations themselves to address and to mention how they would measure success.

So the RFP did focus on capacity building to scale up increased services with existing organizations or seed new organizations or explore new strategies.

Next slide.

So just quickly, the RFP was released on March 1st.

Written applications were due on April 9th.

The interviews were held in April and May.

And there was a panel of 22 raters that reviewed and recommended proposals for funding.

And I'll speak a little bit about the composition of the review committee in a bit.

So as the council chair also mentioned, there was $12 million for this investment.

10.4 million went directly to grants.

1.6 million went to administrative costs like translation, application, technical assistance, greater honorariums, and will go toward network convening and evaluation because the vision is to build a community of providers doing the work and to together and collaboratively develop community-based indicators for safety.

Next slide.

The rating committee was diverse.

They were diverse in age, gender, ethnicity.

Many had lived experience.

They had affiliations like with the Black Prisoners Caucus, Friends of Youth, Undoing Institutional Racism Collaborative, Village of Hope, Asian Pacific Islander Community Leadership Foundation, the NAACP, the Pierce County Anti-Sex Trafficking Sexual Exploitation Initiative, Queer the Land, just to name a few.

And to be responsive to applicant feedback, the interviews were conducted in real time rather than being recorded so that no public record would be created and no unintentional harm as well.

So this ended up being very labor intensive, but every applicant was able to participate as was every rater.

So the rating committee participated in anti-bias training.

excuse me, agreed to a group covenant for participation, discussion, and accountability, and signed confidentiality and conflict of interest statements.

So the raters reviewed all written applications and scored all interviews.

So Rex, I think this is you.

Thank you, Natalie.

Next slide.

Thank you so much.

So there were a total of 78 applications.

Five were not rated for various reasons, including withdrawal and ineligibility.

33 applicants were recommended for funding and, like the raters themselves, a very diverse, broad group of representation.

Next slide.

Our awardees will provide an array of strategies and services.

In general, these services include activating neighborhood-based strategies to reduce crime rates at hotspots.

Next slide.

De-escalation in response to shots fired, re-entry services, case management.

Next slide, please.

community awareness about disproportionality and criminal legal services, family support to prevent youth from entering the criminal legal system in the first place, supports to address family and gender-based violence.

Next slide.

And about half of the awardees are first-time awards, which aligns with the design and interest of and intent of the RFP to promote community-led solutions, allowing community members and agencies to define safety investments.

And you can see the broad representation of BIPOC in these awardees.

Next slide.

And I'll turn it back over to you, Tanya,

Yeah, sorry.

So we gave some, I think, just some overview.

The real interest, I think, for a lot of folks is, well, who was awarded?

And so you saw on the slide is just the brief name in a memo that we have also submitted to a committee and Council Member Herbold's offices.

There's a little bit more of a description there, but it's really a lot to go over in a brief 30-minute presentation.

We are really eager to stand up these organizations so then that way we can report back on some more, you know, information as well as potentially also share what it is that they're doing and revisit a committee.

with the organization so we could continue to be true to our approach, which is having this community-led.

And so for now, we at least wanted to circle back and share with you what the results are.

And so with that, we're happy to go ahead and field any questions that you might have.

Oh, Chair Herbold, you're on mute.

Thank you so much.

I appreciate that overview and appreciate you all being here with us today.

And it's great to meet you, Rex.

I look forward to working with you more over the next year.

Council Member Morales, I see your hand is raised.

Thank you.

I don't have any questions.

I just want to thank all of you for the presentation, for the work you're doing.

You know, this is in my mind a really exciting first step for the city to be moving away from a gun and badge response to community safety.

So, you know, I think this is really important way for us to start transforming that system.

That said, this is one-time funding, and I'm really interested in moving us toward longer-term commitments that would allow for more sustainable programming and to really think about how these community groups can achieve the kind of outcomes that we're asking for them.

That all takes time.

It takes time to build the capacity.

It takes time to implement and really start to have the outcomes that we're looking for.

So just want to put that marker out there.

I'm really hoping that we can start thinking about more sustainable programming for them.

And then the other thing I just want to say is that we really made sure that the process that you went through for this contracting and for the RFP really included the technical assistance.

I think that's a really critical piece of the work that as a city we need to do to make sure that our Organizations that are rooted in communities of color have the kind of assistance they need to develop these proposals.

I think the fact that we have over 70 applicants is a really good indicator of the effectiveness of that technical assistance.

But if we're going to be a racially just city that believes in equal opportunity for our communities of color to participate and engage, then we really need to be prioritizing that kind of early engagement, early assistance in all of our RFP processes so that we aren't overtaxing.

and expecting folks to compete for limited resources without any sort of assistance to help them actually get that.

So I really appreciate the work that you're doing and just want to commend you on the technical assistance that you offered and look forward to having more discussion with you about how we create a longer term financial commitment for this work that we know is really critical in order for us to change the ecosystem of community safety that we're hoping to do.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Morales.

Not take that comment.

If there's any response, it's fine.

And if not, just opening it up to other questions or comments.

I have a couple of questions.

We'll move on to of the questions associated with the presentation.

I want to just echo Councilmember Morales' points.

I really appreciate HSD's efforts to observe equity practices in the RFP process itself, including the technical assistance.

during the application process and providing honorariums for the raters.

I'm really interested in the cohort convening that is part of the expectation for funded organizations moving forward.

I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about the purpose and plans for that regular cohort convening and then I also want to talk a little bit about the fact that there's a goal for contracting black or indigenous-led external evaluation teams to work with the cohort of awardees during the year in order to develop metrics to understand the project's impacts on community safety.

I think that There is a lot of really exciting potential there and want to just link into that development of metrics and evaluation work that the city auditor has had previously done a significant amount of work around.

similar programs to the ones that we are funding now.

I did ask them to produce a brief report based on those 2015 recommendations, and I'm hoping that that work from the city auditor can help support the community-based organizations that have received community safety awards and the external team that will be conducting an evaluation of that effort.

And I'm hoping that we can use this regular cohort convening to include making some movement on some of those outstanding city auditor recommendations.

So, That's one question I have.

The other question I have is we heard yesterday that there has been an additional seven proposals partially funded using resources outside of the Community Safety RFP.

I'm just wondering if you could briefly provide a little bit more information about the proposals and the outside funding source or sources that were used.

And I'm interested to know whether or not those seven organizations will also be participating in the cohort and evaluation associated with the RFP awardees.

Thank you.

Great.

Well, given that Rex is pretty new and that question, the first question that you have has multiple parts over multiple years, I'll field that one.

So Rex, you can thank me later, but feel free to chime in.

So in our safety portfolio, we do have now this group of 33 contracted providers, but we also have millions of dollars worth of safety investments that were issued through a previous 2019 Community Safety RFP as well.

And as you're aware, the city is making an investment in Public Health Seattle King County's regional Peacekeepers Collective.

So we've got a lot of activity.

And to add to that, we are taking on PDA's LEAD contract, which is a multimillion dollar investment too.

And so Rex has a wonderful, robust portfolio, which means that we are thinking about not just this investment in terms of having convenings and having a cohort, but how do we bring all of our providers together, not for the sake of meeting, but because we wanna make sure that we're providing technical assistance to skill up, to build relationships.

We're also, as you had mentioned, and city auditor's office has reached out to us, that we're going to engage, re-engage in conversation about making some improvements where applicable, because as somebody had mentioned previously, we used to have a different model.

called SYVPI, the Seattle Violence Prevention Initiative.

And so some of that is no longer relevant because that was reinvested, but some of the feedback that we received is absolutely relevant.

And so we'll be looking at that.

In that $12 million budget that we had, and some of that investment is set aside, we do have money set aside for evaluation.

Part of that, we also imagine, is part of that ongoing technical assistance, because we have so many new providers, too.

So we want to make sure that the technical assistance continues.

And so it's a top priority.

We're still hiring staff.

Once we get everybody aligned and we are functioning at full capacity, That is something now we're going to move towards, and so we're going to address that 100%.

As far as the one-time ads or investments, rather, outside of this RFP, Natalie has a little bit more information on those fund sources.

I will mention, though, that When we read these proposals, even though they were scored highly by the community raters, when we looked at the performance metrics that they were proposing, it really did fall more along the prevention, which is fantastic.

It's needed.

But what we're trying to really focus in on with this investment is increasing safety to reduce violence in a way that we can measure in the near future.

And where there were some highly scored proposals that were really talking about the creating conditions of well-being, that really seemed to suit some other fund sources, which Natalie can explain.

And that's the beautiful thing about the Human Services Department.

It is this continuum.

You know, we have our Youth and Family Empowerment Division who is focusing more on that.

And now we have the Safe and Thriving Communities Division that can get laser focused.

And so that's some of the internal decision making that we made, but it's not a precedent that we want to start with every RFP process because we don't typically have funds that we can allocate towards that.

And so, Natalie, if you wouldn't mind giving a little bit more information.

Yeah, absolutely.

That was such a great context setting, Tanya.

So those seven proposals, precisely as Tanya said, were Um, really recommended by Raiders as proposals that were worthy of receiving some level of funding, but that didn't have the direct focus of community led solutions to safety and so.

What we did is we identified one-time only funding, mostly general fund funding, as well as sweetened beverage tax funding and a small amount of human services fund so that we could fund, for example, some of the food justice initiatives with sweetened beverage tax funding.

And so we took the Rader recommendation there They will be receiving one-time partial funding.

And to your question about if they will be part of the cohort, that is yet to be determined.

It's likely that there'll be, you know, cohorts with other food providers or food justice providers or others.

But if there's a direct nexus where we can then measure increased safety to reduce violence, then we'll circle them back in.

But the reason why we split it is because it wasn't articulated, and so it's unlikely.

That's super helpful to understand that.

And it sounds like because the focus for these investments is different, are you saying that they are not gonna be part of the Safe and Thriving Division?

Those are, it's a- It would be in Youth and Family Empowerment, that's correct.

All right, that makes good sense, thank you.

I'm just pausing to see if other council members have questions.

I have one more if not.

Okay, my last question is just related to the fact that one of the questions asked on the RFP was whether the proposal submitted by the providers would be an alternate to police response and whether the proposal would be a co-response to a police function.

I understand that of the successful applicants, four indicated that they would be an alternate to police.

and six indicated they would be a co-response.

I'm wondering if you could go a little bit deeper into those funded projects and whether or not your staff did an independent analysis of whether a proposal might be considered an alternative or a co-response, or did you rely on the applicants' self-assessments?

Well, I can answer the latter part first, which is it was reliant on the applicant to self-identify.

But Natalie and Rex, are we prepared to go a little bit deeper or is that something that we'll want to follow up on?

I would like to follow up with that in a separate discussion.

I think given the constraints of time and the detail needed to fully articulate it, it would be better.

I would feel more comfortable if we could wait and have that conversation with you, Council Member Urgold.

So we can follow up with some more information, but the RFP itself, and I think the city, we're defining what those mean, and community also has some definitions of what does it mean to provide an alternative or a co-response.

And so I think for that, On the cover sheet, we were relying on self-reporting.

And so I will say that we couldn't then do a deep analysis given that it wasn't defined and they weren't explicitly being rated for that.

It was more of trying to understand where they saw themselves in that conversation.

But we will be happy to provide more information about who those self-defined folks were.

and what they propose to do.

So yeah, we're, I think, keenly interested in that as part of this conversation around alternate community safety responses and how the city can support them.

Thank you so much.

Okay, I'm not seeing any other questions here.

I just want to close it out by, you know, again, appreciating the work that you're doing.

You know, back in February, the National Commission on COVID-19 and criminal justice membership, including our own Seattle Police Chief Adrian Diaz, the National Commission, recommended urgent action to address three causes of threat to safety.

COVID pandemic concerns about policing and funding anti-violence strategies.

Back in February, the commission reported increased violent and property offense rates for 39 cities, including Seattle.

And the report noted that crime is a cause for alarm, not panic.

And the commission reports that the pandemic has placed individuals under physical, mental, emotional, and financial stress in strained institutions to respond to violent offenses, including community-based groups that proactively engage and depend heavily on proactive outreach throughout at-risk people and places.

And so this came out in February.

We're still seeing the alarming increases in violent and property offense rates.

But I just want to flag that this council has been prepared to address this with exactly this kind of strategy since August of last year.

And so I just bring that up to say we do have a plan.

It's a plan that aligns with national recommendations.

from criminal justice related missions and commissions that recognize that COVID-19 has contributed to increase in violence in our community.

So really, really pleased that this work is coming to bear and really appreciative to the folks who are out there on the streets doing this work and making our community safer by working together and caring for one another.

So really want to thank you again.

And with that, we'll move on to the final item on our agenda.

Clerk, please read the item into the agenda.

Agenda item number three, Seattle Police Department quarterly finance and staffing report, briefing and discussion.

Thank you, Alex.

So I'm going to quickly hand this over to Central Staff.

A couple words.

This is the second update from Council Central Staff during 2021 on finance, staffing, and overtime in the Seattle Police Department.

The Council requested these updates as part of our budget process last year, and Central Staff is presenting them on a quarterly basis.

Greg Doss of Council Central Staff has done a tremendous amount of work to compile this and I understand he's received a lot of assistance from the Seattle Police Department.

We will also be joined by Dr. Christopher Fisher and Angela Sochi of the Seattle Police Department as part of this presentation and I really thank you for helping helping Greg with this and with that.

Let's just do a quick round of introductions, and Greg, you can take it away after that.

Sure.

Greg Doss, Council of Central Staff.

Angela Sose, SPD Budget Director.

Chris Fischer, Executive Director of Strategic Initiatives at SPD.

Perfect.

Thank you so much.

Greg, want to lead us?

Thank you, Madam Chair.

And thank you for thanking SPD staff for their work.

I really am just putting together the information they give me.

It is so helpful to have them work with me on the data and put together the reports.

And so I can't thank him enough and and it's great to work with them too.

So here with Angela Sochi, the budget director and Doctor Chris Fisher and will be going over the January to June data.

Quite a bit of it, and so I'm going to go ahead and share my screen for the presentation.

And one second here.

Can you all see this?

And is it big enough?

Okay.

Seeing nodding.

All right.

So I'm going to start out with the, actually it might be a bit too big.

I'm going to start out with the statements of legislative intent that are covered by this particular report.

So we've got an awful lot that goes into this report.

Four different statements of legislative intent.

The first one is a financial reporting slide that covers really everything that SPD does financially.

It focuses in on financial reporting, categorical reporting, everything from travel and training to salary and overtime.

We're going to go into a detailed dive on all of it.

It also requires pay reporting, officer pay, specifically those officers that are making over $150,000.

We'll be going into that right off the bat.

I'll tell you that my analysis there was there is one so far that has made over $150,000.

And that is it so far.

But as we progress in the year, I expect that will continue.

There is another slide that is on overtime, SPD 002B003.

This again dives into a great deal of overtime, how SPD uses overtime, and we'll be looking at its use compared to last year and its categorical use, how it uses over time on special events versus patrol augmentation will get down to a very detailed level.

The number 3003A003 is on staffing.

This is in the news quite a bit.

SPD has suffered a great loss in patrol staffing and sworn staffing, and we'll be talking in detail about sworn staffing and how that has manifests itself in separations and how we're going to see, um, the department will see a great deal of salary savings.

And then, lastly, number four s p 006 a 003 quarterly reports on, um, on, um, what I would call performance metrics, which are really response times.

And this year, SPD is focusing in on priority response calls, which we will get to, times that they have to go to priority response handling, times that they have to focus their response on priority calls and not go to lesser priority calls.

So we'll go ahead and jump into finance monitoring, which is the first point.

As members are aware from my many boring presentations so far over the last year, there are three big categories that SPD spends its money on, and those are salary and benefits, overtime, and allocated costs.

And these particular categories represent anywhere between 95 and 97% of expenditures for the entire department.

And so as you look at these expenditures over the last six months, what you can see is that last year the department spent $192 million on salary benefits, overtime and allocated costs.

And that this year they have spent $167 million on these expenses.

and that these represent 95% of the expenses that SPD has paid in the six months.

And so what does that say?

Well, it says that the agency has reduced its cost by about $13 million and saved a lot of general fund.

Most of this is due to the departure of the officers and salary savings.

a salary is not being spent.

And so that's the biggest reason that you're seeing lack of expenditure here.

You see a difference in the way the expenditures are being represented in the donut graphs here, because as you can see, overtime is quite a bit down, 6% this year versus 10% last year.

And that change drives the percentage change in salary and benefits and also in allocated costs.

And so with that as sort of a big picture, I'll jump into how that looks against the budget.

And so what you see here is those three big expenditures measured against the budget and measured against the budget last year and this year.

And so on the left-hand column, salary and benefits, overtime, and allocated costs, the middle column, Jan to June 2020, and then the far right, Jan to June 2021. First row, salary and benefits, you would expect to see that halfway through the year, and this is exactly halfway through the year from a payroll standpoint, that there would be 50% of salary and benefits that have been spent.

only 48% here.

You have heard that there are a great deal of salary savings that are projected in the department this year, and it may be at the top of your head, why only 48%?

Why not something like 45% or much lower?

What I would tell you is that many of the officers that have left have left in the last few months, the last couple months, And so the salary savings that those officers are going to provide to the department are not going to accrue until really the last six months.

And that's important to note, because when we start talking about salary savings and throwing numbers around like $15 million, we'll get to that later, those are savings that are starting to accrue now, but that will be accruing throughout the entire year.

And so another thing to note here as we look at the expenditures versus budget is that on the overtime row, you'll see that in 2021 44% of the overtime budget has been expended.

That is not as good as one might think.

The challenge here is that SPD is a, it spends seasonally when it comes to overtime.

A lot of the overtime that SPD spends is on patrol augmentation and on events.

And that is mostly spent in the summer when there is more of a need for patrol augmentation.

More people are out or in the summer and fall for events, for sporting events, for the Seahawks, for various kinds of events around the city.

And so the fact that through June 44% of the budget is already spent is not a good thing, especially considering that.

Events are slow to ramp up this year because of COVID.

And many events are still, many public events through May and June were still suspended or canceled.

So that is, I think, a measure that is saying that SPD may not have enough budget to make it through the year, especially considering that Events are starting to ramp up much more quickly.

We're seeing the Seahawks come online.

We're seeing the Sounders come online.

Many of the events that we thought might not happen due to COVID, the vaccine came around a lot faster than was expected.

Many of the fall events are going to come on as expected, and SPD may not have enough budget to cover those events.

So there's good news and bad news when you look at this row.

The good news is, compared to 2020, about half as much spending.

There's other reasons there, but the bad news is there may not be enough budget there going forward.

And we'll be talking about that in a few minutes.

Why the massive spending of overtime in 2020?

That has to do with demonstrations and we'll get to that when we get into the, we'll be doing a detailed dive in on overtime here in a minute.

So I'm going to go into the smaller stuff now.

I think that you are familiar with the smaller stuff, but I'll go ahead and do sort of a high level overview of it.

As you look at the smaller categories, they represent in January to June of 2021, 5% of expenditures are only $9.6 million.

So a very small amount of SPD's budget.

Services consultant legal and other categories holds things like contracts for professional services.

An example here would be the city's red light cameras and that's like half of the budget for that category.

Other charges category pays for rental of buildings such as the OPA offices or the evidence warehouse.

It also pays for fuel for vehicles that don't fuel up at FAS locations.

The entire annual budget for that category is 4.4 million.

So it's about 1.2% of the entire budget.

It's a very small piece.

And finally, the discretionary purchases category is used for pretty much everything else.

This would include uniforms, guns, office supplies, even things like water that is used to supply officers at special events.

And so you can see the makeup here.

greatly changed because of separation pay.

Um, you can also see that the makeup has changed because of capital, additional expenditures in capital and additional expenditures in, um, in, uh, well, I guess just in in some of the discretionary or I'm sorry, the other charges, and we'll get to that right now.

Here's a breakdown of those charges against budget.

So separation pay.

Again, here you've got the rows that equate to the pie chart that I just showed you.

You've got 2020 expenses against budget and 2021 expenses against budget.

Separation pay, not so great against budget.

Blown out of the water against budget.

Legal and other service consultants, 45% against budget.

And then also capital, 2,000 some against budget.

Why are those so high?

They are high because SPD has started spending some of its salary savings in those two categories.

They have started spending some of the salary savings that they have available now for replacement of technology items, specifically their DAP technology item that they needed to get going now.

They have contracts with Accenture and those contracts break down into those two categories, capital and also consulting, and other.

And so that's why those two categories jump out at a higher level than you might expect to see at this point in the year.

Well, you can see that travel and training is 19% against budget.

It's still lower than last year.

And that, I guess, is That, I guess, is the sum of that particular slide.

Just a quick question here.

So on the capital expenditures as it relates to what was budgeted, is this the category for which the police department's proposal requests upwards of $2 million for technology?

Yeah, it's broken down between capital and other charges and some legal service consultants and other, I believe.

Definitely between other charges and capital.

Angela, you want to jump in and correct me?

That's correct, yeah.

Okay, so if the council were to approve the technology-related expenditures, which I think we'll get into a little bit more detail further on, this will sort of correct the percentage of adopted budget from nearly 3,000% of what was adopted.

to be consistent with budget and just really not understanding why, one, why the funding, if necessary, in this category for capital slash technology was known, why it wasn't included in the mayor's proposed 2021 budget, and two, And I'll have the same question with some other items that Greg's presentation notes you're already spending in.

Is it an accepted practice to move forward on spending in areas that the council has not authorized yet?

Just really, trying to move to a place where we have a common set of expectations that Council approves moving funds from one BCL to another before the department moves forward in spending those funds.

If the spending in this category that is apparently currently happening now is accomplished by moving the patrol staffing excess funding from the patrol staffing budget control level into a different budget control level, I just wanna understand, is it an accepted budget policy to move forward with that spending before the council has authorized it?

Yeah, so I'll try to respond to the multi-part.

So what you're seeing here is, excuse me, a breakout by expense category at the account level or account type and so you have For example, the capital account, which across all of the BSLs and even down to the project level in some cases, we are budgeting.

In some cases at the account level, in other cases, we are allocating budget to you know, the salary line or the benefit lines.

What the legal budget controls or requires is that we operate within our budget control level or our budget summary level.

And so the law restricts us from moving money between those budget summary levels.

But oftentimes the the budget doesn't always perfectly align at the account level.

And so an example being historically we've used salary savings to finance separation pay.

And so if you were to look at the separation pay account in isolation, you would see an overage in that account, but we didn't necessarily violate budget rules because we had sufficient funding in another account to offset that overage, if that makes sense.

It sounds like you're talking about different accounts, but I'm talking about different BCLs.

I think Councilmember, what Angela is saying is that these, at this level, they roll up to multiple BSLs.

So you could have a capital account in every single BSL.

Every single BSL could have a capital account.

And the reason that it's over budget is because Accenture is a weird expenditure that got recorded as capital because some technician recorded it that way.

But this is sort of a different question than the one you're getting at, which is more relevant at the end when we're talking about controlling it at the ESL level.

Thank you.

All right, so jump into overtime.

So I should have done this the other way.

I should have started out with the big one, but I started out with the little one.

So these are the categories of smaller overtime expenditures.

And as you can see here, these are the overtime hours.

These are not dollars, hours that were spent between January and June.

This year, in this slide, there's a three-year history, and what you can see here is the various bureaus where spending has occurred, and between zero and 25,000 hours.

And so, What you can see is for the most part, like last time, you've got the overtime spending is down in most categories.

There are a couple of places that overtime spending is up, and I want to point that out.

Special operations overtime spending is up, and that has to do, I dug into the data there, and that has to do with the fact that the SWOT team has made a lot of call outs on barricaded subjects.

I don't know why that is.

Apparently there are more barricaded subjects that have happened in the last six months than normal.

We can get more information on that for you, but that sort of is just the way that broke out.

Special operate.

That's the special operations one.

The chief operating officer, as you see, is the 21 bar is just slightly ahead of the 20 bar.

It's not a lot.

But digging into that, what what I find is that the communications section over time is higher.

Um, experience there would show that usually when the communication section overtime is higher, it's because 9-1-1 dispatchers and 9-1-1 call takers, um, there is usually some sort of a staffing shortage there.

And, um, there's a situation where overtime is being used to, um, to help with a staffing shortage to meet minimum staffing requirements for that situation.

And that's something that I'll need to follow up and get back to you on.

That may or may not be the case.

I'll ask Angela if she has any more insight into that.

I'm going to pause here, see if my colleagues have any questions on this slide.

I have a few.

Okay, so I have questions.

First of all, I want to just thank SPD for tracking over time daily.

I appreciate that level of attention, especially considering that the work and scheduling timekeeping system solution is, to my understanding, not up and running again.

That will be an automated approach for tracking over time.

But in the meantime, really appreciate the chief's leadership in sort of the more labor-intensive approach of tracking this.

And just a couple questions about the work and scheduling time system.

Just interested whether or not maybe SPD can answer this for me.

Will the new automated system be implemented soon because the 2020 auditor's follow-up report on recommendations that we received earlier this year, it indicated that it would be completed in the second quarter, but yet there was a quote in the press recently, very recently, that the that the spokesperson from SPD said that there's no set timetable for the implementation.

And so I'm just concerned that the city auditor is being told one thing when they're doing their work to monitor implementation of audit recommendations.

They do that annual report.

And so again, The city auditor was told it was this time and work scheduling system would be up and running second quarter of this year, but yet in a very recent newspaper article, the SP spokesperson said there's no set timetable for implementation.

And then I have another question related to the WST system.

A little separate from overtime, but also something that I know there's a lot of concern about and a lot of unimplemented recommendations from the auditor and also from in an executive order from several years ago, and this is related to the tracking of off-duty time.

In February, I believe it was February of 2020, Chief Diaz wrote to me saying that although the work schedule and timekeeping system could theoretically track off-duty time, it wasn't scoped to do so.

And so there is a lot of concern about the transparency around officers working off-duty, and frankly, also concerns about how off-duty work affects availability and readiness for on-duty work.

So just wondering if you could respond to those two questions.

Yeah, happy first to address the work scheduling timekeeping project.

When we provided the status update to the auditor's office, we were set for deployment of a rule out of the work scheduling timekeeping system.

In the second quarter of this year, we had some resource issues, specifically in our payroll section, around the testing phase of the new system, which caused, we convened with Seattle IT and it was determined that we hadn't achieved, we hadn't met kind of expectations around the testing of the system and making sure there would be a smooth implementation.

And so it was decided at that point to put the project on hold.

We have convened with Seattle IT, the mayor's office, and have come up with a plan moving forward.

We are scheduled to kick off Seattle IT is going to organize a kickoff event so we can assess where the project exactly left off, learn also from the fire department's rollout of the same system, and establish a new timeline for the SPD portion of the project.

Happy to follow up with you as that timeline is developed.

In the meantime, we do continue to prepare detail reports, overtime reports on a biweekly basis for commanders all the way up to the chief level.

And we'll continue to do the manual reporting until the system goes live.

It's still definitely a priority for SPD, just from a not only a monitoring standpoint, but from a scheduling standpoint.

And if there was a disconnect between the auditor status update, that was that was unintentional.

As for off duty.

I can only speak to a portion of this.

Chris can chime in if he wants to add on, but the chief is correct that we didn't configure the original phase one rollout of the work scheduling timekeeping to include off-duty work.

That is monitored through a separate manual process as well.

Dr. Fisher, anything to add to that?

Thanks, Angela.

Thanks, Chair Herbold.

I think, as the Chief noted in his, I believe it was February, communication, we're also working through, and I do believe, though I'm not in that room, that any significant changes to how off-duty works and is tracked could potentially both have long-term fiscal and labor implications for the city, so I believe any sort of further sort of restriction or monitoring that what we're doing when this conversation was last enjoined after Mayor Burgess issued that executive order.

I'm certain we clarify with the labor attorneys, but I believe we reached the point where they said doing much more around off-duty either got very close to or directly involved getting into labor discussions around what was permitted and how much control you could have over what someone does on their time when they were not working for the city technically.

But you can follow up on that.

Thank you.

Because I recently re-reviewed that memo from the chief, I just want to flag my interest in ensuring that this system is scoped to track off duty work.

We have not been able to locate any city attorney advice on the issue of Um, pension cost impacts of tracking, um, off duty work officers.

I would appreciate very much if you would share, um, that information with the city attorney's office.

I've had them looking into it and they have recently reported as recently as this morning.

saying that they're not able to track down that advice.

And Chief Diaz's letter suggested that merely by tracking off-duty work, by not controlling it, but just that first step of tracking it, would put the city on the hook for costs associated with increased pension costs.

So really, I'm hoping we can track that down.

OK, so going to go ahead and move on to the next category, which is the larger categories of overtime spending.

The three big ones here, as you can see, go up to 120,000 hours.

The one that's probably the most concerning is patrol operations, as you can see, has nearly doubled since last year, 2021 to 2020. As you dig into that one, what you can see is that two, I would say between two-thirds and three-fourths, just eyeballing it, of all the patrol operations expenditures at the precinct level are for patrol augmentation, either for minimum staffing or sick leave coverage.

The other overtime expenses are just tiny.

They make up maybe a third, maybe 25%.

It's almost all patrol augmentation.

And that is something that is just way up in 2021. And as we get to staffing and precinct staffing, I think that we'll talk a little bit more about some potential causes for that.

Um, you can see that events, including Seattle Center, is, um, is creeping up, and I wouldn't compare that to 2020. I compare that to 2019. Um, 2020, um, that contains the expenditures for demonstrations, and that includes an $8 million expenditure for demonstrations.

$8 million was not The sum of the expenditures for demonstrations for last summer, it was just the expenditures for demonstrations from May through June.

There were other expenditures in July, but the $8 million severely skews that particular column.

But if you compare the If you compare what you're seeing in 2021 to 2019, knowing that there have not been a lot of demonstrations this year, you can see that our events are coming back.

And you can also see that in the sporting events column that they're coming back.

And that's a cause for concern, given what I showed you earlier with overtime running against budget at 44% so far this year, just even through June.

So staffing, moving into staffing.

Staffing so far this year, actuals, January through June, separations, 100 separations so far this year.

The original staffing plan that was adopted as part of the 2014 adopted budget predicted that there would be 114 separations for the entire year.

And there are 100 separations just through half a year.

So that's significant.

And that is the main reason why you'll see in the next slide that there's a projection of 15 some million in salary savings that is available this year.

Hires, not great.

There was a freeze at the academy due to COVID for the last several months of the year, or for a few months of the year, the fall anyway.

And so the hires that SPD was making in the fall, those folks had to sit and wait.

They entered the academy in January all in one big group, 21 of them all at the same time.

And they entered as part of a Seattle only class.

And so of those 38 that have been hired, 21 of them were in January and the rest were spread out amongst the five months since then.

So not a lot per month have been hired.

The June through December projections were supplied by SPD.

And the good news, I'm happy that SPD supplied the projections.

And based on the assumptions that they have provided for the staffing plan, these are, I think, reasonable projections.

And we'll be getting into the assumptions here in a minute.

But at least on the hiring side, the separation side, it it's really difficult to know the separation side.

They have projected that there will be 60 more, and so obviously the original projection was 114. And if it goes the way SPD thinks it will go, there will be 160 at the end of the year.

SPD believes that it's going to get 49 more hires by the end of the year and.

We'll go into the assumptions there in a second.

Looking at the chart here before you, what you see is fully trained officers and officers in service.

To review, fully trained officers are officers that are just that.

They've been through the academy.

They've been through their year of student officer training.

You can take one of these officers and put them out on the street.

They're deployable officers.

Um, officers in service are those folks that I just mentioned deployable officers.

but taking out the folks that are out on extended sick leave or disability or are otherwise unavailable for deployment.

As you can see, looking at this graph, if you go back to 2019, Q1 of 2019, the difference between fully trained officers and officers in service was not that great.

It has always been It's always been about what you can see throughout 2019. Then when you hit the summer of 2020, it balloons into a hundred and some officers that are out on disability and it has not yet recovered.

It is still the case that there are, as of this last month, 108 officers that are not deployable right now that are out on long-term disability.

And so that is, That is or out on long term leave.

Some of it would be family leave for child care purposes or other purposes.

So for one reason or another, there are 108 officers that are not deployable.

And that is that is hurting the department's ability to field officers for 911 calls.

We just pause here.

Yeah, I say the emphasis on the officers out on leave.

It looks like we had a high of about 140 officers on leave in the fourth quarter of 2020. As you mentioned, we're down to, what's the difference between- 108.

108 was last month.

OK, I'm seeing the difference between 186 and 165. So that seems like that's less than 100.

Those are the projected, the 1165 and the 108. That's a dotted line.

Got it.

So you mentioned.

You don't have a lot of information about why these numbers are still so high for numbers of officers out on leave.

I'm just wondering if SPD can speak to that.

I do actually have the categories of the folks out there.

They break out with workers comp, sick leave and accrued benefits being probably the two highest categories making up somewhere around 75 of the 108, and then the rest of them being family medical leave, parental leave, medical leave, and administrative leave.

Appreciate those categories, but I don't think those categories necessarily tell the story about why it's higher than normal.

Sure.

I'll take a stab at that one.

I don't know if we have a specific answer, because we're not really allowed to.

Maybe HR can.

I don't know if they could share it.

But at a command level, we can't really ask people why they've taken particular types of leave.

If they're entitled to it and averted the time and dot the I's and cross the T's, they can.

But generally what we hear is after an exhausting year from the pandemic and everything else, that there were a lot of officers who had issues they had not addressed, who may have been injured or just need time away.

We also know that with an aging workforce, we have seen upticks in our retirements.

Some individuals, as they have earned their sick time, uh, decide to seek the me they've got covered under and their sick leave and issues.

Um, maybe before with the city.

Um, so I t of that.

Um, I think jus and a half that I think w everyone.

Um, which we co having a conversation abo Um, but I think that's par put off having a family when we talk about parental leave, or some other factors that just the last year and a half changed, I think, a lot of people's dynamics in their personal, professional life.

I think we're seeing some of that play out now.

Thank you, Dr. Fisher.

It'd be really interesting to see a comparison of leave time for other frontline workers who have experienced similar trauma and stress associated with all the really important work that so many of our frontline workers have been doing, and just kind of check our assumptions that there's nothing unusual going on with a particular department.

Thank you.

Council Member Herman.

So sorry, I will use my hand feature.

I think that there may have been another Council Member in front of me, and since I'm not on your committee, I'll defer.

I'm not seeing a hand up in the virtual hand.

I see Council Member Peterson.

Oh, there you go.

There you go.

Sorry about that.

Councilmember Peterson, for the help.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair Herbold, and thank you for providing space in your committee to have these periodic reports.

I'm just an alternate at the committee, so I'm able to be here and vote, because one of the other council members on the committee was not here.

But I wanted to just note that I did attend a couple of roll calls at the beginning of the shifts of some of our SPD officers and when I'm looking at this number of attrition and I know I believe we've lost a net of maybe 200 officers up to this point and that's a net after hiring some more officers and then we're seeing this this estimate for the 60 additional officers.

And I just I want to dig in or ask a little bit more about the assumptions behind that.

Because during the roll call, it seemed that the morale is very low and I'm concerned about officer wellness and just want to know what the strategies could be to retain our best officers.

And because, um, in terms of in the north precinct, it's a very large geographic area.

Um, and, um, you know, not seeing office a lot of officers there because there has been this attrition is concerning.

And when we look at 911 response times as well, and I know we're We're striving to set up alternatives, alternative responses in a lot of cases, and that takes time, as we discussed earlier.

And so I'm just wondering, I'd like to know what we're going to do to try to retain the officers.

We do have their strategies that were contemplating.

Thank you.

Was that a question to SPD or a question to the committee?

Sorry, I wasn't sure.

At the discretion of the chair, I would love to hear from SPD on that.

I just wanted to make sure.

So no, yeah, thank you.

We are obviously distinctly aware of the morale issue.

I think that's why the chief has been trying to go to as many roll calls as he can and do messages pretty consistently.

I think people might almost get tired of hearing from him as much as he's trying to communicate and recognize good work to remind people that they are out there helping and serving.

So I think that that's part of it is just an internal sort of recognition and support.

um, for when, you know, folks putting their lives on the line.

Um, I also think, you know, there have been discussions and some of this is being led by the executive around, you know, our, how would we structure some sort of, um, retention, uh, incentive.

I don't know what that would look like.

I think you start to get into labor and fiscal and legal things that are outside of my purview.

Um, but I think we do recognize that One, it takes time and money to get new people on the department.

We know that in a lot of those separations that we had, the 200 net that you noted, a lot of those were our younger officers who have been sort of more in the more diverse, some record levels of diversity and recruitment, upwards of 40%.

of the recruits being non-white.

And so I think we recognize that we have to get, it takes a lot of work to get those folks in.

Um, once they're in, we really have to do all we can to keep them, um, and not work really twice.

If you lose someone within five years, you're basically hiring them twice, which is a lot of, I think, um, unnecessary, um, work where it would have been, you know, better serve the city to keep the folks who were on, especially those.

And we know that was a big proportion who just went to other policing.

jobs, if folks decided this was not the profession, I'm not sure there's much we could have done there, but for those individuals who decide to go be police officers elsewhere, I think that's where the mayor's office did the hiring and retention study, and we saw some of the results there.

I think it's part of why the chief has been so strongly pushing to get to a new schedule.

We know that that is often raised by officers as a key point.

Our current schedule and both in terms of the rotating days off and the time the shift starts can be stressful, especially if you're on that first watch that starts at three in the morning.

That's a tough one.

And so I know we are trying to shift to our 310s, our 410s schedule.

There's been labor negotiations around that.

And I believe that would also resonate really well with folks who are on, and probably also help us on hiring.

Thank you, Dr. Fisher.

Council Member Mapscata.

Thank you.

And after all that, I couldn't find that raise hand button virtually, so I appreciate you calling on me.

Just a few follow-up questions here.

Number one, I think that it would be helpful as we continue this conversation, especially into the fall, to pair this conversation with the one you just had, Madam Chair.

about investments that are going out into the community, the $10 million plus that is going out from HSD, the $30 million we just authorized at full council yesterday from the Equitable Communities Initiative Task Force, the additional $30 million that's going out from the participatory budgeting process, the additional $30 million that is coming from the sale of the Mercer Mega Block that will be going into creating additional housing security, especially for BIPOC communities.

Because I think when you see some of those investments that are going into alternative strategies to creating additional safety and security and stability for communities, you would be able to then see a chart that pairs a downward trend potentially with an upward trend for investments in community safety and security.

So I'm looking forward to seeing that type of analysis that does that overlap.

Just a few questions to come back to this chart looking at quarter four and quarter three here.

Quarter four, did I hear you correctly, Greg, that in the quarter four of 2020 there was a pause on the training for officers.

So there really was a bottleneck created because of COVID restrictions and thus the inability to scale up the hiring as fast as anticipated in that quarter four and partially part of the reason you see such a decline in the officers in service line there.

It is the case that the academy had to stop taking students for a few months because of COVID.

The reason that the officers in service number goes down is because officers went into either a workers comp or a long-term disability situation.

So that's not controlled by hiring per se.

And to the points earlier about trying to peel back the layers on looking at workers' comp and sick leave and family leave, I really appreciate Dr. Fisher's multifaceted answer to why we're seeing additional changes both in lifestyle at home, the contemplation of having a baby and maybe some folks possibly retiring, wanting to take some of that leap.

All of those pieces are really important, I think, for us to hear and to further analyze.

I also think it's importan for us to look at some of the national public health data, health affairs and Kaiser Family Foundation have some reports out there that talk about the higher rates of access of sick leave last year and noted that how important it was for workers across various sectors.

especially those who are into work to be able to a and to access it actually of all of the public healt going in to telling peopl stay home.

Often I know t many of us who are really and wanting to um, make s we'll sometimes go into t go into our frontline ser we've gone in and kind of I'm not that bad, but wit so many more people were and others have said that that sick leave, you actua a decline in many areas o of COVID because people were accessing sick leave.

So I would want to make sure that we're considering as well, accessing sick leave, accessing medical leave, accessing workers' comp for folks who may have compromised health and well-being is actually a very good thing during this time of crisis.

So I just wanna make sure that we put that out there.

And then lastly, on the previous chart, slide 10, Oops, excuse me, there we go, that chart.

I'm sorry, Council Member, Madam Chair, I didn't get my hand raised in time.

I just wanna ask a quick question that will both be clarifying for me and I think members of the public.

If folks were following along last year, there was a lot of conversation around concern with sworn officers, armed officers being in positions like traffic mitigation at events.

And we had a lot of discussion about wanting to remove armed officers from those positions.

In fact, this was a huge topic of conversation during this year's 2021 legislative session in Olympia.

So can you remind us where we stand currently with removing sworn armed officers from traffic mitigation at events, just so that we have a common understanding of where that conversation ended?

Is that a question for central staff or more?

Okay.

That is a subject of a, of a slide response that SPD has sent to the council.

And it is also most importantly, the subject of negotiation that would need to occur between SPD and SPIOG.

There is currently a balance between Deployment of parking enforcement officers and sworn officers when it comes to parking enforcement or traffic enforcement.

Sorry.

And any change in that balance would require negotiation.

It may require negotiation.

Um, in in in, it may be something that, uh, that the city needs to handle in in its labor relations area.

And so that's something that, um, that the city would have to take on with its with its contracts.

Um, so that's that's something that's that's ongoing now is what I would say.

Thank you, Greg.

I would love to move on to Council Member Lewis.

Thank you for your patience.

Thank you, Council Member Herbold.

Going back to the chart that showed the hiring and attrition.

Yeah, right there.

For the second half of the year here, it looks like there is, some optimism regarding anticipated separation and hires with fewer separations for the second half of the year and more hires.

What are those things attributed to?

Is this anticipating what impact some retention strategies might have for the additional separations?

And on the additional hires, is that the bottleneck with the Academy getting resolved and no longer being an issue?

What are some of the factors there that are leading into those estimates?

Thank you for asking.

I'm going to go ahead, and that was my next slide.

I'll go ahead and move to the next slide.

And as you can, I'm just going to go ahead and skip to these bottom two bullets.

As you can see, SPD is projecting that they're going to hire seven new recruits per month.

That's the assumption there.

And that is the Academy maximum.

That's our contract with the Academy.

We can send seven.

recruits per month.

We can send more if they have availability, but seven is is what we can send if they're maxed out.

Otherwise, we are going to the department believes it's going to bring in five lateral hires and two rehires.

The bottleneck for hiring has always been the backgrounding process.

It has been, the challenge has always been that you get a whole lot of folks in at the front end through the testing process.

And then when they hit the backgrounding process, it's such a time intensive exercise for detectives to look into each candidate, to interview them, to multiple interviews, to go into interviewing their family and friends.

It takes so much time.

That's where things really start to slow down.

And so SPD, as you'll see in the package that they're going to describe in a few minutes, using salary savings is changing that they are going to hire or they've started hiring with a third party services, third party service to to expedite that piece of it.

They have also on the front end moved to electronic testing.

So, um, one thing I can say is that this particular go around when the department is predicting more hires, they're doing so with a change in practice.

When the department has predicted more hires in the past, they've predicted more hires, but they haven't really changed anything in terms of new recruits.

Now they've changed some things pretty significantly.

So that's worth noting.

When it comes to separations, I can't speak to that.

I'll let Dr. Fisher speak to that.

It may be optimistic, but I'll pass it over to him and let him take a run.

Thanks, Greg.

Thank you, Council Member Lewis.

Angela can weigh in as well as she does a lot of the groundwork on the estimate and tracking of this.

But I think partially, some of it is optimism of tracking month by month.

We slow down from the highs, specifically in resignations while retirements have maintained at a higher rate.

But I think Angela can speak to why coming through June, knowing how many retirements we've had, why I think looking at the slowdown in early resignations and knowing how the years play out, Angela, if you want to jump in on why we feel retirements may also slow down.

Yeah, so setting aside 2020, we typically see about 65% of our separations occur through June.

There is a benefit built into the contract that incentivizes kind of that particular departure date.

And so typically we see those the first six months about 65% and factor that into the projections here for separations.

Again, 2020 was a bit of an anomaly where we saw the majority of our separations late in the year.

Just based on the month to month separations for 2021, we are seeing, I wouldn't say a return to historical levels, but we are seeing fewer separations recorded, at least in the recent months, but consistency with that June peak.

And I would note, while the trend is, I guess, reason for some optimism, it still puts us at, I believe, our second highest year ever of losses.

So not as horrible of a story as last year, but also not still great news.

And just to finish the recording on the 38 that came in, 13 of the 38 were people of color and seven were women.

And so that's consistent with what the recent academy classes have been with a higher percent of people of color and of women.

But still, even with the 34 that have come in and with the projected numbers that are to come in at the end of the year.

If you analyze the staffing plan and take a look at the entire year, what you see is the numbers before you in this table.

And it all works out to a sort of a headline that there would be about $15.3 million of salary savings in 2021. That $15.3 million is, of course, an estimate.

If the department were to separate more than the 60 that are projected for separation between June and December, then there would be more savings available.

And it's just a matter of waiting to see how that works out.

And so with that, I am going to go ahead and move on to precinct staffing.

One quick additional question.

Angela, you mentioned some data as it relates to separations as far as the length of employment term and their demographics.

And I do remember seeing that information in prior reports.

I did not see that included in the most recent reports.

I trust that you're still collecting that information.

And I do see the demographic information coming in on the new hires.

I don't recall seeing it on the separations.

We are still tracking that on separations, if that's something that would be helpful to share.

I'm sure we could put something together, but we are tracking that.

Thank you.

Yeah, I would definitely like to see that.

Dr. Fisher mentioned that we're still seeing a lot of separations from new hires.

My recollection from last year is the separations were spread among folks who are retirement age, folks who have been on the force for a while, as well as new hires.

And so again, just I'm interested to see any specific trends associated with the separations as well.

Thank you.

Council Member Mosqueda has a question, Madam Chair.

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

Yes, please.

Thank you.

And I also see Councilmember Peterson, so I'll make mine very quick.

Oh, I'm sorry.

Just on this, so two questions.

One is, do we have any indication of where the officers are being hired from?

Are these previous officers that were in other areas that we're recruiting over?

Were the officers at SPD that were let go or left on their own?

And then my second question is, Just to remind us all, isn't it correct that last year's budget included the full hiring plan that could be reasonably achieved that the mayor requested that we included in our budget?

So just to make sure everybody who is watching this is aware that the council fully funded the hiring plan as proposed by the mayor's office.

Could you confirm that as well for us, Greg?

Thank you, Councilor Mosqueda.

I can confirm that the number of hires, the 114 hires that SPD had projected were fully funded in the proposed budget.

There was some discussion about how many people would separate, and that was a number that went under some analysis, but the number of hires was fully funded, yes.

Thank you.

Council Member Peterson.

Sorry, that first question might have been for SPD in terms of where they came from.

Oh, I'm sorry.

I thought that was a request for them to provide information in the future.

I don't know that we have that right now, but correct me if I'm wrong.

I can give a general sense and happy to send the numbers.

I think we've had a very low number of laterals Um, I think that there's a recruitment saying of it's hard to get people to move from an agency when people are leaving an agency.

Um, so not a whole lot of folks who are police officers currently elsewhere.

Um, and we've had, I believe in Angela might know the number, but we can confirm it.

we've had uh maybe five o I think officers who had back.

I don't know how ma because obviously we reass has occurred that would m not want to take them bac has been very straightforward to use another turn of phrase, you know, that the grass was not greener, that they are welcome back.

But we could get the sort of the breakdown of what's the background of the folks who we have hired.

Thank you, Dr. Fischer.

And just before turning it over to Councilmember Peterson for another question on this slide, I just want to say that despite the point that council fully funded SPD's 2021 staffing plan, It is self-evident that officers are still leaving the department in unprecedented numbers, and I just want to take this moment to thank those who are remaining and committed to law enforcement, public service in Seattle, and hope hope folks who want to continue in serving in this role as a public servant consider continuing to do so.

I'm really appreciative that you are expressing your commitment to the city and to this community by staying with us.

Thank you.

Council Member Peterson.

Thank you, Chair Humboldt.

And I really appreciate those remarks you just made.

I know that, at least based on the anecdotal experience going to those roll calls, For officers to hear that, it's really important that some city council members want them to stay.

And I had a question about the $15 million in savings.

Is that a gross number?

Because wouldn't there need to be more overtime funding spent to then backfill patrol positions and and I know we, for example, in the North Precinct, we don't have our community policing officers anymore because they've been moved to patrol, so just.

Wondering if that's if that's a gross number of 15 million, it's it would not be true savings or net savings if we were have to increase overtime to backfill.

Council member, that is a gross number.

That is just salary savings in isolation.

I think you will see at a moment when SPD presents its plan for those salary savings, that one of the elements of their plan is to repurpose some of those salary savings for overtime.

So that would address the statement you're making.

Thank you, Councilmember Pierson.

I just want to note before handing it over to Councilmember Lewis that we are on slide 12. I believe we have 28 total slides to cover.

Councilmember Lewis.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I just want to jump in for a second while we're still on the officer wellness question and appreciate the comments that you made about, you know, encouraging officers with a dedication to public service to stay in the city and work with us.

I want to make sure that Those sentiments don't get lost in the shuffle of what I think is connected to officer wellness, which is the ongoing project to make sure that we continue to develop and stand up a right sizing of first response so that patrol officers do not have to respond to the same volume of calls that they're currently expected to respond to.

I would like, as we go forward, and I know SPD is doing this, and as we have more hearings on the topics of transitioning things to triage one or health one or some kind of Kahoot-style community-based platform, that those also be seen in the context of what our SPD staffing strategy is.

And I did just want to make that note, because I do think that It's become evident and there's agreement between us and the department that there is a very, very significant portion of calls that can go to different services.

And that has implications here for this discussion and I think has implications too for officer wellness in terms of the volume of what we expect officers to do and giving more clarity to their mission and just making sure that I just wanted to raise that context in the staffing discussion that there's going to be a lot more first response services that are going to be stood up than in some cases will be responding to calls that we currently depend on patrol for.

So I just wanted to make that point really quickly.

given that helpful.

Thank you.

Thank you for for weaving those those concepts together.

Um, really, really appreciate, uh, the recognition that, um, part of, um, having a reasonable expectation for our workforce is going to be standing up alternatives so that we are certain that, um, sworn officers are responding to calls that only they can respond to.

So thank you.

All right, I'm going to pick up the pace a little, Madam Chair, given your queue.

I'm sorry, Greg.

Can I just pop in really quickly here?

Yes.

Oh, I'm so sorry.

No, that's OK.

I didn't raise my hand, and I'm at a disadvantage here because I don't have my video on.

But thanks.

Thanks, everyone.

We're at home taking care of a sick toddler, so appreciate the patience.

Just a quick question here for and this is for SPD staff, not for Greg from our Council Central staff.

So I think when we hear about SPD staffing issues and when SPD leadership is talking about SPD staffing issues to the media, what we continue to hear is that is sort of ringing of the alarm bells around hiring.

And what we don't necessarily hear about is the recruitment aspects of SPD's management responsibilities.

And so knowing that our, that SPD's hiring plan is fully funded for 2021. I am not hearing a lot of strategies from SPD about the recruitment pieces of this conversation, and I think that that is both unfortunate and a missed opportunity to have a conversation about recruitment.

Because that's really where I'm seeing these numbers tell a story is about how do how are we addressing things like current officer wellness and well being?

How are we addressing how we are addressing staffing issues, i.e. transfers from positions are more favorable to positions that officers don't necessarily want to be doing and and addressing shift issues as well.

I don't see anything in this presentation, and maybe we're going to get to it a little bit later, about recruitment and not recruitment, but retention strategies that address where I see the most significant concerns existing, which is around separations.

And so I would like to hear from Dr Fisher or anyone else from SPD on the line about sort of what specific strategies is that agency pursuing to address the issue of retention of existing and new officers?

Um, in light of the of these numbers related to separations.

Thank you, Council President Gonzalez.

Those are obviously two important areas that we have been focusing on.

We take our cue from the I-teams work that they did when we had our sort of first retention problem in 2018. And they came up with a lot of strategies.

It was a cross sort of background team that the mayor's office pulled together.

They talked to recruiting experts locally and across the country and came up with a variety of suggested ways we could change our procedures.

Part of the constraints we've had is that with our staffing issues, we are not able to pull as many officers as we used to.

One of our biggest, most successful strategies had been sending officers who looked and could connect to communities that we wanted more officers from to go and speak and make connections and explain why SPD was a great place to work and to make change.

Um, when we've lost Dr Fisher, that's that's a that's a recruitment.

That's a recruitment strategy, not a retention strategy.

I was gonna get there.

I thought I'm sorry, Madam President.

I thought you asked about both.

No, I am.

I am.

I am.

I am focusing in on retention, which is where I see the issue.

I think these numbers tell a story about how SPD has significant room for improvement.

Management of S.

P. D. Has significant room of improvement for retaining the new officers and existing officers that have been hired or have continued to be an officer at S.

P. D. Okay, so I mean, I think when we talk to our

recruiters who talk within the department, because they want to know what would get you to tell a friend to come here.

There's a metric called the, I'm going to forget what it's called now.

It's the net something score.

A lot of corporations use it.

It's basically what percentage on a scale of negative 100 to positive 100, how strongly would you endorse a friend or family member coming to work where you work?

SPD is negative 50. which is bad.

Um, and whe Um, I think one of the bi do is some of the stuff t 10 minutes ago that I don' in a year was hearing fr of the city that they wa here.

They've heard it f They've heard it at times from the community, from the press, but I think this was the first time in a while they've heard it from a broad section of electives.

Sorry, I'm getting a little emotional because a lot of these people I've built relationships with and I know how much it hurt them.

I'm not out there on the front lines getting yelled at.

It's a place of privilege I have to sit in an office, but I know how much it hurt them to feel that they were especially the younger ones, being told they might get laid off.

And I think that was a message that maybe this wasn't the place to be a police officer.

And I think today I appreciate so much of everyone who spoke up.

I think that means a lot.

I do not think this is personal.

I understand how, you know, I understand politics and how things get wrapped up, but I think I can't.

pretend that it didn't factor into a lot of their decisions.

And I don't know the chief has done as much as I think he can do to support and to show that he cares about them, that he recognizes their good work.

And I think, you know, there are other, there are other administrative things, the schedule and other things that I think help people want to stay.

But so many of these folks came to serve and to help their community.

And I think they just want to feel that people see that.

I don't think any of them think that people don't make mistakes or do horrible things.

And those people should be held accountable.

But most of them don't ever do those things.

And I think they just want to feel that their service is recognized.

So but in terms of strategies, we have talked with the executive about ways to get people to stay that we see other de of these have fiscal cost probably have to be negot help cover tuition for cla advance degrees.

They help Um, and there are all sor of benefits that aren't e but help people show that they're investing in you.

They want you to professionally develop.

They want you to take advantage of all the training you can have access to.

And so, I mean, I think those are things we've talked about.

I think finding ways to fund them, ways to legally do them with setups that we have, both from contracts and Washington and Seattle law.

I'm not a lawyer, so I'm not gonna try to get into that, but I've heard the conversations.

So we're very aware of how do we make it so it's the best place to work for the people who want to do the work.

But what we've seen from borrowing from corporate culture is that people who are here need to want to be here to both attract new talent and to get people to want to stay.

And no doubt, and Chief Diaz will be the first to say it, some of it's on command.

We hear from officers all the time, they want to see command more.

They want to feel supported by command.

They need their supervisor to be better.

We're doing a lot of work in our HR unit with an amazing employee who's really focusing on instilling a culture of an outward mindset and a change mindset so people can understand how to grow and collaborate with each other and be open to change and see opportunities to better themselves while they're also better in the department.

There's a lot going on that I think if we need to package it up, we can package it up.

But I think the The department is trying to do what it has the ability to do and is also raise these other ideas that I think just get more complicated and we need to have those conversations about can we uncomplicate them.

So I didn't hear an answer to my question.

And I'm really disappointed about that.

So what I heard is a lot of language, again, on the hiring side.

And I'm not interested in politics.

I'm interested in actual policy solutions, because that's my job.

So I would like to get an understanding from command staff what specific things, strategies, investments, interventions, Other recommendations are being advanced to address the reality of recruitment.

I'm sorry, retention, retention.

So that's really what I think the issue is here, because we have fully funded y'all to do the hiring that you need to do.

And where I am seeing that there continues to be a significant concern, and I think this is on management, is is how do we retain officers that we have spent time hiring, that the department is funded and greenlit to be able to move forward with those hiring processes.

And so I'm not hearing about what the chief and command staff are doing as it relates to actually retaining those individuals.

There will be issues that I suspect will need to be addressed via the bargaining, and we are already in the midst of doing those particular operational fixes.

But I think that what I understand has happened from the interdepartmental department work that you referenced, Dr. Fisher, which my office participated in, and so did Council Central staff, is that a lot of those recommendations have been left on the table, particularly last year because of COVID and because of the reality of needing to move forward.

So I feel like we have not, and by we, I mean the executive, has not spent enough time addressing specifically the strategies related to how SPD's management is addressing the retention issues related to SPD.

Okay.

I'll take another stab at it.

Um, we chief best kicked off and chief Diaz has pushed forward on growing our wellness unit and recognizing that all the supports we can give to officers from both physical and mental wellness are essential to showing people they are valued.

We have been engaging this innovation blueprint with Accenture to figure out from hiring, to technology, to retention, to professional development, to culture, to community engagement, what are all the best practices that Accenture with their broad view of policing and public service agencies across the world have learned and they've brought those to us and we're constructing that blueprint.

We are investing where we can in facilities.

The department has tried that in the past and been told no.

So again, it often comes back to, we can speak about things, but sometimes things involve investments.

And we here in this package that we may or may not get to, have some ideas where we think we can start to do that work.

The new EIS is reshaping the science around trying to count how many bad things might predict a really bad thing and be more of a supportive early awareness system that is focused on quality and support and supervision to make sure that officers are the best they have.

When we talk to officers directly, what we hear is they wanna know the department cares about them and the city cares about them.

For many of them, they would say like more money helps, but if they want it, If it was all about the paycheck, there are other things they could be doing that would make just as much with a lot less time away from family.

They want to know that people are investing in them, investing in the department, that they're appreciated, and that they've signed on, most of them, for a 25 to 30-year commitment, and they want some assurance that that is going to be honored.

And that's what we hear from them.

That's what the IDT team heard.

We're doing the 410 schedule, which is what we consistently have heard.

If there are other things in that IDT or in the I-team recommendations that resonated with folks that have not been done.

We could shake it off again.

But when that was first done, we were not losing a ton of folks.

We had anywhere near the level we lost.

And so I think we may have also seen a change in what the issue was from 2018 to 2020. So we probably need to relook at that in another light.

Dr. Fischer, I think this is a good segue, perhaps to move to the SPD's proposal.

I appreciate the work that's gone into these other slides, but in the interest of time, perhaps we could move forward in addressing and hearing some of those recommendations, because I do believe that some of those recommendations relate to the workload and some of the wellness issues.

And so with that, thank you, Greg, for advancing the slides.

And real quick, Madam Chair, this first slide is sort of a list of things that would be proposed spending within SPD.

And then it continues on to other proposed spending, with the list totaling $15.2 million here.

As you can see, the list is $15.3 million, which is the sum of the salary spending.

I'm going to very quickly, before I turn it over to Dr. Fisher, to describe the list, say that SPD has begun spending on a number of these items, as you know, on separation pay and deferred comp.

Some of these items, Madam Chair, as you have suggested, will need legal authority by moving dollars between BSLs.

The council will need to do that, either through the supplemental bill that is before you or through another piece of legislation.

It's my understanding that there may be another piece of legislation coming to the committee within the next few weeks.

There is a hiring incentive in here that cannot be done without legislation.

Chris will describe, Dr. Fisher will describe that hiring incentive, but it can't be done without passage of legislation that has been transmitted.

Um, and then lastly, as I said before, the funding for the community safety and reinvestments must be moved to other departments.

So all of these things would require legislative action.

Um, SPD can do some of them themselves, mostly the ones on these page on this page.

But, um, the budget chair and the council will have to take action to do some of them on make and make them available to SPD.

Um, from an authority standpoint.

So with that, I'll turn it over to SPD to describe the items.

Thank you.

Thank you, Greg.

I'll kick off with some of these and then toss a few over to Chris as we go.

So your first item there is civilian support.

This line item includes a number of positions, some of which are, let's Thank you.

The full list is included here.

Some of these were identified in January as being critical civilian positions that we were requesting funding for in the 2021 budget process.

As you may recall, we cut $4 million in civilian salaries.

As we continue to lose officers, we identified that it would be easier to onboard some of these civilian positions to help with the workload as we continue to lose sworn personnel.

Some of these are direct support positions to our emergency response function, like the CSOs, like crime prevention coordinators.

And then some provide administrative functions within the department that are deemed critical, like the public disclosure positions.

Eight of these are for dedicated public disclosure support.

We identified some of those earlier this year in the January memo.

We have since added at the recommendation of law department, We've got an increasing public disclosure workload.

I don't think that's a new issue for any of you.

And from a risk standpoint, we are wanting to pursue additional positions to address that growing workload.

The CID Public Safety Liaison, the Bias Crimes Coordinator, were also identified earlier this year in discussions around the legislation.

and the pre-balia training coordinator.

This item is a new position requested by Chief Diaz.

This is in support of a pilot program for relational pre-balia training program meant to support and train community-oriented, compassionate police officers, trying to give new hires the tools to mitigate impacts of the job.

This is highlighted in the Monitor semi-annual report as an area that is a critical aspect of compliance.

So together, factoring in the timelines and our ability to hire these positions, we're looking at about $1.2 million to redirect from the sworn salary savings line to these investments.

If you want to hop back to the slide.

A couple of quick things.

For those who don't speak SPD budget, BLEA is the Basic Law Enforcement Academy.

That's the academy.

And so the training coordinator would be providing training to recruits before they went to academy.

Normally recruits are hired and then they're sent right away.

The things that Angela just described about when they're hired and whether they need positions, at the very back of this presentation, I'm going to scroll, there is a table that describes all the things that Angela went through.

So if you have any questions or need to refer later to where these positions are, whether there's authority needed or where they are in the hiring process, that is all provided in the back of the table.

Not going into that detail now, but that's on the agenda on this presentation in case you need it.

And now I'm scrolling back to the presentation.

Thank you.

All right, up next, these next two items are tied directly to the reimagining community safety work.

The additional community service officer unit or squad.

We would like to start, we would like to expand the unit starting in November of this year.

This was a recommendation that came out of the IDT.

to continue expanding that function.

The CSOs were added to bridge that service gap where police officers can't provide direct services or connect individuals contacted to services.

This unit provides that exact function.

It fits nicely into the city's work and an objective of expanding alternative response resources.

The technology investments were also previewed in January.

We have since entered into a contract with Accenture that includes a number of items.

The data analytics platform upgrade and updates, the capacity planning tool, and the new early intervention system that we've referenced a couple times today.

happy to answer or field any questions there where there's confusion about what those items are.

If not, I can move on.

I see folks coming on screen.

I see a hand up.

Council Member Lewis.

Thank you so much.

I just want to jump in and talk a little bit about the CSOs.

A huge fan of the work the CSOs are doing and really, really proud of that unit and the effectiveness of that unit.

In the medium term here, I do wonder operationally now that we have some other departments where we can host services like this that are non-sworn.

quasi-uniformed, I guess, is how I would maybe describe the CSOs.

What their future might look like in terms of potentially moving them to a different department, I imagine they could still have their sort of referral function of an officer responding to a call seeing that the call probably doesn't require a criminal legal system intervention and then flagging a CSO, clearing the call and moving on.

I could see that still happening with the CSOs being in a different department and apparently having their community credibility in some circumstances increased by having it done that way rather than still being integrated within the department.

And I just wonder if there's any thought about what a timeline or expectation might be in potentially moving the CSOs to the public safety department or one of the other places within the city where that unit might be able to eventually move.

Let's take that.

I can take this one.

I would say that the department's preference in this situation would be to retain the community service officers, recognizing that the police, even once alternatives are set up, the police are going to continue to be dispatched to situations that may, when the initial call comes in, seemingly call for police response.

The CSOs were really meant to work as a handoff from police officers to other community service providers.

They are not in and of themselves direct service providers.

We also, through our community engagement, heard from folks that there was an interest in having a function like community service officers reside in the police department.

Happy to share that engagement report with you, Councilmember, and to dive into that a little bit more if you're interested.

But I think It's important to just recognize that the partnership between patrol officers and community service officers, I think is largely what makes that unit successful.

I'd be happy to read that report.

So I'll just throw that out there right now.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Council Member Mosqueda.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I have two questions, but I will just start with one difference to the other council members on the committee.

The DOJ report that I'm looking at says early intervention system is broken.

We find systemic deficiencies in SPD's early intervention system, which is designed to identify employees who may be experiencing symptoms of stress.

training deficiencies or personal problems that may affect performance, noting that there has to be seven uses of force within a six-month period.

Can you tell me if this is the same EIS system that you are now talking about funding?

And is this, did I understand you correctly, that you've already started to contract with an entity for the data analytics platform?

And does that also include moving forward with this EIS system?

It's my understanding, and we'll let SPD respond because I know they're much more well-versed, but this is a different model in recognition that the old system was not particularly effective and that it's more based on a wellness model using past trauma.

events as an indicator.

But I am also interested that around the cost of this, what portion of this two plus million in technology investments are we talking about for this early intervention system?

I believe we were told back in May that it would be $300,000.

Right.

OK.

So yes, the current EIS system We always sort of knew it, because there's research out there.

EIS really started with the city of Miami, and then it spread based on recommendations of both the US Civil Rights Commission and the Christopher Commission in LA.

It became a big push for EIS.

New Orleans, under consent decrees, as well as other cities, started to develop them, as did SPD.

They were all generally the model of taking performance metrics that may be early warning signs with the hope of impending, you know, excessive use of force, for example.

They would also look at community complaints.

But what most of these systems did not do was to consider the broader scope of the officers' employment, where they work, how long have they been working, shifts that they're on, the type of calls they're dispatched to.

And that at this point would even be an old approach.

So we engaged local researchers at Washington State leaders in understanding performance and performance measurement and effects of stress and other wellness issues on performance to see if those same findings apply to the EIS system that was approved under the consent decree.

And to no surprise, they found the same things.

It's a very similar model.

So ever since that, we have been in conversations with experts in the field and within SPD around how would we build a model taking advantage of the DAP, the data Linux platform that was built to be able to supply the stitched together data that were in disparate systems across the department to be able to say, what percent of 911 calls result in a use of force, something we could not have done in the past.

The DAP weaves those all together and allows us to do that.

Now, recognizing that we need to do more and to do an advanced analytics that would allow us to truly highlight that someone is trending towards maybe a high stress event or they've gone that they're moving to before we start to see those negative performance complaints that would have been used in the old model to say something really bad might happen.

We're trying to use advanced analytics in a very unstructured data model to go more upstream and to understand how can we help officers before we get to things that the research has shown are not actually that predictive because you don't have enough context around what environment they're happening in for the department, for the officer.

And so I think we can break out the specific cost, but to do that, that model of EIS, We also have to change how the DAP is structured, which is that part of that work.

Moving the DAP into the cloud allows us to take more efficient advantage, both from a cost and analytics standpoint.

of the tools that are available when you go into an AWS or Azure environment.

You're able to not have to have everything queued up all the time.

I'm not a tech whiz, but I just understand enough to be dangerous that you can run the data when you need to run it without paying to have it always constantly available and constantly running.

The type of analytics we're thinking about where you're really doing natural language processing, where you're thinking about looking at the transcript of body wo if you know, there are is there.

But that's where w how can we understand how what's going on in their we can highlight to a sup now's the time to engage that person.

Nothing bad has happened yet of any level, but they're consistently showing maybe early warning signs, it's a strong word, of moving in that direction.

So now's the time to coach and engage and support.

So we can break out those costs, but they are intertwined because we can't have the EIS without a more advanced DAP.

And inherently, the DAP has to keep getting improved as technology advances.

we have to keep advancing with the technology.

I think all local governments sort of suffer from that technology debt issue of paying for a big project, and then it's harder to pay for the non big deliverable in between.

I think this is us saying, whether than wait till we have to build a true DAP 5.0, let's upgrade as we go, as we recognize new needs, as we think about how we're re-imagining policing, we're going to need new tools, new analytics.

One of the things that the DAP work will do is allow us to look at where are officers spending time and can we start to think about how would we talk about over or under policing in respect to the level of reported crime in an area.

So there are things where the field is going that we need to make the DAP a better tool and that making the DAP a better tool will make the EIS more realistic and more capable.

We have started that work.

I think Angela explained, you know, with the budget that was already allowed to be spent as she can clean me up here if she needs to.

But we're also there's more work to be done.

And that's where these proposals come in and making sure that we can finish this work and have these tools available.

Angela, did I misspeak on the budget stuff?

Now, I'll just add that as far as the budget goes, that $2.25 million, we have initiated those costs.

We entered into a contract with Accenture earlier this year with plans to use available salary savings consistent with the adopted budget, which a portion of the salary savings is provisoed.

We are restricted from spending those funds.

There are some unrestricted funds that still exist within S&P's budget.

Madam Chair, I accidentally hit my keyboard and my windows switched over and your clerk caught it very quickly and switched me off.

If he will switch me back on, I'd be happy to put the table back on and apologize to the committee that I did that.

Thank you.

So I think it gets to, first I want to say I am interested in these investments, but I am still struggling, as I mentioned earlier, with the fact that you have One, these investments were not included in the mayor's proposed 2021 budget, so the council did not have the opportunity to consider them.

And two, indications are that you're moving forward with these investments using salary savings in the patrol BSL that has not been transferred over for this purpose.

So again, I wanna flag, that's a concern.

I believe that's not an accepted budget practice for the department to be encumbering obligations prior to the council authorization of the spending.

I thought there might be a response from SPD, but seeing none, Council Member Morales?

Thank you.

I want to get to this chart eventually, but I first want to say I understand going back to what Council Member Lewis was asking about the CSOs.

I understand that SPD would prefer to keep them in the department, but we are in the process of transitioning and reimagining what public safety looks like and really trying to center community and community led strategies.

And as we have heard from the department itself, many officers feel like there is a lot of work that the department does that could be transferred out.

And I think the kind of work that the CSOs do is an example, not the sworn officers themselves, but an example of the other kinds of work that could be transferred out.

So I would be interested in you know, delaying a vote on that particular piece until we have a more in-depth conversation about whether the CSOs can go to the new Community Safety Division Communication Center.

Getting to the capacity planning tool, and this is sort of in keeping with the same question, if it's meant to support 911 dispatch, I'm interested in why that would stay at SPD instead of also being transferred with the 911 call center.

I think what my sort of overarching question, and it gets to some of the technology questions too, is how much of the 15 million is tied up and has to be paid out because of contracts, whether or not they've been authorized already by the council, and how much does that leave to be possibly reallocated?

Because I think what we're struggling with is this question of, what is already, what is required?

We know we have to do separation pay.

We know we have to do family leave.

What are the other asks that really do require the council to consider and to pass something?

Thank you, Council Member Morales.

I'll do the CPT.

So the capacity planning tool, which is part of the innovation blueprint, was really a recognition that the current tool we were using, the managing patrol performance, was too cumbersome and too slow and really only focused on patrol officer staffing and deployment.

So somewhere, I don't know where along the lines, I don't know if it's how we wrote something, Or how we stacked items, but CPT has not really anything to do with the 911 center.

It's about when you look at the workload of patrol or investigations or professional standards when you.

It's a tool that allows us to say if you have this much workload and these different types of work items take this much time.

You have this many of them a year and this is your How many folks do you need to fit that?

And we had that with MPP, which was a sort of a black box program that many departments around the country have used for a while.

It is not adaptable.

We were never really completely certain about what was happening in it.

You get trained in it, but the how it's doing its calculations were not clear.

And our engagement with Accenture, they have used this CPT tool that they have built with other departments, and it's much more flexible.

It also, I think it's an important part of the work going forward around re-imagining as we identify calls that don't need to be responded to by an armed officer.

We can see what would offloading that call work do to how many officers we would need, given that, as we have heard consistently from community, folks want to know their officer.

We hear a lot about foot patrols.

They want to see officers out and walking and talking to them.

that sort of deployment model, you can also sort of layer that in to the CPT program.

So it's really, I think, maybe how we got connected to 911 was it helps us look at the workflow coming in from 911 and tells us the how many what time on what day and what in each precinct by each sector and be how many officers do we need to effectively handle that workload with performance targets?

What it does that in a much more sort of user friendly, adaptable, quicker way.

But what it does above MPP is you can do it with other parts of the department.

We can say if we think we're going to start spending more time investigating X type of theft, What would that look like?

And what would that do to how many detectives we would need if we were hoping to solve X number of percent of those?

So it allows us to do that same sort of capacity planning work throughout the department instead of just on a dispatch.

The MPP program is really sort of modeled after a call queuing model at any sort of call center.

And the CPT program is much more adaptable and sort of comprehensive about How many people do you need to do different types of work where the tasks within that work are different than just responding to, in essence, a work order or a call that's waiting to be picked up and addressed?

So that's why CPT, I think that might be how it got connected to 911, but it really does not, it wouldn't help the 911 center.

We could, I don't actually know, I don't know if it could help you to figure out how many staff you need to do the call center.

We'd be happy to work with CSCC on that, but it's really more focused on how many officers do you need to do different functions within the department.

Before Angela, takes the rest of the question, Council Member, if that satisfies the one piece, I just wanted to provide a little bit of overview on the spending component, if I may.

And that's to say that the title of this slide, Executive Salary Savings Proposal, is something I wrote, but I should add a little clarity here.

Um, many of the civilian positions that are in that very first line are positions that the department had already had authority for and we're holding vacant.

Um, and, uh, they were doing so at the request of the mayor.

Um, and it was it is within their, um, it is within their within their purview to be able to use, um, salary savings to be able to fill those positions.

The same is also true of things like the National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform contract.

That is within the department's purview to be able to spend that money.

If they have the budget for it in the right BSL, they can do it.

In terms of salary savings, they may not have the salary savings in the right BSL, but if they have the budget authority for it, they can enter into a contract for it.

So in terms of this being a proposal, I should provide a little context and say that the department does have authority to do many of these things already.

separation pay, the money's already in the salary line for the officers and moving it to, they don't have to move it anywhere.

So with that as context, I turned over to Angela to let her talk about what might be spent and where.

Hi, I'm trying to get in as soon as

Thank you, Greg.

So I'll just, I'll run quickly through these items and just indicate if we've already incurred expenses or not.

I'll note the civilian support because it includes so many positions and varying stages of the hiring process or filled.

I'll refer everyone to the final two pages of this slide deck.

to see kind of where we're at in process.

If a physician has not yet been hired, we haven't incurred any expenses related to that specific position.

No expenses.

We have not hired the CSO unit.

We have incurred costs related to the technology investments, which you saw in our spending plan or spending report in the earlier slides.

Nothing has been incurred related to the work scheduling timekeeping project since it was put on hold.

Although that is set to resume within the next few weeks, I believe.

We have incurred costs related to the National Institute for Criminal Justice reform contract, the results of which were reported in our.

final IDT report.

The mental health professional program and contract background services are also contract costs.

Those contracts have been signed and the contract amounts likely encumbered, although I don't know if we've actually incurred any expenses to date.

Separation pay costs have been incurred.

This is an estimate for the budget overage for the entirety of the year, so that full amount has not been realized, but will likely be realized by December.

I will note if we go over 160 separations, that number will likely increase the budget shortfall.

Deferred compensation, also an estimate.

That is a full year projection as well.

Event overtime, also an estimate.

Year to date, I believe we've incurred about a million dollars in expenses related to special events.

With the sporting events that are set over the next six months, we've developed this estimate just as a total annual overage paid parental leave.

We have incurred, I believe, about a million dollars here year to date.

We do have plans to submit a request for an appropriation from the general fund reserve for that amount if needed.

If we're able to proceed without that appropriation.

That decision will be made later this year.

The potential COVID-related compensation adjustments have not been incurred, and neither have the hiring and retention incentives.

Thank you, Angela.

That's very helpful.

Greg, did you want me to comment on the executive items?

I think this is something that probably we can just hit really quick.

This is something that got pretty covered, covered pretty in depth at the last public safety meeting just at a really high level triage 1. $700,000 is the amount that the executive identified that would need to go into the fire department.

To my knowledge, the executive had not identified a funding source for that triage one until the letter that you all had sent to central staff.

And the same being true of the dispatch protocol system in the regional safety plan peacekeepers collective.

Those amounts would need to be transferred cut from SPD is budget and sent to these other departments.

I note here that the SFD is the executive's proposed plan for triage one.

That's where the money would have to go if it went to the way that the executive had proposed it.

Council members also might consider the CSCC per the conversation that's been going on for the last hour and a half.

With that, I don't know that there's too much more to say about these particular investments, but certainly council members may have questions for you all.

One thing that I would note is something that you noted earlier, Angela, but was a part of my slide deck and is an important part.

and that is that there are provisos that are in place for provisos specifically, an out of order layoffs proviso for $2.5 million, a salary savings proviso for $5 million, and a harbor patrol proviso for 550 that would need to be removed before the department could effectuate a plan to use the salary savings on these items that are in this list.

That would be in addition to the need to move some of the dollars across BSL organizations.

And so that's an important point for council to understand is that to authorize this plan that SPD is putting before you, you would need legislation that would make some of the appropriations moving around money, sometimes within SPD, sometimes out of SPD, but then also to remove the provisos so that SPD would be able to spend the money on its own items.

So with that, I'd ask if there's any questions for me or the department.

I'm hoping we can wrap this up.

It is 1 12 p.m.

I do want to note that, um, council member Muscat and I have been working together even before we received the executive's proposal on legislation as part of the amendment to the second quarter supplemental And I think there is a lot of alignment on what Council Member Mosqueda and I had already been working on and what the executive is proposing.

But I don't want to forestall any additional questions that my colleagues might have, but I'm also simultaneously hoping we can wrap up.

Not seeing, oh, Council Member Mosqueda, yes.

Thank you, I'm sorry, I feel like this is a good chance to ask some of these questions that otherwise I'm not sure we would be able to have the policy questions.

Madam Chair, I'm used to calling you Vice Chair in my committee, Madam Chair had asked some important questions about where Funding had already begun being spent without authorization in the BSL.

And I think I cut off exactly when I was trying to ask that question.

Apologize for that, Angela, if you did hear my question and I didn't catch the answers.

But on that chart, I would still like to have a better understanding at some point.

I suppose it doesn't need to be today on which of these items you've already moved forward on to Greg's point earlier, where The SPD believes they already had authority, or perhaps without authority, went ahead and spent anyways.

That would be helpful for me to know.

Regarding the storage, I think there's a lot of people who are very concerned about the insufficient storage of potentially critical evidence.

But when I look at the report on the evidence that came from the best practices and doing the analysis.

It says that S.

P. D. Does not have standard practices for storing evidence and that each each precinct despite given being given direction to do so, such as there wasn't a list of things that were recommended standards for equipment to be on hand to make sure that all of the storage mandates have the same requirements for each evidence storage areas in each facility.

There was confusion about which items should be kept in storage and which items should just have a picture, and that there wasn't sufficient training on which items to collect.

So I'm wondering, in addition to this request for storage, is there additional policies that you are taking on to try to address some of the deficiencies already outlined in the report to make sure that there's proper storage and specific storage of items that need to be there versus just a large swath of equipment that's being stored according to that report?

Councilor Mosqueda, really quick before SPD answers that question.

The evidence storage proposal is not theirs.

That is a proposal that was part of the Council Bill 119981 amendment that was adopted by the Public Safety Committee.

I'm guessing why isn't it there?

Because it seems like there's a need for improved storage and a need for policy alignment there.

If there is not a proposal that came from the mayor's office that included it in the supplemental, why isn't that when we had clear indication from this report that it was needed both in terms of policy changes and additional space?

Thank you.

Thanks for the reminder, Greg.

Anybody want to take that from SPD?

I can try.

I'm not particularly well versed in this one.

Maybe Angela has more, but we can also get back to you.

My understanding is as our Policy Professional Standards Bureau does, they assess all the recommendations from the OIG, so we can get back to you on what exactly the work plan is for responding to some of those suggestions.

around evidence storage.

Um, I know the chief, both this chief and the prior chief and even the chief before that, we're all very aware of capacity issues.

Um, and I'm not sure if those had ever been formally raised as, uh, potential items for funding.

I know there have been requests in the past.

I don't know how far they made it in the process, but for improved shelving and other ways of storage, Angela might have more memory of those, but I don't think it was on this current list because I don't think the department knew that there was a source of potential funding that would be supportive of putting it additional, but once The chief had conversations with the chair.

I think we were supportive of if the committee was in support of using money to increase capacity in the warehouse, it was something that the department knew it needed to do and was, I think, happy to reach agreement on that.

Angela, I don't know how frequently we've looked at our investments in the evidence facilities.

That's OK.

This is sufficient.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Really appreciate all the extra time that councilmembers and Dr. Fisher and Angela have spent with us today.

I trust that there is some additional information that we will be getting after today's meeting.

And I have a a couple of questions that I'm going to hold for take offline here in the interest, again, in the interest of time.

If there are no additional comments from my colleagues, the next Public Safety and Human Services Committee is scheduled for September 14th.

It is 1.18 p.m.

and we are adjourned.

Thank you.