Seattle City Council Select Budget Committee Session I 101521

Thank you so much.

Good morning, everyone.

Welcome to the Select Budget Committee meeting.

Today is October 15th, 2021. This is Friday and the final day three of three of our central staff issue identification.

I'm Teresa Mosqueda, chair of the committee.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Sawant.

Present.

Strauss.

Present.

Gonzalez.

Here.

Herbold.

And Chair Mosqueda.

Present.

Eight present.

Thank you very much, Madam Clerk.

Colleagues, thank you again for joining us today for day three of the central staff issue identification, identifying various issues for topic, discussion, questions, possible amendment ideas for later that central staff has flagged for us from the proposed budget that we received from the mayor's office about two weeks ago.

I wanna thank central staff for all of the work they've done, and thank all of you for your participation throughout the last two days, and we will get through today and make sure to adjourn We will take a recess at 1 p.m.

and we will come back at 2 p.m.

to conclude our Hearing no objection, today's agenda is adopted.

I want to just ask that we, I'm gonna try to make sure I have the right link here for public comment.

As we open public comment here today, I wanna remind folks that we do have the intent to hear from everybody on my list as I check in with the clerks to make sure I'm looking at the right sheet.

I see 28 people signed up for public comment.

Is that correct?

If so, I want to make sure.

OK, thanks so much.

I want to make sure that we get a chance to hear from everybody this morning.

I will give you a one minute to provide public comment this morning.

Please remember that you have 10 seconds chime that will that will air when your time is about to conclude.

So please do conclude your remarks and send any additional comments to us at council at seattle.gov.

I'm going to call two names at a time so that we were teeing up two names and then you will hear your name.

you have been unmuted.

That is your indication to hit star six on your line.

Again, hit star six so that your line can officially be unmuted and double check that your phone is also not on mute on its own end.

Thanks again for dialing in.

Once you've concluded your comments, please do hang up, disconnect, and go ahead and listen back in at the Seattle Channel live stream or any of the listen in options provided on today's agenda.

Thank you so much for dialing in to provide comments today on the 2022 proposed budget and our deliberations here.

The first two speakers and the public comment period is now open.

The first two speakers are Howard Dale and Nation Burns.

Good morning, Howard.

Good morning, Howard Dale.

City Attorney's Office recently settled a lawsuit for the SPD abuse of an elderly white man for $250,000 and a meeting with SPD Chief Diaz.

However, for the SPD execution-style murder of Pacific Islander Ayoceo Palo Togo, leaving two children fatherless.

The city just settled for $515,000 and no meeting.

In both these cases, our police accountability system deemed the SPD actions, quote, lawful and proper, unquote.

Clearly, this council remembers little about accountability and justice post-George Floyd.

Our current police accountability budget is $10.8 million for 2022. This means taxpayers take twice for police abuse, once to cover it up and a second time to compensate the victims.

The solidarity budget demands that police accountability be removed from the SBD.

We must go beyond that and also divest from a failed accountability system that bills taxpayers twice for abuse.

Go to seattlestop.org to find out how we can do this if the council fails to act.

Thanks, Howard.

And good morning, Nation.

Nation's going to be followed by Trayvon Thompson-Wiley.

Good morning.

I'm not seeing Nashawn Burns on the screen here.

We've lost the caller.

OK.

We'll come back to you if you are able to dial in.

Trayvon, good morning.

And after Trayvon will be Scott Bonjakin.

Good morning.

Good morning.

Hi my name is Trayvon and I'm a resident of District 2. I've called in plenty of times.

Most of the council members already probably know my personal last name by now.

And I've called in mostly talking about divesting from police as a practice and investing in community based holistic approaches to public health and safety.

I want to try something different today.

I want to share with you what areas of the budget we should be funded with divested SPD dollars.

So for instance, the SBB budget is looking like it's going to be $47.8 million more because there's a bunch of responsibilities that were not taken out from the previous budget.

So here's what we can use with that $47.8 million.

We could create nearly 2,000 units of permanent supported housing for in-house people.

We could actually spend 120, it costs about $120,000 to train a cop and pay for a new cop every single year.

we can actually put together some actual programs that will help families.

We can also show that indigenous lives matter by.

Thank you again, Trevonna.

It looks like we have Nishan back on the line here, so I will go to Nishan and then Scott.

Well, Scott, I see you on mute.

Hi, sorry about that.

My name's Nishan Burns.

I'm a renter in District 2. I want to speak in support of a few demands from the people's budget.

uh...

first leading to police budgeting the council should reject mayor durkin's proposed thirteen million dollar increase in funding for it uh...

this money would be totally unnecessary and would in part go to more hiring bonuses for new cops you know for some of the most highly paid public employees in the city they don't need more funding uh...

local right wing media have whipped certain people into a rabid frenzy about imaginary skyrocketing crime rate following seattle government defunding the police which unfortunately didn't happen in any meaningful way uh...

you do not want to bend to conservative media And following most of the council's total refusal to support the demands coming out of the mass protest movement last summer, people are going to notice if you just walk back with little concessions that you did make.

I also want to emphasize the importance of what will actually alleviate crime, which is more funding for social services.

But of course, taking $13 million alone from the police budget isn't going to be enough.

And what we'll need is a massive expansion of the big business tax that the Tax Amazon movement won last year.

That's $120 million, most of which will go to affordable housing.

Thank you very much.

Good morning, Scott.

Thanks for waiting.

After Scott, we'll be BJ last.

Hello, can you hear me?

Yes, thank you.

Thank you.

Good morning.

My name is Scott Bonjukian, and I am commenting on behalf of the Lit I-5 Steering Committee and our coalition of community partners.

I am commenting on the SDOT budget.

We continue to request that the city council fund the downtown street network study that was recommended several years ago by the Imagine Greater Downtown program.

The downtown street network study is necessary to understand all of our options for mobility and placemaking as we recover from the pandemic.

But I5 is also asking that this downtown street network study be done collaboratively with the Washington State Department of Transportation to look at the relation between our streets and the ramps connecting to Interstate 5. Many of these ramps are a direct cause of transit delays and pedestrian safety hazards because of the amount of traffic they induce.

Some of the ramps also hamper opportunities to live the freeway long term.

The public is behind the idea.

This year, a scientific poll of Seattle voters found that 77% of voters favor relocating freeway ramps in downtown if it can help address congestion and safety problems.

Our team is available at www.liti5.org should you have any questions.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Perfect timing.

BJ, you are followed by Gordon Padelford.

Good morning, BJ.

Good morning, my name is BJ Laff, a Ballard resident.

I'm calling in support of the solidarity budget and defunding SPD in the municipal courts by 50%.

Starting with the 1973 Kansas City Preventative Crime Patrol experiment, study after study has shown that patrol slash police presence does not make communities safer.

Meeting people's basic needs makes communities safer.

Police presence has no impact on crime rate.

Police presence, though, does hurt The community in the recent study published in the Lancet found that reform efforts including de-escalation training, implicit bias training, body cameras, and diverse police forces have failed to reduce police violence rates or racial disparities in police violence.

This failure of reform is why the Center for Policing Equity found SPD still uses force against Black and Indigenous community members at disproportionate rates despite a decade of the consent decree and additional training.

This isn't about reimagining public safety, because SPD does not make the community safe.

Meeting people's basic needs makes the community safe.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

And the next person is Gordon, followed by Penny O'Gary.

Good morning, Gordon.

Good morning, council members.

My name is Gordon Bedelford with Seattle Neighborhood Greenway.

I'm here to talk about the transportation budget.

As you know, safety for people walking and rolling is more urgent than ever, given the sharp uptick in traffic thefts this year.

which disproportionately impact people of color, low-income people, unhoused folks, people with disabilities, elders, and really all of our community members.

And unfortunately, Seattle's on track to have the worst year of traffic fatalities and injuries in over a decade.

So we really need to do more to reach Vision Zero.

Luckily, SDOT's Vision Zero program is focused on proven methods to increase safety, and they do so through a strong equity framework, which is why we're proposing increasing the Vision Zero budget.

Please maintain the mayor's proposed spend plan for the vehicle licensing fee and increase the commercial parking tax.

Both of these efforts would go to increase the Vision Zero budget and help keep everyone safe on our streets.

Thank you.

Thank you Gordon.

And Penny you are up next followed by Terry Holm.

Thank you.

Good morning.

I'm Penny and I live in District 6. I'm calling in support of the solidarity budget.

I've lived in a vibrant neighborhood in Green Lake for over 25 years where neighbors know and care for each other.

The people across the street moved into assisted living and sold their home to a real estate developer in Arizona.

The house has been empty since June.

Last night, the owner arrived to find that all the electrical wiring had been stripped and the house obviously occupied by several people.

None of the neighbors were aware of this.

Now the house is boarded up for an indefinite amount of time.

The house next door has been vacant for well over seven years.

All the policing in the world won't change the fact that many people in our community need help, including permanent supportive housing, and will do what they need to do to find shelter and cash.

Police don't keep us safe.

Meeting people's basic needs keeps us safe.

Policing is like a dirty bandage covering a festering wound.

Not only do police not heal the wound, they cause further infection.

Research shows that increasing community service

Thank you, Penny.

And please send in the rest of those comments to council at seattle.gov.

Appreciate you dialing in this morning.

Terry, followed by Blair Pearlyman.

Good morning, Terry.

Just hit star six one more time.

Looks like you're still muted over here.

And I'll also note, Blair, you are up next after Terry, but it has you listed as not present.

So if you can dial in, we'll come back to you.

Terry just hit star six one more time.

Make sure you're not hitting pound.

We had that happen a few days ago.

So star six, and I'll look for you to come off mute on my end.

As Terry's doing that, can we tee up Sam, please?

Sam Dick will be followed by Sylvie Reynolds.

And Terri I'll keep you on the on the screen here just to look for you to come off of mute.

Again star 6 Terri.

Oh Terri I thought I saw you come off mute and then go back on.

One more time.

If you can hit star 6. Hi Terri can you hear me.

There we go.

Terri Hill.

Yeah I live in District 3. I'm calling about the Lake Washington Boulevard South Keep Moving Street program.

I'm asking for your support for Council Member Morales' current initiative to add and provide $200,000 for the 2022 proposed budget, enabling SDOT to proceed with an equitable engagement and outreach with the objective of finalizing a plan for permanent improvement for Mount Baker Beach to Stewart Park.

Adopting funding at this time will be in keeping with your unanimously supported June 2021 amendment to CB 120093 version 2 wherein the council committed to the future funding of this work.

The city's COVID-19 Keep Moving Streets program on Lake Larson Boulevard has been an enormous success over the last year and a half and it's demonstrated the importance of reevaluating this exceptional waterfront park can be used to its greatest potential.

Thank you.

Thank you, Terry.

And next we have Sam.

Good morning, Sam.

Sam will be followed by Sylvie Reynolds.

Hi, Sam.

Just star six one more time.

Hi, can you hear me?

Now I can.

Thanks.

Okay I'm going to.

My name is Sam Dick.

I'm going to be speaking on the 2021-22 budget.

I am a safety supervisor for the Metropolitan Improvement District.

The MID is part of the Downtown Seattle Association and consists of a clean safe and outreach team and parks.

Over the past year there has been a significant increase in crime homelessness in Downtown Seattle.

This has had a major impact on our clean safe parks and outreach operations.

Many of our ambassadors have been threatened and assaulted.

The goal of the Metropolitan Improvement District is to create a healthy, vibrant urban core.

This has been very difficult in our current environment.

We need more police, housing, treatment, and services for us to fulfill our goals and keep our ambassadors safe.

I deeply urge you to create a budget that prioritizes safety and compassion for all.

Thank you.

Thank you, Sam.

Sylvie, good morning.

You are going to be followed by Valerie Schroeder.

Hi this is Sylvie.

I live in District 6. I'm calling in support of Council Member Morales proposals for projects within District 2 including Lake Washington Boulevard and MLK Junior Boulevard safety.

Three community members have been tragically killed this summer on the street and I think that SDOT should increase its Vision Zero funding including sidewalks And I also urge the levy to please restart the projects on page 37 of the COVID impact assessment that are still have not been restarted yet and to follow through on their principles of success including its strong foundation on equity.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Valerie will be followed by Tamar Wilson.

Good morning, Valerie.

Star six, unmute.

Thank you.

Good morning, Valerie Floret from District Two.

The police accountability budget for 2022 is $10.8 million, just for the core partners, the CPC, the OPA, and the OIG.

Recent events show how urgently we need to reallocate these funds.

The OIG investigator whistleblower complaint and the OPA's failure to fairly investigate or censure SPD for violence in the 2020 protests were reported in the South Seattle Emerald, as was a dismal community engagement event this week with the federal monitors.

The investigations done by the OPA under OIG's oversight are now all under question, including investigations into fatal shootings by SPD.

Why should we fund a system that rubber stamps biased investigations to protect police misconduct?

The city should defund the failed system by at least 50% for more information about a proposed legislation for a civilian accountability system based on best practice from other U.S.

Thank you very much.

Please send the rest of your comments in Valerie to council at Seattle dot gov. Peter Condit will be followed by Clara Cantor.

Is this Tamar?

Hey, Tamar, please go ahead.

Yes.

Hi.

All right.

Thank you.

Hello, council members.

My name is Tamar Wilson.

I'm a district two resident in Beacon Hill and the Black Lives Matter community organizer.

And I'm speaking to you today in support of the people's budget, which stands in solidarity with the solidarity budget.

Since 2014 the people's budget has fought to ensure that working class people in the organizations in Seattle have their needs and concerns brought to the fore and provided for not just big business and corporate interests which dominate so much of the city.

Last year thanks to leadership of Council Member Sawant and groups like Socialist Alternative among others the BLM movement in the city was able to win a historic tax on Amazon to fund sorely needed community initiatives like affordable housing and a local Green New Deal.

These weren't only concrete wins for the movement for racial and economic justice, but indeed major wins for Seattleites of all types, being that the majority of our population are renters, with over 60,000 Seattle renters owing rental debt to the landlord.

And we've seen the devastating effects of the climate crisis greatly intensify in the last year alone.

To this end, it's absolutely untenable that rent skyrocket, as home prices skyrocket, as unprecedented heat waves caused by the climate crisis

I appreciate you dialing in today.

It's counsel at Seattle.gov.

Peter, good morning.

Last month, on September 17th, I was approached by SPD Sergeant Hill, who decided he wanted to speak to me without a mask on, indoors, from within three feet.

I had to put myself at risk by telling a man with a gun to follow COVID precautions.

He didn't even have a mask with him.

Why are masks not standard equipment for SPD at this point?

SPD's structure values officer comfort and pay over public safety.

Sergeant Hill was on the job, engaging in an activity known to contribute to the spread of COVID.

Council needs to take power funding and position authority away from SPD to keep us safe.

By defunding SPD, council can increase funding for other things, including Vision Zero and sidewalks.

Also, council should ask SDOT to collect street safety data and crash data instead of leaving that job to SPD.

Defunding SPD is a commitment to meeting

Thank you, Peter.

Please send in the rest of your comments as well.

Clara, good morning.

Hi, can you hear me?

Yes, thanks.

Hi, this is Clara Cantor.

I'm a resident of District 2 and I'm speaking on behalf of the Mass Coalition.

The Mass Coalition is in support of the solidarity budget and I'm here commenting specifically on transportation and asking council to fund

We just lost you, Clara.

We lost you after asking counsel.

Can you still hear me?

Might have gone on mute on your actual phone device.

So let's see if we can get you back on the line here.

Okay, great.

I saw Council Member Morales' screen moving, so I know I'm not frozen.

That's a good thing.

So Clara, when we get you back on the line, we'll keep you unmuted and we will come back to you.

Sorry that our technology got disconnected here.

Shamir, Shamir, you will be followed by Sean Flynn.

Good morning, Shamir.

Shamir, if you could hit star six to unmute.

Hello.

Hello.

Sorry about that.

No problem.

Hi.

I'm a resident of district 7. I'm calling in support of the solidary budget and defunding the Seattle police department.

Defund SPD means vowing black lives and indigenous lives and truly investing in them.

The budget is the ultimate accountability mechanism and it is in your hands.

I hope to see you propose amendments that defund SPD by doing the following as outlined by the solidary budget.

SPD's funding and position authority for sworn officers to 750 members.

And all new SPD spending on hiring bonuses, technology, buildings, and weapons.

And transfer community service officers and other civilian positions out of SPD.

By doing this, council can provide permanent funding for community-led solutions.

There are many well-researched and important ideas in the solidary budget.

For example, Housing for All and Seattle Green New Deal.

Thank you for your time.

Thanks for dialing in today.

Sean Pullen will be followed by Lou Bond.

Lou, it has you listed as not present.

So if you are able to dial in before the end of our public comment, we'll come back to you.

Sean, good morning.

Just hit star six on your end and we should be good to go.

Great.

Hi, good morning.

My name is Sean Pullen.

I'm a safety and hospitality supervisor for Metropolitan Improvement District.

I've been working with the company for a little over eight years.

In that time, I've seen the police presence in downtown dwindle down to next to nothing.

The results of that have caused more assaults on our ambassadors and to the general public.

Unless it's a violent crime, police will no longer respond.

And because of this, we have had to adjust our services to keep everyone safe.

This includes pairing up all our ambassadors so that they are not out in the city alone.

We no longer work past dusk because it is just too dangerous.

And also often several times a week we are focused or forced to move our ambassadors to safer parts of the city to keep them away from danger after an assault or shooting.

I am here today to request the city prioritize needed investments into public safety and the budget.

Thank you.

Thank you very much for calling in today.

Lou, it still shows you as not present.

Lou Bond.

So we are going to move on to Sonia.

Good morning, Sonia.

Sonia will be followed by.

Hi, good morning.

Good morning.

OK.

Hi, it's Sonia Pona.

I'm a working mom in District 3 speaking in favor of the people's budget.

I want to know why we have more funding for police in this budget, like hiring bonuses.

Really, we should be funding public showers, bathrooms, safe parking, sewage, and garbage.

For our unhoused neighbors, they're forced to live in their vehicles.

All over Seattle, people are screaming about the homelessness problem.

And to do something about it, we must do more than provide funding to sweep homeless people and their meager possessions away.

Is that what the police are going to do?

Again and again, the Democratic establishment has failed to hold the police accountable.

What's really needed is an elected community oversight board with full powers over the police.

That means real control over hiring, firing, budgeting, and subpoena power.

If we'd had democratic structures like that in place during the George Floyd protests, would police have been so emboldened to use illegal weapons on all those peaceful protesters?

There's not been one officer held accountable for the 28 killings in the last decade.

It's shameful and unacceptable for those grieving families.

Let's have a- Thank you very much.

If you can send in the rest of your comments, that would be great.

Max, good morning.

Max will be followed by Michael Malini.

Good morning.

My name is Max Rappaport and I live in District District 3 with my partner and in a few weeks our baby.

I'm calling this morning in support of the solidarity budget specifically its commitment to a safer more walkable city.

I live just a few blocks away from Rainier Avenue a street constantly in battle with Aurora for the distinction of deadliest street in Seattle.

Where I live near the soon to be Judkins Park light rail station there's a nearly half mile gap between crosswalks on Rainier.

In between these streets Folks trying to catch a bus regularly decide to dart across the five lanes of traffic rather than walk nearly a mile out of their way to get to a crosswalk.

Over the past few years, the city has punted on much-needed safety improvements time and time again, and the mayor's proposed budget puts us on a 300-year course just to get sidewalks built citywide, which is pathetic.

I support the Solidarity budget in part because of its commitment to making Seattle a safe place for folks to get around on foot and by bike, and even more so because it rightly targets funding cuts at SPD and its floated budget.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

And Michael will be followed by Judith Runstad.

Good morning, Michael.

Hi, my name is Michael Mullaney.

I'm a renter in District 3 calling in support of the solidarity budget and for the council to follow up on its commitment to defund SPD, including ending all new SPD spending on hiring bonuses, technology, buildings, and weapons, and reducing SPD's budget to reflect the transfers of 911 and parking enforcement.

Adam SPD and the mayor's plan staffing reduction, as well as transferring community service officers and other civilian positions out of SPD.

Thank you.

Great, thank you.

Judith will be followed by Anna Williams.

Good morning, Judith.

Just star six to unmute.

And Judith, I see you're still muted on my end.

If you could hit star six.

Colleagues, we are at the 10 o'clock hour, but we only have three other folks signed up to provide public testimony.

So if there's no objection, I'm going to extend the public comment for the next four minutes to get through everyone.

And Judith will keep you teed up there so that you can come off mute.

Star six.

Hearing no objection, the public comment will be extended to get through the rest here.

And Judith, I'll keep you on the screen here.

Again, star six.

to come off mute.

After Judith is Anna Williamson, Amarinta Torres, and Jason Skyes.

And the other two people that I have listed as wanting to speak but are not present are Jim Williamson and Sean Jackson.

So we'll do Anna, Amarinta, and Jason.

Judith, I'll keep you on the line here.

I'm still seeing you unmuted on my end.

So star six.

Good morning, Anna.

If you could hit star six as well.

We'll get you up in the queue.

Great.

Go ahead, Anna.

Good morning.

Hi I'm Anna and I'm a resident of D4 and I'm calling in support of a solidarity budget and defunding Seattle Police Department.

Defunding SPD means valuing Black lives Indigenous lives and the lives of our houseless neighbors.

In my professional life I work as a personal trainer and when I first began training I thought that because I was the quote unquote professional with the title I knew what was best for my clients.

I prescriptively told clients how to move what to eat.

After all I knew what was best right.

How did that method of training go?

Well, the people who were most similar to me, the upper class, thin white ladies, got the most out of training.

Our lived experiences were the most similar so I could best serve these folks.

And the rest of my clients, I'm really sad to say that they didn't get the service they deserved.

Far from it.

What I've learned is that no matter how well my intentions are to help, I am not the expert.

People, when given the support and resources to thrive, know what is best for them.

My beautiful city council members, you work your butts off.

I know you are well-intentioned and you are not the experts here.

The solidarity budget is a literal manual.

Thank you.

Um, Amarantia, uh, let's tee you up and just hit star six.

Judith, I'm still looking at your tile here.

Just need you to hit star six and we will get you up to speak.

Okay.

I think I hit it.

Can you hear me?

Yes.

Hey Amarantia.

Thank you.

Oh, perfect.

Hi.

Thanks so much for the extra time, council members.

Good morning.

My name is Amaranthea Torres, and I'm speaking on behalf of the Coalition Ending Gender-Based Violence.

We support the ongoing work to build meaningful alternatives to the criminal legal system, such as the recent Community Safety Capacity Building Program, among others.

We believe survivors of physical abuse, coercion, domestic violence, stalking, sex trafficking, rape, and sexual assault need alternatives that are specifically tailored to the unique harms they've experienced and the ongoing danger that they face.

Gender-based violence programs have a wealth of knowledge in this area.

We've long offered a range of innovative supports outside of the criminal legal system to protect survivor safety and hold people who cause harm accountable, including survivor-driven advocacy.

Some examples include creative and steady safety planning when a survivor does not want to report to police, prevention programs like equitable relationship classes and building a culture of consent, enlisting trusted community members to intervene when violence occurs, advocacy with survivors about what repair and harm looks like to them.

gender-based violence programs need financial investments to continue survivor-driven mobile advocacy and to keep innovating on these alternatives.

Thank you, Amarantia.

If you want to send in the rest of your comments, that would be wonderful.

And Jason, good morning.

Good morning.

My name is Jason Shikes.

I'm a resident.

I just wanted to echo a couple of comments.

Jason, could you speak up just a little bit?

Yes.

OK, great.

That's better.

Yeah.

Hi, again, my name is Jason Sykes.

I'm a resident of District 4, and I wanted to speak on the police accountability budget items in the upcoming city budget.

Adding them up, it looks like we're going to budget $10.5 million for an accountability system that very few people seem satisfied with.

Again, at the very least, I would want the council to deeply look into the whistleblower complaint that showed that the Office of Inspector General is prioritizing its political relationships with the Office of Police Accountability and intentionally telling employees not to create written records that reflect poorly on the Office of Police Accountability, which is crazy because that is The job of the OIG is to investigate and hold the Office of Police Accountability accountable.

It's a crazy system.

It should be completely redesigned, but at the very least, it needs to be held to account before you fund it again.

Thank you.

Okay, thank you so much.

And Judith, I still see you listed as muted.

We are going to give you one more chance, trying to get you off mute, star six.

Sorry if it's frustrating over there.

I know some folks have been hitting pound six, so I'm just going to keep you up for another second.

Okay, Judith, I still see you muted, so I'm going to go ahead and move us on.

Please do send in your comments to council at seattle.gov.

Colleagues, that does conclude today's public comment, and we're going to head right on into items of business as we have a packed agenda for this Friday.

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

Thank you for your time.

on the line here as well.

Thank you, Council Member Peterson.

We will have Kelvin begin some of the initial comments, if that sounds good, and then we'll have you be the first to offer some comments and thoughts as well.

You know what?

I'm going to switch this up a little chair's prerogative here.

The presentations for today are all very long and really appreciate the work that central staff have done on these.

So for today, I'm going to ask if council members who do have purview over these specific areas, if you did have any opening comments, you're welcome to do that because if we have questions throughout, I just want to make sure that we got a chance to hear from you first.

So if you don't mind, Calvin, I'm going to ask Council Member Peterson if there's anything you'd like to say as opening comments as we get into Department of Transportation, you're welcome to do that.

And of course, we will defer to you first for questions, but there may be some questions throughout.

So I don't want to miss the chance to get you in for some opening comments.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

I think we'll just, if it's okay with you, we can just have Calvin Chow start his presentation.

I think I'll have comments when we get to the issue ID section of it.

That's great.

Okay.

Thank you, Council Member Peterson.

And then when we get to those issue IDs, of course, we'd love to hear your thoughts first and then get other folks.

on the issue IDs, but, Kelvin, in your presentation, is it okay if folks do have questions throughout if they ask you?

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

Okay, thank you, Councilmember Peterson.

Thank you, Kelvin.

Let's take it away on Seattle Department of Transportation.

Councilmembers, good morning.

My name is Kelvin Hsiao with Council Central staff, and today I'll be reviewing the proposed SDOT budget, and my colleague, Patty Wigrin, will be managing the slides.

My presentation today will be on a high-level summary of my issue paper, which is also attached to the agenda.

And so I thought we should start with an overview of SDOT's proposed budget.

Patty, if you could.

Next slide.

Thank you.

So the first slide summarizes SDOT's operating expenses only.

And you can see that the 2022 proposed budget is about 15% higher than the 2021 adopted budget.

318 million.

And there are two main factors for this increase.

The first is in mobility operations, which is row A.

And this BSL increased by 26% because it includes 19 million of additional transit service purchases from Metro that are part of the STBD Proposition 1 transit measure.

The other major factor is in row F, which is the new parking enforcement BSL, which reflects the transfer of the parking enforcement division from SBD to SDOT.

So that is $18.4 million of general fund.

If you exclude these two adjustments, then SDOT's operating budget is really a continuation of 2021 levels of service.

I'd also note that the budget does not restore some operational cuts that were made during the 2021 budget, about 5.9 million that were scattered among a number of different SDOT programs.

Next slide, please.

This slide shows the capital appropriations for SDOT spending.

And as a reminder, capital spending can typically vary from year to year based on the actual project schedules.

So the fluctuations aren't necessarily a result of policy changes.

The 2022 proposed budget is 11% higher than last year's budget, about 400 million for capital.

The most significant proposals are $5.2 million for bridge repair and $2.4 million to restart the Center City connector streetcar project.

And both of these items will be discussed in the issues section.

In total, including all capital and operating costs, SDOC's proposed budget is almost 13% more than the 2021 adopted budget at about $718 million.

At the very bottom, you'll see.

Just very briefly, Calvin, I wanted to just remind folks the the chat function doesn't necessarily work as the best feature on this remote system that we have here.

So I'm going to ask for folks to let me know.

Are you hearing any feedback?

And if so, if there's anything that we can do on the technical side, some folks are hearing some static feedback.

Okay, we will just keep our ear on it.

And if you have any technical concerns or audio concerns, let us know and we'll try to get those fixed.

Sorry, I just wanna make sure it's coming through loud and clear on Seattle Channel and for all of our colleagues.

So I'll look for a thumbs up if you're okay.

If you'll bear with me for a moment, I will move to a...

We're gonna go with high tech headphones with a microphone.

Folks following along at home here?

Thanks so much.

Bear with us one second.

And thank you for alerting us, council members.

That sounds better to me.

There was a high-pitched something going on and now it's gone.

Okay, I'm seeing multiple nods.

I'm hearing that.

Council Member Peterson and I did not hear it, so we might need to get our hearing checked, but other people apparently did.

Council members, can you hear me now?

Is that better?

I think it's good.

Could you pull the microphone just a little closer to you?

Is that better?

I think so.

Yeah, I'm seeing nods.

Okay, Calvin, thanks for your fix there.

Sorry to interrupt you.

That's fine.

I was talking about the position list at the very bottom.

You can see that the department is actually increasing the number of positions by about 13% more or excuse me, by about 16% more.

This includes a total of 157.5 FTEs that are new to SDOT.

120 of these are related to the parking enforcement officers.

About 24 are conversions of temporary term limited positions to permanent positions that would otherwise expire in 2022. There are six and a half FTEs that are new positions with no new budget appropriations required or requested.

and using funding from within the existing program budgets.

And there are seven FTEs that are new positions with new budget appropriations.

Next slide, please.

This slide shows SDOT's revenues and resources that support SDOT's expenses.

As you can see in row O, the general fund contribution to SDOT is increased.

And again, this is primarily due to the parking enforcement transfer.

As you may recall, the Move Seattle Levy requires a minimum general fund contribution to SDOT to ensure no supplantation.

The minimum requirement for 2022 is 46.4 million.

If you exclude the Parking Enforcement Division and the TNC tax revenue from SDOT's budget, the remaining general fund contribution would be 49.5 million, which is still higher than the minimum requirement.

I'd also point out that these resources, while they do match the expenditures, they include a significant drawdown of fund balance.

Next slide, please.

This slide shows some of SDOT's major funds, and it highlights that the department is relying on almost $41 million of fund balance in 2022. Some of this is expected, particularly for Move Seattle, where this is consistent with planned spending on the portfolio of projects.

That levy expires in 2024, and it is tied to a capital spending plan.

But the other funds really do provide funding for SDOT's ongoing operations and maintenance.

Even with the use of fund balance, SDOT's budget relies on significant recovery of transportation revenue sources, though not back to pre-pandemic levels.

And so there is a risk that if resources don't recover as quickly as projected, we would have to use additional draw on fund balance or potentially cut back on levels of service.

With the current financial projections, the transportation fund would not become net positive in revenue until 2024. So that sort of concludes my broad overview, and the next slides will cover issues for council's attention.

So I'm happy to take any questions before we move into that.

Seeing none.

So- Peterson, would you like to offer any questions or comments?

Thank you.

different priorities to try to juggle and synthesize with Seattle Bridge closure, dealing with that emergency.

I really appreciate all the city workers in the field working on these projects for us.

There are a lot of Vision Zero safety projects that are being implemented now, and I know there will be an interest in a lot of Looking at a district specific projects like pedestrian safety projects that we have in our districts and bigger picture You know I did as I mentioned before One disappointment with this budget is that it doesn't it seems to kick the can down the road again on on bridges and we have consistently discuss this issue for the past year.

And now that we have the full $700 million budget in front of us, my questions later as we get an issue ID will be about how can we make this a yes end moment where we are honoring the previous discussions and decisions on how to allocate the $7 million of vehicle licensee.

That's a discussion that is in the past, in a way, because now we have the full $700 million budget.

And we also have an infrastructure bill that, or two infrastructure bills, we hope, that are coming from the Congress.

And I think this is a moment that, with the West Seattle Bridge closure, with the bridge audit, that we as a council, while the executive has not done much more for bridges here, this is an opportunity for us to do more for bridges, multi-modal bridges, buses use bridges, pedestrians use bridges.

I'm thinking about the university bridge.

I'm also thinking about some of the commitments made during the move to move Seattle levy voters.

If you remember The Seattle Times did an excellent piece on how there were re-estimates of the seismic upgrade costs to bridges throughout the city, and that there were 16 bridges that were promised for seismic upgrades, and SDOT, when they got revised estimates, they actually took some bridges off the list.

And so I would like to look at addressing those bridge issues that includes the Ballard Bridge, the Fremont Bridge, the University Bridge, the Second Avenue South Bridge, which was ranked poor by the bridge audit.

And so I'll be, as we get an issue idea, I want to sort of take an expansive view of the $700 million budget and also looking at the transit investments.

We, as you know, we added $20 VLF, which added $7 million.

So that funding, what we'll learn later, I think, in this, and it's in Calvin's excellent memo, is that there are some, SDOT is holding back a lot of money for transit, and I know that there's a desire to do more for transit.

I do want to just daylight the reserves that are just sitting there, about 17 million, I believe.

So we'll talk more about that as we go through issue ID.

But Chair Mosqueda, thank you.

Those are my initial thoughts and comments.

Appreciate that.

Thank you.

And having recently tried to bring a bike trailer for a kiddo on one of these bridges and having to take the road because it would not fit.

I completely appreciate the connections that you have drawn between bridges and multimodal transit options, including buses.

So look forward to getting into issue ID.

I'm not seeing any additional comments.

Let's go ahead.

Next slide, please, Patty.

So the first issue for discussion is the vehicle license fee.

In last year's budget, Council authorized an increase in the vehicle license fee from $20 to $40.

And at that time, Council directed SDOT to engage in a stakeholder process to develop a spending plan for the additional revenue.

After SDOT completed that process, Council approved a 2021 spending plan, which funded SDOT's operational programs for safe streets, safe sidewalks, strong bridges and structures, active transportation maintenance, and planning.

In approving the 2021 spending, council also directed SDOT to develop a list of transportation projects that could be funded by $100 million of bond financing.

So this was the idea of turning that revenue stream into debt service to finance a large bond outlay.

The project list was to include a minimum of $75 million for bridge projects, and that list is actually on the next couple slides, so we can go to that in a second.

The 2022 proposed budget does not include any funding for the projects on this list, but proposes to continue spending on the same operational programs as of 2021. So I have listed here an option to redirect those resources to other priorities.

Next slide, please, Patty.

So the next couple of slides do show the SDOT project list.

And I just wanted to note that issue two and issue three I provide a summary of SDOT's bridge and Vision Zero spending to help provide some additional context to this conversation.

So for this first slide shows the $75 million of identified bridge projects.

There are eight bridge projects here in total, and the spending is spread out over the next five years, which, if pursued, would provide time for SDOT to move through project development and finish design.

These amounts are total estimated project costs.

And in developing this project list, SDOT did not rely on any external grant funding.

I think I see a question.

Is there a clarifying question, Council Member Herbold?

Oh, Council Member, you are still on mute.

We limit ourselves to clarifying questions at this point?

Well, I think that if your hand or comment was more related to weighing in on the options, then I might wait for us to get through the full slide here.

Yeah, I think it's more, my comment is more granular than the options.

It's more to do with the projects on the list.

Yeah, go ahead, please.

Okay, thanks.

I just want to note that The first two projects are, of course, Project 1 projects.

And item A is the Fontenoy Freeway, which connects the bridge to the peninsula.

Item B is the Spokane Viaduct, which connects the bridge to the rest of the road heading east towards I-5.

And these are proposed for projects for 2022, and 2023, and 2024. And I just want to say for the record if we are.

West Seattle needs a break.

And I think I'd like to make sure that we keep the roadway open and free from closures as much as possible for the next few years.

Thanks.

Thank you, Council Member.

And I think, you know, the policy option before you is really, do you want to continue using this funding for operational funding or do you want to divert it to a capital program of some sort?

And then we can work through the details of what that capital program might look like.

And this is one option that identified projects that SDOT is aware of, and we can work to move things around if that is the direction the council goes.

Patty Creeper.

Chair, may I?

Please, go ahead.

And I know that this is how it was sort of framed back in the spring, because we had created this additional funding of $7 million.

And there was, as we like to say, a robust debate about how to index those dollars.

And even though that's how it was framed up before, because we had that new money, but it was a relatively small amount of money, Now we have the full $700 million budget.

So I don't think it's an either or choice.

It could be a yes and depending on how we unpack the entire budget, but I appreciate.

seeing these numbers on the screen here for potential projects.

And I'm disappointed that the Durkin administration didn't then choose to fund them or provide a way to fund them.

We know there are ways to fund them, such as by issuing bonds.

But we want to be careful how we then pay for those bonds so we're not taking away from other programs.

And I think there may be a way to do that as we continue our budget discussions.

Thank you.

Patty, next slide, please.

This slide shows the $25 million of non-bridge projects.

SDOT identified nine projects.

And similarly, these projects are spread out over the next three years.

They're generally smaller projects.

They're not as complicated as the bridge projects.

And as part of the response to the request, they only identified projects that were eligible for bond financing.

So they only included projects with an expected life of over 20 years.

I think I mentioned previously that the next couple items will cover sort of what is in the bridge spending and Vision Zero spending.

But if there are any other questions, I can move on.

I'm not seeing any hands, Calvin.

Next slide, please, Patty.

So the next issue for discussion is the bridge infrastructure spending.

In 2020, at Chairman Peterson, Council Member Peterson's request, The city auditor completed a report on SDOT's bridge maintenance program, and that audit made 10 recommendations for business process improvements, which SDOT is currently implementing.

The report also identified an ongoing need for $34 million per year for bridge maintenance, which is based on an engineering assumption that annual maintenance should be 1% of the total replacement cost of the asset.

The report found that SDOT's average spending on bridge maintenance from 2006 to 2019 was $6.6 million per year.

In calculating this figure, the audit focused only on routine maintenance programs, and the audit excluded asset preservation programs such as seismic upgrades and bridge replacement expenses.

To provide a bit more context, the next slide summarizes SDOT's total proposed capital and operating programs related to bridges.

Next slide, please.

So this table...

Sorry, Calvin.

Let's do one issue at a time if we can.

If we go back one slide real quick, do you mind just backing up one more so that we can have a kind of concluding thoughts on that first issue ID?

Kazimer Peterson, did you have your hand up?

I think we have a question from the auditors.

And some folks would take the midpoint of the $34 million and the $102 million and just say it's $68 million is what the ongoing repair and maintenance costs would ideally, or the investments would ideally be if we had those resources.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Calvin, I'm sorry to interrupt you.

I just wanted to make sure that We're following along here with the issue identification that you've included in your memo.

So if folks had any additional comments before we move on to the bridge infrastructure piece, were there any additional comments or questions that people had on issue ID number one and the options and be there?

Okay, great.

Thanks, Calvin.

Sorry about that.

And please continue.

Thank you, Chair.

I appreciate you holding me to the agenda.

No, you're doing great.

I know there's a lot of context here, so thanks for walking us through it all.

Patty, could you please turn to the next slide?

Thank you.

So this table shows only programmatic spending on bridges in the proposed budget.

This is programmatic bridge spending, so the West Seattle Bridge, for example, is not included.

You can see that the bulk of the capital spending is closely tied to the Move Seattle Levy timeline, which expires in 2024. The Bridge Seismic Program, for example, which is one that Council Member Peterson mentioned earlier, funds currently nine bridges as a deliverable of the Move Seattle Levy with this particular line item.

At the bottom half of the table, we only show the operational spending for 2022, but these programs are expected to be ongoing and funded in future budgets.

These cover operations and maintenance for all of the bridge and structures division.

So this includes some other functions that aren't necessarily tied to bridges, such as engineering support for other projects.

In the 2022 proposed budget, there is a proposal to add $5.2 million for bridge capital spending to fund repairs for the 4th Over Argo Bridge and repairs on three of SDOT's Bascule Bridges.

The proposed budget also includes $1.9 million from the VLF money that we discussed earlier for bridge maintenance, which largely replaced what was a one-time $2 million general fund ad that council added in the 2021 adopted budget.

Are there any questions on this issue?

Please go ahead, Council Member Peterson.

Just to clarify, Calvin, you might have mentioned this, but item D, bridge seismic, that does not include the Move Seattle Levy items for Ballard Bridge and Fremont Bridge, correct?

Because those are taken off the...

That's correct.

It's the ones that were approved by the reassessments from 2020 or 2019. I can't remember exactly when the realignment happened.

There were two phases of that.

Okay, thank you.

Okay, with no other questions, I go to the next slide.

Thank you.

Thank you.

So issue three, again, to provide some additional context is Vision Zero spending.

Vision Zero is the city's goal of eliminating traffic fatalities and serious injuries on city streets by 2030. And so it is a safety goal for both SDOT and the traveling public.

And because Vision Zero is an overarching vision, it can be sometimes difficult to point out all the related capital spending in the CIP.

Many individual projects like the Georgetown to South Park Trail are fundamentally Vision Zero projects, but the CIP does include several programmatic capital programs that are dedicated to implementing Vision Zero improvements.

And so on the next slide, I've provided a summary of this proposed spending for the CIP projects.

Once again, this table only shows secured funding in the CIP, and the spending reflects reliance on the Move Seattle Levy, similar to the bridge projects.

There's only one project that is actually named Revision Zero, and it focuses on the high traffic arterials that have the highest number of crashes.

That is in row A.

The line item in row B, the Neighborhood Traffic Control Program, focuses for traffic calming on non-arterial streets, There are two participatory budgeting programs, the Item C and Item D, Neighborhood Large Projects and the Neighborhood Park Street Fund, which generally fund projects that are selected by the community.

Those projects are not currently accepting new requests, but they are funding projects that were already identified and are in the queue for delivery.

And then the remaining projects that are listed fund implementation of the Pedestrian Master Plan and the Bike Master Plan.

I wanted to note for both the Vision Zero programs and the bridge programs, and actually for SDOT in general, that with Move Seattle expiring in 2024, thinking through what a renewal of that might, what a proposal might look like is really the next major opportunity to contemplate major shifts in the spending priorities.

We have commitments from Move Seattle.

We have leveraged a lot of transportation revenues, and we are coming up on a time where we can dramatically rethink or reprioritize the spending for another window if we go forward with a proposed renewal.

And I'll stop here if there are any questions on this slide.

Thank you.

Council members, any questions?

Okay, I'm not seeing any.

Calvin?

Okay, Patty, next slide, please.

Issue number four is federal infrastructure funding.

And so of great interest to all of us is the federal infrastructure bill, which passed the Senate in August.

That bill has $1.2 trillion for transportation, utility, and internet investments.

And this included the reauthorization of the Surface Transportation Act.

The funding proposal covers five years, 2022 through 2026, but it still requires passage in the House before becoming law.

Most of the transportation funding would flow through existing federal grant programs and formula allocations, so we'll need to monitor those program requirements as the federal agencies roll them out.

SDOT has recent experience in securing federal funds, most recently for the Madison BRT and the West Seattle Bridge, but some of the potential projects that we may want to put forth may need additional project development and design to be eligible and competitive for these grants.

How's our Peterson and I?

My office did.

I did speak with the staff at the DC office and committee staff of one of our US Senators Maria Cantwell to try to get a better understanding of.

The $1.2 trillion of the bipartisan so-called bipartisan infrastructure bill, and the good news is that.

They.

That includes a small bridge competitive grant program and they did.

confirm that the city having local dollars to match would put us in a highly competitive position.

Unlike other cities, compared to other cities, we have a lot of bridges and we have a lot of smaller bridges.

And so that is another, I'll keep trying to pitch the concept of doing something more for bridges here.

There's a real opportunity here with this federal bill to put together some local matching dollars.

It's true that SDOT has had recent success in getting things funded.

Part of that, I believe, is due to the West Seattle Bridge emergency that we had.

Everybody, I think, recognized that was an emergency, and so we were able to get matching funds for that.

But I wanted to just note that one of the authors of this bill is saying that having a local funding match would put us in a more competitive position for a small bridge, local small bridge program.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Peterson.

I want to echo your appreciation for our congressional delegation, Senator Murray, Senator Cantwell, and our Seattle delegation who have been working on that.

I also want to echo their strong support for a continuation of congressional direction and discretion so that they can identify projects like this and to be able to maintain that.

at the federal level is something that they have been fighting for, so appreciate their work on that.

And wanna also emphasize the importance of passing the infrastructure bill, traditional infrastructure for bridges and roads, along with human infrastructure with the Build Back Better Act.

And I think that that is a conversation our congressional members are having right now and appreciate Senator Murray and Senator Cantwell and Representative Jayapal's leadership on that.

So hopefully we will be able to enact infrastructure for roads, bridges and families across our city here soon.

Thank you for raising this, Cal, and we will continue to look for updates on how that moves.

And if there's anything from your conversations with senators as well, Council Member Peterson, that we should be doing to show our support broadly for the infrastructure bills, I'm happy to work with you as well to send those messages.

Did you still have your hand up, Council Member Peterson, on another end?

Okay, just carry over.

Okay, great.

Council President Gonzalez, anything from you?

I was just going to suggest, and Calvin, I don't know, maybe you've already done that, but have you had any coordination with folks over at the Office of Intergovernmental Relations on this issue?

And perhaps you can share a little bit more about what conversations you've had with OIR that might be relevant to this discussion.

I have had conversations with OIR mostly to confirm what I've prepared in the memo and mentioned here.

I think it's a fluid.

We are all waiting to see what actually comes out and actually gets approved into law.

I think there may be options for congressional delegation to identify specific needs that may come into play.

But I think the vast majority of the money will still rely on existing programs, which we do have some history securing funding from.

Typically, those do require local match of some amount to demonstrate that you have a real project.

And I think one of the key things that maybe will come up again later on in my paper getting sort of projects developed enough where we are confident of the costs, confident of the scope, that helps with our project requests, our grant requests as well, because we're clear that we have a clearly defined project and it isn't firm cost estimates and a plan for how to move forward.

So I do think that part of this is trying to figure out when the right time When will the granting agencies make this money available?

The budget is proposed to be available over five fiscal years.

Some of the money does tend to roll over.

You get into the queue and then you kind of get to the place where you actually get the award many years later.

So I think there's a lot of work that needs to be done up front to kind of get a project list developed that could be eligible for funding.

Okay, I think I will.

Patty, can you move to the next slide, please?

Very briefly.

Council President, anything else on that?

Okay, great.

Great question.

Thank you, Cal, for the work that you've done on coordinating with our Office of Intergovernmental Relations, and we look forward to, you know, standing at the ready to help in any way, and again, sending our appreciation to the Seattle delegation and our Washington congressional representatives for all that they're trying to do in the Senate and in our house to make sure that these bills are all passed together and that we get the infrastructure funding.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Issue 5 is the STPD Proposition 1 transit service.

So just as a reminder for everyone, Seattle voters renewed Proposition 1 in 2020, and it authorized a 0.15% sales tax to fund transit service and transit-related programs.

So the proposed budget increases the amount of transit service purchased from 2020 from King County Metro by about $7.7 million.

a total of 28.5 million of transit service, which is roughly equivalent to 150,000 bus service hours, or about 2,200 weekly bus trips.

I note that transit ridership has not yet recovered from the effects of the pandemic.

The WSDOT reporting site shows sort of a statewide number that's about 40% below baseline through the summer.

It is increasing, it is recovering, but we're still not at pre-pandemic levels yet.

Fair revenue does help offset the cost of transit service.

So lower ridership means that our transit service purchases cost more per hour.

SDOT is holding about 17 million in reserves against potential escalating costs or revenue fluctuations if our revenue projections don't hold.

And the reserves are also there to manage the program over the entirety of the measure.

Our transit service agreement with Metro allows us to, we're required, the maximum service change we can do is 100,000 hours.

So if the measure were to expire, there is a need to keep some funding available to be able to meter that out over the Metro service planning changes to meet the commitments in the contract.

The proposed budget also funds programs that support access to transit for low-income individuals, essential workers, and students, transit infrastructure projects, and programs to meet emergent needs related to COVID-19 and the closure of the West Seattle Bridge.

I'll pause here if there are any questions.

Council Member Peterson.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

Thank you, Calvin, for the mentioning of the reserves that SDOT's proposing that we hold back.

And your memo is very thorough on this, too, on page 11, the $17 million.

And part of that was a holdover from the previous measure.

One of the reasons that SDOT gave, which I think you mentioned, was to allow for a gradual ramp down of transit services if the measure is not renewed in 2027. And I just feel that if we do want to ramp up these transit, invest these transit dollars sooner, that I would think there would be room to do that without jeopardizing the future because I know that there's a lot of discussion about looking at this transportation benefit district and taking it, doing something King County wide so that we go back to a regional approach.

And we had structured this ballot measure to be several years into the future so that we could go to the voters perhaps early to King Cou do it regionally.

And then the fallback position of where there's such strong here.

So to me, the renewa a desire.

A lot of advoca do more for transit.

Let's of the frequency and the system.

We've got the li up and I know we've gotten office, uh, folks who'd li getting them to the light One of the things we may want to do during this budget process is take a hard look at those reserves, how much are really needed, and wouldn't it be nice to deploy more of those transit dollars now?

The one thought that I would put to you is to just remember that increasing transit service now is, you know, the expectation is that we would want to keep those services into the future as well.

So, you know, Thinking about adding, using the reserves for a one-time drawdown now, sort of, please think about that in terms of what that increased cost is for the next several years of that service, because we wouldn't want to just ramp up a service in one year and then have to take it back if revenues aren't matched.

So to kind of think through the overtime impact of adding service.

But as I recall, you had a nice chart.

This might have been a part of the question and answer process with when you're asking the agency to provide a spending plan, not just for 2022, but for the entire length of STD.

And they were piling money into the reserves throughout every year.

And so it seems like there could be a way of adding transit service from the reserves in a way that is sustainable through the rest.

Because this issue of ramp down risk in the final year, I think is less of an issue because we'll either We'll either win it King County-wide or we're going to win it in Seattle.

And so I don't, I just, you know, I would hate to hold back on service now when there's such demand and having that intense frequency of buses is what will get people to consider getting out of their cars and then the reliability of the buses.

So just some thoughts there.

Thanks.

Yes, Council Member, I was, it was just a sustainability issue that I wanted to make sure was part of the conversation.

Thank you.

Okay, Calvin, I am not seeing additional hands on this one.

Okay, Patty, next.

Oh, excuse me, Council President, please go ahead.

Just, thank you, Madam Chair, sorry for raising my hand so late here.

I did, you know, in response to your flag, Calvin, which is always a good one, We don't want to inadvertently create fiscal cliffs where they don't need to be, which I think is what you're flagging here.

Is there sort of an in-between between status quo and what Council Member Peterson is proposing?

In other words, is there a way to make an increase in transit service in 2022 that is more scalable.

So I'm thinking, for example, in our conversation around the vehicle licensing fee, where we looked at how we can target some of those dollars towards essential workers, for example, and providing them with reduced fares or free fares.

So I'm just sort of thinking about whether there is something similar to that kind of a model that would allow us to have an increased transit service in 2022 that is scalable in nature so as to avoid the fiscal cliff danger that you are identifying.

I think it will take some more work with the department to dig into the plan reserves and sort of work out what some options might be and what that might look like.

It really does come down to the funding.

We have an expected revenue stream that's tied to sales tax.

I don't know that there's that much else that we can do aside from think through what the revenue policy should be, unless we're willing to consider other revenue sources to support transit service.

Got it.

Thank you.

Okay, seeing no more questions.

Patty, next slide, please.

So issue number six is the Center City streetcar and the existing sales streetcar system.

These really are kind of two separate issues, but I think they do sort of inform each other.

The 2022 proposed budget includes $2.4 million to restart project development on the Center City Streetcar Connector.

So as a reminder, this project would connect the existing South Lake Union Streetcar to the First Hill Streetcar through downtown Seattle.

Prior to the pandemic, Council had authorized $9 million to assess the project after cost estimates increased and problems with the vehicle design were reported.

But with the pandemic, Council redirected those funds to other priorities, and so this project was put on a hiatus.

The proposed $2.4 million would allow SDOT to reassess how to proceed with the project, including maintaining eligibility for federal grants and evaluating potential conflicts with the Sound Transit downtown tunnel alignment for the West Seattle Ballard extension.

The proposed funding is general fund using the TNC tax revenue.

So as an option, council may not want to restart the Center City Streetcar project and then could then repurpose that funding.

The proposed budget also includes $5.3 million to operate the existing First Hill and South Lake Union streetcars, and this is the SDOT contribution to the total cost of operations, which will be about $14 million in 2022. The streetcar does rely on fares and contributions from Sound Transit and King County to fund operations.

These external contributions will expire over the next few years, and so SDOT's contributions are projected to increase over time to make up the difference.

As with other forms of transit, ridership on the streetcar is recovering, but the ultimate pace of that recovery is still unknown.

The proposed budget assumes that the streetcar will raise 1.6 million of fare revenue in 2022, which is pretty close to the 1.8 million that was collected before the pandemic in 2019. So if ridership recovers slower than anticipated, streetcar service may require additional public subsidy or reductions in planned service.

and I'll pause for any questions.

Council members, any questions?

Okay, Council Member Peterson, please go ahead.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

In terms of the $2.4 million, I was just looking at the capital improvement program part of our budget, and the central city connector has its own page in the budget.

If there were a study and there was the option to go forward, it would be...

I mean, there's a lot of sunk costs already into this project.

And then I believe it'd be about...

165 million or something more that would have to be spent and that's for the capital element not not the operating subsidy and so I'm just you know, I just I think I've been Consistent with my concerns about this particular project being redundant with other modes of transportation along that corridor there with the light rail and buses and other options that are available.

As I recall, this is not a Move Seattle levy project.

We have lots of unfulfilled promises with Move Seattle levy, the seismic bridge upgrades I mentioned, for example.

I am concerned this project, Well, I'll just stop there because I see Council Member Herbold.

Council Member Peterson.

Council Member Herbold.

I just want to add for clarification purposes, the CIP entry for this project lists 92 million in unsecured funding.

It says unsecured funding strategy, SDOT will continue to work with the mayor's office and the city council to determine the future of the project.

Separately, the CIP entry notes $50 million in federal funding from 2023 as secured.

I had put in a question to SDOT about the federal funding, and the Budget Office reply acknowledges that the Small Starts grant was never awarded.

SDOT holds no grant funds associated with this grant.

The $50 million in the last year and a half.

And then the last year and a half lapsed at the end of fiscal year September 30th 2021. there is not 50 million in federal funding and I know that vectors about way feels feels confident the match from the federal government stance at this point, because that has really been a driver of some of our decisions in the past, is the fact that we were, we didn't have the money in hand, but the funds had been approved.

So I think it's really important to consider that when we're considering investing more dollars in studying this option.

I agree with Council Member Peterson that that corridor is well-served by transit.

And the funding source, TNC taxes, would be a great funding source for investing more deeply in some of our region zero projects.

So I would be really interested in looking I think it is important to look at other more pressing needs for those PNC funds.

Maybe just piling on to what Councilmember Herbold just noted.

Does that mean that the total amount of lapse funding from the federal government on this is actually $57.3 million that we have not been able to utilize that has been allocated to the city from our federal partners?

I know there is no outstanding federal grant money, as Council Member Herbold mentioned.

It has lapsed.

SDOT had received a grant to pursue vehicle procurements, and that was part of what led to some of the re-evaluating of the project two years ago.

That grant has lapsed.

We did not spend it.

And so currently there are no outstanding grants on the project.

The project is still in the, it maintains its eligibility for future small grants programs.

So it is still being reported to FTA and has an active grant application in, but there are no current awards.

Okay, there's no current awards.

And then just to follow up on Council Member Herbold's question, is there active seeking of additional federal dollars happening right now that we know of?

I think beyond just sort of maintaining the eligibility in the small starts program, I think that's the only effort I'm aware of to the extent that the new infrastructure bill, if it passes and provides more money to that program, then presumably there would be more federal money available through that existing program, but I'm not aware of any other grant search activity.

Okay, thanks.

Council President, please go ahead.

I would also be interested in hearing a little bit more about, you know, understanding that we don't have any information now that SDOT is actively pursuing particular grants.

I think it would be helpful to get an understanding of their perspective of opportunity in that area for grants to continue to advance the The vision related to the center city streetcar connector and.

And so I hope, Kelvin, that you're able to, after today's meeting, go and talk to SDOT about sort of what their thinking might be available so that we have a better sense and context for what the realm of possibility might be to address that gap in this existing project.

I do want to just address really quickly a couple of comments made by my My good colleagues, Councilmember Peterson and Herbold, as it relates to redundancy or areas that are already well served by transit.

And I just want to remind us that literature in the area of transportation, I mean, dating back to the early 80s, repeatedly tells us that redundancy should be a feature of all transit systems.

especially in mid to large sized cities, because that's what makes the transit network and system actually function really well.

So I want to make sure that we are focused on those good practices and on the expert literature that really does talk about how critically important it is for our transit systems to have redundancy.

Because if one part of the system goes out during an emergency or for whatever other reason, that creates a real pressure on people being able to access transit service if that transit service is no longer available.

And creating these other redundancies allows people to have options throughout the day.

And, of course, options if 1 part of that transit structure fails, then they can rely on the other redundant part that is still functioning and still moving forward.

So.

I normally I agree that redundancy isn't always the most efficient and good thing, but as it relates to transit.

You know, study after study literature piece after literature piece tells us that redundancy is a feature, not a bug in transit systems and wanted to.

lift that up for conversations today.

As we continue to debate sort of how to invest these really critical limited resources to enhance our transit networking system.

I appreciate that, Council President.

Thank you for that reminder.

And Council Member Peterson, please go ahead.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

And a couple of points on this.

Right now, there is the light rail and the bus as transit options.

So I think that there is some redundancy, some positive redundancy there now.

So I agree with Council President Gonzalez that that is helpful.

have that and I'm just concerned about the additional cost with the other needs we have and adding a third item at such high cost.

And Calvin, to the extent that you do check in with that stat about, what they think their chances are for federal funding for this going forward, since it's not secured at this point.

Asking what the status is of the, I understand the Office of Inspector General at the U.S.

Department of Transportation is still, that this project is still under active investigation by the OIG and U.S.

DOT, and so I don't know how that plays into our ability to get federal funding if they're under federal investigation for the project.

So that would just be something to throw out of the mix to see if it would be eligible at this time for funding.

I'll definitely follow up with ASTOD and CBO on sort of the current thinking about federal funding.

I do think part of their intention in proposing this $2.4 million was to rethink funding strategy in general.

The project really has not had any significant work on the city side for a couple years now, so I think it is, I'm not sure how good their response is going, how much of an approved response they're going to be able to give us right now.

Okay, thank you Calvin Council President.

Sorry, just really quickly.

I think, you know, I think if the policy choice related to the center city streetcar is being fueled by.

Concerns related to whether or not we can, um, you know, effectively get those federal grants.

That's 1 policy choice that I think.

Uh, you know, the, the information we're hoping to understand a little bit better from will be helpful towards understanding and Calvin.

It might be that they say.

We don't have any good prospects, but I feel like I haven't heard that very clearly and stated that unequivocally.

And if that's the case.

Then that's relevant information for us as we, as we, as we continue to identify.

You know, ways to move through the, the.

You know, frankly, the pickle that we're in as it relates to the center city street car connector project and so just be helpful to me to just sort of here 1 way or the other is, you know.

Like is this, did we sort of miss our opportunity here and now we're in a position where we are once again delivering on a set of broken promises to members of the community who expected that we would have a connected system of streetcars from the center city all the way to to China Center International District.

And so we just got to sort of identify whether or not that's going to be another broken promise or whether we are going to come together with a clear plan on how we are going to secure the $50 million gap that has been identified through your work and the department's work.

And then the last thing I just want to say is, again, that's one set of questions.

The other set of questions is, Is sort of the vision around what kind of transit network we want to create and I get really concerned when when we we, you know, site to existing bus and future light rail or existing light rail is sort of the only amount of redundancy that we should have.

And I want to I want to make sure that we.

are making decisions about what we want our multimodal transit network to be by including things like streetcars or bike lanes or good, safe sidewalks.

These are all important redundancies for us to have.

And while I agree that this area generally has access to good transit services, again, I don't think that we have sort of Um, reached redundancy saturation as has been, um, asserted in our conversation today.

So, um, so those are, those are, I, I see that I see there's a distinction between, can we fund these projects and the sort of policy question around what kind of transit network are we looking to create for this part of the city that will, um, serve workers, visitors and others in this area who are taking public transit, which is good for all of us, because it reduces congestion in downtown.

Thank you, Council President.

I will just underscore one question that I asked earlier, because it relates to what the Council President just lifted up again.

And then we'll have Council Member Herbold close us off on this one.

And then we'll get to the last item, the last three items for issue identification here.

Calvin, to that point that Council President Gonzalez just made again, I want to make sure that the expiration of the $7.3 million for the Small Starts grant, if that has expired and we have also let the $50 million that we originally received expire, have we lost or are we in a worse position to get federal grants in the future?

Politically, I would guess yes, because when people continue to put time and energy and political capital into helping the city receive federal funding and then to have it not be put to use, I assume, like our state legislative members, it's harder for them to continue to find funding for specific projects.

But, like, you know, technically, are we still eligible for all of these other grants and is the loss of $50 million and the unused and expired 7.3 million called out in your memo here, are we still able to secure federal grants for this project in the future?

So that's just a quick underscoring of the big questions there.

And if you don't have an answer now, that's fine too.

Well, I have a couple of thoughts that I just wanted to add.

So, I mean, SDOT has been very clear that they think the project on its merits on the amount of ridership that it would generate and sort of the Efficiency argument of connecting the existing streetcar lines.

They think that the project does score very well For the small starts criteria, and I have no reason to argue that I think that compared to other public Transit projects that are proposed around the country That we probably do score very well in terms of the the land uses where it would support and the ridership would generate But that you know transit projects And one of the interesting things about the streetcar is that we have a legacy of the South Lake Union streetcar, which was mostly an economic development tool for South Lake Union, and the First Hill streetcar, which was a way to connect First Hill to the transit network after the First Hill Sound Transit Station was eliminated from the system.

So we had these two sort of legacy projects that didn't really, I don't think fully internalized the ongoing costs that transit subsidy is required to run transit.

And that's what we're seeing now in terms of the amount of commercial parking tax revenue that we are providing to operating the systems.

So I think these things kind of, the system I think is a good, scores well in terms of comparable FTA grants that are out there.

I think it's as much a question of whether we have the, do we have a financial plan that makes sense to us to support that or not?

I think that's really kind of the rub here.

Politically, I think if we have not taken action on the Small Starts Grant, that maybe doesn't is not a great message for other funding sources or for some of our delegation partners.

But in terms of the Small Starts grants itself, I think we're still in the queue and it's more of a delay and not necessarily that we've foregone the opportunity.

Great, and just want to double check before we move on to Council Member Herbold.

Council Member, Council President, did you have a follow-up?

I see your hand's still up.

No.

No, I just forgot to lower my hand.

Okay, great.

Thank you.

Council Member Herbold, please go ahead.

Thanks.

I just want to go back to why we're talking about this $50 million, why I'm talking about this $50 million, because I heard reference to a $50 million gap.

It's not a $50 million gap, there's a $140 million gap.

For me, the importance of the $50 million in federal funding in this discussion has always been for many, many years is that we should continue to pursue this project and fill the gap between the full cost of the project because we have this $50 million.

And so in my questioning whether or not we have this $50 million is to suggest the narrative that has been used for years that we have secured federal funding.

And so we should look at filling the rest of the gap because we have such a substantial match.

I'm questioning that now.

It is not to suggest that we only have a $50 million gap, though.

we have a $140 million gap.

And that's just if none of the costs have gone up since the last time we had this conversation two years ago.

OK.

I was holding back on making a joke about redundancy saturation given the three-year conversation.

Too funny.

OK, please go ahead, Calvin.

OK, next slide, please.

So issue number seven is the integrated transportation planning proposal.

SDOT is proposing to do a major overhaul of its transportation planning, which would integrate the existing modal plans into one common transportation framework and one document.

They propose to do public outreach concurrent with OPCD's major comprehensive plan update and sort of roll those efforts out together.

The total cost of the total of the transportation plan update is expected to be about $4.5 to $5 million over the next two, three years.

The proposed budget adds about $3 million for this effort in 2022, and they have about 500,000 of existing planning resources available.

This type of work would also help inform a new levy proposal potentially for renewing Move Seattle, and as I mentioned before, level renewal planning would be a great opportunity to reassess all of our transportation revenues and transportation priority spending.

Any questions?

Any questions on that?

I'm not seeing any questions.

Let me ask one.

quick question here then.

Just pause to see if any hands up.

Okay.

Of the $3 million available for integrated transportation planning, can you tell me what the total community outreach and engagement budget is?

And similar to our other conversations around OPCD and the need for authentic community engagement, is there any way to gauge whether or not this is sufficient for the type of community outreach that's needed?

I heard the conversation yesterday, so I'll follow up with with my compatriot on the OBCD side and dig into that a bit more.

This may be something that this will be a multi-year process.

So I think right now they recognize a big body of work, but I don't believe that the executive has a firm detailed work plan.

So this could be something that a sly or some other direction from council setting expectations could help establish what you want to see report back to council.

Okay, great.

Calvin, thank you for walking us through all of this.

Is there anything else on this slide?

All right, let's get going.

Okay, next slide, please.

So issue eight is really just to highlight some of the SDOT equity investments that are in the proposed budget.

So these are specific funding proposals directed at historically underserved communities.

I just wanted to highlight that there is funding for the 8th Avenue Street End Park as part of the Duwamish Valley Action Plan.

There is funding for pedestrian and public space improvements in five specific targeted neighborhoods as part of SDOT's RESET program.

There are improvements to the Detective Cookie Chess Park, and there is ongoing funding for SDOT's Transportation Equity Work Group.

Wonderful.

Okay, next.

Great.

Next slide, please, Patty.

This should be slide nine, says slide eight, but should be the ninth issue.

COVID-19 response programs.

So to help accommodate social distancing and provide more public space in the right of way, SDOT's been sort of rolling out a number of programs in response to the pandemic the last two years.

The Safe Starts Cafe Streets program allowed businesses to make structural improvements in the right of way and to allow for outdoor vending and food service.

SDOT is currently developing proposal to make this program permanent for Council's consideration, hopefully in early 2022. But the proposed budget does not by itself include any budget changes with that.

So presumably those proposals would come together with a proposal to Council.

The Stay Healthy Streets program built on the Neighborhood Greenways program to encourage non-motorized use of streets.

And this year SDOT is completing some permanent improvements at Greenwood, Beacon Hill, and Bell Street locations and developing additional proposals for making existing locations permanent in 2022. But the proposed budget does not include funding for additional construction of permanent Stay Healthy Streets.

And then finally, the Keep Seattle Moving program closed streets to vehicle traffic in locations near Seattle parks.

So these included Green Lake Way, Lake Washington Boulevard, Alki Point, and Golden Gardens.

Recently, Green Lake Way was reopened to traffic with a two-way shared path, but the proposed budget does not include any funding for other permanent improvements in 2022. To my knowledge, Lake Washington Boulevard is still envisioned as a summer program.

I believe the Alki Point Temporary closures are still in place and the Golden Gardens closure is no longer being used.

Any questions?

Not seeing any questions on this one.

Okay.

Next slide, please.

So there are two pieces of budget legislation that were transmitted with the budget.

The first is the car share fee ordinance.

This would change the permit fee structure that's in place for free floating car share, and it would move it from a parking-based cost model to a per-trip cost model.

So this would reduce permit fees by about $150,000.

Under the current parking-based model, the program generates about $340,000 in those use fees.

There's also an administrative fee that would continue to be collected under the new legislation.

But this would move to a A per trip fee structure of $0.50 per trip in a vehicle with an internal combustion motor and $0.25 per trip for electric vehicles.

The legislation would also authorize SDOT to determine what an equitable geographic coverage should be for free floating car share services.

Currently in the code, we require that car share companies offer service across the entire city within two years of beginning operations.

So this proposed legislation would give us discretion to consider feasibility and fleet size, specific service areas with identified needs, the breadth of service and sort of what strategies are being used to reach low income customers.

I think it's important to note that this is really being put forth in the context that in 2019, the three companies that were offering these services in Seattle, ceased local operations, and there is currently one new provider that's operating a fleet of 370 vehicles in Seattle.

Any questions on this legislation?

Can you remind me again, why was it that the three companies ceased operations here?

This is just conjecture on my part, but I think the combination of competition from ride share, ride hailing services, other micromobility options, and potentially the requirement to expand your service within two years to cover the entire city may have played a role in their business decisions.

Thanks, Calvin.

Okay, I'm not seeing, oh, excuse me, Council President, please go ahead.

Can you, Calvin, I may have missed you saying this, but who's the remaining car share provider?

The new company is called Gig, gig.

Okay.

Previously, we had Cardigo, ReachNow, and LimePod.

Right, right.

Okay.

And so the ordinance that we're being asked to consider, I'm trying to understand what the change here is programmatically, if any.

Can you give us, I mean, what's the programmatic effect of the council's adoption of this proposed budget legislation?

So the, I think that it really does two things.

It reduces the cost to the permit holder of doing business, continuing to do business in Seattle, reduces that permit fee by about $150,000.

And then the second thing it does is it gives some discretion to SDOT to work with the permittee to figure out what the appropriate coverage service requirements should be.

Without this change, the code would require that a company that's been operating for two years has to demonstrate service is available for the entire city.

Beyond that, I'd have to get more feedback from the department to kind of understand where those discussions have been, but that was the genesis of the proposed legislation.

Okay, so then adopting this legislation would lift the requirement that there be more equitable geographic coverage of car share services.

it would give SDOT the discretion to consider a number of factors in determining whether the service provided was equitably delivered, as opposed to a, you must serve the entire city.

Right, so I just wanna, like for clarity purposes, the current requirement is you have to have geographic equity in these programs in exchange for being able to do business here in this model, right?

That's the status quo.

And this ordinance would give SDOT the discretion to deviate from that and not require equitable geographic coverage, presumably because it's the intent.

We just lost the council president.

But I think you get her points, Calvin.

I have the same question, so I'm happy to pitch it.

Did you want to add anything, Council Member Morales?

Well, this is the piece that I'm struggling with, and I think it would be helpful if we know, you know, what was, what reasons the other companies really did leave.

And if this is the reason, what's behind it, you know, was it really costing them more to try to operate citywide or was it because there were regions of the city that they did not want to operate in is the real question.

And if we have that information that would be very helpful.

I'll be happy to engage us and see what type of information is available.

I'm not, it's not Some of it can seem like hearsay when it comes to the business reasons for why businesses choose to do what they do, but I will get an answer from SDOT.

Okay.

Thank you.

And the Council President is trying to get back on the line here, but I know she will appreciate that line of question from Council Member Morales as well, and your answer, Calvin.

Council Member Herbold, anything else on this slide?

This is anecdotal, and I appreciate that Calvin's going to track down more information, but I remember taking a meeting from Car2Go a couple years ago before they ceased operations, and they were taking my temperature for a decision that they wanted to make, which was to get permission from SDOT to make a change in the ordinance that would allow them to no longer serve part of West Seattle because People were driving the cars downtown, but they're not bringing them back until the end of the day, whereas they like to see lots of circulation of vehicles all throughout the day.

And so it just, you know, it was a part of town that people were definitely using it, but they weren't getting the frequency of coverage and they wanted to stop serving that part of town.

So I definitely know that it was a factor.

And we do have, thank you, Council Member for both for the additional context.

We do have Council President Gonzalez back.

Council President, anything you wanted to add to that?

We're still on the same topic.

Sorry about that.

It turns out your computer will die if it's not plugged in and you're on Zoom for a long time.

So just a pro tip.

to plug it in.

Sorry about that.

I think if I was picking up what Councilmember Herbold was putting down right now, I think that sort of punctuates or creates an example of what I am understanding this change to be.

I am concerned about creating this discretion because I do think it will create some pretty significant inequities in terms of geographic coverage, particularly for low-income communities and also communities like West Seattle that may need to rely on this given how difficult it is to move about on the peninsula currently.

So I'd like to, I'd just like to get a little bit more information about why we are both reducing the permit fee.

and potentially in exchange for that also eliminating the policy goal of requiring equitable geographic coverage of free floating car share services.

That does not seem like a good deal to the people of the city and I have a lot of concerns about that.

So if we could hear a little bit more about intent and policy goals from SDOT, that would be extraordinarily helpful to me in deciding whether or not I can support this budget legislation.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Great, thank you all very much.

Calvin, I know you said you're going to look into it and chat with SDOT and you'll get back to us on this topic of interest clearly to a number of council members, so appreciate it.

Okay, anything else, Calvin?

No, one last piece of budget legislation.

Next slide, please.

So there is also a proposal to update the street use fee ordinance.

We do this fairly regularly.

It updates the hourly service rates and permit fees.

While the cost of permit fees would generally increase, the proposal does include consolidating some administrative and filing fees that had been previously charged separately.

The proposal also creates a new street improvement light permit, which is a less expensive permit for small improvement projects.

And it also maintains the existing free permit programs for block parties, safe streets and similar types of programs.

Any questions?

In my issue paper, there is a table to try to highlight what the impact of the permit fee changes are to different permits and customers.

Okay, thank you for this table as well.

I am not seeing Any specific questions from my colleagues?

I do see street improvement light.

That's a decrease?

It's a new program.

So it sort of creates a new pathway for some of these smaller street improvements.

So for right now, everything kind of falls under the large street improvement program permit.

And this sort of carves out a lesser cost for sort of smaller scale improvements.

OK.

It currently is, is it currently being categorized under utility major?

Utility major or the regular street improvements, there's a line I think there that's, I think it's just below that line.

Yeah, they all have the same dollar amount.

Yes.

Okay.

Got it.

Okay.

All right.

Kelvin, thank you for walking us through this presentation.

Thank you, Council Member Peterson, for your comments and context as well as Chair of Transportation.

And I want to thank all of you for the robust discussion, questions, and ideas that you put out there for today.

I think that concludes our SDOT overview.

So thank you, Kelvin, for all the work that you've done.

And this may come as a surprise to folks, but we are right on time according to my script.

We are going to move into item number two on items of business.

Madam Clerk, can you please read item number two on the record?

Agenda item two, alternatives to police response and the criminal legal system for briefing and discussion.

Okay, wonderful.

Thank you very much for being here with us, Asha Phantrakam.

And colleagues, I think we will try to get through the first few slides and we will then have additional comments after the first overview slides and background.

And then before we get into issue identification, we will have the chance for council members to make comments.

Council Member Herbold, we will start with you as it relates to the public safety aspects.

Thank you, Asha.

Please go ahead.

Welcome.

Good morning, council members.

I'm Asha Venkatraman, your council central staff.

As you can see, we'll be talking through alternatives to police response and the criminal legal system.

I'll provide an overview of the paper and some background about how we'll be discussing it, then turn it over to some of my colleagues to discuss the specific subject matter included in the paper.

The 2022 proposed budget includes a variety of proposals that would reduce the public's involvement with law enforcement and decrease involvement with the criminal legal system in three primary ways.

By developing alternatives to police responses for calls to service, funding approaches other than prosecution and incarceration, and then making investments in community-led solutions to public safety.

And so to help us weave through the complexities of these investments, the paper and the presentation are split into these three main sections.

So as you'll see in the budget summary table, the piece around alternatives to police response lists a variety of investments in that area.

I just wanted to be clear that both this and the other sections don't note everything that the city currently funds, primarily those things that have implications in the 2022 proposed budget, and that fundering is scattered across departments, so including the Human Services Department, the Seattle Fire Department, the City Attorney's Office, and the courts.

And so within the alternatives to police response, you'll see there's entries related to mobile integrated health, the community safety and communication center, administrative response, crisis response units, and crisis lines.

And so in the 2021 adopted budget, we were looking at about $20.4 million related to those responses.

And that has increased by about 20, almost 26%, up to $26.9 million in the 2022 proposed budget.

In terms of alternatives to prosecution and jail, we're looking specifically at prefiling diversion and electronic home monitoring subsidies.

Those were funded at about $640,000 in the 2021 adopted budget and has a proposed increase of about 52% up to $975,000 in the 2022 proposed budget.

Next slide, please.

looking at community-led public safety investments.

You'll see there's a variety of programs, all of which that are currently in HSD, but those programs were funded at about $24.2 million in 2021 and have decreased by 13.5% to about $20.9 million in 2022. Next slide, please.

So this presentation is divided into several parts.

As I mentioned, I'll provide just a basic introduction and background to the presentation itself and the considerations in the issue ID paper.

And then I'll turn it over to my colleagues to talk about alternatives to police response, which will include both the categories of alternatives, how you all might consider implementing those alternatives and then issue identification.

Then we'll move on to the alternatives about prosecution and jail.

We'll get into the background and issue ID there, as well as background and issue ID about community-led public safety investments.

Next slide, please.

In terms of background, you'll note in the paper that there are a variety of reports that are referenced that have recommendations and principles related to the criminal legal system.

And these reports are a result of earlier discussions in the 2019 adopted budget regarding the city's alignment along investments and policies and some of the lack of alignment that existed throughout the city.

in various departments and the various branches of government that are related to the criminal legal system.

It also incorporates council's considerations of the racial disproportionality that exists both nationwide and locally in the criminal legal system.

And so the recommend excuse me, the principles that are referenced on the slide here come from the Community Task Force report on the criminal legal system, which you might have heard about in the Public Safety and Human Services Committee in September.

And so these principles are intended to inform the Council's consideration of the criminal legal system in general.

And so they consist of the pieces around divesting from the system and investing in communities, supporting community capacity to respond to harms, independent of the system and the city, providing resources and funding to community organizations, and prioritizing survivor support.

Next slide, please.

In addition, you might have heard about the criminal legal system strategic plan, which is also a report that came from the Council's requests back in 2019. This strategic plan was heard in the Public Safety and Human Services Committee back in June of this year.

And its analysis is based on a variety of community guiding principles.

And the ones listed here on the slide are those that are related to people that are already involved in the system.

So I won't go through and read all of them, but they have similar themes to the task force report in the sense that the city should reduce unequal and disparate treatment, compassionately and competently engage with people experiencing homelessness and mental illness.

finding alternatives to formal law enforcement, looking at root causes, and increasing alternatives to the system in the form of diversion, decriminalization, and alternatives to arrest.

At this point, if there are no questions, I will turn it over to my colleagues to talk about alternatives to police response.

Let's take a few questions here before we get into those alternatives.

Councilmember Herbold, please go ahead.

Not a question, just a clarification.

Asha mentioned the committee briefing from the criminal legal system task force in my committee.

There was a prior briefing from central staffer.

who we actually brought on to develop the strategic plan.

And we also had a briefing in my committee with Carlos before he left.

It was a time-limited position to develop the strategic plan.

And he presented, I believe, it was maybe in July.

And I just lift that up because there's some differences, right?

So differences between the strategic plan as developed by central staff and the recommendations of the criminal legal system task force members.

And there's a lot of alignment too.

But since Asha is lifting up the task force recommendations, I did want to make sure we didn't forget the great report that Carlos put together as well that is, I think it's part of a whole, I think is how I would like to think of it.

And when we think about the strategic plan, I think we should think of it again as a whole that includes both the task force recommendations and the, I don't know, year, two year long work of our central staff on this project.

Thank you very much.

Thanks for that context Council Member Herbold and I think we can go ahead and continue.

Good morning, council members, Anne Gorman, Council Central staff.

My role here is to walk through what we mean by alternatives to police response to provide context for some issue identification in this area.

When we talk about alternatives to police response, broadly speaking, we mean any response to an incident that is not 100% comprised of law enforcement.

That response could have zero participation from law enforcement or it could be law enforcement with a civilian responder.

Typically, this is someone who has training in mental and behavioral health.

And just to set the scene, the study of alternatives to police has expanded over the past several years in recognition of the fact that a large number of service calls do have a mental and behavioral health component, and that a law enforcement response is not only inappropriate to some of these calls, but may actually compound the stress of people at the scene.

At the same time, there are situations in which a law enforcement response is exactly what is needed.

And all of the alternatives that we're going to walk through today would have the effect of freeing up law enforcement to concentrate on the work that they are uniquely trained and sworn to do.

So this slide lists various categories or elements of alternatives to police response.

But something we want to emphasize is that any one programmatic solution could weave together elements of two or more of these categories.

The first one on the list is mobile integrated health.

These are non-emergency resources and treatment provided by a mobile care provider or providers.

Providers come to the scene, come to people wherever they are, their goal is to meet the immediate need and and move on potentially to serve somebody else.

Sometimes the person at the scene has a need that cannot be met right right there and right then perhaps there is an underlying substance abuse issue or the person's underlying need is for shelter and in that case there is typically a mental or behavioral health person on the scene who can help connect the person to services that will be of assistance in the future.

They can provide referrals.

A couple different kinds of mobile integrated health.

There is medical and non-medical mobile integrated health.

The city currently has a medical MIH program.

This is Health One in the Seattle Fire Department.

Two firefighters and a counselor from HSD come to people and provide the services they need, in some cases the referrals they need, and again, move on to the next person who needs assistance.

Just as a note, all firefighters are EMTs, so that is the healthcare component of this model.

The city also has a non-medical MIH program.

This is the crisis response unit in SPD.

The responders are an officer with crisis intervention training and a counselor from HSD.

Typically, as in the Health One program, the counselor can attend to the scene and also make referrals to ongoing services.

The 2022 proposed budget includes a proposal for another non-medical MIH unit.

This will be called Free Out One and located in the fire department as a complement to Health One.

A couple of key differences between Health One and Triage One.

First of all, these responders in the post program would only attend the scene of non-medical, non-emergency calls.

And something to note here is that this program is acknowledging an unmet need for mental and behavioral health response.

Second, the proposal includes the triage team responders responding to person down calls and performing welfare checks.

Health One does not perform this work.

Both of those bodies of work are currently in SPD and they are among 29 call types that are being analyzed for potential feasibility of civilian response.

No decision yet on that from SPD.

remind us the timeline for when we expect those decisions.

I do not have that information yet.

I will check on that and follow up.

I'm sorry to interrupt you, Anne.

You are doing a fantastic job, by the way.

It's wonderful to see you on the screen.

We haven't had a chance to welcome you officially to this forum, so it is great to see you, Anne Gorman from central staff.

I did see council member Herbold and Greg pop in real quick.

We're probably popping in for the same reason.

They're telling us quarter one.

End of quarter one.

end of quarter one.

Oh, there's a there's a discussion about whether or not we want them just to do the 29 call types now and get that over with or to do the whole analysis of all 50% of call types that the Nick Jr.

Report says may not need an arm response.

Um, They're telling us they can do the big list just as quickly as they can do the smallest.

And they are saying they can get us report by the end of Q1.

But I was somebody who was really wanting them to focus on the smaller numbers since there was strong agreement that that was a number that was sort of low-hanging fruit.

But if we can actually confirm that they can do the big job, in the same amount of time, I don't have a big problem with that.

Thank you, Council Member Herbold.

It would be ideal to get information before our budget process, but I appreciate that how fast and hard you've been working with them to try to get that list.

Greg, good to see you again.

Any additional contacts?

Oh, thanks.

Just one quick follow-up.

Councilmember Herbold, I think, got all of the timing down.

In my presentation this afternoon on police, I will be calling out that SPD will be asking in the 2022 proposed budget to use $260,000 of their salary savings on development of the software to complete this project.

So I just want to highlight that now so that when I get to it this afternoon, you have a marker for it.

Thanks.

Appreciate it.

A preview of a robust discussion to come this afternoon.

I am glad we are starting with the alternatives conversation and apologies for the interruption.

Please go ahead.

It is all welcome information.

The memo also has some information about the Mobile Crisis Team, which is a King County program for which council included funding in the 2021 adopted budget.

That funding continues in the 2022 proposed budget.

Are there any questions specific to mobile integrated health before I go on?

This definitional stuff takes a little while.

Great, great.

Thanks for pausing.

I do see a question from Council Member Lewis.

Thank you so much, Madam Chair.

And Anne, thank you so much for getting us started here.

I just wanted to ask real quickly at the beginning here, of these responses, what is and isn't a direct 911 responder?

Because my understanding is the mobile integrated health team, they are a team that responds after a 911 first responder gets there and flags them.

as someone to come out, is that the case?

I just wanna confirm what is like a first responder in this list and what is a secondary responder?

HealthONE can also be directly dispatched based on the information that is conveyed in a 911 call.

No, I know HealthONE can.

I was asking about the, like the DESC crisis intervention folks.

I believe that team needs to be summonsed to the scene by a first responder.

I can check on that and confirm.

Perfect.

That was what I was just seeking clarification on.

Thank you.

I can give confirmation of that.

So the first responders can reach out to the mobile crisis team to come in response to a call.

There is a pathway where the crisis connections or designated crisis responder can also call on the mobile crisis team.

So there are some other pathways, but I think the one that we're most familiar with is where first responders call the MCT to the site.

Thank you, Jeff Sims of Central Staff.

Good to see you as well.

Thanks for the early response as well from Greg Doss from Central Staff.

Lisa K., did you have anything else you wanted to add?

I see you on screen.

I don't.

Thank you.

Well, it's good to see you too.

Takes a team here.

Wonderful.

Appreciate that, Anne.

Thanks for the question, Council Member Lewis.

And it is a great question teeing up some of the first issue identification issues that I think we'll get to as well, so appreciate it.

So I will move on.

Another type of alternative to police response is the civilianization of officer functions.

So based on the structure of the triage one proposal, you can see that it includes both items one and items two on this list.

It's got an MIH focus.

and includes some civilianization of officer functions.

Something that the memo goes into detail about is the historic role of uniformed police officers other than as responders.

For instance, participating in community meetings and supporting city health programs.

And we know that many members of BIPOC communities, for instance, are made uncomfortable by this kind of police presence.

And the SPD community service officers' backgrounds and their connections to the communities they work in may make their presence more welcome at events like this in contrast to law enforcement officers.

And I know that Greg will talk a bit about the community service officers this afternoon.

Next item, administrative responses to service calls.

It may also be possible for civilians to take on some of this work.

Administrative responses are things like taking reports of minor accidents and property destructions.

At the same time as SPD is working on its analysis of call types, central staff is also working with the city attorney's office to understand whether there are any call types that require, by state law, a law enforcement response.

And I should note for items two and three, anytime we are talking about potential transfer of work, we are talking about bargaining with any affected unions.

Crisis Line can also be an alternative to police response in that they provide a resource to people who are having a mental or behavioral health crisis.

People answering those phones provide advice, support, information, other numbers to call to get more specialized help.

There are several of these operating in Seattle.

including the OneCall pilot, which I believe Jeff just referred to, that lets emergency responders call Crisis Connections for help when they are on scene and someone is having a crisis.

There's $403,000 in the 23 proposed budget in HSD to extend that pilot program.

Um, coming online soon is a new statewide 988 system that will launch in the middle of next year.

This will be a new number that people can call 24 hours a day when they're considering self-harm or having a mental or behavioral health crisis.

Um, and none of these crisis line options allow for the dispatch of therapeutic resources to the person who is calling.

Finally, I want to touch on dispatch protocols.

These protocols are the questions that lead callers, excuse me, that call takers lead callers through when they call 911. Those scripts and decision trees and these protocols help a dispatcher send the appropriate response.

Again, right now, the only responses that we can send are SPD and SFD.

The 2021 mid-year supplemental included funding in the CSCC to create a standardized interrogation protocol in that department, which would lead to the collection of more consistent data and would also support the equitable provision of services.

This data might be useful in the future to help guide the development of new non-police dispatch protocols.

I think that's all I have to say.

Thank you.

Any questions here before we move on to the next slide?

It's fairly limited right now, right?

And we have, I think, a policy interest in growing the alternatives that can be dispatched.

But the funding that the council provided a couple of months ago for the dispatch protocols is a necessary precondition.

Right now, the questions that dispatch asks and has answered when somebody calls 911 They're fairly simple and they're simple because they only need to get you to one or two alternatives.

As soon as you start adding more alternatives, the questions necessarily become more complex and look more like a decision tree.

So that's why I think the council did a good thing by not waiting until this discussion about next year's budget in order to fund those dispatch protocols, because it's really important to get them in place before we have any additional responders who are being dispatched from 911.

Thank you, Council Member Herbold.

Anne, if you have any comments on that, you're welcome to.

I also see Council Member Morales' hand.

Please go ahead.

Yeah, if I could clarify, the current investment in the CSCC would not be sufficient to get us to a place where we were able to dispatch non-SPD, non-SFD resources.

There would have to be another investment before that became possible.

But it's a good base set of data, and the current investment would definitely support any future investments.

Wonderful.

Thank you.

Council Member Morales, please go ahead.

Thank you.

Anne, I'm hoping you can help.

Let me sort some things out.

So I'm looking at page 10 of the memo.

It talks about the Nick Jr.

Report, about 80% of the calls, at least within this two-year period, were not criminal.

The report recommends that alternative response options should be developed for the 70% of calls that do not require law enforcement.

But then it says that we're really only going to be looking at 12% of calls to try to shift away.

Is that because we just haven't ramped up?

Or is there some other reason why we're only looking to try to divert 12% of the anticipated calls?

Let me follow up on that.

I have seen this 30%, 12% seeming inconsistency referenced before.

I am not as schooled as some of my colleagues are in the Nick Jr. report, but I will follow up about that.

I do know that these 29 call types, they were the low-hanging fruit, if you were.

I am not aware that anyone is thinking of these 29 call types as the end of the story.

Oh, it's Greg.

Thank you, Greg.

Thank you.

Appreciate it.

Councilmember Morales, just for a little bit of background, and I think you're familiar, the Nick Jr. study divided call types into four different categories.

The tier that has the 29 call types that we've been talking about is the one that basically an officer is not required.

They're pretty much, for the most part, non-criminal.

There are still potentially some that have risk, and that's why SPD, risk to injury of a civilian, and that's why SPD is doing an analysis on them.

SPD is going to continue to do analysis on other calls that are non-criminal calls, calls that might extend into the other tiers And they have a project risk to management software that would continue to do that kind of risk analysis to determine what a civilian could safely go to.

So that is a project that is in the pipeline, so to speak.

It's not something that's totally being forgotten.

It's just more of a next step.

And it's a project that is one that I'll talk about this afternoon.

Thank you.

Okay, wonderful.

Let's go on to two of two here.

Thank you, Patty.

So if the council did want to implement one or more of these alternatives, what might that look like?

One option would be to locate additional functions and or staffing that support alternatives to police response in the CSCC.

The CS was set up to provide, and I'm reading here, civilian and community-based services and solutions to community safety challenges.

And council could determine that it is the appropriate place from which to direct non-medical therapeutic responders.

One note here is that in its current location, the CSCC is space constrained and will not be able to add additional staff on site.

Another option would be to locate alternatives to police response in SFD consistent with the executive's proposal for the new triage team.

That team would require HSD and SFD staff working together and it would rely on SFD fleet vehicles.

Another option would be to partner with a community-based service provider on a mobile integrated health solution, perhaps as a pilot program.

Other cities have done this.

What it might look like is a contract with a local nonprofit that has experience providing mental and behavioral health services.

The appendix outlines a few approaches along those lines.

And there are both benefits and drawbacks to this model.

And if council wanted to analyze any particular framework, central staff would be available to support that effort.

Wonderful.

Thank you.

I see Council Member Lewis, I believe, first, and then Council Member Herbold.

Council Member Lewis, did you have a question?

Well, I'll defer to letting Council Member Herbold go first.

OK.

Great.

And then I would like to jump in after.

Thank you.

great collegiality team.

Please go ahead, Council Member Hermel.

And you described option three as a potential pilot, but we already fund a program that would fit that definition, right?

mobile crisis team through DESC?

This could be a pilot that would provide for the dispatch of mental and behavioral health care resources to the scene where it is needed.

So the difference would be not the service provided, but how it was accessed.

Yes, correct.

Yeah, thank you for the opportunity to clarify.

When we talk about the potential to contract, that is not in reference to changing what is currently happening in SFD.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And Council Member Lewis, did you have any follow-up?

Yeah, please go ahead.

Yeah, just to jump on that same theme, I mean, as we discussed a little bit earlier, that DESC team is not a first response function currently.

It is something that is gatekept by a different provider.

And I don't necessarily think in sort of my vision and having studied some of these provider-based response programs in other cities, that I am necessarily talking about just giving a first response capability to that DESC team.

I think I'm talking more about developing an intermediary service that could be an alternative gatekeeper that responds first to the scene, and then if they need that higher acuity service, can summon the DESC team.

Because I don't actually think that in the majority of calls for service, there's necessarily the need for that high of acuity level of response.

I think in a lot of cases you could see a low acuity provider-based service responding to things like trespass.

or some of the kind of person down calls that the triage team is envisioned to respond to that don't necessarily require the more intense capability of the DESC team and would operate I think there's a little bit of overlap with the triage team concept.

And maybe I'll just bookmark this for future comments as we get into the different services a little bit more.

I don't know if this is the

Yeah, let's take some more comments and questions about the slides that we've seen already, and then we can kind of hold those pieces for the issue ID, if that sounds okay, Council Member Lewis.

Yeah, exactly.

Okay, thank you so much.

I appreciate you teeing that up, and I think similar to the conversations we've had, you know, this month, last month, the big issues that we're hearing from some of these first responders, especially fire, is they need a landing place for the people they see.

So it's less about who that first responder is in every case and more about who can they refer out to.

And I think those are some of the questions that I'll be asking as well.

Yes, we want that first responder in many ways to not necessarily be these people with a gun showing up when what we need is a medical unit or people with the ability and training to treat the mind and body.

And then the bigger question is then where do they go?

So we'll tee up some of those questions for the Issue ID here to come.

I want to see if there's any additional questions on the previous slides that we've seen before we get into Issue ID here.

Okay, Ann, you were really, really helpful, I think, in helping to explain to folks what alternatives look like, and thank you for your comprehensive overview.

I did have one question on the previous slide before we move on, but I want to just double check.

Ann, were you able to conclude your comments for the background?

I just want to agree with some of the council members who have commented that it's a complex area, designing an MIH program, And the program is necessarily going to be responsive to the specific needs that a community has identified.

It is in no way one size fits all.

And the table that we've put together showing how other cities have chosen to step forward really illustrates the fact that they all look a little bit different.

So there is real opportunity to craft the appropriate tool for the need.

Find the mute button.

Thank you so much for that.

And then a quick comment just briefly if I might, Patty, sorry, if we can go to background one of two.

I just wanted to make sure that I understood what you said on item number four here and also for the viewing public.

When we talk about the crisis line that's being developed at the state level, that was for individuals who themselves are having a crisis.

If they are experiencing a mental health crisis, if they're having suicidal thoughts, there's going to be a statewide number.

However, that is not a new number for calling if you see somebody having a crisis or if you're worried about the health and safety of somebody else, right?

Yes, that's correct.

I think if you're in the same room as someone who is in crisis, the new 988 number might be a really good resource to have.

But yes, you're correct and your picture is accurate.

Yeah, if you see somebody potentially on the street having maybe an episode or needing assistance, that's not the right number to call.

And that's why we're working, I think, to issue identification number one that you're getting to, to making sure that we have a triage model behind the scenes when 911 is called so that the appropriate person then gets deployed for those emergency situations.

And that appropriate person could be someone with a mental health and case management background, along with the health services that you mentioned.

Okay, let's get into issue identification here.

Okay, issue number one.

This concerns callers who are dealing with a mental or behavioral crisis and would ideally like for therapeutic resources to come to the scene of that crisis.

Currently, the city is not able to dispatch such resources, but council members may wish to start planning for that.

Option A would add funding for a study that recommends a plan for a non-9-1-1 crisis response line and for various ways that that line could be staffed.

Option B, no action, not going to do that.

Okay, any thoughts on these options?

Let's do it.

The one caveat or maybe caution I would put out there is I think the goal is still trying to civilianize 911. We want people to be able to call 911 because they've been trained and conditioned to do that.

We're hoping that there was more options on the dispatch side, we can deploy the appropriate person.

We want to make sure that we stay connected to that vision and setting up a clear choice for folks to know that when they call 911, there will be a healthy, safe alternative to policing as still available is my goal.

Councilmember Herkul.

I am of the understanding that the state crisis, the funding through the state for a crisis line, a non-first responder crisis line, is not only for people who are in crisis.

It's my understanding, and we had folks come in and present in a roundtable.

It was a couple months ago, so I will have to go back and check.

But it is my understanding is they are looking at setting up or supporting jurisdictions, and ours would go through King County, but it's with state money, to set up crisis lines for for us to call if we see somebody in crisis.

And I believe it's Crisis Connections that's going to be doing that work.

They take some of those calls now, today.

Again, not just for somebody who is in crisis themselves, but for somebody who is looking to help somebody in crisis.

So I would just ask, obviously this is, something that I want us to do, but before we go down the road of funding a study, I would really want to have a super clear understanding of what is being funded with the state funding and what the plan is for King County with Price Connections.

Thank you, Council Member Herbold.

I see Amy Gore.

Hey, Amy from Central Staff, welcome to the screen again.

Thank you.

I was just going to mention with just to build on what Council Member Herbold said, I went back and read the original legislation.

And I think that one of the challenges we're having here is there was not ambiguity, but there's kind of a gap between what the actual legislation says and what that implementation will look like.

Um, and exactly what the parameters of the call line look like.

And I believe that, um, like, say this is on the King County side and on the state side and that they have, um, some, um, stakeholder groups and some community groups that are working on figuring out those details.

And we'll try and connect back in with them, um, to make sure that we know exactly where they are right now, as they develop these, um, program details and implementation before next year.

Okay, that'd be great.

Sorry.

And I thank you for the clarification.

That would be very helpful to know if that is intended for people who are concerned about the health and safety of a situation as well and appreciate Amy and and your joint work on that effort.

And perhaps we do need to have some more conversations about this, colleagues, as we figure out what the next step is here and on the options that have been identified.

Again, I think a lot of folks are trained to call 911 if they still pick up the phone and dial 911 like I have done when I've seen folks in crisis.

I think we still want there to be the deployment of that triage system that is underway right now so that the right person shows up for the situation that is being reported.

And given how many people just intuitively call 911 versus having to be retrained on a different number, perhaps there's a way for us to figure out the right system behind the scenes.

So I do have a number of questions about A here.

And at this point, you know, would love to chat more with you all about the ways in which we can get the 911 system and the triage work that you all have been working on and Councilmember Herbold that you've been leading on, how we get that deployed so that the right person shows up.

So just signaling interest in knowing more about how that is coming along, how quickly that can be deployed versus setting up a completely new number at the local level.

Okay, thank you.

Let's move on.

Next slide, please.

Thank you.

This issue concerns SFD's proposal for the new triage one team.

As I noted, there is some overlap between the proposed new program and the existing program.

We've also talked with SFD about the implementation timeline for the proposed new program.

and they don't believe they would be able to stand it up until quite late in 2022. The proposal requests 2.15 million of general fund resources, but a lot of that is staff costs and would not be expended in 2022. The proposal also contemplates moving some bodies of work from SPD to SFD, but SPD has not yet reached the conclusion that this is feasible, and if and when they do, it will be subject to bargaining.

So acknowledging some constraints, we've prepared a couple options about the new proposed mobile integrated health unit.

That funding could be reallocated to a contracted mobile integrated health program.

We could establish a new mental and behavioral crisis response unit in the CSCC rather than SFD because there would not be a need for medical assistance for these calls.

We could adjust the parameters of the HealthONE and or triage team programs to align with the council's vision and goals.

for 9-1-1 dispatch of therapeutic resources, or we could take no action.

Council Member Herbold, please go ahead.

I'm a little bit confused with the characterization that the triage one The proposed triage one unit is not materially different from the existing health one program.

We talked earlier in this presentation about how the calls that triage one is proposing to take are not calls that health one takes.

There would be overlap between the two programs.

Both of the programs would Both of the programs would perform outreach to people on the streets.

Sometimes it's not easy to tell from the initial call whether or not medical assistance is needed.

And we also understand from SFD that a number of the call types that HealthONE is currently responding to do not have a medical component.

We have a list of those call types from them.

They're not the same program, but there is some overlap.

I'd really like to learn more about that.

It's my understanding, again, that Trans1 is only proposing to handle, at this stage, two call types.

And they're not call types that Health1 takes.

So I would really, like I said, love to learn more.

Thank you.

I see Council Member Lewis's hand.

Please go ahead.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

So just to get into this a little bit more, and I appreciate how these options were presented, just speaking more broadly from the highest level on this.

I actually don't think there would be anything wrong with 2022 being a year where we try multiple different ways to deploy the teams, monitor the results and the impact, and then make decisions in 2023 about what we want to scale up or what we want to scale down.

I think that that would probably be a combination of A and B in the sense that we maybe fund a pilot program for a provider-based response.

to respond to similar call types as the triage one team and that maybe there's a decision to divide response areas geographically or maybe to mix and match with the response types.

Because I think we've seen from a lot of different cities that there are certain inherent advantages of deploying some of these services through a provider in terms of having the service be non-uniformed, having the service be infused with a lot of the criminal legal system divestment principles of community organizations.

I think that's attractive.

I understand for a lot of reasons the preference of the executive to establish a new team within one of our legacy emergency response departments.

I understand you know, for liability and some other reasons that there's thoughts that that might be a better practice.

But I do think that this is a time to really experiment with some different models and really try to get something out in the community faster.

You know, what I hadn't really been thinking about until this slide is that contracting some kind of response system might actually be faster than sending it up in a department.

I hadn't really thought about that before.

And maybe central staff could expand a little bit on whether giving money to HSD, for example, to bid some kind of first response that is hardwired into 911 might allow that to be stood up quicker, or maybe I'm wrong about that.

But the last thing I would just say is you know at the end of the day what we're really talking about here just to kind of you know, like make it simple is You know some service that is composed of an EMT and a mental health clinician in a van That's equipped to respond to low acuity situations that currently People are not getting any kind of service response for, be it a person in distress or be it a small business owner who is essentially having to deal with that on their own in terms of trying to deescalate a person or meet a person's needs because the city isn't sending anyone out to functionally do anything or assist with that situation.

And I just want to make sure whenever we're envisioning this, that we're really thinking that regardless of how it's composed, it's basically going to be the same fundamental personnel deployed through a van as we've seen in multiple other cities.

And I just want to keep that grounded as we figure out how to deploy it, because I worry that we inadvertently could make something complicated that could be fairly simple in terms of the team composition and just figuring out the way to get it up and get it out to meet the very real need that we see in the community right now.

Council Member Hurdle, please go ahead.

Yeah, and to the point of urgency, I think it's really, again, some context setting.

I do want to recognize that there has been work for many years to have alternative response.

When the mental health unit was first stood up and HealthONE was developed, this is work that predates the racial reckoning in the wake of George Floyd's murder.

When this entire council began engaging even more in earnest in this issue, you know, we were talking about ramping up an alternative with the idea in mind that we would, we had at that, at the same point that we were providing the funding and the infrastructure for planning for an alternative response over the course of 2021, we had, that fall, approved a budget of for 1,343 officers.

This council did not vote to support a hiring freeze in 2021. And so I think we take a lot of criticism for not having this thing built yet.

But we were talking about building something at that point to divert a relatively small number of calls, and that we would reduce funding for traditional law enforcement as we were building the system.

And we were talking about a system that would take over a fairly small number of calls from a fairly small number of reduced officers.

And I am very frustrated and I think we are all very frustrated that with so many police officers leaving the department this year, having nothing at all to do with our budget actions, people are now asking us why aren't more alternatives set up?

And I'm very frustrated, having worked on this over the course of the year with the executive, that we don't have something in this budget that is, I'm supportive of the triage one unit, but I would like to see more.

That triage one unit is scoped take, I believe it's 4,000 calls.

So, you know, and this is a, you know, this is a public safety issue.

This isn't, this is about making sure that people have the right response, don't get a police response when they don't need one.

But it's also about making sure that in those instances, as Anne said, where the only, response is a police response that there are, that officers are able to, to respond to those calls.

And at this point, as you know, as, as we're going to talk more this afternoon, um, about 911 response times there, there are some, some real issues there.

So we really need to, I think in this budget cycle, put our heads together and feel and figure out how to do something more quickly, bring it online early next year.

Thank you, Councilmember Herbold.

Very important reminder.

And I think just putting into context the statistics that you and central staff and others have continued to raise that, you know, the Nick Jr. report using SPD's data alone shows that at some point that 80% of the calls are non-criminal in nature.

that at some point in the near future, 49% of those calls should be transitioned to an alternative response.

And in this very moment right now, 12% of those calls could be handled by a different entity today.

So with those statistics, the call for urgency is ever more important.

And I appreciate you expressing your frustration that this is not time to nibble around the edges when we have an incredible need for the right person to show up at the right time.

We've spent the last two years talking about how that is not only a good thing for the health and safety of those who are in our community that are potentially faced with a gun and an officer when what they need is a mental health call.

It's actually good for officers as well, as you just said, to be able to free them up to show up to what they should be doing as police officers that are not mental health, case management, or housing connector calls.

and appreciate that you put that in your central staff presentation as well.

Councilmember Lewis, you have your hand up.

Please go ahead.

Thank you.

Just really briefly, I completely agree with everything Councilmember Herbold said and completely share her frustration.

I'm sure all of us do.

I think that all the considerations Councilmember Herbold put out around urgency are good arguments for pursuing multiple response theories at the same time in the next budget and potentially through different departments.

I think that having an HSD provider-based response that's bidded through HSD and then having a triage team in the fire department and monitoring both of them and seeing how the calls can be mixed and matched or how they can cover different geographic areas is a good way to just start getting some stuff out into the world so that we can start actually seeing how these things can work Um, in practice, instead of just theory, uh, and then, um, based on those lessons, um, scaling things up.

I do think one of the things I've been concerned about over the last year is that there has been sort of a, you know, like.

There has been sort of an effort to not do anything until the perfect response can be envisioned or developed to a certain extent.

And I think it's sort of in a lot of these cities that have built responses like STAR or CAHOOTS, they were built incrementally through experimentation and through kind of plug and play and seeing what works out in the community.

They didn't just come up with the perfect program and then drop it down out of the sky.

So I think part of it is just getting some rubber on the road and seeing how these things can work.

And so if we can do that with a couple of programs in a couple of different departments, I think that might be a good way to do it, monitor the results, and then scale things up accordingly once we have more data.

OK, thank you, colleagues.

I'll say one more thing on this slide and then we're going to move on.

I do want to make sure that the alternative responses include the alternative front first responders who have been on the on the front line.

Very, very much appreciate our firefighters and our case managers who are part of Health One.

We have taken that program from one to three.

Hopefully in this quarter, we will see the third van from health one come online and we want we have been respectful of them saying we need time to make sure that it's successful in other areas.

I'd like to see the five ladder areas quickly brought onto line when there's capacity to do that.

And I've heard from folks at HealthONE, the firefighters, Seattle Fire Department, the case managers, that there is a need for us to recognize the scale at which HealthONE is operating in a city as big as Seattle, comparably to some of the other cities that we look at.

They are doing a tremendous amount of work that is on par if not even bigger than what some of the sort of case studies that we reference often are doing.

And so how we can help stabilize them and make sure that they have the resources they need now and expand that is something I'm interested in because they do have a tested and true model.

And that said, they can't be at every one of these places and they need a place to hand it off to.

So maybe it's both that layering of where the landing place is, where the organization is that takes the handoff is as equally as important as creating that initial first responder touchpoint.

Okay, Ann, you've sparked a lot of conversation before we moved on.

Lisa, is there anything else you'd like to add on this?

No, I'm just teeing up for slide 10.

Well, let's do it.

All right.

Thanks, Patty.

And thank you, Anne.

That was a great introduction.

I'm Lisa Kay with central staff.

I'm going to be just talking about the next two slides that you have in front of you.

that will show kind of flesh out and weave in some of the concepts you've already been discussing to show some additional policy options.

So slide 10 shows three functions that could potentially be added to the Community Safety and Communications Center.

The first one you've been talking about a lot is triage one.

As you've heard, discussions are ongoing as to whether this should be housed in the fire department or the Community Safety and Communications Center.

And one of the key factors in that decision is whether the firefighters would be part of the triage one response.

or if the unit, this particular unit would be fully staffed by civilians.

A second potential function would be to move the community service officers unit out of the police department and into the CSCC.

As described in our staff memo, the CSOs are currently a civilian unit within the police department.

That group could potentially respond to several of the types of calls flagged by the Nick Jr. report as not requiring a police response.

And then a third option would be to create a special unit in the CSCC to provide administrative response to some types of these 911 calls.

The Nick Jr. report did note that administrative responders could potentially handle some low-risk calls, which might include the things that Anne mentioned about creating accident reports for incidents without injuries or producing reports for minor thefts.

One potential step to implement this could be funding a pilot project at the CSCC using civilian administrative responders.

And again, I would note, I know there's a real sense of urgency to get these stood up.

Moving any of these functions into the CSCC would require a fair amount of lead time to develop both the administrative capacity to run these programs and potentially to update the dispatch protocols to make sure that all of the dispatch entities are integrated and that the technology that supports dispatch is set up properly.

Also, as Anne mentioned, some of these changes could be subject to bargaining, and some may also benefit from some written agreements to weave together the roles and responsibilities between the different entities, CSCC, police, fire, human services, and our community service providers.

So with that, I will pause, therefore that is obviously to take no action on adding additional functions.

So before I go to slide 11, I'll see if there are any questions.

Great, thanks.

I'm gonna take the hands in the order in which I saw them, Council Member Lewis and then Council Member Herbold.

This is just a clarifying question, because this is the first time I've kind of been exposed to this administrative responder concept.

Would that basically be something where someone comes out in the community and takes a report uh...

instead of us was sworn officer so you know if i if i wake up in the morning and the car you know if i had a car don't have a car but i had a car the car my window was broken and i call in a vehicle prowl and instead of an officer coming an administrative responder comes takes the report down you know takes pictures of by damage car And if something ever comes of it in the future, now there's like a report and I don't have to do the report online because there's this administrative responder.

Is that the concept of what that would be?

I couldn't tell you the exact logistics about how that would play out.

I mean, I know that I've had, I've woken up and had my car missing before.

And sometimes you would get a police response.

Sometimes you would just talk to somebody on the phone, but somebody in the department would fill out your report.

They'd take your information.

They file a report because when you ask for insurance coverage, you have to have a police report number.

So that work would be done administratively and doesn't need to be done by a sworn officer, according to the Nick Jr. report.

So it's likely that the scenario you played out could happen.

I don't know how much in-person conversation would be involved.

But that's the kind of thing this job would do.

I guess that's what I'm kind of asking.

Exactly.

Yes, you are right about that.

All right, and presumably it's envisioned as a unarmed service?

Yes, I mean, for example, if you had the CSOs do this, which there has been some conversation of doing, you know, that group of individuals could potentially do it or some other unit that would not be sworn officers.

Yeah, you know, one thing I would flag here that might be might be helpful for central staff and maybe for the executive departments is under the retail theft program loss prevention officers complete police reports.

You know, which obviously are not sworn personnel and are not police so.

I raise that because there's potential bargaining or labor issues that that must have been envisioned when we did the loss prevention program, because those are people doing reports that aren't police.

And I don't know how that was taken care of, but this seems to touch on similar issues.

And I would also just flag that from a customer service level at the city, you know, one thing I hear a lot of frustration about is people that don't like going through the byzantine online reporting thing or you know don't feel like the city you know really cares about you know when they do have a package stolen or when they do have their car prowled because they like no one kind of comes out and takes a report.

So I do think from a customer service level, like it is good to have some kind of service like this that could be provided.

And I'm just flagging my interest in pursuing it and then doing it in a way that obviously doesn't involve an arms for an officer.

I would note, if I could, the theft loss prevention program, we did have a fair amount of discussion about that when the tech committee reviewed the cop logic technology.

So there is a police involvement.

They are on the receiving end of those reports that are filed by the prevention officers.

But they'd be on the receiving end of these reports too, right?

I mean, I think it's fundamentally the same exchange.

Again, those are that's why it doesn't that's why it takes a little while to stand these kinds of programs up because there are a lot of.

Nuts and bolts to be figured out about how it actually will play out.

Thanks as it relates specifically.

To option B, I want to remind everybody that as part of the second quarter supplemental, or I guess we call it the mid-year supplemental now, we parked the 2021 funding for the triage team in FAS pending a report on the program for triage team.

So I see this as potentially needing some alignment, because this proposes that we tell the executive what our vision is for it, and we have just recently asked them to tell us their vision and we're holding on to the money until we get that information.

And then when, in Anne's comments earlier when she was talking about the length of time, it is likely to take, um, to stand up this initial small, uh, triage team.

Um, it sounded like she was saying, um, pretty far into 2022. And I'm wondering, is that, is that irrespective of whether or not it stays in fire or goes to CSCC?

Because my understanding was that, um, it might take a while if we insisted on moving triage one into CSCC because of some of the human infrastructure, the HR issues that they're managing right now with being a new division, but that the timeline for a triage one being launched out of fire would be a shorter timeline.

And the idea for an MOU I think is about Yes, the long term vision for triage one, maybe not so much the short term, because I think in the short term, it's like, let's just make sure we're agreeing where we're starting and let's get it launched.

And then let's have a MOU for what the long-term vision is.

That's sort of what I'm seeing, but I would really like to know from Anne whether or not she's hearing that we're not going to, it doesn't matter where triage one is launched out of, we're not going to, you're hearing from the executive, we're not going to see it until late in 2022.

Yes, just to confirm the timeline that SFDU prepared for the program to launch from that department.

Has it, you know, fully implemented as in they're staffed up, people are trained, they're going out onto the streets.

in December of 2022. We have heard from them that if the program were launched out of the CSCC it would take longer than that, but I have not followed up on specifically how much longer.

I would be happy to do that if it's of interest.

begs the question why there was such an urgent press release and press conference held on it in mid-2021, if 2022, end of the year, is the actual launch point.

So I think that we'd very much like to see how fast we can move some of those conversations along, and I'm surprised by that timeline.

And Council Member Herbold, you and I, I think we're anticipating something much quicker than that.

Ali, I see you on the line here.

Again, welcome Ali Panucci from Central Staff.

If you have anything else to add, please feel free to.

Good morning, Chair Mosqueda, thank you.

I just wanted to weigh in, or add in if necessary, but you already said it, but since Anne wasn't here at the time, I think that the story is unfolding, but we just wanted to affirm that what Councilmember Herbold was communicating is what we had understood in July and August when the council was considering the supplemental budget ask, and it seems that the story has evolved a bit in terms of the timing.

Well, that's very interesting.

So we will follow up with you.

And I think, you know, to the conversations that we have had with first responders from fire as well.

I know that there was a lot of concern about that program being stood up without conversations with frontline members from IAFF 27, for example.

So if anything, this gives us additional opportunity to talk to firefighters themselves.

to see how those conversations are progressing.

Appreciate that, you know, the sense of urgency that we all have to try to get some things stood up, but it doesn't actually help to have a press release in July that then is not for a program that's potentially going to launch until December of 2022. So to the points from our colleagues earlier, I think there's a lot to be potentially done in this budget to try to provide swifter action and true alternatives.

Let's continue to go through this.

I'm going to try to see how far we can get in the next 20 minutes.

We do have two more items on this section here and then three more issue identification pieces.

If we don't get through them all, I do need to have a hard stop at one o'clock so we can give folks a full hour for a meal break and then we will resume at two with anything that we haven't covered.

But let's see how much we can get done in the next 20 minutes here.

Okay, thank you, Council Member.

I'll just quickly go over slide 11 then, and then we will be moving into the next half of the paper.

So issue number four is a response to low-level criminal 911 calls.

So as Greg mentioned, and Anne mentioned also, the police department's conducting what they call a risk-based analysis of the types of calls for service that could be handled by civilian responders with minimal risk as a follow-up to the NICTR and your recommendations.

And you can see in our staff report on Appendix X is what it's called on page 26 of the issue ID paper, you'll see a list of the call types that are included in SPD's analysis.

As Council Member Herbold added, the police reports anticipated to be completed by the end of Q1 2022. So that information kind of came out after these options were produced, but Option one then would be to create a statement of legislative intent asking for a report on that risk analysis by a specific date.

And now we would know that that date is Q1, end of Q1.

So you could ask for that report by that date.

Option two then would instead add FTEs and funding to establish a unit in the CSCC to provide civilian response to low risk 911 calls.

And that overlaps with some of the other discussion you've previously had.

Okay, wonderful, Lisa.

Colleagues, any comments or questions, thoughts, responses to this one?

I'm not seeing anyone.

I'd be interested in learning more about option A here with members of the Public Safety Committee.

I'm not on that committee, but look forward to coordinating with the chair and other council members to see what your response is.

Okay, I've read this quite a bit, so I think that it's clear that we're interested in swift action on the items that could be moved over quickly.

I will then turn it back to Asha to introduce the section of the paper addressing the alternatives to prosecution and jail if that meets your needs, Council Chair.

Thank you.

Thanks, Lisa.

So, as you mentioned, I'm going to be talking about alternatives to prosecution and jail in the context of the 2022 proposed budget.

We're looking specifically at 2 things at pre filing diversion and at subsidies for electronic home monitoring.

So I'll start talking about pre filing diversion piece and then move into.

Currently, the city attorney's office does run a pre-filing diversion program that weaves together three different elements.

We're looking at individuals accused of committing low-level misdemeanors, then it expanded out to relicensing for individuals accused of driving while their license is suspended in the third degree, and then expanded into diversion for individuals accused of non-intimate partner or family domestic violence.

In the Seattle Reentry Work Group report, which was issued back in 2018, there was a recommendation to expand this current pre-filing diversion program for individuals that were 25 and over and to a broader set of potential misdemeanors that were eligible for diversion.

The council asked for a statement of legislative intent from the city attorney's office to request that law evaluate looking at the staffing and resources it would take to expand the program, as well as providing some funding for a pre-filing diversion racial equity toolkit, assessing that concept.

And so both the current pre-filing diversion program and the expanded concept are issues that I will raise in a moment.

I wanted to provide some additional context as to specific recommendations came from the Community Task Force on Criminal Legal System Alignment, as well as the RET.

Those considerations are in Appendix W that are in the paper, but Contains similar themes around principles that pre filing diversion should should align with to be to be most effective to community members.

And so you'll see those elements in, as I said, appendix W, but.

I'll mention just a couple of them here.

Some of them are to focus on declining charges or decriminalization rather than focusing solely on diversion, making sure that we're looking at root causes, why people commit misdemeanors, especially when they are crimes of poverty, asking that diversion be voluntary rather than compliance based.

flagging that it can be problematic when relying solely on the discretion of law enforcement officials and focused on eliminating barriers to accessing diversion.

And so one of the specific concepts that is related, because we are in budget season, is that the budgets of the criminal legal system should not be expanded, but rather that funding programs like this that are intended to decrease further involvement with the system should be funded with existing funds into the system.

And so if we can move to the next slide, you'll see I flagged things here in terms of fully staffing the existing reparation program.

So as it stands in the 2022 budget, there is a proposal to add funds to make sure this program is fully staffed.

Right now it's staffed by a part-time paralegal and two assistant city prosecutors.

The proposed budget would add in an additional almost $248,000 and a strategic advisor, as well as making the paralegal a full-time position rather than a half-time position.

So, in terms of issues laid out about the lining with principles for a couple options for the council here, you could fund this proposed program in the budget and then adopt a statement of legislative intent, asking that law submit a report to the council.

talking about how the existing program aligns with the principles, both in the RET and in the task force report, and recommend any changes that would allow the program, where it doesn't align, to align better with the report recommendations.

The second piece is to potentially proviso the proposed funds and prohibit expenditure until law provides that kind of reporting.

Or proviso the proposed funds to mandate that the funds could only be used to support a prevailing diversion program that does align with the principles laid out.

Or the council could take no action and just allow the funding to move forward.

Regarding the funding source, there are a couple options laid out here.

And for this first option A, you can just cut the funds in the budget and not add staff at all if you wanted to use those funds for other council priorities.

Option B is to cut the general fund allocation and replace it with existing funds and staff from the police department, other places in laws, criminal division, or the Seattle Municipal Court.

And I wanted to provide a little more context about this particular option.

I'm currently working with the city attorney's office to figure out if there are existing ways to reallocate funds that are currently within the criminal division into prefiling diversion.

But there are a couple considerations that relate to how staffing works.

The first is something that's within the council's purview to some extent.

The number of cases and charges that come into the system are predicated on the things that are, the behaviors that are criminalized as misdemeanors within the Seattle Municipal Code.

And so to the extent that council has the jurisdiction to decriminalize some of these things, that could potentially cut down on the number of reports and arrests that are even coming into the system.

I'll note that there are limitations in terms of what council can do in this regard because so many of the crimes that are listed as misdemeanors are state level crimes.

And so the council doesn't necessarily have the jurisdiction to change what is at the state level a crime at the city level.

But there are things here and there that the council can do.

A recent example is the ways in which the council decriminalized drug and prostitution loitering.

And so if there are additional crimes that could be moved out of the code, that could potentially decrease the number of cases coming in.

The other issue that relates to freeing up capacity in the city attorney's office would be around how a city attorney chooses to handle reports that are coming into the office.

On the one hand, if a city attorney were to decline to charge any of those cases, there wouldn't even be an option of moving that case forward into choosing to prosecute or to divert, they would just be declining charges altogether.

And that would decrease the ability, excuse me, decrease the number of cases that a potential prosecutor would move forward with for charging, decreasing the need potentially for prosecutors across the system.

The other, the other, item of note would be if the future city attorney decided to divert a higher number of cases, so expanding eligibility or increasing overall the cases that moved into a diversion program.

That could also potentially free up a prosecutor that would otherwise be pursuing those charges in court and provide for that prosecutor moving into pre-filing diversion.

So all that to say, I am still working with the city attorney's office to figure out what that kind of staffing looks like and would hopefully have more information about that as the analysis continues.

And so those are the pieces related to how to fund the existing program.

I'll stop right there for any questions before moving into the next issue, which is also related to pre-filing diversion, but on the expansion piece.

Thank you.

I see Councilmember Herbold and then Councilmember Lewis.

Councilmember Herbold, please go ahead.

Thank you.

Just for everybody's situational awareness, as is said sometimes, and because our timelines are short, I just want to surface that of the pre-filing diversion actions that Asha is covering here, actually there's There's more, but between this one and the next one, I do not have a city council budget action related to fully staffing the existing pre filing diversion program.

I, I do have so if somebody's interested in taking that on.

I just want to let folks know that that is not something that I'm moving forward, not because I'm not interested in it, and I absolutely am, but because for the expansion of the pre-filing diversion program to people over 25, that was work that I've just been engaged in because of efforts from Council President Gonzalez a couple years ago in a slide report coming to my committee on the racial equity toolkit that we had asked him to do.

So I've just been a little bit more engaged in and have actually requested that the law department make a proposal for the pre-filing diversion program to be expanded.

I do have a proposal around that, but not about this one.

I just want folks to know in case you're interested in the options that Asha is proposing.

Thank you.

And I am similar to Council Member Herbold's comments.

I don't really, at this point, have anything to weigh in on the options that have been put up here.

I just want to comment on a more fundamental level that, you know, there is going to be a change in leadership in the city attorney's office after this next election.

And I do think a lot of these questions and, you know, Asha, I don't know what your conversations have been like with the current city attorney's office in terms of trying to predict out how to get some of the information you're requesting, because a lot of it is sort of going to be contingent on what direction the new city attorney wants to take to a certain extent.

I did just want to flag here an interest that I have in using our powers under the charter to create legislation, creating a duty for the city attorney to maintain a diversion program as a fundamental part, like item of business that we do.

And that at this point, it shouldn't be frankly discretionary for diversion to be part of that work.

We've seen over the last couple of years, and I've worked directly with with the Choose 180 Pre-File Diversion Program, the incredible results of that program, as demonstrated in a very, very low recidivism rate for people that participate in that program, as demonstrated by the very strong community partnerships between Choose 180 and the city government.

really fundamentally changing at the core our legal system to being, you know, more restorative, restorative rather than being more punitive.

And, you know, I think it's too important to be in a position where a city attorney could just, by their discretion, get out of that line of business and stop doing free file diversion as part of the practice.

So, you know, I do think we I mean, we have the power under the charter to create affirmative duties for the city attorney, I think that we should exercise that power given that we are going to be, for the first time in 12 years, transitioning, and for the first time with the life of pre-file diversion as a concept, transitioning leadership in that department.

Just to make it clear that this is something the city will continue to do and give some peace of mind to community stakeholders that that program is not just going to be arbitrarily washed away.

in the event that there's a city attorney that doesn't believe in pre-file diversion or doesn't think it should be part of their business.

So I just wanted to flag that as something I'm interested in and flag it to give some, maybe some relief to our community partners who are potentially concerned that this could all just go away based on that change in leadership.

Thank you very much, Council Member Lewis.

Appreciate that concept.

And Asha, do you have anything else that you'd like to go through on this slide?

Not on this slide.

I'll note that many of the considerations and much of what we've just discussing will apply to the next slide, which is about expanding prefiling diversion.

OK, let's go ahead and go to that one.

We have about five more minutes, and if we can't get through it, then we will do a pause at 1 o'clock.

Thanks, Patty.

So as it currently stands, the 2022 proposed budget does not include any funds for expanding the pre-filing diversion program.

But in the consideration of expansion, as Council Member Herbold mentioned, there was a slide response as well as a RET that happened, they were able to estimate that the cost of such a program would be $1.4 million.

$750,000 would go directly to supporting a community partner and about $680,000 would go towards supporting staffing in the city attorney's office.

And so, as I mentioned, there are options around potentially figuring out how these align with the recommendations that came out of the task force report and the RET.

So option A is to adopt a slide that would require law to submit a report about the alignment of principles and how they would design that program.

option B would be to add the funds to expand pre-filing diversion and either do it without a proviso, with a proviso that requires the funds be spent on a program that aligns with the principles in the task force report in the RET, or with a proviso to prohibit expenditure until a report came in that describes alignment, or C, that the council could take no action.

And then similar to the considerations I mentioned above about the existing pre-filing diversion program, when it comes to funding source, you could either add, option A is to add general funds to provide the staffing and support needed to expand the program.

Option B would be to reallocate funds already within the system.

So either from the police department, other places in the city attorney's offices, criminal division, or the Seattle Municipal Court to fund the program.

Or C, you could take no action which would mean not providing funds and staffing to expand the pre-filling diversion program.

Thank you.

Any initial comments or questions on item 1B here?

Okay.

Asha, tell me more about, this might not be a simple answer, but what would it look like to make some of the policy changes outlined in the central staff memo instead of expanding the city attorney's budget?

Have we done that sort of analysis?

So I think the challenge is that by expanding the policy pieces and eligibility of the program, it'll mean more cases coming in.

And so that sort of automatically ups the amount of the body of work that the city attorney's office would need to do.

And given that the existing program isn't fully staffed in a way to do all both the work of diversion generally, as well as some of the reform work that the current lead prosecutor has been doing in terms of participating in work groups around jail use around.

criminal legal system efforts.

Otherwise, it might be difficult for the city attorney's office to handle the influx in case volume that comes without additional staffing.

The funding that would go to a community program to be able to do this work in the same way, I don't know that they would have the capacity to take on the additional volume of cases that would come with expansion.

So even if we were to make the policy changes and the city attorney's office were to expand diversion, I think it would be difficult for them to actually handle the practicalities of that level of case volume.

Yeah, I just want to clarify.

What I think I heard you say, Asha, is more cases will be coming in.

Not that more cases will be coming into the law department for prosecution, but there will be more cases eligible for diversion.

Those diversion cases are staff in the city attorney's office manage those cases through the diversion program.

And so I think that's why when we're referring to these principles from the criminal legal system task force, there are a number of principles.

The preference is not to expand the funding footprint for components of the CLS.

the city attorney being one of them, but in those cases where you might be doing so, the preference is that you take money from other places in the CLS.

So that's why under option B, it's a recognition that you may need to add funding to the CAO, but you should take it from somewhere else.

within the CLS, the criminal legal system.

And then there's a community stakeholder funding component also for some of the programmatics that does not need to be held in the city attorney's office.

Thank you.

Thank you both for that clarification.

And with that, I think I would be leaning towards option two, option B2, to make sure that there is alignment with those recommendations.

Council Member Lewis, to close us out on this item, unless Council Member Herbold, you had something else.

Okay, great.

I see your hand go down.

Council Member Lewis, let's close this out on this slide, if you don't mind.

Councilmember Percival?

I concur with Councilmember Herbold and Madam Chair, your preferences in regard to how to proceed with this.

I guess one thing I would flag based on my personal experience is that I do firmly believe that over the course of a couple of There will be a an efficiency realized in the criminal division of the city attorney's office in terms of freeing up additional time by by reducing the amount of employee hours required to process a similar number of cases.

diversion work is considerably less time-consuming than adversarial criminal litigation.

And as that is expanded, I think there will be some corresponding savings that could be captured and reinvested in other city priorities.

I guess what I would like to do is figure out a way that we can structure a way to monitor the increased efficiencies and the reduced demand, and then have that be part of what we do over a series of budget cycles.

Similar to how we are interacting with the police department, as Council Member Herbold indicated earlier, You don't want to be in a position, which has been the council's position, of cutting before those capacity efficiencies are realized, which, of course, this council hasn't actually done despite misconceptions in the community.

But to reduce some of the functions in the city attorney's office, before those efficiencies are realized could be problematic.

But I think that by monitoring and having a stated budgetary goal of over time expanding diversion and then reducing the overall footprint of the criminal division is something that can be and will be realized by increasing and expanding diversion.

So just some way to structure and track that so in future budgets we can continue that work.

Okay, thank you very much for that comment and appreciate and agree with that sentiment that we need to.

appropriately scale and thank you for the clarification colleagues on this piece.

I am going to suggest that we take a pause.

We come back.

Asha, sorry to interrupt the flow here.

We do have a few more slides to go, about five more slides, so we'll come back and we'll start again on slide 15 unless there's any additional questions or comments on this one.

Madam Clerk, I would like to I would like to give folks a full hour, so if there's no objection, tell me, Madam Clerk, if I'm saying this appropriately in terms of process, if there's no objection, I'd like to amend the agenda to have our recess end at 2.05 p.m.

Is there any objection to amending the agenda to have a full hour recess to return at 2.05 p.m.?

hearing no objection.

The agenda is amended.

We will have a full hour.

Thank you all for joining us again to continue the alternative responses and then leading right into SPD.

We'll make sure to get you out of here before 5 p.m.

tonight.

Thanks for all your time and questions.

The meeting is in recess.

See you at 2.05 p.m.