Seattle City Council Select Budget Committee Session I 11/10/2020

♪ ♪ Thank you so much for joining the Seattle City Council Select Budget Committee.

I'm Teresa Mosqueda, Chair of the Select Budget Committee.

Today is November 10th, 2020. The time is 9.31 a.m.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Here.

Council Member Peterson.

Here.

Council Member Sawant.

Here.

Council Member Strauss.

Present.

Council Member Gonzalez.

Here.

Council Member Herbold.

Council Member Herbold.

Council Member Herbold, you are still on mute.

I'm sorry.

Oh, hi.

I also had my sound turned down.

Was somebody trying to reach me?

Council Member Herbold.

Hello.

Present.

And Chair Mosqueda.

Present.

Nine present.

Thank you very much, Madam Clerk.

Colleagues, yesterday we received confirmation that the Proclamation 2028 has been extended by the state legislature leadership for another month.

It expired yesterday at 11.59 p.m.

The extension is until December 7, 2020, and we are still awaiting the governor to officially issue the extended proclamation.

Today, we're going to go ahead and have a motion to suspend the rules to allow for today's meeting to occur remotely, and that will allow us to do the work that we need to do with the council president's office to make sure that we can extend this proclamation.

Council members, as a reminder, the rules are silent on allowing remote meetings and the electronic participation of select committee meetings.

To allow for the meeting to be conducted remotely today, the Select Budget Committee will need to suspend the council rules.

If there's no objection, the council rules will be suspended to allow the meeting to be held remotely.

Hearing no objection, the Select Budget Committee will continue to meet remotely through the extension of the proclamation.

Again, we thank our state legislative partners and the governor for their continued commitment to making sure everyone is able to stay home in order to stay healthy, and we appreciate this proclamation has been extended.

Moving on to approval of the agenda, council colleagues, I'm going to note that after the chair's remarks this morning, we are gonna have public comments.

I have committed previously to at least an hour for public comment this morning.

So we're gonna do an hour public comment this morning and at the next two meetings.

Today's public comment as well as the next two meetings will include one minute each so we can hear from as many people as possible.

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

Hearing no objection, the agenda is adopted.

So good morning, everyone.

Today is the day that we have been waiting for for quite a while here at the Seattle City Council.

Today is our opportunity as a council to really show the community and folks that we've been working with our revised budget.

I know that people have been working on this budget day and night on the weekends for the last two months.

So quick thank yous before we get into some opening remarks.

I wanna thank first and foremost, central staff led by budget team leader, Ali Panucci, Dan Eder, Tom Meisel.

Lisa Kay and Patty Worgen, this has been a tremendous undertaking on top of the work that you all have already done over the last eight months as we not only worked on the summer budget process, but had rolled right into our conversations about summer budget after the jumpstart progressive payroll tax discussion.

They, your central staff, have been working with all of you to craft your amendments that we will be discussing today.

They have been in deep conversation with each of you about how to make sure that the vision for your amendments is able to come to fruition and have been very thoughtful about the use of very limited resources, even as we received a positive revenue forecast.

There's still not enough to go around and they have been very helpful in thinking through strategies.

So thank you again to our central staff who are going to be walking us through the budget today.

Thanks as well to our incredible communications team.

We've gotten a ton of feedback on how transparent the process is, the visuals that have been created, the ability to have the graphics to go along with the remote meetings has been essential.

So thank you very much to Joseph, to Dana, and to Stephanie.

I want to thank our IT and clerks team, the clerks office and our IT folks have been skillfully working to provide online access to these meetings, to meet our online demands, and have everything really accessible and visible to the public.

I really appreciate all of you.

And speaking of visible to the public, again, we want to thank Seattle Channel for your continued streaming of this meeting and all of the activities here at Seattle City Council as we meet remotely.

We know many of you are working behind the scenes at City Hall, and we appreciate everything you do to make these meetings possible.

Let's think as well the central budget office under the leadership of Director Noble as well as Mayor Durkin for their continued work that they put into the initial budget as we work to amend that budget.

We know that a lot of work went into that initial draft as well.

And lastly, I want to thank the folks at Team Teresa.

Thank you so much to everybody in our office, led by Central Prairie Chief of Staff, Aaron House, who's our policy manager, Freddy de Cuevas, and Rita Basu, our legislative team who have been working to make sure all of the council members' issues help get addressed, as well as deep engagement and conversations with stakeholders.

I really appreciate all of you and all of the tremendous work you put into crafting this draft council budget.

And last, but definitely not least, council colleagues, thank you.

It has been no easy task to tackle the needs of our city during a COVID crisis and economic downturn, a civil rights reckoning that has demanded so much of all of us.

And many of you have been putting in day and night hours working remotely, putting all of your effort into making sure that the city has The funding that it needs through your support and passage of the jumpstart payroll tax and the spend plan through our summer deliberations, both with making sure that there was emergency dollars and that we began important steps towards community safety.

You have delivered on so much already.

We know that there's much more to do, but I want to thank you for all of your work so far.

I want to make sure that we recognize that we have a lot of shared priorities in this budget, and we cannot completely solve for the major issues facing our city in one budget season.

And we're going to continue to fight for equitable solutions to homelessness, to housing, make sure that there's more small business support, that we continue down the path towards creating community-driven solutions to public We will have a lot of conversations over the next two weeks.

where we need to make the investments where we need to and continue down the path towards true transformational change.

It's clear that the city does not want to see city council fighting with the mayor's office.

And this is not a political game.

We have very important policies that we have engaged in in a very public way.

We're making sure that we're working to keep parks open, house our homeless neighbors, make sure people have a place to live.

and that we're addressing the disproportionate impacts of the criminal justice system on our black and brown neighbors.

This is something that is very important for us to come together to try to identify strategies to address these tough problems.

But let's remember as well where we started with the beginning of this budget.

In trying to solve some of the most tough issues in our city, we began with about a $13 million hole that we needed to fix.

This is a hole that was due to timing when the budget was sent down, And the transmitted budget package didn't account for the $3 million that the council had committed to funding BIPOC investments, again, due to that timing.

So from the get-go, we had a hole to fill.

We had a $3 million investment that we needed to back into.

We needed to make sure that we were addressing the revenue shortfall, which really only had about $3 million included in the revenue emergency funds.

And it was critical for us to be able to not only address the gap in the balanced budget, but to also make sure that we were backfilling those dollars in emergency reserves.

So this is what we were walking into.

And I want to give you that framework as I talk about the context for the budget in front of us.

The framework that I brought to our conversations, both in public and as we've deliberated which amendments should be included, were to first build back the reserves, to second, address and prevent austerity budgeting, and the third, make sure that we created a more equitable economy by investing in housing, make sure that we were healthy, and make sure that we are all safe.

As we look at building back the reserves, we wanted to make sure that this budget reflected the amount at least that the Great Recession Emergency Reserve had.

We wanted to replenish the emergency reserves to at least the amount that the Jumpstart Spend Plan had envisioned.

That's around $40 million that were both envisioned in the Jumpstart Spend Plan and the amount that was in the emergency reserves as we headed into the last Great Recession.

And colleagues, we've done that.

We have about $38 million in emergency reserves at this point.

This is just short of our goal of having around 40 million that we sought to build back in.

And why is it important to do that?

Because it's our low wage workers, it's our seniors, it's our black and indigenous and people of color community members who are hardest hit by COVID and the worsening economic equality and economic collapse in this city that we must be prepared to support.

We are investing in the reserves as an investment in our most vulnerable communities and our most marginalized communities who in the worst case scenario next year or in the coming years will face even greater hardship if we only have $3 million in reserve.

So even when there's tens of millions of dollars more in the revised revenue package.

It was critical for us to put a sufficient amount, ideally around $40 million back into reserves, especially as we see skyrocketing rates of COVID.

And we know with that comes an uncertain and worsening fiscal future.

When it comes to preventing against austerity, this budget protects against the cuts to core government public sector workers and the services that they provide to make sure that our most vulnerable and diverse community has the services they need.

We have protected against deep cuts to the personnel and made sure that the budgetary layoffs that were planned in the proposed budget have been replenished to ensure the continuity of services, especially for our most vulnerable now in this time of crisis, and to make sure that those services are there as we work to recover.

Every data point shows us that we cannot cut our way out of a recession.

When cuts are made, it just prolongs economic downturn and further harms the private sector businesses as well as those who rely on public sector services.

We see the data.

It's been presented in our community.

It's been repeated by local and national experts who looked at the last recession.

So this budget takes an anti-austerity approach.

It builds back all of the proposed budget cuts to budgetary personnel changes.

in an effort to make sure that our city core services, like childcare and libraries and transportation and infrastructure, have the people that they need to carry out services and promote economic resilience as we work on recovery in a more equitable Seattle.

The pillars of this budget in order to get to that economic recovery focused on housing, health, and safety.

So just very briefly, I wanna highlight a few of the components you all have put in form Bs as we think about policy and funding directives.

These have been included, and that's why I continue to refer to this as the council's draft budget, because nothing in this budget was included that you all haven't discussed publicly in the committee settings.

In housing, staying home to stay healthy is the public health mandate, the directive that we hear every day, but that requires a place to call home.

We are now in our fifth year of a housing emergency.

This budget prioritizes housing supports and homelessness responses to get people out of unsafe congregate shelters, off of the street and into safer non-congregate shelter and housing options.

We are moving forward with acquisition and pre-development dollars so that more housing can get developed now to create affordable options in the pipeline from our Office of Housing Partners.

This is in anticipation of JumpStart dollars that will be available to fully fund some of these efforts in 2022. We've got to build the pipeline now, and that's what this budget strives to do.

This budget has fully funded Aurora Commons.

Thank you, Council Member Juarez.

It has fully funded the Africatown hero place in the south end.

Thank you very much, Council Member Sawant, for bringing that forward.

And not only has it assured that the Office of Housing has the funding to ensure Africatown could get the full amount, but it has included the pre-development costs so that there is no question of the city's support for this effort.

We have funded the Home for Good program.

Thank you, Council President Gonzalez.

Directed the Homelessness Prevention for Families with School-Age Children.

Thank you again, Council President Gonzalez.

We've included tenant outreach, education, eviction defense, and organizing and counseling.

Thanks to Council Members Strauss and Sawant for their efforts on this.

This package makes investments in humane, effective, and immediate homelessness response efforts.

Thanks to Councilmember Morales for her ongoing work on the HOPE program, the Homelessness Outreach and Provider Ecosystem, along with Councilmember Sawant's 24-hour operation and basic shelter services.

Along with Councilmembers Lewis, Sawant, and Peterson's support for tiny home villages, we now have the equivalent amount of three new tiny house village dollar amounts in this budget.

We are adding over a million dollars to homelessness outreach efforts to support complementary efforts to the HOPE program with geographic-specific priorities included in this budget, thanks to Councilmembers Juarez, Straus, Morales, and Herbold.

We are investing in a myriad of public support services through Chief Seattle Club and other organizations that primarily serve the Black, Indigenous, and people of color members.

Thank you, Councilmember Juarez and Councilmember Lewis.

In the health component, our health priorities are center to this budget.

We cannot be healthy if we don't have access to clean water to wash our hands, regular meals to help our families stay healthy, access to mental health services and substance abuse counseling, and a place to say that they are safely housed.

This budget has scaled up investments in all of these areas.

We are increasing access to hygiene and sanitation and hand washing centers, as well as expanding trash cleanups at encampments to 13 additional sites.

Thank you, Council Member Morales.

We're expanding the Fresh Bucks program.

Thank you, Council Member Strauss, and senior congregate programs.

Thank you, Council Member Swan, and identifying food bank site in Belltown.

Thank you, Councilmember Lewis.

And when it comes to our health, this budget is based on science.

Here in Seattle, we look at science and data and public health best practices to help treat addiction and the health crisis that is caused.

We are investing in harm reduction and prevention strategies, counseling and services.

Thank you, Council Member Herbold.

We've doubled down on our firefighter support so that those who are on the scene first to provide life-saving support and improve our health and connect with community members have what they need.

Thanks again to all of you for your support on the HealthONE expansion.

We now have three HealthONE teams in this budget.

We're adding a crisis counselor for trauma-informed care.

Thanks for your support on that.

And providing life-saving equipment and so much more.

Councilmember Herbold, thank you for that.

In addition to making sure that there's training and support.

And we're adding a consulting nurse to the Seattle Fire Department's 911 response center.

Thank you, Councilmember Lewis.

But we also know that health cannot be possible if we do not address climate change and makes investments in the Green New Deal.

And we've invested in Green New Deal priorities in this budget.

We've invested in Green New Deal infrastructure to make sure that the fabric of our city has the updates and strategies that it needs to make sure that people can not use a car, that they can be healthy and walk around.

We've invested in sidewalks, bike lanes, safe routes.

This budget includes all of the priorities from the MAS coalition, We are investing in new infrastructure support in Rainier Avenue, South Park, Georgetown, Route 44, sidewalks, and the Bike Master Plan.

Thank you, Councilmembers Morales.

Thank you very much for all of the work that you've done to make sure that we are lifting up the priorities of the Move Seattle Levy and keeping our commitments to those efforts.

The call for investments in BIPOC communities must also recognize the disproportionate impact that climate change and environmental racism is having on our low-income households and BIPOC communities.

And this budget addresses that.

We fully funded the Green New Deal advisor.

Thank you, Council Member Sawant, building energy efficiency programs and not delaying that.

Council President Gonzalez, thank you.

And we have fully funded the climate policy position.

So we do not miss a beat with setting up the Green New Deal investments.

that are going to be coming in 2022. Thank you Councilmember Strauss.

Equitable investments and safe infrastructure for frequent transit and services for people across our city means that people can get around without having to use a car.

It also means that we need to be investing in the affordable housing in our opportunity-rich neighborhoods throughout the city.

And together, those efforts will help provide safe alternatives to driving long distances, alternatives to people being displaced, and improve our environment and our population's health.

Investments in support like this, thank you council members and also voters for all of your support for the STVD package that was recently approved by voters.

We have reflected that priority and those investments in this budget.

And we know that those who disproportionately rely on transit are more likely to be from black, indigenous, and people of color communities.

So that is a direct investment as well as our commitment to continuing to invest in black and brown communities.

And finally, in safety, as we scale up our work to shrink the size of the police presence in community and simultaneously scale up the alternatives to community-based solutions that have long existed, we are investing in the needed capacity our community needs to be able to respond.

Many may be frustrated by what we were able to accomplish in just one year, but there are multiple barriers and we understand the frustration.

The right sizing of our police department and scoping of the work that is done, the scoping of the type of calls that are responded to by an armed officer continues.

This is our effort to try to make sure that we are taking important steps now to undo centuries of the status quo.

inherent structural racism, given that this is one of the oldest institutions in our country.

And I want to be clear, we are on the path still.

We are not at a turning point yet.

That would indicate tremendous changes already happened within the institutions, and that community would have received sufficient support already, and we're just not there yet.

We are on the path in the same direct strategy to make sure that we're reimagining community safety, but we have faced roadblocks.

We have faced tremendous barriers, and we are working still on implementing the summer's budget efforts.

that began to invest deeply in community and make structural changes that we need to the police approaches.

But we must bargain various changes and we continue to strive to overhaul the use of overtime.

And we have a lot of work yet to be done that has not been initiated.

We are going to continue in this budget to invest in the strategies that we authorized this summer into community efforts to scale up alternatives to police responses.

We are working to address both an investment in community and structural changes simultaneously.

This year was the first year that our council did not vote to expand the police budget.

In fact, it took steps to divest from police budget and importantly, invest in BIPOC communities and to do so that we are scaling responsibly at the same time.

I committed at the beginning of this budget process to being transparent with all of you and the public so that in this budget, in the draft here, what you see is only items that were discussed during our public process.

If you put forward a form B, an amendment to the police department that has been included with the exception of one that has technical questions that we're still working on, So let's summarize what's included.

We reiterated our demand for bargaining out of order layoffs.

Council Member Herbold, thank you.

We captured funding from vacant positions and we cut from vacant positions.

Thank you very much, Council President Gonzalez.

And we cut funding from the overtime budget.

Thank you, Council Member Herbold.

We imposed a proviso for more than anticipated attrition from Council President Gonzalez.

And we created a new public safety department from Council Member Herbold.

We cut supplies and travel costs, thanks to Councilmember Herbold, and we pulled out essential mental health services to make sure that they can continue to be provided, thanks to Councilmember Strauss.

And this is just one side of the path that we are firmly still walking.

This budget makes massive investments into black and brown communities, into our BIPOC community.

communities by reducing in our efforts to try to reduce the need for 911 emergency responses by an armed person.

It reduces the chances that community may encounter police or the criminal justice system and invest in restorative responses if harm has occurred.

This includes our Office of Civil Rights community-based alternatives to addressing harm created by the criminal justice system.

from Councilmember Herbold, restorative justice pilot program from Councilmember Morales, programming for black girls and youth and women and black queer and trans youth from Council President Gonzalez.

It includes $30 million investment into participatory budgeting process and maintain that commitment to fund that effort along with 30 million in the investment in the mayor's task force with the hope and invitation that the task force recommendations are part of the broader participatory budgeting process.

And it maintained the jumpstart relief.

as noted earlier, because this relief in a COVID crisis and an economic crisis will continue to hit our Black and Brown communities the hardest.

Even among those items that I just listed, that's way more than $100 million.

Just those items alone total up over $130 million worth of investments.

But in public comment, let's remember what we heard.

One example is from Hannah, who's in D7.

She said people are concerned about public safety, but public safety is not more police.

We need to address the root cause, including poverty, income inequality, the lack of support and resources.

We need to stop treating poverty as if it were a crime.

And colleagues, I believe that this budget begins to make those important efforts to reflect that this budget is making changes to policies and investments that are being called for from across the country.

It scales up community-led alternatives to police models.

It addresses the intersectional harms of the lack of access to housing, sidewalks, safe streets, good jobs, and the impact of environmental racism that we have seen only worsen as our wage gap grows in Seattle.

In conclusion, this budget responds by prioritizing investments in housing, shelters, food assistance, ensuring a just response to COVID is possible while protecting emergency funds given the uncertainty of the upcoming year.

We are protecting living wage jobs at the city.

We are providing key supports for essential minimum wage earners.

We are maintaining and expanding access to small businesses to have access to capital funding and adapt in this time of COVID to be able to open again when it's safe.

We are taking key steps to rectify the harm of the criminal justice system and building on our investments from this summer.

We are not yet there, but we are working.

We are working to build back support for our community, our local economy, and make it so that an economy just doesn't recover, but it recovers in a more equitable way.

And for all of that work, I'm proud of the work that you all have done.

I know there's much more to do.

and I look forward to public comment and engagement, your ideas, suggestions, and amendments as we discuss the draft budget in front of us before it is finalized in the next two weeks.

I thank you again for all of your work and the community's robust input.

And at this time, we will move into hearing more of that robust input.

We're gonna open up the remote public meeting at this time.

Colleagues, if there's no objection, the public comment period will already be extended for another 40 minutes because I did commit to one hour.

We are going to, Make sure that we have one minute for each person so that we get through as many people as possible.

If there's no objection, the public comment period is extended for one hour so that we will hear from as many people as possible.

Okay, there's no objection.

The public comment period will be open.

The public comment period for this meeting is 60 minutes, and each speaker will be given one minute to speak.

I can call on three speakers at a time, making sure that each person has the chance to read their name into the record.

You will hear a chime at 10 seconds.

When you hear that chime, that's your indication to wrap it up.

Before you begin speaking, you will hear you have been unmuted.

That is your clue to then press star six to make sure that your line has been unmuted.

After you speak, please do hang up and call back in on the listen in line or watch on Seattle Channel.

And we really appreciate your time.

If you're not able to get to all of your public comments, or if we're not able to call your name today, there are other chances to provide public testimony.

Again, we are going to be meeting on the 18th and 19th, that is next Wednesday and Thursday.

We'll have public comment again in the morning at 9.30.

Please email us the rest of your comments if you'd like to, because hearing from you is gonna be critical as we work through this effort.

I believe we are gonna be able to get through everyone, and we will start right now.

Maya Garfinkel, followed by Katie Rubin and Howard Gale.

Good morning, Maya.

Hi, my name is Maya Garfinkel, and I'm BCL's tenant organizer and a renter in District 4. Thank you to Budget Chair Mosqueda, Councilmember Sawant, and co-sponsors Councilmember Morales and Lewis for supporting the budgetary amendment of an additional $500,000 for tenant education, advocacy, and organizing.

Be Seattle is a proud endorser of the solidarity budget because we know housing justice and racial justice are inextricably linked.

Prior to the pandemic, Seattle was experiencing a homelessness and gentrification crisis in the city with black and indigenous folks being disproportionately affected.

If the city council does not take action, Seattle will see even greater displacement and houselessness of communities of color.

Without education, organizing and advocacy support, many renters will self evict.

I've seen landlords in your district, Council Member Juarez and Urbold, use intimidation and harassment to try and get around the eviction moratorium, this budgetary amendment is imperative to fight this.

Please continue to support the budgetary amendment for $500,000 for tenant organizing, education, and advocacy.

Thank you so much for your time and consideration.

Hey, Maya, thanks so much for your succinct comments.

If you do have anything else, I'm going to go ahead and add 30 seconds to our time because I think we can still get everybody in within an hour.

If there's anything else you'd like to say, Maya, you're still welcome to continue.

Well, thank you very much, Maya.

I appreciate your testimony.

Again, we have Kate Rubin.

Kate, good morning.

Good morning.

My name is Kate Rubin.

I'm the Executive Director of B Seattle and a renter in District 2. I would like to thank Budget Chair Ms. Gata for including the budgetary amendment of an additional $500,000 for tenant outreach, education, and organizing, introduced by Council Member Sawant and co-sponsored by Council Members Morales and Lewis.

We appreciate all of you for standing up for tenants.

As endorsers of the solidarity budget, we recognize the direct connection between housing justice and racial justice.

Black and indigenous people of color were already disproportionately affected by the homelessness crisis before the pandemic even began, and renters are really struggling to stay housed.

We are anticipating a tsunami of evictions upon the end of the moratorium.

Without Know Your Rights education, organizing, and advocacy, many renters will simply self-evict to avoid the hassle of the formal eviction process and going to court.

If the City Council doesn't take action to ensure there is sufficient funding for tenant support we can expect even greater displacement of communities of color.

We need city funding to build renter power and fight for our neighbors during the pandemic and beyond.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And good morning Howard.

Good morning.

Howard Gale from District 7. Seattle Times reported yesterday that the proposed 2021 budget will cut police spending by about 17%.

Though this figure is misleading, since 71% of this figure comes from simply transferring functions out of the SPD.

Does anyone believe that transferring parking enforcement and 9-11 services out of SPD would have changed the outcome for Kerry Kaver or any of the other 26 people killed by the SPD since John T. Williams?

Does anybody believe that these changes will prevent the continuing beating Our fellow Seattleites in the First Amendment have suffered for the last five months.

With these changes have prevented the police from putting Cal Murphy Duford in the hospital in critical condition just last Wednesday.

I get it.

This is morning after regret.

In June your performative acts of giddy wokeness over promised things that you cannot or will not deliver.

Changing police policy will not work because they ignore it.

Changing police training will not work because they are not interested.

So at the very least.

I would like to ask you, please, councilmembers, could you give us true police accountability as other U.S. cities have based on real community oversight with an elected body capable of investigating and disciplining police?

Rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic is not going to prevent people from drowning.

If you won't be cutting the budget by 50%, please at least give us accountability.

Thank you.

Toast them and Derek to stun to send Derek I just want to note that you are listed as not present.

So please call in if you are hearing this Logan.

Good morning.

My name is Logan Swan.

I'm a journeyman union iron worker and a member of Socialist Alternative Corporations like Amazon F5 Network Starbucks.

You know they're recording record third quarter profits and I just it's unbelievable that major Mayor Durkin wants to put the burden of the economic crisis and the pandemic on ordinary people, flashing $200 million from parks, libraries, transportation, and affordable housing.

The question to the City Council, though, is, will you make big business pay for this crisis, or are you going to put the burden on working people in communities of color?

I urge the City Council to support Council Member Sawant's proposal to increase the Amazon tax to stop all the budget cuts.

I was a volunteer with the tax Amazon movement.

We gathered 30,000 signatures for a viable ballot initiative, and that forced big business and the democratic political establishment to concede this has the Amazon tax from the city council.

If it wasn't for our movement, you'd be cutting an additional $214 million from essential programs.

Now we have hundreds of activists from the people's budget and the solidarity budget, and we've been demanding that the bloated police budget be defunded by 50% so that we can fund community-led programs, the Green New Deal, and affordable housing.

But unfortunately, as of now, Socialist Council Member Sawant is the only elected representative who's kept her promise, stood with People's Budget and the Solidarity Budget, and brought a proposal forward.

Sawant's also the only one who's brought forward a crucial proposal to take urgent steps toward creating an elected community oversight board over the police.

And as someone who marched repeatedly with the Black Lives Matter protest, I'll be watching to see what other elected officials do.

Your actions matter, not your words and promises.

Now, we welcome the improvements in this budget proposal, thanks to the activism of the People's Budget, the Solidarity Budget, and Council Member Shama Sawant's office, but it's unfortunate.

Thank you, Logan.

The next three speakers are, oops, I already called them.

Will, good morning.

Hi, my name is Will Toastburn, and I am Union Staff at Solid Ground.

I'm here speaking on behalf of Solid Ground, who stands in solidarity with the community and coalition, calling on Seattle Council to pass the Solidarity Budget.

We urge you to divest from SBD by at least 50% and support distribution of funds divested from SBD through a participatory budgeting process that invests in black communities, black and brown communities, and community-led health and safety.

Instead of criminalizing poverty, we need investments to be led by community to overcome and undo the root causes of poverty, namely institutionalized and structural racism.

We're also urging you all to include and vote for additional rental assistance for family rapid rehousing programs on the balancing package, item 85. At the public hearing on October 28th, you heard powerful testimony from families participating in rapid rehousing about the impact these programs have had on their families' lives.

Unfortunately, COVID has had a devastating effect on the employment market, particularly for families in rapid rehousing programs.

We're asking you all to provide additional rental assistance funds for families in these programs who are not allowed to access other rental assistance sources.

This will ensure that families can maintain their hard-earned housing stability and not return to homelessness.

Thank you to Council Member Herbold for her leadership on this and the support we've heard from council members Morales, Gonzalez, Strauss, Lewis, and so on.

Finally, I urge you to maintain HSD funding to support community groups during anti-poverty organizing at the state capitol.

The city's advocacy partnerships supported by this funding have achieved real benefits for Seattle residents living on low incomes.

In the wake of COVID-19, anti-poverty advocacy is more important than ever.

This 2021 budget represents an opportunity to respond to this crisis and build an equitable future.

Thank you for making the right choices.

Thank you.

And Derrick, Derrick Toussaint, we still see you listed as not present.

We're going to go on to the next three.

Dan Wise, Melissa Purcell, and Denise Harnley.

Good morning, Dan.

Good morning.

My name is Dan Wise.

I'm a member of District 6 and the Deputy Director of Catholic Community Services of King County.

I'm here today to advocate for the Social Service Provider Academy, which was left out of the proposed council budget package.

The academy is a partnership between local area nonprofit housing and homeless service providers and Seattle Central College.

The goal is to provide racial equity and access to education for people with lived experience of poverty and homelessness.

During earlier budget hearings you heard from students in the program who after struggling with homelessness and addiction never imagined that they would have the opportunity to go back to school.

Students who understand from their own experiences the importance of having social services reflect the racial diversity of their community and people seeking services.

I'm the person responsible for implementing Home for Good, and I'm also a board member of the Aurora Commons, which are both in the proposed budget.

And I appreciate the budget investments this council is making in funding services for people experiencing homelessness.

But I'm here to tell you that we must also invest in education and training for our BIPOC frontline staff in order to diversify our social service leadership for the future.

This is especially important as we work to shift our community response from a law enforcement model to a service-oriented approach.

I want to thank Council Member Herbold for her leadership in sponsoring the budget request, and I urge you to consider adding the money in your final efforts to pass the budget.

Thank you.

Thank you.

The next person is Melissa.

Good morning, Melissa.

Good morning.

My name is Melissa Purcell.

I'm a member of the Seattle Film Task Force, and I represent labor unions as a business agent of IATSE Local 488. I represent the crews that make films, advertisements, corporate web content, television, et cetera.

These are not easy times.

I want to acknowledge the many needs and asks of those in our city.

There's much work to be done on doing structural racism and bringing social justice to our black indigenous communities and many difficult decisions to be made.

But I'm here to ask that you find a budget of $50,000 for a future film commission.

Many in the creative industries are struggling and will continue to for some time.

The film industry is fortunate that we are currently working, allowed to work with explicit COVID safety protocols in place.

The film task force has spent the last nine months making certain that our task force is diverse and fully represented.

We've been discussing and learning about white privilege and how we can begin to undo institutional racism within our industry.

We've also created a structure for a new film commission, set priorities for OFM and the city's needs to make sure that our industry succeeds and thrives.

Our industry will be intrinsically involved in our regional and national economic recovery.

We translate information to the masses through marketing and promotion, entertainment of all kinds, as well as informational documentary content.

The film industry is about telling stories.

It's also how we make a living.

We are living wage jobs.

Our industry reaches multiple sectors in retail of all kinds, restaurants, hotel, tourism, convention work.

To fully succeed in our region's economic recovery, the Future Film Commission needs a budget of $50,000 to jumpstart this work in the first quarter of 2021. I ask that you add and find a $50,000 budget for the Future Film Commission.

The film task force is available if you have any questions.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Denise, good morning.

Just one second, folks.

Looking for Denise here.

Good morning, Denise.

Denise Harnley.

Okay.

I'm not seeing her pop up on my screen.

Sorry, Denise.

There you are.

Okay.

Good morning, Council Members.

I want to thank Council Member Mosqueda for including the funding for the South Park Public Safety Coordinator position in the balanced budget.

I also want to say a huge thank you to Council Member Herbold for moving the proposal forward and City Council President Gonzalez and Council Member Peterson for co-sponsorship.

The South Park residents and businesses are just amazing.

They have stepped up during these incredibly tough times, and they also stepped up to support the continuation of the funding for this position, and we are very grateful.

The community safety dialogues, youth engagement programs like Youth Writing Circle, Clean Streets Initiative, and assistance with community support during COVID will continue if full council approves the proposal.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, Denise.

The next three people are Leah Lucid, Amy Tower, and Catherine Manbeck.

Good morning, Leah.

Hi, good morning.

This is Leah in District 4. I want to thank you all for your hard work to get Seattle moving in the direction of justice.

It's making me cautiously hopeful to hear you talk about prioritizing shelter and housing options, the HOPE program, Africa Towns development, more tiny home villages, harm reduction and counseling.

As a clinician myself, that's very important to me, and other areas for increasing healthy, safe options for all of our neighbors.

However, I'm deeply concerned that you're not divesting meaningfully from SPD.

Our black and brown communities have suffered under police terror in Seattle, the murders of Charlena Lyles, John T. Williams, Che Taylor, Sean Fier, many others, and just last week, the brutalization of Kel that he thankfully survived.

So please, please keep searching for ways to defund SPD and reach the goal of 50%.

I know this is hard work.

I implore you to be brave and be bold.

And we thank you so much for this hard work.

I yield my time.

Thank you so much.

The next person is Amy.

Good morning, Amy.

Good morning.

My name is Amy Tower.

I'm a lifelong Seattle resident.

I'm a current renter in District 4. And I'm also a tenant organizer with the Tenants Union of Washington State.

I want to thank Council Member Mosqueda for putting in the $500,000 for tenant services, outreach, education, and organizing into the budget, and thank Council Members Sawant for proposing, and Council Members Morales and Lewis for cosponsoring.

This is really crucial, crucial funding that we need for next year.

As the moratorium is scheduled to end December 31st, As tenant organizers and advocates, we connect a lot of renters to their rights, whether that be through SDCI or through Housing Justice Project or just generally how to advocate for themselves.

And we know, of course, you know, we're endorses of the solidarity budget.

We implore also that the council still continue to fight to defund the police department by 50% at least.

We stand in solidarity with all of the amazing community organizers and members and organizations that have been working together to make Seattle more equitable.

And please also if you can find some ways to fund legal services.

The lawyers particularly at the Housing Justice Project are key absolutely key to preventing homelessness and keeping people in their homes.

Thank you so much.

Thank you very much.

The next person is Catherine.

Good morning, Catherine.

And as we look for Catherine, I will note the next three speakers, Violet Lavati, Lars Watson, and Tiffany McCoy.

Catherine?

Okay.

Folks, I'm not seeing Catherine.

We will come back to you if you are still available.

We'll go on to Violet.

Just want to make sure my screen didn't freeze.

Is Violet with us?

Great.

Hi, Violet.

Violet.

Thank you, Council Member Musqueda.

Thank you so much for your piece this morning, sharing with us about the budget, about racial equity.

I also want to say thank you to Council Member Sawant And I also want to say thank you to Tammy Morales and Louis.

The important work that you guys are doing to make sure that this is an equitable budget.

You know as a my name is Violet Labatai.

I'm the Executive Director of the Tenants Union of Washington and we take calls and we can't take clinic walk-ins right now.

But on our hotline we have seen upswing in triple numbers of tenants reaching out to us.

And we're at a critical point right now where we're going to see more people on the streets.

We ask that the city council you know if you don't take action Seattle will see a greater number of displacement of communities of color.

We're asking that in this budget to extend and uplift some of the budget that we need to help more tenants.

Every day we're coming, we're being created that these tenants do not get evicted.

And I always tell, share this with everybody.

Black has the highest number of evictions.

We're seeing a lot of evictions in our black and brown communities.

And I urge the city council to take action to fund tenant services more.

So thank you again, council member Mosqueda.

It was really good hearing that, what you shared this morning.

Thank you very much.

And it's really good to hear from you.

I appreciate it.

Lars, good morning.

Good morning.

My name is Lars Watson, and I am a resident of Councilman Straus' district here today to urge the council to reinstate the ADR resolution director's position in the city's 2021 budget.

I am a member of the steering committee, race and social justice for this program.

The reason given for eliminating this position is that it is duplicative with other city programs, specifically the Mayor's Office of Employee Ombudsman, but this program is not duplicative.

Its unique services include the use of external mediators not associated with or paid by the city, i.e. truly neutral.

With issues of discrimination, harassment, and alleged racism, ADR mediators use a trauma-informed social justice model of mediation specifically designed to handle these situations.

No other city program has the capability to utilize this model.

This is no time to lose a program with these services.

Cutting this program at this particular time makes no sense in this time of increased racial conflict and increasing numbers of employees stepping forward to ask for help with race issues discrimination and harassment and misconduct.

The services that the ADR program provides should be increased, not decreased.

I urge you to reinstate the FTE for the director of this program.

Thank you.

Thank you very much for flagging that.

I will look into that for sure.

Tiffany.

Tiffany McCoy, followed by Daniel Clark and Thomasina Schmidt.

Good morning, Tiffany.

Good morning, council members.

My name is Tiffany McCoy.

I'm the lead organizer for Real Change, and I want to thank you for including money for boosting up our handwashing stations and even actually increasing over what we originally wanted.

However, I am a bit concerned about how the language has morphed, and I wanted to express that to each of you.

First off, this reads as SPU will be in charge of quote-unquote developing hygiene stations for hand washing.

And the Clean Hands Collective already has a prototype, two different prototypes, one of which is ADA compliant.

And that's what we based all of the numbers on for this street sink project to be expanded across the city.

So I'm just concerned about getting bogged down in process and looking at other prototypes and not immediately putting sinks on the ground right now that can serve our house and our unhoused neighbors.

Furthermore, this says that that money is intended to supplement 15 stations that the city has deployed.

The previous language said that this project would go towards propping up to nine sinks in each council district, and I just really am worried about moving away from that mandate of boosting this up citywide.

We know that there's a need.

I know that the intent is in the right place, but I'm just concerned because of the money that we won last year for the mobile pit stop program.

That was repurposed towards different hygiene models that didn't serve that original model that we wanted.

And I just want to make sure that this is different.

I want to make sure that that money goes directly to the Clean Hands Collective.

Thanks very much.

Just a quick pause here.

I really appreciate that testimony.

This is exactly why we want to make sure that we're getting input.

We will follow up with you and make sure that the intent is matching the language there because it is absolutely intended to be complementary to the city's efforts and to fully fund the hygiene stations by ensuring that there is work that we do with that community partner.

So I see that I see the sponsor of that one coming on board.

So we will make sure to follow up as we have now have this on our radar.

So thank you very much, Tiffany, just want to make sure we follow up with you on that specific item.

Daniel, you are next.

Good morning.

Hi, last time I described a situation where a white supremacist and SPD targeted me with violence, and city council said they would follow up with OPA about my story.

I hope that happened.

I want to see this council stay true to its word and divest from SPD by 50% or more.

I did not get to finish my story after that incident the same night I was targeted again, taking cover and hearing a potentially friendly shooter on my side yell at the police.

Most recently, on Saturday, I was assaulted by a security guard for filming after they interjected themselves in the celebration, identifying himself as killer and putting his hands on my throat while saying, I will kill you.

I have video and a mark on my neck.

Every dollar to SPD is a dollar to organize crime.

Evidence shows police officers celebrating after killing black people in LA.

I am a strong believer in abolishing SPD and all body cam footage being available to the public now, not in February.

A new chief from outside the city is needed.

Act swiftly or more protesters will be killed or maimed.

Pick your side of morality.

Black lives matter.

Thank you.

I yield my time.

Thank you for sharing your story.

And we will follow up with you on that traumatic experience and the repeated experiences that you noted.

Tomasina you are next.

Good morning.

Hello.

My name is Tomasina Schmidt.

I'm the Executive Director for Seattle Neighborhood Group and I'm a resident in District 5 and I'm calling in regards to the South Park Public Safety Coordinator position.

I just want to express my deep gratitude to Budget Chair Mosqueda for including this proposal in the 2021 budget.

And I also want to just give a huge thank you to Council Member Herbal, her leadership and her amazing team for putting this proposal forward.

And a special thank you to Council President Gonzalez and Council Member Peterson for co-sponsoring this crucial proposal.

Also want to thank all the South Park residents and businesses for speaking out in support for this position.

This is a great example of community voicing their needs and government responding accordingly to meet those needs.

Thank you.

I yield my time.

Excellent, thank you very much.

The next three speakers are Sarah Kenney, Quan Wah Lee, and Rebecca Smith.

Good morning, Sarah.

Good morning.

My name is Sarah Kenney and I work at Wellspring Family Services in our Rapid Rehousing for Families program.

I'm here today to speak to the importance of including additional rental assistance for family rapid rehousing programs in the balancing package.

You heard from families who are participating in these programs at the public hearing on October 28th.

Rapid rehousing is a highly effective program model that helps families move from experiencing homelessness into stable housing.

The program provides rental assistance, employment support, and other services to help families find stability in permanent housing.

Unfortunately, COVID has had a devastating effect on the employment market, and particularly for families in rapid rehousing programs.

Our rental assistance is based on an income subsidy model.

So the fact that it has been difficult for people to find employment means that families are staying in the program for longer and programs are paying larger amounts in rental assistance.

Seattle's human services department has been helpful collaborators in doing what they can to keep us afloat and keep through 2020, but fixes do not solve the critical funding gap we are anticipating in 2021. We are asking you all to provide additional rental assistance funds for family rapid rehousing programs to ensure that families can maintain their hard-earned housing stability.

Thank you to Councilmember Herbold for her leadership on this and the support we've heard from Councilmembers Morales, Gonzalez, Strauss, Lewis, and so on.

Thank you very much.

Thank you very much.

And Juan La, followed by Rebecca, and then Catherine, if you are still on the line, Catherine Manbeck, we're going to go back to you to see if we can get you off of mute on our end, and just want to give you that quick heads up.

Kwan Wong, good morning.

Good morning.

Hi, we can hear you.

Let's restart your time.

Can you hear me?

Yes.

Thanks so much.

Go ahead.

Okay.

Good morning.

My name is Kwan.

I live in District 7, and I'm urging you guys, the City Council, to defund SPD at least 80% and possibly abolishment.

So, yes, the protests have seemed to quiet down, but protests are still going on, and the cities still haven't met all the city's demands yet.

And Wednesday, I witnessed a protester who was brutally beat up by police.

Not only he was laying down on the streets for 15 minutes with no police trying to help them, also after Also the SPD responded with no stretcher.

It was a piece of white cloth, and we thought the protester was dead.

And not only after that, SPD has the guts to say that the person has a premeditated seizure when bystanders saw the police smash his head on his concrete.

So this is brutal brutality.

This is police brutality, and it's seen every day.

And yesterday, I also I also saw a police where they apprehended a lady.

They pulled over a lady on the car.

A police officer pointed a gun with her and her hands were shaking.

And it was actually a false call by her boyfriend.

And the police does not know how to react and respond.

They are very poorly trained in de-escalation.

And I heard that this is police brutality every day.

And so I urge you guys to do find some solution over it.

We allocated money to needed services such as education, house of service to black and brown.

Thank you very much for that and we will follow up with you as well.

Rebecca Smith.

Good morning.

Good morning, council members.

Are you able to hear me?

Yes, we are.

Thank you.

Wonderful.

With regards to defunding the Seattle Police Department, I would like to draw your attention to the micro-community policing plans, which were recently implemented in 2015 with the idea of combining police and community engagement to identify specific problems for specific neighborhoods in Seattle to increase police effectiveness.

And I want to talk about who makes these surveys.

and who responds to these surveys.

The surveys are written by students at the University of Seattle, which has a student body of 52.6% white students, 26% Asian, 11% international, leaving only 5.1% Black, 2% Native, and 3.4% Pacific Islander.

And yet, those who are responding to these surveys, which are supposed to shed light on community input into where our needs lie with regards to the police.

So those who respond to this survey are 79.5% white, 10.5% Asian with only 3.8% being black, 6.2% being Hispanic.

And of these responders, 77% are college educated.

So what I would like to point out is that we're not really getting feedback from those who are most affected by SPD and those who are interacting most frequently with SPD.

And since you, your city council office is one of the administrators of this survey, I would just request that you withdraw your support from the micro community policing plan.

Rebecca, thanks so much.

I'm gonna ask if you might be able to send us the rest of your comments, and we'll also follow up with you on the micro policing concerns you just brought up.

Thank you very much for putting that on our radar.

So we're gonna go back to Catherine Manbeck, and then we'll hear from Karen Glynn, Jim Street, and Naomi C., Katie Neuner, and Bob Johnson.

That's all folks that are present.

Catherine, are you available?

Hi, yes.

Can you hear me now?

Excellent.

Thank you for waiting.

I'm sorry for the delay.

Please go ahead.

No worries, thank you for returning to me.

I want to, I'm a Seattle resident in zip code 98109 and I'm calling to echo the calls to defund SPD by at least 50% and to allocate sufficient budgeting for participatory budgeting, particularly allocated to BIPOC communities I believe that organizations are calling for at least $100 million to go towards that participatory budgeting, although that seems like the least that would be acceptable.

And to make sure that the priorities of that budgeting are funded by community-identified priorities.

I also want to echo what Rebecca was just sharing about moving away from micro-policing and being very intentional about making sure that we are doing outreach to communities who are disproportionately impacted by police violence when making any and all decisions.

And as a constituent, I want to highlight that the recent polls suggesting a lack of support for City Council is not reflective of my experience.

I am appreciative of City Council's efforts to defund SPD, although I also believe that we need to push harder and do more.

Thanks.

Thank you very much again for waiting.

Good morning, Karen.

Thanks for your patience as well.

Karen Glenn, followed by Jim Street, Naomi C., Katie Nooner, and Bob Johnson.

I'll note that Jim and Bob, you are listed as not present.

If you'd like to chime in, please give us a call.

Good morning, Karen.

Good morning.

Thank you.

My name is Karen Gillen, and I am a District 7 resident.

Winter weather is approaching, and we have way too many chronically homeless people living unsheltered on our streets.

It is inhumane not to provide for those suffering with drug addiction and our mental health issues.

which combined with the elements will be disastrous.

I would like to see the city invest more in shelters such as the new King County Congregate Shelter just opened in photo.

The shelter was implemented speedily and provides for the issues that keep the chronically homeless from accepting offers of existing shelter.

Each person is given an eight by eight foot pod with a bed, small table, chair, storage locker, and onsite wraparound services including case managers, housing navigators, and mental health specialists.

Placing more people in these shelters will also mean fewer 911 calls and could be an alternative to rotation in and out of jail for low-level offenders by addressing the underlying causes of drug addiction and mental health issues.

I would also like to note that defunding the police by 50% is not really a reasonable thing to do when we're experiencing 40% rise in violent crimes in Seattle.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And I still see Jim not present.

We'll go on to Naomi C.

and then Katie.

Good morning, Naomi.

Good morning, Naomi.

Hi there.

Hey, can you hear me?

Okay.

Okay.

My name is Naomi from the Low Income Housing Institute, and I would like to first thank the entire council for the dedication and really just incredible spirit and love put towards providing for our unhoused community.

We really appreciate it.

I also wanted to share an experience Lehigh had last week at John C. Sr.

Little Park, where we conducted outreach in partnership with REACH.

There were no police officers, just community-based organizations and service providers.

We were called in to respond to neighbors' concerns about tents in the park.

And REACH built on their existing relationships with encampment residents formed over weeks and months to identify the best clients to be referred to the villages.

Lehi worked with Reach to show encampment residents what the tiny house villages look like and discern which village was the best for the residents' needs.

In the end, Reach and Lehi peacefully and successfully transitioned 10 individuals and couples into shelter and were able to remove their tents from the park.

In many cases, the encampment residents would only accept tiny house villages.

Without the option of the villages, many residents would have remained in the park, creating an increasingly contentious situation between them and neighbors.

And without the existing relationships Reach had diligently developed, we would not have moved people into the best place for their needs.

Lehigh and Reach's success proves that community-based organizations and service providers are better equipped to meet the needs of both our unhoused neighbors and the surrounding neighborhoods.

But it also proves that a fundamental component of successful outreach is the availability of dignified spaces.

Thank you.

Perfect timing.

And thank you for your comments today.

Katie, good afternoon.

Oops, still morning.

Good morning, Katie.

Good morning.

Can you hear me?

Yes, we can.

Thank you.

Good morning.

My name is Katie.

I'm a district two.

No, I'm not a district two resident.

No, you will never see me on City Council.

We'll start your time over here.

Sorry about that.

We do have a little encouragement.

My name is Katie.

I'm a small business owner in Seattle and a District 2 resident, as well as a Black woman living in Seattle.

And I wanted to kind of piggyback on what Rebecca was saying about the representation in polls.

And that just goes to further explain representation in other areas and in areas you might not be hearing from us.

For example like in in public comment there's probably not a lot of Black people in this area because having access to hearing about these different things can be hard for many reasons.

I also want to just reiterate the importance of language in our budgets and in our contracts for cities.

And I want to make sure that we are writing down Black communities, Indigenous communities, not just equitable communities, because that's a trendy word right now.

But equity doesn't necessarily mean equity for Black and Indigenous people.

So I want to make sure that even when people of color, that can often leave out Black and Indigenous people.

So I want to make sure that that writing in the budget says Black and Indigenous people.

and black and indigenous youth are very crucial in this movement.

We need to make sure that we're putting a lot of money towards them because just like our house's community, now they were kids once.

And if we don't give them the resources and skills in order to be a resident here, then they will end up in the same way.

So we have to invest in our youth to invest in our future that we all desire.

I yield the rest of my time.

Thanks again to everybody who's called in.

We have Jim and Bob still listed as not present, and Derek from before.

But other than that, we have now heard from everybody who has both signed in and is present to provide public comment.

So folks, that will end today's public comment period, and we are gonna move into items of business on our agenda.

Madam Clerk, as we move into item one, I know that all of these items are going to sort of run together.

I would defer to you to let me know if it's needed or possible to read in all of the Roman numeral, all of the Roman numeral items so that we don't have to pause if we move past it.

If that's desired, we can go ahead and do the larger headings on those.

Yes, Chair Muscat, I can do that.

Agenda item one, introduction and proposed balancing package overview, including Roman numeral one, economic recovery, Roman numeral two, health and safety, and Roman numeral three, housed.

Thank you.

Thank you very much, Madam Clerk.

Colleagues, I started this day with a huge thank you to Allie Panucci, Dan Eater, Tom Mikesell, the incredible team, Patty and others.

We have really a tremendous level of appreciation and respect and awe.

for all of the work that you've done over the last year here.

So we're going to have central staff walk us through the agenda today.

And I want to remind folks there are over 100, well, there's almost 150 actions that this budget encompasses.

And we're going to walk through each one of those.

We're going to ask folks to keep their comments relatively short because central staff does have both a presentation and they're going to give us an overview of each of the items.

I'm going to provide some news as well as we get towards the end of the central staff's opening presentation to give you some context as we look at potential amendments as well.

But Allie, why don't we have you go ahead and open it up for us?

Thank you.

Good morning, Chair Mosqueda.

Good morning, committee members.

I'm Allie Panucci with your council central staff.

Um, today we are on step four in the budget process and I will provide some overview discussion initially, and then we will walk through the, the presentation and the agenda by category.

We are not actually intending to present each item individually, given the numbers that council member.

excuse me, Chair Miscada just described, but each item is listed in the slides.

I will summarize each category and then pause for questions or if there are any specific items that council members would like to discuss or have questions about.

And I have the majority of the central staff team on the Zoom call, and they're available to provide additional information or descriptions of any items at the chair or council members requests.

So as I just mentioned, today we're on step four in the budget process, where we'll discuss the balancing package.

This is step four of six with just two short weeks until you complete the final step and adopt a balanced budget.

Next slide, please.

After, as I noted, I will summarize, I will provide an overview of the balancing package, doing my best to splice together related items as I walk through the categories.

And then I will, as I noted before, I'll pause between each of the sub-investment areas for questions and comments.

The majority, and then as I noted, the central staff team is on the line and available to answer questions.

Next slide, please.

Following the discussion today on the proposed balancing package, the next step in the budget process will be voting on the package, including any proposed amendments to that package.

As a reminder, council members wishing to amend the balancing package must submit a request to central staff by 5 p.m.

on Thursday, November 12th, or just in a couple of days.

Any proposals that will increase spending must include an offsetting cut.

And if any of your proposals would require new legislation, that needs to be introduced and referred to the budget committee by Monday, November 16. So if you haven't already notified central staff of any legislation that might need drafting, please do so as soon as possible.

Unless there are questions about the next step in the process, we'll move on.

Great.

Thank you.

So this slide is just to provide a general overview of the balancing package.

And some of this was covered by the chair in her opening remarks this morning.

As you likely recall, the first action that the chair and the committee needed to address was resolving the starving balance shortfall.

After working with the city budget office and reconciling what was transmitted in the budget and the actions included in the budget revision ordinance, we needed to resolve a starting shortfall of about $8.8 million.

So that is sort of step one in the process.

The package overall increases use of general fund by about $68.2 million.

This includes about $26 million of net new general fund investments Just over $20 million to resolve some of the revenue shortfalls identified in the November 2020 revenue forecast in the short-term rental fund, commercial parking tax fund, and school zone camera funds, and replenishing $32 million to the city's emergency fund.

In addition to the proposed amendments, The third quarter to replenish the city's emergency fund, the third quarter supplemental budget ordinance, an amendment to that bill will swap out the use of $3 million from the revenue stabilization fund with general fund, resulting in a total increase to the two reserve funds by about $35 million in this balancing package.

Next slide, please.

I want to take a moment here to talk a little bit about the city's fiscal reserves.

This chart illustrates the ending balance in the city's fiscal reserves since 2006. You can see that even with the proposal in the balancing package to replenish $32 million to the emergency fund and $3 million to the revenue stabilization funds, the balances in the city's fiscal reserves are still below where the city was during the last recession.

And this is only, this will leave about 2.4% of the city's total general fund revenues in the reserves.

I will note that taking this action to replenish the reserve, the emergency reserves is consistent with the spending plan for the payroll tax that the council adopted this summer, replenishing the majority of funds used to support the joint COVID relief efforts.

Holly, could you just reiterate that point?

I think it's really important as part of the framework as well for the budget, both what the jumpstart spend plan originally intended to do with reserves and where we are at currently.

Sure.

So just a few short months ago, the council adopted the payroll tax and the jumpstart payroll tax as well as the spending plan associated with that payroll tax.

In addition, the council has taken several actions to fund emergency COVID relief with direct financial assistance to the community using the city's emergency funds.

After working with the mayor, the mayor and the council agreed to spend about $45 million in 2020 and 2021 from the emergency funds.

The payroll tax spending plan included a specific allocation in 2021 to replenish those emergency funds used to support those COVID relief efforts.

And so this proposal to replenish the emergency reserves is consistent with that item in the spending plan.

Thank you so much.

I don't see any questions on that.

Appreciate it.

Next slide, please.

Now moving on to what is in the balancing package.

The agenda is organized by the following main investment areas that are further broken down into subcategories.

Economic recovery, health and safety, and housed.

The numbers on this table show the proposed investments in the package by category.

and that are supported by a mix of fund sources.

This includes use of the new, the general fund revenues and REIT that we learned of in the 2020 forecast update, revenue update, as well as the SPDD revenues to support these investments and includes reprogramming spending that was proposed by the mayor for the 2021 budget to be reprogrammed to restore funding for previous commitments, as well as to support other council member priorities.

Thank you so much, Ali, and salute to whoever was in the background there.

I will also note that there's a lot of crossover.

I really appreciate the work that central staff has done to try to identify for the public, instead of just departmental investments, where we are investing in strategies to keep folks healthy, housed, invest in our safety and ensure economic resilience and to build back our economy in a more equitable way, not just to rebound.

For example, where there's a crossover, the house section here doesn't include the 30 million, for example, that we are building back into the budget.

I think that that was more categorized in the equitable to make sure that we're investing in that strategic investment for those who are historically at risk for displacement and creating affordable housing.

That's another great example.

And you'll see other areas where they could be categorized different ways, but we wanted to provide you sort of the overall context.

Ali, I think you can move on to the next slide.

And I would like to make one note as we go into our discussion here.

Colleagues, as other budget shares have done in the past, we have set aside a small amount to make sure that the dollars are not reflected in this budget here.

My intent is to set aside at least $1.9 million that would be available as a starting place if council members have additional priorities that they'd like to see.

because we are extremely concerned about the need to protect the emergency reserves.

I'm sorry, Ali, if you could go back two slides.

I forgot it was backwards.

This emergency reserve level, the chart real quick.

I went too far.

There we go.

The chart here shows We have been really thoughtful and I hope you will agree we have been proactive in conserving almost 40 million, 35 million as Ali mentioned in the emergency reserve section here.

My hope is that as you look for possible amendments or other The set aside of 1.9 million and other strategies that you might like to see change in terms of the levels of those investments to really help us protect against dipping into this reserve any further.

As you can see, if you look at the total amount here, we are just on par with what the 20 2008. and 2007 actual emergency funds were total going into the recession.

And in order for us to be prudent about the unknown for next year and the years following, I would like us to try to stay as close to 40 million as possible.

So that is my both hope and ask, and also the news that I wanted to share.

Obviously, 1.9 is not enough for the priorities that we're talking about, but it's a helpful starting place.

Thank you very much, Ellie.

Let's go on.

Thank you.

Patty, if you could jump ahead one more.

Thank you.

Okay, so I will start with walking through the proposals in the economic recovery investment area.

Items two through 16 on the agenda are related to effective government services and include actions like restoring funding for positions proposed for budgetary layoffs, creating an independent forecasting office, requesting a report on the city's retirement funds, requesting more curbside pickup and returns at all library branches.

In total, this will result in $46.9 million of spending added to or modified in the proposed budget.

And this excludes the $32 million proposed to replenish the emergency fund in 2021. It also includes requests to fund a transportation impact fee study and requests for reports from certain departments like OED on strategies to mitigate the impacts of construction activity on small businesses.

Next slide, please.

as well as recognizing the revenue from the Transportation Benefit District funds implemented through the voter approved Proposition 1, restoring funding or backfilling the revenue shortfall for the commercial parking tax and the pedestrian, excuse me, the school zone camera fund, as well as funding a new recruit class and testing cuts in the fire department.

And I'll pause there.

That's a brief summary of some of the actions included in the effective government services and provide time for council members to ask questions or highlight specific proposals.

Excellent.

Thank you very much, Ali.

So, colleagues, with each of these bullets that you just saw on the last two slides, there is the backup council budget actions and statements of legislative intent, one pagers that go with each of these actions.

If you would like to ask any questions or feature any of the pieces that you sponsored or co-sponsored, we are happy to have time in today's agenda to make sure that those items get lifted up.

If there's also clarification that you would like, we are happy to seek that.

This is our time to really ask these questions and dig in so that as people think about possible amendments before Thursday's 5 p.m.

deadline, you have a chance to really understand the issues more.

I will ask, Ali, if you could do a quick clarification piece.

I know that it's been said that there was $57 million in new net revenue, and I'm just wondering if you can help us break down that number about what was actually available for us, because it's slightly different than just $57 million in new net revenue, correct?

Correct.

So let's see here.

So I think you all have seen various references to $57 million.

So just as a reminder, that includes about $68 million of new general fund that was provided in the forecast update or the revenue update provided in November.

But then you have to subtract out the shortfalls in the short-term rental fund, the commercial parking tax, and the school zone camera fund.

So that results in about $41 million of general fund available after accounting for those shortfalls.

And then there's $15 million of new REIT revenue, which is that can support investments in capital projects and affordable housing.

So parameters around how those REIT dollars can be used.

That is correct.

And you'll see later in the presentation that the proposed use of those new REIT revenues is both helping address some of those shortfalls as well as supporting council member proposals for investments in transportation projects in the Department of Transportation.

That's great.

Thank you very much.

I just thought that context was helpful as we hear from stakeholders who may have questions wondering if you have $57 million, why are there X, Y, and Z items left out?

There are still important trade-offs that we were considering, A, as we built back the emergency reserves, and B, because there's some restrictions on how those dollars can be used, and C, as Ali said, there were some deep gaps once the revenue forecast came out specific to some of the transportation we were able to do that.

We were able to do that.

We were able to do that.

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We were able to do that.

From the budget chair staff and from central staff and from the department.

So thank you for all this hard work.

I know there are a lot of moving pieces with different transportation funding sources, just to clarify for the public and then to ask a question.

and maybe set up a potential Form C, the 24.8 million of STDD funds to SDOT, that is to implement the newly approved Prop 1, the one that was just approved overwhelmingly by voters last week.

And I believe the amount that that will generate is actually in excess of $30 million.

And I think what's happening here is that the proposal from SDOT their, their spend plans have sort of moved around a bit, but the latest version of this, I think has, um, $8 million just sitting idle in reserves.

And so, um, we want to make sure that we are, um, allocating those funds to the appropriate buckets, not specific projects necessarily, but to the buckets that voters approved.

And in looking at the opening up that document, it looks like there's a proposed spend plan that seems to leave out, it seems to zero out infrastructure maintenance and capital improvements.

and instead has all the money sitting in reserve.

So since voters just approved up to $9 million for infrastructure, maintenance, and capital improvements, and the Seattle Times published SDOT's original spend plan, which included $5 million for infrastructure, maintenance, and capital improvements, I think might want to rebalance that a little bit so that we that are showing to the voters that after they just approved it, that we're not trying to zero out anything from the various categories.

So I will confer with central staff on that.

Thanks so much, Council Member Peterson.

As chair of transportation, we appreciate your deep dive into that.

Just see Calvin Chow from central staff popping up as well, and we'll turn to him for any comments or reaction.

I just want to make sure that I share with the Council of what Councilmember Peterson and I also discussed as we looked at this item.

What the proposed package here does is it adopts the SDOT spend plan as it was transmitted by the department.

So nothing in this proposed budget changes anything from what SDOT has proposed to us.

And we are happy to continue to engage as Councilmember I think that is a great time to get some clarification on those questions.

I just want to make sure for you, Council colleagues and the viewing public that there is an awareness Calvin, do you have any thoughts or additional information for us to share?

Just to confirm that the transportation chair is correct that the proposed spend plan from SDOT does cover the transit investments as well as the passes and funding for some of the West Seattle related work that was approved by voters.

There is funding held in reserves.

I think part of it is in the context of all the other Move Seattle and other transportation pieces, I think they were holding potentially holding on to some of those reserves to come back to have that discussion, but certainly council could take action to make that available in this budget action as well.

Any additional comments on that?

Please go ahead customer appears here just real quickly.

So I, you know, these categories are not project specific for this particular spend plan that we received from s dot.

But I think it would be nice to restore all the line items that voters approved just so they see some funding for each line item that they had approved.

I mean, In District 4, I know we've got the bridge overpass on 45th Street that we want to make sure gets funded.

And so there are capital projects like that that are important.

So it'd be good to signal that we want to invest in those as well.

Thank you.

Thank you very much, Councilmember Peterson.

Are there additional comments?

And perhaps, Allie, as we walk through, oh, hello, Councilmember Juarez.

Hi.

Hi, please go ahead.

And Allie, I'll get back to you in just a second, if that's okay.

Go ahead, Councilmember Juarez.

I am swimming in paper and screens, but I'm gonna put out a few basic comments.

First of all, thank you for the balancing package.

I love how you guys broke it down into the sections so we can understand not only the category but the price tag attached to it for the economic recovery for 55 million, health and safety 79, housed 11, and then how it breaks down into the budget.

I know at some point I just want to clarify something here because I looked at, we looked at what the executive had sent down on November 2nd and Council, Madam Chair, you and I had some frank discussions about what our concerns, our proposals, and of the seven that the mayor sent down, four of those were restorative.

And I see some of that had been absorbed in what you shared with us yesterday when you break down your budget direction and where you're pointed to on the economic recovery, health and safety and housed.

The mayor sent down something on November 2nd about Clean Cities Initiative.

Restoring the strategic investment, I see that that's in there to the tune of 30Million.

That sounds great.

Expanding shelter capacity, eliminating budget driven layoffs.

I see a lot of this in the 14 million restored.

So I see a lot in the restoration and the South Park safety coordinator.

So I see a lot of the initiatives that were proposed by the executive that came later because some of these projections came in or we didn't know that we were going to have some additional funds.

So I had been like doing this cross referencing.

where, and I shared this with you, Madam Chair, where I see we have some really strong alignment with the proposals that were sent down.

So thank you for that, because I know you and I talked about that last week extensively.

about where they overlap and where we have wins.

And I am of the opinion that where these budget tributaries come from, or revenue streams come from, if I can keep with the analogy, as long as they all lead to the great sea of the public good, I don't care if the tributary is labeled the legislative branch or the executive branch, as long as the money gets to where it has to go.

So I will make clear now that I am concerned about revisiting and possibly providing another form, another form C on the Clean Cities Initiative.

I know it's to the tune of 5.6, Madam Chair, and I know that a lot of what you shared is absorbed into what the three areas that you have outlined and the staff have this morning.

But I would like to just have people keep an open mind about that because we know right now that, particularly as district representatives, that is the number one issue we're dealing with is public safety for the unsheltered folks.

And thank you again.

We also know that we have the new navigators in the South Branch.

South Park and the other people that we now have ready to go to be deployed to provide services and all the things that we need on the ground.

But we also need desperately the cleaning of the parks, the needles, the garbage, all of those issues.

As I've shared before, and I can't say it any stronger, It's great to have hand washing stations.

It's great to have porta potties.

It's great that and parks are doing overtime and picking up garbage, but we need more.

And so I hope that we can keep an open mind.

And I like what you said in the beginning madam chair that we are working together with the executive to get this done.

that we don't have any time or there's just nobody has time for political posturing.

We just don't.

And so with that, I'm going to keep an open mind, Madam Chair, but I just wanted you to know that the Clean Cities Initiative is still important to me.

I don't know if it's to the tune of 5.6.

Maybe we can have central staff look at it.

I'm trying to do it on my own here with my own staff, where we have some cross-referencing, where you have absorbed some of those issues that were brought up by the executive that are already absorbed or overlapped into your general budget.

So I'm going to leave it at that.

So thank you for the time.

OK, thank you very much, Council Member Juarez.

Patty, do you mind going back to slide three for us really quickly here?

I really appreciate what you mentioned, Council Member Juarez.

And just to orient folks, I know we are all swimming in a sea of paper here as well.

Sorry, Patty, one more back.

So we can look at that balancing package step four here.

So to avoid swimming in a sea of paper, just a quick reminder that we're going to do the following categories, economic recovery, health and safety, house, resources, and then the budget legislation that goes with it.

I know there is probably going to be a more robust health supports, and I just wanted to orient folks to the summary of the information.

I think Allie and I were thinking it might be helpful for us as we go through each of these categories.

We'll slow down and go through each bullet so people can really hear what's been incorporated in the budget, and to the degree that we have the information at the top of our fingertips, we'll note the sponsor, and you all, after we summarize that category in these five areas, you'll get a chance to speak to them.

Want to make sure that folks know in the area related to health and safety, there's a few subcomponents.

So we'll go through A, B, C, D, E. And then we'll have a chance to talk a little bit more about the support services that we're providing to those who are living houseless and to those in our community at large, because when there is garbage outside and folks don't have the ability of garbage pickup like everybody who is housed have, it does affect the entire community.

You are right, Council Member Warrens, there is quite a bit of overlap in what the mayor sent down late or midweek last week.

Much of the budget proposals had already been submitted and much of the budget was already drafted by then, but I think the nice part is you see some synergy in terms of what the executive and the legislative branch are interested in advancing.

And as you already noted, central staff is doing a deep dive into the request that was made for the 5.6, noting that 4.4 is about what they asked for for 2021, and really trying to crosswalk those numbers with investments we made before to make sure that they are able to be scaled up and whether or not a six-month timeframe is is enough, but I think that those questions that you have asked about, you know, does this pencil out and how does this overlap with existing investments are really important, and thank you for the early heads up on that.

We will get a chance to get into that specific topic in just a bit.

Does that work for you, Allie, if we go through the process that way and maybe read each of those bullets?

Yeah, so just to clarify, I'll provide a brief summary of the category, and then I'll read in each item that's within that category.

And we'll do my best to name the sponsor from memory, and then I'm working right now to get a different list with all the sponsors in it for me in the right order.

But if I to make a mistake, mistake, apologies in advance.

No worries.

And I can chime in and try and help as well.

And this is just my way of hoping that we lift up all of the good work that council members did.

I tried to do some of that in my opening remarks and my apologies as well because there was so much that was done that we didn't note at the opening.

And if I also got anything wrong, this is our chance to correct it now.

So.

That works.

Okay.

Is there anything else in the effective government category?

Again, on slide 7. And why don't we start with 7, Allie, if you just want to summarize them real quick for the viewing public, and that will allow us to make sure that it's daylighted.

Great.

So, this is the effective government services category.

And just to clarify, Chair Mosqueda, so I can now read in each of the items in this subcategory.

I'm going to go ahead and get started.

As I noted earlier, there is about $46.9 million of proposed spending in this area.

The first item, item number two on the agenda would add $2.18 million of general fund to restore positions proposed for budgetary layoffs in the and imposes a proviso, and this is sponsored by Chair Mosqueda.

You can keep going, and I'll look at hands.

Is there anybody saying they'd like to chime in?

Council Member Herbold, please go ahead.

Thank you.

Yeah, just real quickly, appreciate the chair, including in the budget package, the fire department's highest rated priority, restoring the cut from the mayor's proposal to keep pace with hiring for our firefighters, which are anticipated to face a wave of retirement in the coming years.

and then just, again, really appreciate the priority.

This was a priority of the council last year, and I know it is for this year as well.

Thank you, Councilmember Herbold.

Okay, Allie, thank you.

Sorry, I was muted.

Item three on the agenda would request the FAS provide a report on small business on the small business and for small businesses related to the business and occupation tax for relief options.

And this is sponsored by Council Member Lewis.

Item.

four on the agenda would add $150,000 of general fund to finance general to create an independent economic and forecasting office and imposes to proviso sponsored by council president Gonzalez.

Item five on the agenda would cut $10.4 million of general fund and add $32 million to the emergency fund.

So this is the action item sponsored by the and the committee to replenish the funds.

And I'll just note here that this is really a technical adjustment, but it just reflects after all of the proposals, the remaining general fund to replenish reserves consistent with the payroll tax spending plan.

And the transactions are really of a technical nature.

Item six would add $60,000 general fund to the legislative department to supplement a King County survey on countywide human service wage inequities sponsored by council member Morales.

Item seven adds $150,000 to the ledge department to fund a transportation impact fee study.

Item eight is a statement of legislative, excuse me, and that is sponsored by Council Member Peterson.

Item eight on the agenda is a statement of legislative intent that would request that the Office of Economic Development develop a construction impacts mitigation program for small businesses.

And this is sponsored by Council Member Peterson.

item.

Excuse me.

Item nine on the agenda is a statement of legislative intent requesting that the retirement group provide a report on sources and uses of city retirement funds and performance of the service to plan sponsored by Councilmember Peterson.

Item 10 requests that the Department of Transportation provide monthly reporting on the West Seattle Bridge immediate response program consistent with the July 16, 2020 mail proclamation of civil emergency.

And this is sponsored by Council Member Herbold.

Item 11 would add $24.8 million of the STDD funds to SDOT to implement the voter approved Proposition 1. Item 12 adds $9 million of general fund to the department of transportation for debt services to backfill the reduced 2021 commercial parking tax revenue forecast.

And this is sponsored by council member, by the budget committee and the chair, as well as item 13 that transfers $9 million of general fund to the school safety traffic and pedestrian improvement fund to backfill the reduced 2021 school zone camera revenue forecast.

So I will note, I'm still frustrated that there are many folks who are still accessing our schools.

And I want to continue to make sure that there is not high traffic or high speeds around those schools, even those schools not technically being done at the school during, as we traditionally know schooling, there's still some school programming.

So this is an area that I am still looking into.

It would be nice to figure out ways to ensure that folks are driving safely around those school areas.

Because even though I believe that there's still some school programming that's occurring, we know that families are accessing those playgrounds and open spaces.

So I just want to let you know I'm still looking into this issue because I think it'd be important to both slow traffic and if there is any revenue there, that'd be great.

Thank you.

Item 14 would add $1.6 million of general fund to the fire department to restore recruit class and testing cuts sponsored by Council Member Herbold.

Item 15 would request that the public libraries open curbside pickup and returns at all branches sponsored by Council Member Lewis.

And item 16 is a statement of legislative intent requesting that the city of Seattle public utilities prepares a report of work to analyze wastewater treatment plans and potential government structure changes sponsored by councilmember Peterson.

I'm wondering if we read in item number three and four.

I could have just missed it.

on small business, business and occupation tax relief options sponsored by Council Member Lewis.

And item four would add $150,000 to finance general and to create an independent economics and forecasting office and imposes two provisos sponsored by Council President Gonzalez.

I really appreciate that work as well, Council President Gonzalez.

Thank you all very much.

That brings us to page number six in the agenda.

We have gone through the first 16 items.

Before we go on to economic recovery, is there anything else that folks would like to highlight from the two slides that showed a summary of those items, slides seven and eight here?

All right, thank you very much, Allie.

Let's move on to the next category.

Great, thank you.

The next category relates to infrastructure investments.

It relates to items 17 through 22 on the agenda that includes about $8.2 million of investments to support transportation projects.

I will start with item 17 on the agenda that would add $777,000 of REIT to support the Thomas Street redesign project sponsored by Councilmember Lewis.

just, yeah, that is the full amount that was requested by the council member.

Item 18 would add $500,000 of REIT for the route 44 transit plus multimodal corridor project sponsored by council member Morales.

Item 19 on the agenda would add, oh, excuse me, that was sponsored by council member Strauss.

Apologies, council member Strauss.

Item 19 would add $5.2 million of REIT to fund the Georgetown to South Park Trail.

This is sponsored by Council Member Morales and this increase, this is an increase from the amount originally requested to fully fund that project.

We are going to move on to the next item.

This is an important one.

had requested and the answer was really no.

You either do all of it or it's not going to happen and let's just do all of it so that these projects don't continue to get put back on the back burner.

Council Member Morales, did you want to add anything to that?

I just want to thank the chair and central staff for helping us figure that out.

You know there were some different layers that we were trying to assess as we were putting this together and so I'm grateful and the South Park and Georgetown communities are grateful to see this fully funded.

I think that is all I have to say.

Thank you.

Item 21 would add $400,000 of general fund to the Department of Transportation for the Bike Master Plan Protected Bike Lines Project, also sponsored by Councilmember Morales.

And item 22 would add $4 million, $2 million of REIT, and $2 million of general fund to SDOT for the Bridge Load Rating CIP Project, sponsored by Councilmember Peterson.

Okay, Councilmember Peterson, did you want to make any comments here?

bridge funding, big ticket item that is obviously not being met by $4 million, but double the amount that we originally talked about, but still a lot of work to do here.

So if you would like to make any comments, please go ahead.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

Yes, so the city auditor who did a report on all city bridges throughout Seattle after the West Seattle Bridge closed suddenly reported to us that bridge maintenance should be funded from between $34 million and $100 plus million.

The Durkin administration thankfully kept the bridge maintenance funding level despite there being massive cuts from SDOT to the tune of about $60 million.

So however, that would mean another 24 million was needed to reach that bare minimum of 34 million.

So I appreciate the chair willingness to try to find some additional funds for this.

I think that we still need more money for bridge maintenance, and so I'm going to be trying to get creative here as we head into the next phase of the budget with the form Cs to see if we can get additional dollars.

But I appreciate the willingness to try to add a little bit here.

we have a lot of money in the budget.

The 24 million was the bare minimum of what the city auditor told us is needed.

I need to strive to find more dollars here.

Thank you.

Councilmember Peterson, I look forward to working with you on that.

We also want to double check with the Department of Transportation to make sure if any funding was sent their way I'm glad we were able to at least double the initial amount and recognize that this is still an underfund of what is overall needed.

So look forward to working with you.

And also on some of the, you know, progress, some of the revenue proposals that you've also discussed as possible ways to ensure sustained funding.

So look forward to those future conversations.

Council Member Herbold, please go ahead.

Thank you.

I just want to speak again with my appreciation, Chair Mosqueda, for your inclusion of this funding in the Chair's balancing package.

The context, I think, for some of my enthusiasm about increased funding for bridge maintenance is out of an understanding that one of the large reasons why SDOT is considering a replacement of the West Seattle Bridge instead of a repair of a bridge that our technical experts feel has only a 5% chance of not having the remainder of its 48-year life extend with a repair.

is because of SDOT's concern as asset manager, right?

Our technical experts are really focused on, will the repair work and will it stick?

SDOT has to consider that, but then they also have to consider their role as an asset manager.

And as an asset manager, they have to believe that the resources exist to maintain the bridge.

And they estimate that the West Seattle Bridge the annual maintenance costs are about $500,000 a year as opposed to about $250,000 a year.

And I hope the council thinks hard about whether or not it is fiscally responsible to pursue a nearly $400 million infrastructure project instead of a you know, $70 million, I'm sorry, yeah, I'm sorry, getting my numbers mixed up, a much more, much less costly repair simply because SDOT doesn't have the confidence that we can maintain the repaired bridge at a higher rate and I think we have an obligation to address this issue as it relates to annual maintenance funding and to do everything we can to act on the recommendations of the city auditor.

Okay.

I'm not seeing any additional hands.

Thank you very much for walking us through items on slide nine.

That brings us to page seven of the agenda and into the health and safety category.

I, you know, I do want to note here, um, there's sort of a, a crossover.

If you look at your agenda items, um, one B and items I see here, um, I'm going to move on to item 2A.

It's both infrastructure investments and then it's also planning investments.

Those items that I talked about at the beginning, the green buildings program by Council President Gonzalez, the Green New Deal position and the Climate Ambassador position.

I think it's important to look at the combination of items 17 on infrastructure investments through 27 on health and safety in the climate area.

That's where I see the combination coming into really invest in green new deal priorities.

If you think about that as we walk through that, I would love to hear your feedback as well.

Thanks, Sally, so much.

Thank you.

I think we are on items 2A.

These are the health and safety climate investments.

They're items 23 through 27 on the agenda that include about $400,000 of investments to support the city's work to reduce climate impacts.

So the first item in this subcategory is item 23 that would request a statement of legislative intent requesting that the executive recommend strategies for consolidating urban forestry functions sponsored by council member Peterson.

item 24. Item 24 would add $132,000 to the office of sustainability and environment for the green new deal advisor position.

Restoring funding for this position sponsored by councilmember Sawant.

Item 25 would add $150,000 and a position to the office of Item 26 would add $140,000 to the Office of Sustainability and Environment for the Climate Policy Advisor position sponsored by Council Member Strauss.

And item 27 is a statement of legislative intent requesting that Seattle Public Utilities explore an expansion of the Tree Ambassador Program, also sponsored by Council Member Strauss.

And that concludes the items in this subcategory.

Thank you very much.

Are there any comments, questions, additional things you'd like to flag for the council?

I'm not seeing any hands at this point.

Okay.

Thank you very much.

Let's move on.

Okay.

The next subcategory is food access.

That includes items 28 through 31 on the agenda.

to support efforts to increase access to healthy food.

This includes about a total of $1.8 million.

The first item in this category is requesting that FAS report on potential spaces for a food bank in Belltown, sponsored by Councilmember Lewis.

That's item 28. Item 29 is a statement of legislative intent requesting that the Human Services Department carry forward any unspent funding for senior congregate meal programs.

to 2021, and this is sponsored by Councilmember Sawant.

Item 30 is also a statement of legislative intent requesting that OED develop strategies to support farmers' markets, and this is sponsored by Councilmember Strauss.

And on this item, Councilmember Strauss, I want to just thank you for bringing this forward and all of the Councilmembers who signed on in support.

We think of this as access to healthy, fresh food, which is critical for the health and safety of our community.

I also see this as a strong small business support element as well.

You highlighted that in your comments.

I appreciate you flagging this.

Yes, please, Council Member Juarez.

Thank you.

I just want to thank Council Member Lewis.

You know, I'm not into thanking everybody for everything, but for number 28 on the potential space for a food bank in Belltown, take it from D5.

When you have a really good, robust, caring, on-the-ground food bank that does more than hand out food, they have baby food and diapers, get people signed up for insurance, do eviction prevention, I mean, you name it.

These people are more than a food bank, so I'm very supportive of that.

Thank you.

Excellent.

Great point.

And having visited one of the food banks in your district with Council President, what was that, two years ago now?

We saw the health clinic as well, so great example of how to make sure- So we roll in the North.

And we want to make it happen across the city, so thank you so much.

Okay, I'm not seeing any additional hands.

Any other comments on that item?

Okay, let's keep going.

Sorry, I forgot to unmute myself again.

Item 31 on the agenda would add $1.8 million to OSC to expand the Fresh Bucks program, and this is sponsored by Councilmember Strauss.

Councilmember Strauss, please go ahead.

Thank you, Chair, and thank you and central staff for putting this together.

I see here on the slide, it looks like Patty may have moved forward one slide.

Patty, if you could move back to slide 11, there we are.

That $500,000 of this item is coming from the sweetened beverage tax.

And speaking with the community advisory board, it seems that we may need to find a different source for this $500,000.

What I'll say is that Fresh Bucks is direct food access for so many people in our city.

This budget item would clear the wait list and address some folks that have newly become eligible since the COVID-19 pandemic has begun.

This is my top priority and understanding that $500,000 may not be able to come from the sweetened beverage tax.

I'm still interested in finding where that $500,000 could come from.

So I'll be working to identify that.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Strauss.

And adding additional context to this, as I've communicated to folks in the community and at the Sugary Sweetened Beverage Task Community Advisory Board, this is very much a strategy that I and our team really thought was a way to ensure the same type of services were being offered through the FreshBooks program, given that FreshBooks program was already stood up and ready to go.

I want to make sure that I am publicly say this was not a Councilmember Strauss effort to try to reduce any funding from sugary sweetened beverage tax priorities.

Councilmember Strauss and myself, along with so many Councilmembers here on Council, have been strong staunch supporters of making sure that the CAB recommendations are fully adhered to.

I take responsibility for not having earlier conversations with the CAPT better explain how this is in alignment.

And I think that there's a lot of overlap with some of the investments that the sugary sweetened beverage tax funding would be going to as it relates to healthy food distribution.

I think we have a lot of people on the wait list right now.

We have a lot of people on the wait list right now.

I think it's 3,358.

And with a program that's ready to go already stood up, there's no question that this item should be fully funded.

So we will do some follow-up with you on this effort as well, but want to make sure that I was on the record expressing support for this item and explaining the fund source here, along with our ongoing support for the strategies that the CAB have continued to bring forward.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Council Member Strauss.

Okay, I'm not seeing additional questions in this category, so I think we are on to 2C, health and safety in the health services section.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

Items 32 through 37 on the agenda reflect about $2.1 million of investments to expand health services.

So the first item, item 32, would add $80,000 to the human services department for commercial sexual exploitation services Sponsored by Council Member Juarez.

item 33 would add $1.12 million to HSD for drug user health services and imposes a proviso sponsored by Councilmember Herbold.

And I'll note here as well as later in the presentation that this and the previous item and item 34 on the agenda is supported by funds that the council has previously approved in previous council adoptions for a community health item.

Item 34 is the third item that is funded using those previous resources that have not been spent would add $200,000 to HSD to increase harm reduction would add $383,000 to the fire department to fund automated external defibrillators, Lucas devices, and ballistic sets sponsored by Councilmember Herbold.

Item 36 would add $141,000 and a position to the fire department to fund a pilot program for adding a consulting nurse sponsored by Councilmember Lewis.

And item 37 would add $150,000 and a position to the fire department to fund a crisis counselor.

This is an entire category that I'm so excited about and I think is really reflective of the council's overall support for public health evidence-based solutions to be implemented into our budget.

As we try to care for the health and safety of folks during a pandemic, we recognize their health has to be stable to begin with.

So much of these investments I see going into creating healthier communities.

year round and also ongoing.

Are there any comments that folks would like to lift up in the health and safety health services category here?

The only comment I would like to make, Madam Chair, is thank you very much, so much, and all my colleagues.

This is a long time coming.

Thank you.

We are very excited about the investments and really look forward to seeing how all of this plays out and we'll continue to build on these investments because we know there's more needed as well.

So thank you, Council Member Juarez, for your longstanding commitments to these efforts.

Okay, we are on item 2D.

For folks following along with the agenda, that's page 10, and people who are Watching on the PowerPoint, we are on page 13. Item number 38 on our agenda, I believe is where we're at.

Items 38 through 48 are in the Access to Programs and Services subcategory with about $2.8 million of proposed new investments.

Item 38 is a statement of legislative intent requesting a new internet for all section in the 2021 adopted budget book sponsored by Councilmember Peterson.

Item 39 would add $550,000 to the Department of Education and Early Learning for a study and one-time funding for black girls and young women and black queer and trans youth sponsored by Council President Gonzalez.

Item 40 would add a Planning and Development Specialist and $130,000 to the Department of Neighborhoods to staff and support a new Indigenous Advisory Council sponsored by Councilmember Juarez.

Item 41 would add $1.7 million in funding to the Human Services Department to increase services at agencies specializing in American Indian and Alaska excuse me, Alaska Native Populations, sponsored by Councilmember Juarez.

Item 42 would add $60,000 to HSD for Age-Friendly Seattle, sponsored by Councilmember Herbold.

Item 43 would add almost $47,000 to HSD to provide safe services at cultural centers serving the Native and Indigenous communities, sponsored by Councilmember Lewis.

Item 44 would add $100,000 split between HSD and DEEL for programs supporting Native and Indigenous children and families sponsored by Council Member Juarez.

Item 45 is a statement of legislative intent requesting that the executive participate in a work group regarding implementation of the 2019 Racial Equity Toolkit Report sponsored by Council Member Morales.

Item 46 would restore $190,000 to the Office of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs for the Legal Defense Network sponsored by Council President Gonzalez.

Item 47 would add $100,000 to the Department of Transportation for a public life study of Capitol Hill sponsored by Council President Gonzalez.

And the final one in this category is a statement of legislative intent requesting that parks design and place signage at Licton Springs, sponsored by Councilmember Sawant.

All right.

Thank you very much, Ali.

I'm going to be really surprised if folks don't have pieces they want to lift up in this category.

Is there anybody who'd like to make any comments or questions, flag any concerns or anything else?

All right.

I would briefly.

Thank you very much.

I had to hit the find the mute button.

I'm just going to be very brief.

And again, thank my colleagues in the chair.

This is historic for the city of Seattle to finally have an indigenous advisory council and actually have staff assigned to it with a commensurate salary to do the things that we need to do.

I see that we've had staff, we now have staff positions for the climate change issues and the initiative.

This is an area where we need input, not only from our brothers and sisters and Native American led organizations, but from tribal folk.

tribes, other institutions, and having a body of people from community on a committee that work with Department of Neighborhoods that have a staff that can clarify a work plan and bring us their budget concerns instead of all of us, mainly me, kind of just getting out there and doing this kind of ad hoc issue spotting all the time.

We do this, I don't have a problem doing it, but this is much more streamlined and it certainly gives the respect to our indigenous folks that we need And particularly now, going into this new administration and what kind of money and what kind of resources we can get from the state and the federal government.

So thank you very much.

Thank you, Council Member Juarez.

Additional comments?

Council President, I think we heard you.

You may explode on camera if you didn't get one of these items.

So very excited that we were able to get the support for immigrants and refugees.

the additional comments.

Okay.

Let's keep going.

Thank you.

The next category under health and safety is community-led investments.

This is items 49 through 53 on the agenda.

The balancing package includes about $59.1 million in community-led investments that are in this category.

This total amount is in addition to about $20 million of funding that is listed in the next category, alternatives to policing for participatory budgeting, and the $30 million that is reflected here as a proviso for the So I will start with item 49 on the agenda that would cut $30 million from the equitable communities initiative and add $30 million to restore funding for the strategic investment fund to address Item 50 would impose a proviso and retain $30 million of funding for the Equitable Communities Initiative and support the work of the Mayor's Task Force.

Item 51 would provide $18 million of general fund cut from the Equitable Communities Initiative for a participatory budgeting process.

and imposes a proviso sponsored by Council Member Morales.

This includes about $500,000 of funding to support a proposal coming from the community for an app for alternatives to 911 responses, as well as funding to support the administrative costs for the participatory budgeting process.

Item 52 would restore $10 million of funding to HSD for community-led public safety investments and imposes a proviso.

This is sponsored by Councilmember Herbold.

And item 53 restores the funding to the Office for Civil Rights for community-based organizations providing alternatives to or addressing harm reduction by the criminal justice system.

Councilmember Herbold, did you have a comment?

Okay, please go ahead.

Thank you so much.

As it relates specifically to the $10 million for HSD to fund community-led public safety investments, I just want to uplift the fact that this is funding that the council has voted twice to provide.

With this budget, it'll be the third time.

First, in approving Council Bill 119825 during our 2020 rebalancing process, and then in overturning the mayor's veto of it.

I really appreciate its inclusion in the balancing package.

It was a high priority and a key request of the decriminalized Seattle and King County Equity Now coalitions during the rebalancing process this summer and a high priority for me now.

During central staff's presentations on community safety investments in the 2021 proposed budget, they introduced the concept of the intercept model, which is a way of understanding the criminal legal system through a public health lens.

The intercept model can be used to analyze community safety investments to understand how they work together to build community safety by intervening at multiple points in the status quo legal system.

It can also help identify where there may be gaps in the system that lead to decrease community safety or to spot duplications.

The mayor's office is currently considering HSD's proposal for awarding these funds in conjunction with the community.

I've shared my interest in incorporating the intercept model into the process, and Director Johnson says it's well aligned with the process that they are proposing.

I'm working with central staff to incorporate the use of the intercept model as a public health model into this $10 million investment as a tool for decision makers and community to use during their discussion of the development of the RFP to help identify person-centered outcomes from specific investments and as a way of presenting their recommended spending plan to the council.

I just want to uplift that some of this direction may be coming to us in the form of a form C.

I'm just waiting for central staff guidance on whether or not a form C will be necessary to provide this additional guidance to HSD.

Thank you so much.

I really appreciate your leadership on these pieces and thank you for that explanation.

Councilmember, any additional comments?

Councilmember Morales, please go ahead.

Thank you.

Can you hear me?

Hello?

We can hear you.

Thank you so much.

Okay, thank you.

I do want to thank Chair Mosqueda for her earlier remarks about the historic nature of what this council is doing today, not expanding the police budget.

As we've been talking about, there is a strategy here, not just in reallocating resources from SPD, but in investing those dollars into community.

And this is important because it's true that our country has for 500 years established institutionalized racism into every system of our government.

And it will take more than one budget cycle to make a dent in fixing that.

But I think we've all here expressed our support for beginning that work at the city.

And even at the state level, we know that there's work that we can do to begin to address some of those challenges.

I also do want to say that achieving racial equity, addressing racism, eliminating anti-Blackness, that's the work of white people.

work of this city council is to dismantle the systems that allow that racism to persist.

And so I'm excited that this council has begun our work with this budget process to include things like participatory budgeting and committing to community safety.

And I'm excited that we have made those commitments through this process so that we can ensure that there is a reallocation in a way that is more just and that really centers our neighbors and can ensure safety for everybody.

And I want to thank central staff as well for make those adjustments.

The first time we saw this, it was indicated about a million dollars for the administrative piece.

This just acknowledges some of the other things that we'll be talking about later so that we have about $18 million in participatory budgeting.

And the last thing I want to say is that we have had a conversation with the department of neighborhoods to start talking about how we would structure this and how we can make sure it is running smoothly.

Thank you.

the concept of making sure that there's sufficient investments in our BIPOC communities, and that's black, indigenous, and people of color-led communities, so that our black and brown communities have alternative investments so that folks have fewer interactions with police and the criminal justice system.

This is a huge priority.

Even in a few items that I mentioned this morning, we know that the investment that is needed is much more than $100 million.

and if you look at the totality of what this budget is investing, it is far greater when you think about who is going to directly be impacted by these investments.

We've looked through the racial justice lens in many of the investments that have been put into these budgets, and if we were to tally up each of the items that have a direct investment in BIPOC communities, it would be much, much bigger than $100 million.

If we think, though, about how this council is using that $100 million sort of bucket, I think that folks can conceptually think of making sure that we were prioritizing the $30 million for the we wanted to make sure that the $30 million was maintained for its original purpose.

in addition to that, the $10 million that the city council had allocated in this summer's process to make sure that we're scaling up community investments so that there is an alternative model that has the sufficient capacity, that grows capacity.

This is basically seed dollars for that new vision.

We wanted to follow through on all of those funds that we had set aside and make sure that there was a funding source that wasn't going to be in question.

That's part of it.

So that's $40 million.

And then you look at the two buckets that are remaining.

Two buckets are $30 million for participatory budgeting and $30 million for the current task force.

This is round numbers to help us better understand just whether or not that $100 million threshold has been met and so much more.

and that's I think an important takeaway here.

Even though we should make sure that we're not pigeonholing ourselves into just a hundred million dollar amount, we should actually ask what has community been asking for for a very long time, and that's housing assistance, that's first-time home ownership options, that's eviction prevention, that's rental assistance, that's making sure folks have access to healthy foods, job training, educational programs, and security so that people can be out of cycles of generational poverty.

And that, on the macro level, is what we have done, and it's much more than $100 million.

Thank you very much for letting me walk through those core elements here, and let's keep going.

Thank you.

The next category, items 54 through 75 are actions to support efforts to find alternatives to policing.

And this includes a total of about $13.4 million of investments.

The first would add $550,000 to deal to the Department of Education and Early Learning for a restorative justice pilot program sponsored by Council Member Morales.

Item 55 would add $75,000 to Department of Neighborhoods for a South Park safety coordinator sponsored by Councilmember Herbold.

Item 56 is a statement of legislative intent requesting that the Human Services Department provide a report on demand and cost for citywide diversion programs by April 2nd, 2021, sponsored by Councilmember Herbold.

Item 57 would add $65,000 to OIG for a Sentinel event review sponsored by Council President Gonzalez.

Item 58 would add $254,000 to the Fire Department and $223,000 and personnel to the Human Services Department for HealthONE expansion and exempt the Fire Department from the planned fleet reduction sponsored by Chair Mosqueda.

Item 59 is a statement of legislative intent, as are the next four or five items, requesting that the police department provide reports.

The reports requested in ordinance 126148 and resolution 31962 that were adopted by the council this summer and fall, sponsored by council member Herbold.

Item 60 would request a report from SPD to provide reports on its overtime use, sponsored by council member Herbold.

Item 61 is requesting that SPD provide monthly reports on police staffing sponsored by Councilmember Herbold.

Item 62 is requesting a report from SPD on traffic stops sponsored by Councilmember Herbold.

Item 63 would request a report from SPD on cost effectiveness of using parking enforcement officers for special events Item 64 is requesting a report from SPD to report on 911 call response time sponsored by Councilmember Pedersen.

Item 65 would impose a proviso on the police department and request out-of-order layoffs of 35 police department officers sponsored by Councilmember Herbold.

And this is a proviso on $2.5 million, and if those savings were achieved, would be part of the funding to support participatory budgeting.

Item 66 would cut $6.1 million from the police department from vacancy savings and adds that funding to finance general and imposes a proviso for the participatory budgeting process sponsored by Council President Gonzalez.

Item 67 would cut 37 point, or excuse me, $3.7 million from the police department for overtime savings and adds that to finance general and imposes a proviso also to support the participatory budgeting work.

Sponsored by Council Member Herbold.

Item 68 would impose a proviso on $5 million in the police department's budget from potential salary savings sponsored by Council Member Gonzalez.

And these savings, if achieved, would also be used to support the participatory budgeting work.

Item 69 would abrogate 93 police officer positions in the police department sponsored by Council President Gonzalez.

This includes the 50 positions that were in the mayor's, unfunded in the mayor's proposed budget, as well as 43 additional positions that are, where the funding is cut in item 66 on the agenda.

And this is sponsored by Council President Gonzalez.

Item 70 would cut $175,000 from the police department for travel and training and imposes two provisos.

It adds this money to finance general for the participatory budgeting process sponsored by Council Member Herbold.

Item 71 cuts $300,000 from SPD for discretionary purchases and adds that funding to finance general for participatory budgeting.

And I believe that's the last item that adds funding for the participatory budgeting, making a total of $30 million in finance general for participatory budgeting, as well as about $7.5 million under proviso that could be added to that funding.

72 on the agenda would cut $450,000 from SPD for contracted mental health providers, adds that funding to the Human Services Department and adds an additional $1 million to HSD for 11 additional mental health providers and imposes a proviso sponsored by Council Member Strauss.

Item 73 would impose a proviso on SPD regarding Harbor Patrol functions sponsored by Council Member Strauss.

Item 74 is action that would adopt legislation to create a new community safety and communication center that would house the 911 operations as well as the parking enforcement officers sponsored by Council Member Herbold.

And the final item in this category is item 75, a statement of legislative intent about the 911 call center sponsored by Council Member Herbold.

Thank you for walking us through all of those items.

Councilmember Herbold, you have a number of them.

I see your hand up first.

And we'll note on item number 74 here, this does include about half a dozen items that Councilmember Herbold had daylighted for us in the last committee meeting that were all connected.

And thanks to the work of central staff, we've been able to reflect those in one item here.

Just again for the viewing public, all of the items that you see here listed in this category, starting back at item number 54, finding alternatives to policing, through item number 75 here.

All of these items were discussed during our committee meeting.

and with the exception of one proposal that we're waiting for some feedback on, all of the items were incorporated from the SPD proposals into this budget.

So again, thank you, colleagues, for your ideas, and I'm happy to see these reflected here.

Council Member Herbold, please go ahead.

Thank you.

And I really appreciate that there are other council members who have contributed to sponsoring items in this package as well.

And I hope they will speak to those actions as well.

But just broadly, I really feel that the council's budget actions in this particular area affirm a commitment to finding the best public safety responses for the community.

with 56% of 9-1-1 calls to SPD being non-criminal, we know that not all 9-1-1 calls need an armed officer to respond.

Actions in this budget keep faith with the commitments made during last summer's supplemental budget process to reduce the size of the force through out-of-order layoffs, setting overtime funding at the revised 2020 level, and adjusting travel and training and discretionary funding in line with lower staffing and COVID limitations.

I would like to say thank you to all of the councilmembers for their hard work.

Savings are dedicated to funding the participatory budgeting process.

And thank you to Council President Gonzalez for proposing a budget action related to the police department to help accomplish this.

and as we know, Councilmember Mosqueda's action adds a very critical additional health one unit.

The council has also, with these proposals, renewed its commitment it made during the summer to be fully informed, requesting information regarding financial and excess pay reporting, reports on methods for incentives for early retirement, potential civilianization of sworn functions and any impact on policing from reductions.

SLI is also requesting monthly reports on the use of overtime and staffing, reporting on demographics on traffic stops consistent with the bias-free policing ordinance co-sponsored by Council President Gonzalez several years ago.

the council's adoption of the funding for the South Park public safety coordinator initiated a few years ago, along with the council's prior decision to reinitiate the CSO program, began an important commitment to find alternatives to policing that do not rely on sworn officers, and I'm really glad that the chair's budget continues and expands this commitment.

When it relates specifically to the creation of the community safety and I just want to say that when the labor organization representing over 100 PEOs, parking enforcement officers came forward with a vision as part of this community safety and communication center to take on more work of SPD, I believe then that this was a workforce-driven vision that could help provide critical momentum to drive the changes to shift more of SPD's work The parking enforcement officer's guild was concerned that around parking enforcement duties.

They testified that the status quo does not reflect a growing nationwide demand for civilianization of certain police functions.

They testified our community is no longer satisfied with the same old, same old.

They demand something better, something different.

We hear our community, we understand the need for change, and we want to be part of the solution.

They also wrote to us to explain that moving the PEO function to the new department would allow PEOs to engage far more directly with the public in rules other than simply issuing parking citations.

They would be able to provide services to community members that are currently in short supply, and their BIPOC and multilingual officers would be able to more easily build trust with community, especially communities of color.

So again, I think this is a really important vision.

I'm so gratified that part of our workforce is helping us to drive that vision, and I think it's going to be really critical and working through the many issues associated with implementing that vision.

So in total, thank you for everything that we've included in this budget and in particular, the creation of this new community safety and communication center together with the transfer of the PEOs there.

Much appreciated.

Thank you, Councilmember Herbold.

Additional comments in this section?

Yes.

Councilmember Juarez, please go ahead.

Thank you.

First of all, a big thank you to Councilmember Herbold and all the hard work that she's done.

And I know I said this, and I unfortunately became a tagline, and I didn't intend it to be to some degree.

We are marching towards a plan, not a percentage.

And I want to thank all of you for that work.

When I look at what I sponsored and what I co-sponsored, on the co-sponsoring piece, There's a bunch of them, but the ones that stand out to me with working with Councilmember Herbold was number 62 on the report of traffic stops.

69 abrogating the 93 police officer positions.

Number 74 creating the new community safety and communication center.

But I do want to address one thing that's kind of the elephant in the room.

And I again want to thank Councilmember Herbold and the discussions we've had offline.

That number 65 is a request for out of order layoffs for 35 police officers.

And I think it's important to say that it is a request.

and that we need to bargain those changes.

And the bargaining is coming.

And I think it's fair to say in November, as opposed to in July, that we all understand and we all know, and now as electeds, we're gonna move this legislation forward, that we need to reduce the number of police officers.

That more police officers doesn't mean more protection.

And for some communities, it could possibly mean death.

And so, with that reckoning, with that recognition, with a plan moving forward, I'm happy to support these.

Positions in this budget package, and I look forward to working with chief Diaz, the executive council member herbal who chairs the public safety and counselor Gonzalez, the former chair.

And, of course, the 5 members that are making up the labor relations.

board for the city council and some of the changes that are going to come about with having some of our community partners, our partners at the CPC, OIG, what we call our accountability partners at the table when we actually look at how we refashion, rebalance our police department to fit community needs.

So thank you.

appreciate that.

I appreciate your support for these items and more additional comments, Councilmembers.

Council President Gonzalez and then Councilmember Peterson.

Good morning, Council President.

Good morning.

Nope, it's afternoon now.

So good afternoon.

Thank you for an opportunity to just share a few reflections here.

I won't belabor the point because we've had robust conversations about each one of these items in prior Budget Committee hearings.

I just want to, again, express gratitude to you, Chair Mosqueda, for including many of the items that I put forward in this section.

and appreciate both Council Member Herbold and Council Member Juarez's comments already.

I do want to acknowledge the budget action request around the 35 additional, excuse me, the 35 out of order layoffs and really acknowledge that we in the Labor Relations Policy Committee context have have been working together with the executive around accomplishing the intent around pursuing how to accomplish out-of-order layoffs.

And so I do think that this is a opportunity for us to work collaboratively with the executive on the concept and the construct of out-of-order layoffs that are proposed here.

This will be, of course, for 2021. So we have an opportunity in our labor relations context to really dig into that work and make sure that we have a plan in place to I am supportive of that action.

I wanted to quickly mention on some of my vacancies at SPD and capturing future potential savings.

I think this is, again, a reminder for colleagues and for the general public that these are ordinary things that we normally do during our budget process.

We take a look at what the police department has been forecasting in terms of what they think they might be able to hire.

When we received the mayor's budget, of course, it was a point in time calculation that we received.

After digging into the budget further, we realized that we could capture additional savings, and we are doing that here.

And so while we have gone through that exercise in the past, it is obviously different now.

And I do think it is important to recognize that both the $6.1 million reduction to SPD to capture vacancy savings and reallocate those to participatory budgeting processes, as well as the $5 million proviso on any future potential salary savings as a result of unexpected and unanticipated attrition are really important towards accomplishing the council's goal of not further expanding law, excuse me, not further expanding the Seattle Police Department, especially in advance of the interdepartmental task force body of work that is currently occurring under the mayor's executive order that is really undertaking a lot of the nitty-gritty functional analysis related to what is core to law enforcement and what divisions are going to be necessary in order to fulfill the city's need to provide public safety services.

I feel very good about these budget actions included here, and I feel particularly good about the fact that these savings are going to be dedicated to the participatory budgeting process in a very meaningful way that will allow us to continue to invest in those community-led safety programs that we talked about in the slides, a few slides before these.

So thank you again to all of my colleagues who co-sponsored these budget actions and special thanks to the budget chair for including them in her initial revised balancing package.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you very much, Council President.

Additional comments or questions?

Council Member, I'm sorry, Council Member Peterson, you were in the queue.

Yes, please go ahead.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

I'm also eager to redeploy substantial dollars to improve public safety and community wellness.

Ideally, we would first have more results and the public safety plan from the participatory budgeting process and the mayor's task force before we cut so much today.

The Seattle Times recently reported on the relatively low number of officers Seattle has when compared to other cities.

The attrition, the new information since the summer is that the attrition and loss of trained officers is much higher than expected.

And some of the key reforms from the consent decree require funding and people to implement those reforms.

So, and I also wanna make sure response times for priority one emergency 911 calls are fast.

we have to make sure that we are doing everything we can to make sure that we are doing everything appropriately fast for those priority one calls and the police union contract needs to be revamped to increase flexibility and save even more funds for alternative investments.

I will be asking central staff for more details on the net impact of all of these cuts as we hope to scale up alternative solutions to improve public safety.

Thank you.

I'm going to pass it over to you.

Councilmember Juarez.

I failed to mention in my points that my overarching approach at this point I believe aligns with everything that Councilmember Peter just said.

We took actions over the summer budgeting process that had they I would like to say that these actions, the combination of these actions, does not get us to funded positions below the 1,322 officers.

the number of officers in the police department without, beyond what we had committed to over the summer, without first working to take these next steps around funding the infrastructure for additional non-police crisis response.

Thank you.

Council President?

Thank you.

I also feel the need to respond to Councilmember Peterson's comments.

The first comment related to the Seattle Times article, I do want to caution us as council members about that particular piece.

Of course, when we had SPD present during our budget committee process, I spent a considerable amount of time questioning both Dr. Fisher and Chief Diaz about how we evaluate, analyze, and look at what our staffing needs are at the Seattle Police Department.

And one of the things that Chief Diaz said that is completely omitted and not referenced in that article is that the city of Seattle and Seattle Police Department in particular does not use a per capita measure for determining what staffing levels should be of our sworn personnel in our city.

We use a combination of different factors, but we do not use a straight per capita formula.

In other words, per X number of people in the city of Seattle, we should have X number of sworn officers.

That is not the formula that the Seattle Police Department uses in order to project what its staffing should be in order to meet the public safety needs of the people of Seattle.

And so I wanna caution us about that particular article and sort of the underlying analytical assumption that it relied on in order to come to the conclusion that SPD is, quote, understaffed.

Secondly, as it relates to the proposals that I have put forward, which seem to be the subject of Councilmember Peterson's comments, I've proposed to abrogate 93 police officer positions in the budget.

I've also proposed to reduce the appropriation for staffing at SPD by $6.1 million.

In addition to that, should there be unexpected, unforecasted attrition in 2021, I have signaled to the police department through my $5 million proviso that it was Council's intent to capture $5 million of those potential salary savings through unexpected attrition in order to capture those dollars for the participatory budgeting process that will lead to community-led safety programming and investments.

And I just want to say that in In our conversation with Council Central staff, and I want to read the information I recently got from Greg Doss and Allie Panucci related to these particular numbers.

And Greg Doss wrote to me recently, Monday at 1150 AM, the following analysis related to these numbers.

SPD, and he writes, quote, SPD incurred a significant number of unplanned separations after the mayor transmitted her proposed budget.

In response to this change, SPD developed an updated staffing plan that assumes 25 net new hires.

That's 114 hires less than the 89 projected separations.

According to the staffing plan, again, staffing plan that's created by the Seattle Police Department, according to the staffing plan, Seattle Police Department will have at the end of 2021 a total of 1,311 fully trained officers and 1,247 officers in service, the latter accounting for a projection of officers that will be out on disability, military service, or administrative leave for a total of 64 sworn officers in that category.

The balancing package would not affect the SPD hiring plan and would result in the same staffing levels.

In response to the unplanned attrition, the balancing package makes a $6.1 million adjustment reduction in funding for 43 annual average FTEs.

This adjustment is made because SPD has indicated that its updated hiring plan can only achieve an annual average of 1,357 FTEs.

So I believe that the balancing package, as we are discussing it, is a reasonable, responsible response to the data that we have received directly from the department and analyzed by our council central staff that has led to a obvious opportunity to capture these additional salary savings resulting from the vacancies.

that we could dedicate to participatory budgeting processes that will prioritize council's interest in supporting community-led safety programs for the future.

And then lastly, I'll just say, as it relates to the abrogation, those are positions that are currently vacant and unfunded.

And my goal with proposing that abrogation was to make sure that, again, We weren't growing the police department or allowing for an opportunity to further expand the footprint of the police department in advance of the conclusion of the work that is currently happening as it relates to the functional analysis being done by the mayor's IDT, which council has a seat at that table and is participating in that robust functional analysis.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you very much.

The next hand that I saw was Councilmember Sawant.

Thank you, Councilmember Sawant.

Good afternoon.

I just wanted to add that my office of course, needless to say, supports all of these reductions in the bloated police budget.

And I appreciate these items being included in the proposed balancing package.

But also, as I have continued to promise, my office will be bringing the budget amendment for the final vote to defund the police by 50%, as has been demanded by hundreds of people organizing with the People's Budget and the Solidarity Budget, which, as we know, includes not only community organizations, but also a large number of union members and socialists.

Thank you.

Thank you very much, Council Member Swat.

Additional comments?

Okay.

Thank you all for your items here.

As we mentioned at the beginning, this is a complete package of all but one item in the SPD area because we're seeking just a little bit additional input on that.

But overall, every item that was put forward I want to say thank you to the city of Seattle for including us in this proposal.

I appreciate all of the work that you all have done to make sure that we are both taking steps investments in historically underinvested communities so that there is not only preventative strategies like housing, education, job security, violence reduction and prevention strategies in place, but that we're also scaling up interventions if folks have a need for harm reduction strategies and alternatives to policing.

We have created those alternatives through community led strategies and community led strategies that are black and brown led.

So very optimistic about the investments that we are making at this point and recognize much more will be coming.

We have a lot of feedback coming in.

We have a lot of feedback coming in.

We have a lot of feedback coming in.

the calendar year.

We wanted to make sure that the calendar year was being $30 million immediately and if some of these provisos do materialize, there would be additional there.

councilmembers.

Again, did I mention this at the beginning?

I want to mention again as other councilmembers have, this is the first year that the city council is not expanding the Seattle police department's budget.

we will continue to work with you as we work towards a more just and equitable public Seeing no additional comments, thanks again for all the feedback on this section.

Let's go ahead and go into the next section.

Okay, we are now moving into the housed category.

This first subcategory is outreach, so items 76 through 81 on the agenda that reflect a combined total of $5.6 million of investments to expand homeless outreach services, expand the encampment trash program, and increase funding for publicly accessible sinks.

The first item would add about $1.1 million to the human services department to increase homeless homelessness outreach services and imposes for provisos.

I'll note here that this action combines four separate proposals that were presented previously to provide outreach services specifically in Northwest Seattle, Lake City, West Seattle and South Park and Rainier Valley and adds an additional $450,000 to increase the amount of money for outreach services.

and other flexible funding for homeless service providers.

This action is sponsored by Councilmember Strauss, but those other actions that were merged into this item were sponsored by Council, also sponsored by Councilmembers Herbold, Councilmember Juarez, and Councilmember Morales.

Item 77 on the agenda would repurpose eight FTEs for a new homeless outreach and provider ecosystem in the human services department.

This replaces the unsheltered outreach and response team included in the mayor's proposed budget.

This program would oversee and support community-based agencies contracted to provide homeless outreach And city staff would coordinate litter pickups, trash removal, provision of sanitation and hygiene services, and storage or retrieval of personal property.

And when circumstances require relocation of removal of a property, this is sponsored by Councilmember Morales.

Item 78 would add $1 million to HSD to increase funding for mobile crisis teams sponsored by Councilmember Strauss.

Item 79 would add about $110,000 and a position in HSD for grants and contract administration and imposes a proviso.

Item 80 would add $286,000 to the public utilities department to expand the encampment trash program to 13 additional sites sponsored by council member Morales.

And item 81 would add $100,000 to SBU for a publicly accessible SIG program sponsored by Council Member Morales.

And I think I failed to say that item 79 that would add a position in the Human Services Department is sponsored by Chair Mosqueda.

Those are the items in this subcategory.

I'm going to go to item number 79. more than anticipated workloads and not enough staff to do it.

We're talking about contracts out for supporting our key homeless service providers in addition to all of the work that they're doing to getting contracts out the door for the public safety efforts that we supported this summer and so much more of their regular work.

So this is an FTE to help support the work that will support community efforts.

It helps streamline getting those dollars that we have provided out the door in a more streamlined, I'm sorry, in a more quick fashion.

And really wanted to make sure you understood what that one was because even for me, it raised the question mark.

So that is what that alphabet soup there means.

other items that you would like to highlight.

I will do two notes here.

Item number 76, which is the first bullet here for increased outreach, and item number 77, our second bullet here related to hope.

I hope that it is accurate to say these are placeholders to indicate council's strong interest in making sure that these items We want to make sure that there is a hope program as we have a placeholder for those We will continue to work with each office and the providers at large to make sure that the language is complimentary to the hope efforts.

And I know that there's many conversations happening right now, including with the executive office and deputy mayors.

So I look forward to continuing to hear more about those, but it was really important for us to continue to signal support for the hope program and the direction that Council Member Morales and others have to make sure that there was geographic specific support for

Thank you so much, and I want to also thank Councilmember Strauss for taking the lead on this.

This is really important work as stated to shift to a new, more successful approach away from the navigation team, a team that, when we're not in a COVID emergency, is very focused on removals, and we really want We want removals to be the option of last resort.

And we know that outreach is no replacement for sufficient non-congregate shelter space and affordable housing.

This proposed budget continues to invest in scaling up these resources as well, so folks that live unsheltered can have healthy and safe alternatives.

to their tent, but in the absence of sufficient affordable housing and healthy shelter space immediately available, outreach can also help connect to other needed services, such as programs like LEED or healthcare, identify the need for city services, such as garbage removal, help encampment residents make changes to address safety or hazard concerns.

to minimize the likelihood that the city will seek to remove the encampment.

Build relationships and provide information to people who live or work near encampments.

And help broker positive relationships among neighbors.

Really also want to recognize central staff, Jeff Simms' work to pull together multiple outreach proposals in my I think it's important for us to recognize that.

And I want to thank our

Thank you.

I do want to just thank my colleagues who are supporting this increased investment in services.

We do think it's really important that we are moving away, moving toward a more provider-centered approach.

I think it's much more humane and will be more productive, as we've heard from outreach workers over the last few weeks.

The ability for them to have the time to build relationships with folks is critical to the success of moving people into more stable situations.

I do wanna say, I've done a quick, my staff has done a quick analysis of the Clean Cities Initiative.

There's obviously some overlap in some of the elements that are there.

And I'm happy to talk with the executive and work with Council Member Juarez.

You know, there are certainly some budget neutral items there.

We know that the maintenance jamborees, in addition to sounding like a whole lot of fun, provide some really important service in our parks and in our neighborhoods.

I would also be interested in learning a little bit more about these cross-departmental programs.

It is a big budget ask.

And I'm also wondering about potential for actually employing some of our homeless neighbors to do some of this work since they have the lived experience that could be really critical to making some of this work successful.

So I look forward to I think it is important for us to have those conversations.

Thank you very much.

Are there any additional comments?

Councilmember Pedersen, please go ahead.

Thank you.

Just to clarify, the repurpose of the 8 FTE for new homeless outreach and provider ecosystem, was that the accord that was reached

I see Jeff Simms also on the

I'm going to turn it over to councilmember lewis.

Councilmember lewis.

I think part of the compromise was moving from five FTEs, which was our original proposal, to the eight that was considered as part of the restructure so that those positions are still there.

We're just working to make sure that those positions don't do the outreach per se, but are really supporting kind of the back office piece of the work that needs to happen there.

Jeff, I don't know if you want to add anything.

I don't have a substantial amount more to add.

It's just generally that it's a follow up because Jeff might just just a quick follow up.

Please go ahead.

Thanks.

Does this proposal include any sort of performance measures or tracking where we're sort of tracking the results?

Is it HSD is tracking the results of the, since we're trying something new, I want to make sure we're tracking the outcomes and I'm assuming HSD would be doing that as well.

I can answer that.

I'll take a stab at it.

So just to be clear, Council Member Peterson, this isn't anything that is new.

We already contract with these outreach providers.

The work that HSD staff would be doing is the contract management, working on the deliverables, coordinating the different programs that we're talking about, SPU, the purple bag program, for example.

So the work would be some of the, and this is all obviously still part of the ongoing discussion, the framework and the original position descriptions that we had were are still being discussed, but in general, the idea is that there would be somebody doing the data analysis, collecting the kind of information you're talking about, and also positions would include contract management with the service providers who are the folks who know how to do this work best.

Council Member Peterson, did that answer your question?

It sounds like a yes.

Yes, thank you.

I think that's it.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Excellent.

Thank you.

Councilmember Herbold and then we have Allie, I believe, as well with some clarification.

Thank you.

I just wanted to add that I believe the budget action itself states that the team would act within the parameters of a framework developed by the mayor, council, residents of Seattle, and those who are living outside the framework as emailed to

Thank you very much.

And I also think Council Member Lewis might have a comment.

Did you have a comment, Council Member Lewis?

Yes, thank you, Madam Chair.

Just to jump in on this real quick and to speak to some of Council Member Peterson's concerns, you know, I think that we're, I mean, we're getting towards a pretty good place here in the specific provisos that will be attached to kind of implementing the The bounds that were identified in that framework are going to get us to a pretty good place on the new outreach strategy, and I know that Councilmember Morales is very engaged in that process, and that is informing this process of shaping HOPE as sort of the next step in developing this new framework-based and collaborative outreach strategy.

I mean, I would just further say that, you know, I mean, the providers would still be contracted through HSD, and my understanding is those contracts, you know, are attached to certain performance and review metrics.

So, you know, I think that there is already an accountability model that is in place that this will be building on top of.

But I don't know if there's talks about putting in something that's more supplementary.

Though I would add that the framework that was emailed out to us does identify certain areas where there are provider responsibilities and provider expectations as part of the division of labor that is outlined.

So, yeah, I don't think we're quite finished yet with exactly, you know, what this will ultimately look like, but it's going in a good direction for a collaborative result.

councilmembers.

Thank you.

Great.

Thank you very much, councilmember Lewis.

Allie, any additional clarification or items?

I wanted to note something related to the clean cities proposal that has been referenced multiple times.

We look forward to working with We have done some initial looking into it.

It appears to be a bit of a concept at this point for how much funding would really be needed to pursue the initiatives.

Our understanding is the executive has not created a full implement, like all the implementation details for how this would actually be deployed and are creating an interdepartmental team to discuss implementation.

We've asked a number of questions to get more details on the proposal and to understand that.

But while what was delivered to the council was quite detailed, it is, there is still a lot to we have some potential recommendations on how councilmembers may want to approach this if you are proposing a change to the balancing package, but I just wanted to flag that while it appeared very detailed, I think there is still more work to do to fully understand the costs and how those resources would be deployed.

Ellie, thank you.

You're reading my mind.

I was just making these notes and I wanted to follow up on that without being a dead horse on the clean cities because Council Member Morales raised a very good point about the employment factor for the outreach for item 76 and 77 and what what Councilmember Herbold shared about getting away from a non-police led strategy to address homelessness.

So for me, both sides of the equation are employees to do the outreach with our unsheltered folks to keep them safe and to get them to services.

And the other side of the equation is employees within parks and outside of parks, hopefully new employees that can be deployed, um, in a rapid response team to actually get on the ground and clear up and clean up trash pickup and cleaning up in the parks and open spaces and to help businesses, particularly small businesses, which we've been hearing in the districts, manage issues of trash accumulation, picking up needles, Just all those things that are happening.

So we have, like I said, two things we need people to do the outreach and we need people within parks and outside of parks, hopefully new positions to come in and.

get out there to do the litter abatement and to stand up a rapid response team.

And I think the last thing I wanted to add, because I am the chair of parks, is I talked to the executive, and I believe I shared this with the chair, Madam Chair, correct me if I'm wrong, looking at key improvements And park overall cleanliness, because that's where we're really hurting where we're not.

We can't this summer.

So many people were angry and calling in calling parks and calling park saying.

this isn't getting clean, this isn't being mowed, this isn't being picked up, this isn't, and we just, you know, as you all know, all of our resources were going other places.

That's why I think the clean cities, where it overlaps great in the general, in the budget that Council or Chair or Madam Chair is proposing, but I'm looking for where it overlaps and then where the pieces that we didn't hit.

And what I'm seeing in the pieces that we didn't get, is the rapid response piece of actually physically going out there and cleaning up these spots.

But not removing people, but cleaning up these open spaces in these parks, because that's what we're hearing from community.

This is what we're hearing from residents.

This is also what we're hearing from the unsheltered, and we are certainly hearing this from our small business community.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Juarez.

Additional comments?

Excuse me, Jeff, did you have clarification?

And then I see Council President.

Please go ahead, Jeff.

Yeah, I do want to have have 1 clarification to councilmember Peterson's question councilmembers Morales and Lewis are correct that are.

Contracted providers are held to a certain set of metrics.

It's primarily the proportion of clients they interact with that are referred to shelter.

But just to make sure a nuance of your question wasn't misunderstood, the HOPE team itself, the framework outlines a variety of expectations and a new strategy that HOPE would pursue, but there are not specific performance metrics that are discussed either in the framework or necessarily directly alluded to.

Those would need to be developed at this point I think that is a good point.

I don't think there is a reference to that.

Council President Gonzalez, I see you are up next.

quickly, in looking at the document that we received from the mayor on the clean is that unfortunately we received the proposal very late in our budget process.

And so I acknowledge that that is likely the primary reason why it's not reflected in the chair's rebalancing package.

It's a little difficult to include or consider those proposals when they come in rather Rather late and secondly, in my review of the proposal, and I haven't spent an exorbitant amount of time with it.

It is about 4 pages long.

One of the things that occurred to me is that we hadn't had the benefit of having Council Central staff's analysis of the proposal and haven't really had the ordinary back and forth with the executive around what this proposal is or isn't.

And so to that end, and I suppose tagging on to what Council Member Juarez has already said, Hope that there is an opportunity through this, the, this budget process now to to figure out if.

Um, if there's a, if there is a, a way to use a form C to, um, to, uh, signal council's interest in evaluating the proposal and in, um, identifying, um, how, uh, this rebalanced package, um, uh, meets some of the functional needs identified in the clean cities, um, initiative proposal.

And for those things that may not already be incorporated in the rebalanced package, what the path forward is for providing support for those functions.

And I think I'll speak for myself.

I certainly agree that there is an ongoing need for increased cleaning in in public on publicly owned properties and lands across the city of Seattle.

I believe that that's been a need since I ran for this position in the first place in 2015. And so I think that I think that there is a lot of alignment in terms of overarching intent and goals here.

And so I think the tricky part is in this sort of rigid budgeting process, how do we find a way to move this body of work forward, acknowledging that we are literally a couple of weeks away from voting on the final budget.

And we just received this late last week.

And so if there is an opportunity to work with Council Member Juarez and with others and with you, Chair, on identifying how we can parse some of this out and how we can effectively establish a work plan to continue to prioritize this body of work for the public health and the safety of all of our residents in the city, I would certainly be interested in pursuing that kind of an opportunity.

Thank you very much, Council President.

And yes, as a reminder to folks, including folks in the executive's office, the process that we had committed to early on was to make sure that there was no items in here that hadn't been discussed publicly at the committee.

And also when we received the letter, having the budget pretty well baked at that point, there was a lot of overlap, a lot of crossover as council members have already spoken to today.

I think the outstanding questions are, how much have we already invested in these areas?

Are there additional areas to be invested?

Obviously, there's ongoing need, as council members have spoken to.

And then really, as Ali has articulated, getting a better sense of whether or not the universe of dollars that has been requested is a fully-baked concept and if those dollars are sufficient for the items that have been identified.

I like the idea, Council President, that you just put out there about sort of putting a placeholder as we think about how we continue to to implement various strategies once we've identified the full universe of areas where we may want to supplement what this budget has already put forward.

Yes, thank you.

Thank you.

Councilor Gonzalez.

What we shared this morning was some of what you just shared on doing a form C on.

I think it's really wonderful that you pointed out.

I wasn't just looking at, and I read it in detail, not just the mayor's proposal that came down on November 2nd.

but Director Ben Noble, the City Budget Director, his memo as well.

And so what I did is kind of cross-reference those two and why we had a new forecast that was different than August, which of course brought us to the fact that we had an increase, additional money, and then been cross-referencing that with Chair Mosqueda's budget that came out yesterday.

And I agree, and I think we've shared this again.

There's a lot of overlap of the five items that Council Member Mosqueda has put forward.

and what the executive has on those seven points.

The seven points that the executive has proposed, which again, should probably end up in a form C, a lot of that has been absorbed in what the Madam Chair has presented.

And I've been keeping a running tab.

I don't think you want to see my chicken scratch, but I've just like, oh, tick that one off.

Oh, they got that one in there.

The strategic advisory.

Okay, great.

That was in there.

The South Park.

Great.

That was in there.

So a lot of the good stuff.

Good job.

Of course, you don't need me to tell you that, Madam Chair.

we have a lot of work to do.

we have a lot of work to do.

we have a lot of work to do.

we have a lot of work to do.

we have a lot of work to do.

we have a lot of work to do.

we have a lot of work to do.

we have a lot of work to do.

we have a lot of work to do.

we have a lot of work to do.

we have a lot of work to do.

we have a lot of work to do.

we have a lot of work to do.

we have a lot of work to do.

we have a lot of work to do.

Okay, I am seeing none.

Allie, should we take a pause here and take a little break before going on to the other items?

That sounds great, Chair Mosqueda.

Okay, wonderful.

So, colleagues, it is 1250 p.m.

now.

We are going to move from the outreach section, which is 3A, to the housed and shelter prevention section, which is 3B, when we reconvene after a much needed We are going to have lunch break and that will be at 2 p.m.

this afternoon.

Again, we'll jump right into the conversation as this is going to be a continuation of our agenda from this morning.

So the public comment has already been taken care of this morning.

So please be ready at 2 p.m.

We want to thank everybody for their participation in the discussion today, especially our central staff who have been in the background helping to compile these items and available for us.

on each of those sections.

If we didn't get a chance to hear from you, we knew you were there.

If we need it again, we appreciate you popping in.

Thanks all.

We'll see you at 2 p.m.

Today's meeting is adjourned until 2 p.m.

Not adjourned.

Pause.

We are on recess until 2 p.m.

I hope that got captured for the viewing public's clarification.

Just recess.

See you at 2 p.m.

Thank you.