Seattle City Council Budget Committee 10/29/20 Session I

Good morning, everyone.

Thank you again for joining day two of our Select Budget Committee meeting as the Seattle City Council discusses Form B's, our amendment process to consider various priorities for the Seattle City Council's proposed rebalanced budget.

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

It is 9.32 a.m., and it's October 29th.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Council Member Strauss?

Present.

Council Member Gonzalez.

Here.

Council Member Herpel.

Here.

Council Member Juarez.

Here.

Council Member Lewis.

Present.

Council Member Morales.

Here.

Council Member Peterson.

Here.

Council Member Sawant.

Here.

Chair Mosqueda.

Present.

Nine present.

Thank you very much, Madam Clerk.

Thank you again, colleagues, for the robust discussion yesterday.

We're going to engage in a very long discussion today, and I will make sure that we get an hour break before lunch and that we will end by five.

With your help, I think we can perhaps end a little early like we did yesterday.

There are some items on here that I think will require a little bit longer discussion and some that don't.

So I'm hoping that it'll balance out, but we'll let you know if we need to do the two-minute rule later in the meeting today.

I think if we get through the various amendments plus public testimony, that leaves around nine minutes for each of the each of the amendments.

And I know that not all of them will need that time.

So I have confidence that we're going to be able to get through this and appreciate your time in advance before we consider the agenda.

Just a reminder for everyone that most of the.

conversation we had yesterday was around all of the forms that were submitted on time by last Thursday at 5 p.m.

We did ask for two co-sponsors on Form Bs to ensure that we were having a conversation and allowing the central staff to focus on those amendments that really did have those co-sponsors to make it on to our agendas with sufficient time for offices to review.

But any Form Bs that did not receive the two-member co-sponsorship or did not meet the deadline are still eligible for walk-on consideration.

To make sure that they are ready for discussion, we have asked for those walk-on amendments to be circulated by 5 p.m.

the day before, and that the proposing council members submit the information to identify whether the proposal has been discussed with Seattle residents, stakeholders, whether central staff have time to consider the proposal, and if needed, whether it was reviewed by law.

By way of reminder, the conversation right now on potential walk-on amendments is not about whether or not we as individual council members like the proposal.

It is about whether or not we find it meritorious and for the purposes of the vote to walk or to amend the agenda, whether it has enough information in front of us to discuss the proposal, given that it did not meet the original deadline.

Just because the proposal may not be deemed right for today's conversation, if it does not receive sufficient votes, then that does not mean the conversation is over.

We still have the form Cs, which will help change or identify different balancing techniques in the council's proposed budget.

With that, I want to say yesterday's conversation was very helpful as we identify potential questions or issues as we considered walk on amendments and are all the other form B's that were also submitted on time.

I am aware of at least one walk on amendment and it was circulated by 5pm.

So today our conversation will be around whether or not it has a simple majority of council members to be considered to amend the agenda.

But for the purposes of our recorded meeting here, I want to make sure that we go through the process and get clarification from the clerk that it was indeed circulated by five.

Councilmember Peterson, I believe you have one amendment, amendment number one.

I'm going to ask the clerk verify whether this was circulated by 5 p.m.

on the preceding business day.

Madam Clerk, was amendment one circulated by 5 p.m.

yesterday?

Yes, Chair Mosqueda, it was.

Excellent.

Well, thank you very much, Madam Clerk, and Councilmember Peterson, I'll turn it over to you to make the motion for consideration.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

I move to amend the agenda today by adding citywide walk-on amendment one entitled cut funds for adjusted wage increases for nonrepresented employees earning 80% or more of Seattle median income and placing it on the agenda after item one.

Thank you.

It's been moved.

Is there a second?

Second.

It's been moved and seconded.

Thank you very much, Councilmember Peterson.

I'm going to turn it over to you for a brief overview as well before folks ask any questions they may have.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

So colleagues, today I'm simply asking you to consider this amendment as a potential viable option to immediately generate savings that we could redeploy to many good proposals that we have put forward to add to the budget.

A firm decision is obviously not needed today.

Once we get our revised revenue forecast within a couple weeks and hear the rest of the additions to the budget being proposed today and tomorrow, we can decide whether the option is actually needed.

This is an opportunity to redeploy millions of additional dollars to shelter those experiencing homelessness, to invest more in Seattle's BIPOC communities, and fix our crumbling infrastructure.

Seattle government employees received raises in 2019 and this year.

During this time of back-to-back deficits, this proposal would apply to just the planned salary increases for next year and for just the higher-paid, non-represented city government employees.

When so many people in Seattle are out of jobs and our city has such deep needs, I personally don't think it's the right time to increase the pay of our city government employees again.

I don't think this proposal is about austerity.

Austerity is when you're spending less money, but the mayor's budget proposes to spend the same $6.5 billion that it spent last year, and we're hoping to add to that.

The real austerity is when we choose not to provide more money when we can to help those who are literally sleeping every night on our streets.

I believe our city government can and should get more resources into the hands of our most vulnerable populations and to address our aging infrastructure instead of putting more money in our own pockets.

We can also use these funds to save city jobs and prevent layoffs.

Thank you for considering this as simply a potential option.

Okay, thank you very much, Council Member Peterson.

And as a reminder again, we are not considering the details or the policy proposal itself.

The merits of whether or not the criteria was met for walk-on today is what we're considering.

A summary sheet was sent to all of you and this asks questions like was it reviewed by law, departments, stakeholders, et cetera.

So perhaps I will offer the following.

The proposal that was sent around did meet the 5 p.m.

deadline.

It was reviewed by central staff, yes.

It was reviewed by law and the specific members of our legal team are indicated as well.

and the department was consulted with.

The answer around stakeholders yesterday, you'll remember that I asked about specific stakeholders.

The proposal does not appear to have a specific stakeholder item listed, though residents of Seattle was listed.

Again, that's not necessarily an indication of not supporting, I just wanted to note, just like yesterday, even though the department in that case wasn't consulted with, we can always get additional information.

But those three categories were marked, yes, law, yes, central staff, and yes, CBO has spoken with the proposed sponsor.

Are there any questions for the proposed sponsor here?

Council Member Sawant?

Good morning and thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

I don't have questions, but I just wanted to clarify for members of the public who are watching this that I will be voting in favor of adding this proposal to the agenda because I think all budget proposals amendment proposal should be discussed, supported, or opposed in the open on political merits and not procedural reasons.

So that is why we're voting yes.

But I also want to clarify that I don't support the actual policy in this proposal.

And when it comes up for discussion later, I will explain that why.

Thank you very much, Council Member Sawant.

I'm not seeing any additional hands.

Council Member Peterson, I also would be interested in whether or not there's other departments that you were able to check in with besides CBO.

I see CBO on the cover sheet, which is important because it meets the criteria, and whether or not employees impacted by the CBA were consulted with.

If you have thoughts on that, you're welcome to share them, or you can save that as well for the discussion, assuming this gets on the agenda.

It was central staff law and CBO only.

Thank you.

All right, I'm not seeing any additional questions.

With that, let's go ahead and ask the clerk.

Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll on the adoption of Amendment 1 to the agenda?

Strauss?

Yes.

Gonzales?

Yes.

Herbold?

Yes.

Juarez.

Yes.

Lewis.

Yes.

Morales.

Yes.

Peterson.

Yes.

Sawant.

Yes.

Chair Mosqueda.

Yes.

Nine in favor, none opposed.

Thank you very much.

Is there any additional comments or questions?

I'm sorry, let me for the record say the motion carries.

Thank you, Council Member Peterson.

Amendment one is included in the amended agenda for today.

Are there any additional questions or comments on the amended agenda in front of us?

Seeing none, Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll on the adoption of the amended agenda?

Strauss?

Yes.

Gonzales?

Yes.

Herbold?

Yes.

Juarez?

Yes.

Lewis?

Yes.

Morales?

Yes.

Peterson?

Yes.

Sawant?

Yes.

Chair Mosqueda?

Yes.

Nine in favor, none opposed.

Thank you very much, Madam Clerk.

The motion carries and the amended agenda is adopted.

The walk-on amendment will be considered at the end of the items for that specific department this morning.

Are there any additional comments before we go to the order, before we go to public comment?

Council Member Strauss.

Thank you, Chair.

I'm going to need to step away at this time for a scheduled meeting that I could not reschedule.

I will be listening into public comment via the listen line, and I will let you know upon my return.

If I don't return before the First Amendment is up, I would like to co-sponsor.

Thank you very much, Council Member Strauss.

Thank you.

Appreciate you listening in as well.

Okay, thank you so much, colleagues.

At this time, we're going to turn to public comment.

We do have 14 folks signed up for public comment.

We have committed to 30 minutes at the beginning of each of our meetings, so we are going to give folks the two minutes.

They're allotted time.

I'm going to call the names in the order in which they appear on today's list.

You will hear a 10-second chime at the end of your allotted time, and then you will be cut off promptly at two minutes.

Please do hang up at that point after you provide a public comment and dial back in on our listening line.

Watch on Seattle Channel or the other options listed on today's agenda.

We want to make sure that we get through everybody in front of us.

So please do be ready to speak by hitting star six after you hear the prompt that you have been unmuted.

Many of you have been through this before, and for those who are joining us for the first time, thank you so much for being with us, and we are here to help if there's any technical issues.

At this point, Madam Clerk, let's go ahead and open up the public comment.

The first three people that we have on the list are Howard Gale, Kate Rubin, and Robin Briggs.

Howard, good morning.

Hi.

Hi.

I think I'm on the unit.

You're good, yes.

Good morning.

This is Howard Gale from Lower District 7. Seattle Community Police Commission, at a cost of tens of thousands of dollars, is now engaged in formulating bylaws and a strategic plan, despite having clearly articulated legal mandates from both the federal courts and in Seattle City Law.

And they are doing this over seven and a half years after they first started meeting.

Seven and a half years.

The CPC is doing this by hiring professionals while prohibiting public comment, ignoring legal mandates for well over five years to actually hold public forum, as well as ignoring mandates to have youth representation on the commission.

The CPC ignored the SBD murder of Ryan Smith in May of 2019, and failed to even take note of the SBD murder of Harry Kaber when it happened in May of this year.

Both of these were murders by SBD of black men in severe mental health crisis.

All of this is indicative of a bureaucratic top-down approach that relies on paying professionals to tell a community police commission what to do instead of actually listening to the community.

Council members, please, support Council Member Siwan's proposal to develop a true community-based independent police oversight entity.

Stop the pretense that we have oversight.

Stop the bifurcation of having a supposed community commission and a pseudo but not really independent office of professional accounting.

Thank you.

Thank you Howard.

Next person is Kate.

Good morning Kate.

Good morning.

My name is Kate Rubin.

I'm a renter in District 2 and I'm the executive director of B Seattle.

I'm calling today in support of the solidarity budget.

We urge you to divest from SPD by at least 50% and invest these funds into Black communities and community-led health and safety programs.

Prior to the pandemic, we as tenant advocates and organizers saw tenants displaced and pushed into houselessness through eviction, rent gouging, and lack of know-your-rights education.

More than half of Seattle residents are renters.

47% of tenants were rent burdened, which means that we spent more than 30% of our pre-tax income on rent.

Due to Seattle's racist housing history, low-income Black and Indigenous people of color are more likely to be renters, as well as the first to be pushed out of their homes.

We were not prepared to shoulder the massive job loss that came with COVID-19.

And right now, as hundreds of thousands of renters have lost their jobs and the federal government has failed us time and time again, This crisis has been made even more dire for Seattle renters.

As it currently stands, we are bracing for a tsunami of evictions upon the end of the moratorium.

Without adequate funding, the incoming wave of tenant needs will go unsupported.

The eviction courts will be flooded, and many tenants will just self-evict to avoid the hassle and humiliation of going to court.

Community-based organizations like the Seattle Tenants Union and others need sufficient funds to connect renters with resources provide know your rights education and help them organize to ensure that they receive fair treatment from their landlords and are able to stay housed during the pandemic.

This pandemic will not be over anytime soon and we must protect our neighbors.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And the next person is Robin.

Good morning, Robin.

Hi, my name is Robin Briggs.

I'm a member of the 43rd Democrats Environmental Caucus.

I wanted to thank Council Member to want for her proposal to allocate 20 million from the general fund to transition our housing stock off of fossil fuels.

And thank you to council members Strauss and Gonzalez for sponsoring the senior planning and development specialist and the climate policy advisor positions in OSC.

These changes are essential for our efforts to reduce the impact of global warming and to get us moving along the path to decarbonization, which is critical for our planet.

And thank you all.

Thank you for your time this morning.

The next three people are Brent McFarland, Sarah Cohn, and Jennifer Gosar.

Brent, good morning.

Good morning, Council.

My name is Brent McFarland.

I live in North Seattle.

Seattle's Office of Police Accountability, or the OPA, is not working for people of this city.

The makeup of OPA has only two civilian investigators and nine SPD sergeants.

We need an elected civilian controlled accountability system.

I urge that you support council member Swan's proposal to finally create this system to hold police accountable.

This proposal would enable the city of Seattle to establish an independent elected community oversight board with full powers over police accountability including the power to investigate reports of excessive force and racially biased policing, to subpoena witnesses and evidence, and to fire or otherwise discipline officers as needed.

I ask that you support this proposal.

Thank you.

Thank you for your time this morning.

Sarah, good morning.

Hi can you hear me.

Yes I can hear you now.

Thanks.

Hi.

My name is Sarah Cohn.

I'm a resident of District 6 and a graduate student at UW and I'm calling to add my voice to the many people you've heard from this week in support of a solidarity budget.

The Solidarity Budget Coalition has brought together an incredible group of organizations and communities that includes all kinds of people around Seattle which are exactly the people that City Council must represent in this moment.

I urge you to divest from SPD by at least 50 percent and to distribute those funds through a participatory budgeting process.

And instead of criminalizing homelessness we can reallocate the funding for the navigation team to community-based outreach workers who can directly refer people into housing that works for them.

Ensure all people have access to basic sanitation and create more dignified COVID-19 safe shelter and housing.

I want to reinforce what so many people have commented on this week.

that addressing anti-Black systemic racism the housing crisis and climate justice are the same fight.

We know that those closest to the problems are closest to the solutions which is why my last point today is that the Green New Deal Community Oversight Board should be fully staffed and funded so that frontline youth and low-income community members can lead on city policy to eliminate Seattle's climate pollution address injustices and create thousands of good union jobs.

The 2021 budget is.

Really a huge opportunity to put Seattle on a path to addressing anti-Black racism and an equitable recovery from the intersecting crises of COVID-19 economic injustice and climate change.

And not only are all these issues really the same fight they are the most urgent crises of our time.

It's time to dismantle anti-Black racist policing and invest in dignified shelter and affordable housing, vital public services, COVID-19 economic relief, Seattle's Green New Deal, and a healthy future for all.

And we can do all of these things.

Thank you so much.

Thank you very much.

The next person is Jennifer.

Good morning.

Good morning, Councilperson Mosqueda.

I have called in today to support consideration for the SPD Civilian Oversight Board proposed by Councilmember Shama Sawant.

I'm a constituent of Councilpersons Dan Strauss, as well as you, Chairman Mosqueda, and Teresa Gonzalez.

As an involved and concerned community member, I have watched and attended forums where our current organizations, CPC and OPA, have failed time and again to question, challenge, engage, or execute their mission of police accountability.

To say the system is broken is to imply that it ever worked, and that would be false.

Accountability bodies, like the CPC and OPA, have consistently been ineffectual and or dysfunctional, and in part because each body has little or no accountability power and uses current or former SPD officers to get information.

It is imperative that we have an actual accountability body developed with practices and powers to better protect those most impacted by systemic racism from police brutality and use of deadly force.

I urge you to advocate tirelessly for this as a walk-on amendment.

For more than 27 people who have died at the hands of Seattle Police and the countless community members brutally beaten over the summer a real step for accountability needs your support.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

And the next three people are President Kenny Stewart, Jim Street, and Valerie Schultz.

Good morning, President Stewart.

Good morning.

Yes, my name is Kenny Stewart.

I'm a Seattle firefighter on Ladder 8. I'm also president of Seattle Firefighters Union, IFF Local 27. And on behalf of the almost 1,000 firefighters and members of Local 27, I want to thank you for allowing me to provide input on the 2021 proposed budget.

Seattle Firefighters serve the people of Seattle by providing world-class fire suppression and emergency medical care.

We take great personal risks in doing so.

Seattle Firefighters consistently lead the way in fire service as a modern, innovative, diverse organization.

I first want to thank Mayor Durkan for prioritizing public safety and for proposing a budget increase for two critical issues in our city.

The expansion of the essential and very successful Health One program and a critical increase of Seattle Fire Department resources, Ladder 13 and Medic 26, to address the West Seattle Bridge closure.

Firefighters hope the City Council prioritizes these public safety measures as well and supports these issues.

In addition to the budget proposal as written, firefighters respectfully ask Council to fund the following priorities on the agenda today.

First, staffing.

Restore the additional 20 firefighter recruits to maintain staffing levels to support all of the critical services and programs in the department as our workload increases.

The demands on firefighters continues to expand due to the growth and density of our city, homelessness, the mental health crisis, the opiate abuse crisis, the pandemic, wildfires, and more.

Firefighters, for example, have increased our services since the pandemic began by staffing four COVID testing sites in Seattle six days a week.

We've served over 300,000 people in providing those tests.

Automatic external defibrillators is the second one.

We have all those AEDs.

Firefighters and paramedics use AEDs for heart attacks on a daily basis to save lives.

We need to maintain our complement of these life-saving devices.

Finally, turnout gear or personal protective clothing.

These requests are reasonable, relatively inexpensive, and will help protect the people of Seattle and keep firefighters safe.

I'm grateful that Mayor Durkan and the City Council

Thank you very much, Kenny.

Please send the rest of your comments in, and we'll make sure to circulate those today as well.

I appreciate you calling in.

The next person is Jimmy Street.

Good morning, Jimmy.

Actually, it's Jim, but that's OK.

I'm so sorry.

I added that.

Good morning, Jim.

I was always called Jimmy when I was a little kid, but I'm not.

I don't even know you that well.

That's not appropriate.

Thanks for being here, Jim.

My name is Jim Street.

I'm a member of the 43rd District Environmental Caucus.

First, thank you to Councilmember Strauss and Gonzalez and other councilmembers for sponsoring the filling of the two positions in the Office of Sustainability, the Senior Planning and Development Specialist and the Climate Policy Advisor position.

Delay in filling these positions until 2022 will severely limit the pre-implementation activities that are crucially needed to carry out carbon reduction actions, and they would undercut the city's ability to establish climate accountability benchmarks.

Thank you, second, to Councilmember Sawant and other Councilmembers for sponsoring the addition of $20 million to the general fund to subsidize low-income housing electrification.

This is a real substantive action now to reduce emissions, and it is a real substantial action for climate justice here in Seattle.

In addition, with regard to the Department of Transportation, we support the proposal by Move All Seattle Sustainability Coalition to add $21 million to the capital budget for reducing cuts from walking and biking projects.

Further, we will absolutely need new revenues to balance this budget.

We urge you to approve now the $20 increase in the vehicle excise tax.

Depending on the vote in November on the Transit Benefit District, consider submitting the full $60 tax to voters in 2021. We support consideration of an excise carbon excise tax, a Seattle gas tax, and a 1% income tax in terms of thoroughly analyzing these for possible 2021 revenue sources.

Thank you very much.

Thank you for your time this morning.

And Valerie, good morning.

OK, I hope you're great.

My name is Valerie Schloret.

I'm a resident of District 2 and I've been following Seattle policing for the past 10 years.

Looking back at what has happened in that time it's clear that the reform process hasn't produced meaningful improvements in police attitudes or police behavior.

We have an opportunity now with this budget to begin to move from failed reform to the real transformation we need for a peaceful safe and equitable city.

To do that we have to change policing but also police accountability.

The Seattle accountability structure is inadequate and provides the illusion of police accountability without the reality.

It is also opaque.

Seattle residents don't really know what it does or what outcomes it produces.

In the wake of police shootings of people in mental health crisis in recent years and extreme police violence toward protesters this summer we have been told repeatedly by authorities like the mayor and the police chief that the OPA is civilian oversight.

It is not and it costs millions of dollars every year.

Please support council member Sawant's proposal to begin the process that could create a new elected accountability structure.

We need a body that is transparent and answerable to the people who pay for it.

We pay for policing and we deserve much better.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

And the last four speakers are Lorette Colbert, Ian Gordon, Jesse Rollins, and Scout Cleland.

Lorette, good morning.

I see you are still muted on my end.

If you hit star six, perfect.

Good morning.

Good morning.

Can you hear me?

Yes.

Thanks for checking.

Thank you.

Yeah.

May council members.

My name is Lorette Colbert.

I'm a long time resident of the penny region neighborhood, and I'm also calling to comment on our system of police accountability.

I'm well aware that I'm standing on the shoulders of this, excuse me, of this summer's many demonstrations and the Black Lives movement, which many of you council members have supported, and all of which, you know, express strong concerns about Seattle's police accountability and racially biased policing problems.

I support council members to launch proposal for an elected civilian community oversight commission with full powers to investigate excessive force, racially biased policing, et cetera.

I think it should be obvious that our current accountability system does not work for a whole variety of reasons.

But especially now, there couldn't be a better time after the momentum and the interest built this summer to take this on, to create a Civilian Elected Police Accountability Commission.

The time is now.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you very much.

Anne, good morning.

Good morning, Anne.

Looks like you're still muted.

Just star six one more time.

I know that that is an unfriendly button sometimes.

So we will come back to you, Ian.

Oh, I see you.

Please go ahead, Ian.

Hi, my name's Ian Gordon.

I'm the business manager for Laborers Local 1239 and a proud new resident of the Greenwood community for the past two years.

But I'm speaking today in support of retaining two positions at SDOT.

One of them being the Asphalt Paving Assistant Crew Chief, and the other being an Asphalt Raker.

The Asphalt Paving Crew Chief is a relatively new position.

What it does is it handles the multiple crew chiefs, the overall coordination of the work project, safety setup, traffic, stormwater, and in a variety of field situations.

Their contacts are with inspectors, safety officers, and other departments.

They make up for the gap between the crew chief position and the asphalt raker position.

The asphalt raker is responsible for measuring the layout of the project, determining mix and amount to order for the job, coordinating what equipment necessary, organized safety set up for flaggers to state guidelines, leads and trains, asphalt rakers, and laborers.

Simply put, the crew chiefs work to plan the job at the 3,000-foot level.

The assistant crew chief is the on-the-ground person who's responsible for coordinating and planning the job.

So there's right mix and right people to do everything.

The raker, hello?

Yes, you still have about 10 seconds.

Okay.

Go ahead.

Measures out the project and leads and trains the asphalt rakers and laborers.

Thank you so much, Anne.

Thanks.

Yeah.

If you have that in writing and you'd like to share it with us as well, that's, um, that would be very helpful.

Thank you for those details this morning.

Very informative.

Um, and the last two speakers are Jesse Rollins and scout, um, clean and lean.

Good morning, Jesse.

Good morning, budget chair, Mosqueda council president Gonzalez and city council members.

My name is Jesse Rollins and I'm the public policy manager at the public defender association.

PDA is a nonprofit corporation that works to advance public health and criminal legal systems change.

I'm also a member of the local group Just Access to Health, or JAW, which aims to advance innovative and reality-based solutions to our local drug user health crisis.

This morning, I'm hoping to request further support for two budget actions on today's agenda that will not only impact the lives of vulnerable people who use drugs, but will also be extremely beneficial to citywide safety and health.

When we discuss transforming the ways in which public safety is designed and implemented, it is critical that innovative and reality-based drug policies be part of the design.

I want to thank Councilmember Herbold and Christina and Councilmember Herbold's office for advancing two specific budget actions that can increase drug user health and advance better safety and health for all Seattle residents.

Seattle Council has led the way on Supervisor Safer Consumption, which is an evidence-based intervention to reducing harms and death caused by problematic drug use.

For too long, earmarked funding by many council members here has sat dormant, lacking mayoral action.

Now we have a clear pathway forward for allocating these funds.

By supporting Council Member Herbalist's budget action to transfer the dollars to the city's public health contract, we can ensure that SES becomes the local success.

In addition, we want to thank Council Member Herbold's leadership with a second budget action to increase funding for current social service locations that provide services to people who use drugs, which is a common-sense proposal to one of our community's most dire emergencies.

I also want to thank Council President Gonzalez, Council Members Morales, Lewis, Juarez, and their super-duper important staff for the current support of these budget actions.

Thank you all so much.

Thank you so much.

And our last speaker of the day, please go ahead.

Hello council.

My name is Scout Keelian and I'm a resident of District 7 and I support a solidarity budget for our communities in Seattle.

I'm speaking in solidarity with those who have commented before me in support of the solidarity budget and increased accountability of Seattle Police.

But today I'm speaking to give my support for a few of today's agenda items and asking you to divest from Seattle Police Department by 50 percent and invest in Black and Indigenous communities.

Our struggles to build a more equitable Seattle are definitely interconnected.

Divesting from police systems and investing in black communities go hand in hand with climate and housing justice work.

We need a healthy, just climate future for all.

And to get there, we have to divest from harm, police, and pollution, and invest in what makes our communities healthy and climate resistant, such as housing, health care, public safety, clean air, and good jobs.

I am very pleased to see items on this agenda that will fund community-led public safety investments, such as agenda item 11, and those that will fund our city working towards the Green New Deal, agenda items 19, 20, and 22. Those closest to the problems are closest to the solutions.

Black, brown, indigenous, and immigrant communities are most harmed by COVID-19, climate injustice, racism, and criminalization, and should be central to the process of transforming Seattle's budget into one that serves all people.

I also support items 7 and 8 which together allocate nearly $146,000 to services or programs that support Indigenous communities.

However I believe more needs to be done in supporting and uplifting Native communities and especially the Duwamish tribe.

We cannot continue justifying an economy that prioritizes profit over people and I know that the Seattle Police Department has too much money if you need to get some more.

Thank you very much and I yield the rest of my time.

Thank you so much, everyone, for calling in today.

That does conclude all of the folks that we have signed up for public testimony this morning.

This will end our public comment period for today.

And we're gonna move on to items of business on today's agenda.

Madam Clerk, I know we have a number of items here.

Would it be helpful for the record if we just read in the Roman numeral number titles, just so folks have an orientation as to what categories we are considering today?

So I believe that would work fine.

So we're on agenda item Roman numeral one citywide proposed legislation.

Madam Clerk, I might ask if you want to just read all of the Roman numerals that way we can roll through if that sounds okay to you.

Okay, on today's this morning's agenda, we have Roman numeral one citywide Roman numeral to finance general.

My place.

Roman numeral number three, Human Services Department.

Roman numeral number four, Seattle Fire Department.

Excellent.

That's it for this morning.

Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Clerk.

Council Colleagues, thank you so much for all of the work you have done over the last now almost six weeks on the proposed budget in front of us.

We have quite a bit of discussion to have today, and I'm looking forward to the robust discussion.

With us, we have Karina Bull.

I see you popped right up there.

Thank you so much.

And why don't we go ahead and have you do a quick summary for us on the first item on our agenda.

Thank you so much.

This budget action would add a total of $2.13 million general fund to distribute among five departments to restore 15 positions that would be eliminated in the 2021 proposed budget for budget reasons.

The five departments are Human Services Department, Office of Economic Development, Office of Planning and Community Development, Seattle Department of Transportation, and the Seattle Fire Department.

This CBA would also impose a proviso on a portion of each of the listed departments budget to restrict use of the funds to solely retaining the positions.

To provide background, the executive provided council and central staff a list of employees that would receive layoff notices as part of the proposed budget.

Information from city budget office and the departments on the reasons for elimination of these positions indicates that 15 of these layoffs can be characterized as budgetary versus programmatic.

Budgetary meaning that the department proposed eliminating the position to meet its reduction goals and usually identified possible negative impacts to programs and services.

Programmatic In contrast, meaning that the position has job duties that are no longer necessary due to a program elimination, reorganization, duplication by other positions, job duties moving outside the department or city, or other reasons not related to budget.

And that summarizes the budget action.

Thank you very much, Karina.

Colleagues, this is one of the priority documents I have put forward, and I'm very excited to be able to kick off today's discussion about restoring budgetary layoffs.

I think this helps set a good tone for the day, and I want to thank Council President Gonzalez and Council Member Lewis for their co-sponsorship of this.

As you also heard Councilmember Strauss has signed on this morning and I appreciate their support as well.

This form really should be no surprise given my ongoing commitments to support workers' rights, to make sure that there's a strong and thriving local economy, and to push for progressive revenue to ward off austerity budgeting.

And why do we want to protect against budget layoffs during an economic downturn?

Because government services, and specifically public sector jobs, are the backbone to making our economy recover faster.

This is not just my opinion.

This is a fact.

This is what the data shows from economists around the country and around the globe.

And we heard it as early as this year in May, as the COVID crisis began to expose the already existing cracks in our local economy, both at the local level and the national and global level.

This was the forum that was called the economic realities of the COVID crisis, which we held in May.

If we were in person, I would be sharing with you a handout right now.

So I'm going to share that handout with you virtually if you'll indulge us for a quick second.

I want to show some of the data that was presented at that forum.

And thanks again to Patty for sharing that information.

If we can zoom in just a little bit.

Appreciate it, Patty.

This is the data from Shar Habibi in the public interest who presented data from the American Progress Report.

The original data was pulled from the BLS, which shows that by every measure, when state governments and local governments cut public sector jobs or cut public services during a recession, by every measure, local economies are hurt.

It hurts not only the individuals that we're trying to serve by making sure that they have the basic services they need, but it also hurts our ability to recover, and it specifically hurts the private sector as well.

That's an important takeaway from the bottom left-hand corner in this chart, which shows the impact when local governments decide to cut services and jobs.

She says the austerity idea that government should severely cut spending as the primary way of dealing with an economic downturn is a starve the beast approach that doesn't lead to improved economic conditions, but instead leads to inadequate resources and personnel to meet public needs, which then reinforces an anti-government sentiment by presenting governments as the problem.

It can threaten to create a fiscal austerity cycle where growth declines, which lowers tax revenue and thus further creates austerity.

During that same forum, Josh Bivens from the Policy Institute, the Economic Policy Institute said, we are facing the largest and most sudden economic shock in the United States, larger than the Great Depressions in terms of job loss.

And goes on to explain that state and local governments should consider their responsibility for responding to the crisis because our workers and our services should do the support for frontline services for lowest wage and most vulnerable residents in our communities.

He warns, return to economic recovery is going to be gradual.

And as we have all seen already, it will be in waves, which is not only a threat to the economic growth, but is also a threat to the health of our community.

And we must have a strategic approach to spend everything we need to spend on public frontline services and those who provide those services.

This requires employees to be able to provide these critical services.

He concludes that when local governments preserve spending and employment, the economy recovers faster and the unemployment rate recovered faster and job growth was faster.

He notes it's an obvious policy choice.

And lastly, because if you haven't seen the forum, we are going to go ahead and put up some of those slides and the link to that forum.

Lenore Palladino from UMass said that if cities slash funding during this economic crisis, it could take even longer to recover from the economic downturn, prolong unemployment, and this should be our greatest economic fear.

This is the responsibility of public policymakers now to look for ways to make investments in the local economy and prevent, again, slashing employment and services in times of economic need.

This is, colleagues, I think, recognized already by this council.

We passed the Jump Start Progressive Revenue Proposal.

This council put spending plan together that allocated around $60 million to preserve city services, contracts, and by extension, city jobs.

And we recognize that we might not be able to protect every single city job, including when there's policy or directional change.

But that is not the case with these potential budgetary cuts that are in front of us.

And that is what this Form B aims to restore.

There is money in the budget.

There was money in the budget to save these vital services and jobs.

and to make sure that we ward off against unnecessary cuts, especially to members of the BIPOC community, BIPOC workers, as you see noted in the central staff summary.

So colleagues, this is one of my top priorities that I look forward to working with you on.

I appreciate you indulging me for a little extra time because not only is this the backbone for what helps an economy recover faster, this is the backbone of the framework that I'm hoping that we will bring to looking at budget priorities in the 2021 cycle.

I'll summarize five reasons that I think this is important.

One, city employment means fewer people who, preserving city employment means fewer people who are going to rely on our safety net.

Second, the people that have money in their pockets by being able to keep jobs are more likely to help spend it in our local economy.

City employees provide vital services, as we just discussed.

The data shows that the services and support they provide to our residents of our city right now helps to make sure that our recovery will occur faster and that the disparity that we currently see will be less severe.

HSD has noted that the layoffs that are being proposed here would not result in less work.

In fact, that work would be spread across other staff members, increasing workload amongst an already stressed out workforce.

Fourth, typically first in first out layoffs result in the most diverse employees being let go.

And we want to make sure that we're not doing this in the cycle, as you can see as well.

It's apparent that the two SDOT represented positions that we're looking to restore, those familiar with those positions, categorize them as growth positions, allowing the employees to gain experience and then be offered other positions.

And these are predominantly staffed by people of color.

And finally, five, we want to keep people employed because we know that institutional knowledge creates greater efficiency among city programs.

This has been noted by the Office of Economic Development because they've also noted that one of their potential layoffs is an employee that will not be absorbed and that individual in this position helps guide policy-based and best practices that are rare.

We want to make sure that those, that institutional knowledge is being able to be maintained.

We heard that same thing from Ian who testified today about how that position that's potentially being slated to be cut actually creates that connective tissue between various services and losing that position could be really a detriment.

I know I went longer than we usually do.

I appreciate that you have given me the extra time for considering this proposal, given that it really does shape sort of the framework that I am hoping to bring to this conversation around the budget and our concerns around how we can get our economy back and running as fast as possible.

With that, I will stop myself and ask if there's any additional questions and comments.

Thank you, Patty, for sharing the screen.

Well, I appreciate all the sign-ons.

Council colleagues, I don't see any additional, oh, please go ahead, Council Member Sawant.

Thank you.

I support this amendment to stop the mayor's proposed layoffs of City of Seattle workers.

We need to be clear that these layoffs are a tiny, tiny fraction of the budget cuts proposed in Mayor Durkan's budget.

In almost every department, the budget cuts are to what is called the capital budget, that is the budget for things like construction and maintenance.

Because all of that construction is contracted out, the layoffs are overwhelmingly to not city of Seattle workers, public sector workers, but construction workers hired out by the contractors.

So activists and working people who want an alternative to what is proposed by Mayor Durkin as draconian budget cuts and austerity must look at the facts and not allow elected officials to claim that their hands are clean and that they're eliminating layoffs while behind the scenes actually unfortunately hundreds or even thousands may end up losing their jobs.

In real terms the mayor has slashed over 200 million dollars from the city budget and city councils and central staff analyzed the difference in general fund and found a 27 million dollar difference but once you account for all of the other sources of funding like the real estate excise tax, the total tangible cuts to departments like parks, libraries, transportation, and housing is well over $200 million.

My office and the People's Budget Movement have proposed increasing the rate of the Amazon tax to eliminate all of that austerity, all of those cuts, Unfortunately, so far, no other council member has agreed to support that proposal.

So it will not be discussed during these form Bs, which require three co-sponsors, but council members will still have an opportunity before the final vote of the budget in November.

So I really urge council members to look at that very seriously.

and also, my office will be bringing that proposal forward for the final budget votes in November.

So I'm definitely in support of this budget amendment, but also would point out that it restores about 1% of the mayor's proposed budget cuts, and I hope that when it comes time for the final budget votes, council members will also support restoring the other 99%.

Thank you.

Okay, thank you so much.

Thanks, council colleagues.

Again, I appreciate all of your sign-ons here.

Councilmember Silva.

Councilmember Silva.

In addition to having Councilmember Silva.

In addition to having Councilmember Silva.

In addition to having Councilmember Silva.

In addition to having Councilmember Silva.

Louis, please go ahead.

Oh, thank you, Benancher.

I just wanted to briefly share another important consideration, and I'm proud to support this and follow your leadership on this issue.

As you know from the HealthONE ride along, this investment is critical for making sure we can stand up those additive pilot programs that are going to scale more.

And one of my takeaways from that ride along was hearing from the firefighters saying that You know, unless some of these funding cuts and personnel cuts to the fire department in particular were restored, that could have an impact on scaling up HealthONE, because the first priority is always going to be staffing ladder companies, staffing the traditional capacity of the fire department to respond to fires and higher acuity medical situations.

And unless those needs are met, things like HealthONE are going to continue to be seen as extra and additional to the mission.

So these critical investments are also really important to scaling up those critical additive first response services that have been such a big priority for the council over the summer and the fall.

And this is a really critical component of that to make sure that we that we are maintaining our other fire first response capabilities while expanding health one.

I'm happy to join you and glad you brought this forward.

Thank you so much.

appreciate all your comments and sign-ons.

Let's move on.

I believe before we can go on to the next item on our agenda we do have the walk-on I'm going to turn it over to you.

Thank you, again, I'm Karina Bull on central staff and this proposal would amend ordinance 126008 to eliminate the current requirement to increase the base wage rate in 2021 for non-represented positions.

Elimination or amending this ordinance, which is referred to as the non-represented employee wages ordinance, that ordinance requires an adjusted wage increase in 2021 for all non-represented Extended positions with certain exceptions, such as for positions categorized as APEC SAMs, which means the Executive Strategic Advisor and Manager positions.

So assuming that the council would pass that amendment to that ordinance, this proposal would also generate savings of at least $5 million in the 2021 proposed budget by eliminating adjusted wage increases for employees in these non-represented positions who earn 80% or more of the Seattle median income, which is about $82,000.

And then the savings generated by this proposal would be reinvested in programs to save city jobs, as Councilmember Peterson earlier indicated, help people experiencing homelessness, increase investments in BIPOC communities, and repair bridges.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Councilmember Peterson, please go ahead.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

So I feel like I had a real good opportunity at 9.30 this morning to introduce this.

So happy to jump right into question and answer.

Wonderful.

Council Member Sawant, please go ahead.

We should definitely get together and share some more.

One second, if we could, if we can make sure that, there we go, we got a little background noise.

So Council Member Sawyer, thank you for waiting.

Please go ahead.

Thank you.

As I said before, when we were approving the agenda of today's meeting, I opposed this budget amendment.

This amendment does not cut the wages of the highest paid City of Seattle employees.

It does not cut the pay of the City of Seattle executives.

This budget amendment targets City of Seattle workers while leaving the bosses' pay untouched.

The mayor's proposed budget freezes the pay of City of Seattle executives, yes, but that falls far short of capping city executive pay at no more than $150,000 as my office and the people's budget movement have consistently advocated for for years.

Though I do believe that freezing the pay of city executives is an important step.

at the very least.

This budget amendment would extend that pay freeze to city workers.

Yes, we are in a recession, and every time there is a recession under capitalism, the question becomes who will pay for that recession, workers or big business?

And every time there's a recession, workers are told it's time for shared sacrifice.

Will workers pay for the recession with pay cuts, layoffs, furloughs, and cut social services?

Or will we build a movement to tax big business and the super rich?

And in Seattle's case to expand the Amazon tax that we just won to stop all budget cuts and start new public works like the green new deal.

This budget amendment puts even more of the burden of the recession on regular public sector workers.

So, you know, this is a section of the working class and I would urge council members not to go sponsor it.

Thank you.

Are there other comments or questions?

Council Member Peterson, if you have anything else.

Council Member Lewis, please go ahead.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I mean, in the abundance of caution, I do want to disclose.

I'm not sure if she would be covered by this or not.

But just to get it out there, my girlfriend, Laura Baird, who is an assistant city attorney, may or may not be covered by this.

I haven't looked into it.

But I do want to disclose that in any event, if she is covered or if she does, that doesn't factor into my decision making in regards to this.

to this budget item.

But I did, in abundance of caution, I just wanted to flag that as a potential conflict.

Okay, no problem.

Thank you very much, Councilmember Lewis.

I know it's a small city, even though we've grown by quite a bit, that makes a lot of sense for you to flag it, but I don't see that really raising to concern today, given that this is on the macro level.

Appreciate you raising it, though.

I do have some questions, Council Member Peterson.

I asked earlier about whether or not the employees that are affected by the collective bargaining agreement have been reached out to on this.

Can you elaborate any more about whether or not there's been conversations with the folks?

Sure.

So the employees that would be the city government employees who are would be getting this raise next year.

They're not it's they're not subject to collective bargaining.

Okay, thank you for that clarification.

Any additional questions, colleagues?

Council President Gonzalez, please go ahead.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

I don't have any questions, just a general comment about this particular proposal.

I did express significant concerns about the proposal as originally presented and discussed by Council Member Peterson.

during issue identification phase of the budget process.

I think some of the concerns that I raised, particularly as it relates to the sponsor's intentions, have been addressed by removing represented employees from the proposal.

Nonetheless, I continue to have concerns about this proposal in terms of the impact on non-represented employees.

Certainly appreciate the effort to address some of the race and social justice impact issues that I highlighted in my comments previously by looking at those employees who have 80% or more of a Seattle median income.

I think that the reality is, is that we have to be extraordinarily careful in terms of exactly which employees are being impacted.

I think it's easy to think that 80% of Seattle median income is a very large volume of a large amount of money by which our city employees and their families can sustain themselves.

And I'm not I'm not convinced that that's true.

So I continue to have concerns about the significance of this particular proposal and will not be supporting this proposal at this juncture.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council President.

Council Member Peterson, I don't see any additional hands.

Did you have any other comments on this?

No, I just want to thank my colleagues for enabling us to get on the agenda, for enabling us to have a gracious discussion about the different, you know, consequences, unintended consequences, the choices that we, the tough choices that we have to make, other considerations like the ones Council Member Sawant raised.

So I just want to thank my colleagues for their grace in letting us discuss this today.

And, you know, again, we're not, technically voting on it today, but when the new revenue forecast comes out, if there's any other sort of thing that happens that could negatively impact our budget, I mean, I was able to vote in favor of the First Amendment today to restore those jobs, because this is about preventing layoffs of city government employees as well, in my mind at least.

I'm not sure where we're going to find the funding to do all the things we want to do.

And so I appreciate my colleagues enabling me to air this as one potential source if it were to become necessary.

Thank you.

Thank you very much, Council Member Peterson.

All right, let's move on to the next section here.

Thank you, Karina.

Good morning, Tom.

Good morning, Chair Mosqueda and members of the committee.

I'm Tom Mikesell with your council central staff.

We're talking now about the finance general section of the budget.

Budget action FG1A1 would add $150,000 to finance general reserves for the partial year costs of establishing an independent economic and forecasting office that would be developed through separate legislation.

This funding would be combined with existing amounts in the city budget office budget to support the initial setup and partial year costs of the independent office.

Similar to the King County Office of Economic and Financial Research and the Washington State Economic Revenue Forecast Council staff, An independent office would enable access to independent and confidential economic and tax research and resources for both the council and mayor, and would establish a level playing field for the timing of receiving this type of information.

Legislation established in the office will be introduced separately.

The new office's final operating budget, including staffing and other operating considerations, will be based on the body of work included in that legislation.

The budget action also imposes two provisos that would be released when an ordinance is created establishing independent forecasting office, including $330,000 in the city budget office budget and $150,000 in the finance general budget as added by this action.

Council President Gonzalez is the prime sponsor with additional sponsors of council member or co-sponsors of council member Morales and council member Lewis.

Council President, thank you so much.

Please go ahead.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda, and thanks, Tom, for that.

I apologize.

I may need to toggle back and forth.

I'm pulling double duty this morning by also attending and representing the City of Seattle at the PSRC General Assembly meeting, and we're getting close to doing a roll call over here on this other side.

So I apologize if I have to interrupt my comments in order to go.

toggle to the other screen here.

But really quickly, I believe that city council members and its staff should have equal access to the economic and revenue data generated by and provided to the executive branch as we work to adopt the city's budget.

Of course, we all know that the city budget office directly reports to the mayor's office and that embedded within the mayor's city budget office is the economic revenue forecast unit.

Since the forecasts are generated from within the city's budget office, sorry, pardon me, just a moment.

No problem.

Sorry about that.

Just a moment.

No.

Thank you.

Again, thank you for the indulgence.

As the forecasts are generated from within the Mayor's City Budget Office, executive staff has sole responsibility for and access to the data, methodology, and initial conclusions that are part of the forecasting process.

Both before and after forecasts are completed, central staff and analysts would benefit from unfettered access to the underlying assumptions, data, and other information associated with the forecasting process and results.

Other levels of government, including King County and Washington State, have independent forecasting units that report jointly to both the legislative and executive branches at the identical time.

My office and central staff have met with King County staff responsible for their 2008 Charter Amendment and legislation that created the Office of Economic and Financial Analysis.

They confirmed that the utilization of this model has multiple upsides, including Increase public transparency and confidence, more timely and robust forecasts and improve collaboration and trust between the executive.

trust and efficacy between the executive and the council, I believe this is an effective good governance structure which the city of Seattle should emulate.

Again, I believe this is simply a good governance proposal that is well worth the marginal cost of implementation, and it should provide many broad benefits to the city's forecasting and budgeting exercises for many years to come.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Happy to answer any questions.

Thank you, Council President.

Are there any additional questions?

Okay, I am seeing none at this point.

I do see that there are additional co-sponsors.

So now Council President Gonzalez is joined by Council Member Morales, Peterson, and Lewis.

Thank you all very much.

Okay, let's keep going.

Okay, unmuted now.

Item number three is Council Budget Action FG2A1, which adds $30 million general fund to financial reserves for a strategic investment fund to address displacement.

This fund will support strategic investment in areas at high risk of displacement or in areas of low access to opportunity that present unique opportunities for transformational equitable development.

A $30 million appropriation to the strategic investment fund was included in the 2020 adopted budget.

However, that is proposed to be cut in the third quarter supplemental appropriations bill proposed by the executive.

This action would reappropriate that same amount into the 2021 budget.

The 2020 budget also included a proviso for these funds that indicated that none of the amount that appropriated for that purpose may be spent until authorized by future ordinance and that the council would anticipate the authority would not be granted until the executive submits a proposed spending plan for the monies.

This action is sponsored by Council Member Sawant with additional sponsors of Council Member Herbold, Council Member Morales.

Excellent, thank you.

Council Member Sawant, please go ahead.

Thank you and thank you to Council Members Herbold and Morales for supporting this budget amendment.

The mayor describes this as a cut to the quote strategic investment fund and quote in the third quarter supplemental budget but that language is intentionally designed to mean absolutely nothing and to hide what is really being cut.

This is very different from the language that Mayor Durkin used during last year's budget when she trumpeted that she was creating this fund and would work with community organizations to invest these $30 million to address displacement in Black and Brown communities.

As I pointed out last week, the mayor talked about this $30 million exactly the same way that she is now talking about the $100 million, but she has neglected to invest one penny of the $30 million in real terms.

So it sort of casts a shadow on what's going to happen with the $100 million as well.

Many council members have expressed outrage that the mayor was breaking this promise.

So I hope council members will support and co-sponsor this budget amendment to follow through in practice on the opposition to the mayor's cut that has been correctly expressed in words last week.

There is no shortage of essential projects that these funds could be used for.

Unfortunately, we are in a situation where we are spoiled for choices.

They could be used to build affordable housing for child care, for community centers in places like the Central District.

where huge swaths of working-class Seattleites have been displaced from by rising housing costs.

These funds would be perfect for projects like the anti-displacement project proposed by Africatown at the site of the former Cairo Center.

That's one example.

that we have already discussed yesterday.

And thank you to Council Member Morales for being the only Council Member willing to support that project proposal.

I hope others will also support that soon.

But that's just one example.

There's countless other uses that will greatly benefit the working class community and marginalized communities specifically by making sure that these funds are actually used for the intended purpose.

And cutting these funds is simply unacceptable.

So there are several good options for how this could be funded.

And at this stage, because I'm not required to have not been prescriptive in this Form B proposal, it could be funded by increasing the Amazon tax rate.

It could be funded by defunding the police by 50%, which would free up an additional $170 million.

or it could be funded in other ways that have been discussed last week.

If council members support restoring this funding, which would, of course, be consistent with the words that have been expressed, then, of course, my office would be happy to be flexible about the funding source as long as it is progressive.

Thank you very much, Council Member Sawant.

Are there any questions or comments?

I have a quick question, and perhaps this is for Tom, and I think it's summarized nicely in the document that you provided in Katsuma VersaWant's summary as well.

But I just want to reiterate, this puts back into place the exact same language that was used during the conversations initially in 2019 that really put sideboards around how the $30 million was to be used.

Is this the exact same language?

Yes, Chair Mosqueda, this is essentially just reimposing, replacing what was adopted in the 2020 budget and applying the exact same language.

Thank you very much.

And as Council Member Sawant noted, I think there's a lot of folks who were participating in a conversation around Mercer Mega Block who had worked on that language, and it's important for them to hear that.

Council Member Herbold, please go ahead.

Thank you.

I just want to share with the viewing public a press release that we received from Puget Sound SAGE, Share the Cities, Graham Street community members around this proposal in the mayor's budget to reduce these funds.

They remind us, and this is a bit of history to the original allocation of these funds, they remind us that when this huge parcel of land was being sold in 2019, we heard from a lot of people concerned about the fact that we were selling public land, and many, many people urged that the land instead be kept in public hands and instead be used to develop permanently affordable housing.

And I quote, the press release says, when the mayor and council ultimately decided to sell the Mercer Mega Block to the developer, Alexandria Real Estate Equities, for $143 million, community opposition was somewhat softened by the way the city proposed to allocate proceeds from the sale.

In particular, $78.2 million was earmarked for affordable housing, including $30 million for the strategic investment fund.

The loss of public land in South Lake Union, city leaders promised, would enable the acquisition of land for new affordable housing and community development projects elsewhere in the city to be used to combat displacement and gentrification.

They go on to quote Mayor Durkin saying about the sale, I believe that years from now people will look back at the chance and say that we seized an incredible opportunity to make our city better by reinvesting the proceeds directly in housing across Seattle.

So I think it's really important that we maintain our commitments to community as it relates to this funding, not just because of the context in which those commitments were made, but because of the great need.

And then finally, because There are communities who are right now engaged in discussions about priorities for this funding.

And I don't think it's appropriate to again, ask those same communities to shift their efforts from figuring out what the priorities are for spending this funding to address displacement and affordable housing needs, and instead use those same dollars and engage in a process around the mayor's task force for addressing BIPOC community needs.

It just, it feels really unfair to community who has been mobilizing for these funds and is working to plan to spend them now.

Thank you.

Thank you very much Council Member Herbold.

Any additional comments?

Council Member Morales, please go ahead.

Well, I want to thank Councilmember Herbold because I just had that same press release pulled up.

So thank you for reading it for me.

And I do want to just echo the sentiment, which is that we have community members who are, as we speak, in the process of making plans for that commitment that was made to them.

So I do think it's really important that we honor those commitments and that we don't ask folks to prepare themselves for some other process of application and really acknowledge that this is an important resource that has been committed and we need to make sure that those projects can continue and don't get disrupted by having to pause and wait for the next round of opportunity to come up.

Okay, thank you all very much.

I don't see any additional comments.

Thank you.

So to summarize, Council Member Sawant is joined by Council Member Herbold, Morales, Lewis, and President Gonzalez.

Thank you all.

Let's move on to the next item.

Good morning, Amy.

Oh, excuse me.

I'm sorry, Council Member Strauss.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

I have returned in signaling.

I would also like to sign on to the second item on the agenda, creating an independent economic and forecasting office.

Thank you.

And that was a Council President's item on our official agenda that was sent around.

And that is the first item under that section, number two, finance general.

So we will note that for the record.

Thank you, Council President and colleagues.

I do have my hand raised function up now.

Sorry if I missed anybody earlier, but we will make sure.

to continue watching for your virtual hand raises and welcome back Councilmember Strauss.

Thank you for representing us as well at the important housing event you were just at.

Okay, moving on to the next one.

Amy.

Great.

Good morning.

I'm Amy Gore from Council Central Staff.

The next 10 budget actions on the agenda are for the Human Services Department.

We will start with agenda item four, which is budget action HSD 1A1 and is sponsored by Councilmember Herbold as primary sponsor as well as councilmembers Morales and Strauss.

This item would add 60,358 ongoing general fund dollars to HSD.

Sorry, Amy, just very briefly for our viewing public as well.

I want to make sure they're also seeing that.

There we go.

Perfect.

Thank you very much, team.

You are amazing.

Okay.

That way, if anybody's listening, they can also see the visual representation.

So sorry, Amy, please go ahead.

As I mentioned, this item is sponsored by Councilmember Herbold as primary sponsor and Councilmembers Morales and Strauss.

This item would add $60,358 ongoing general fund dollars to HSD for age-friendly Seattle.

This action will restore the program's budget to the 2020 level of $603,000 and avoid programmatic reductions in 2021. With that, I will turn it over to Councilmember Herbold to discuss further.

Thank you, Councilmember Herbold.

Thank you so much.

Really appreciate the sponsorship of councilmembers Morales, Strauss, and Lewis on this item.

The history of the age-friendly team is that it was formed following the closure of the mayor's office for senior citizens.

And it has been working to develop and implement the age-friendly Seattle action plan.

The age-friendly Seattle program handles implementation, oversight, and evaluation of an action plan to increase racial equity, reduce displacement, increase social participation, and raise awarenesses about the challenges and opportunities that accompany Seattle's aging population.

The cut in the 2020 budget, the proposed cut, is about a 10% cut.

By reversing that cut, we can restore programming that would otherwise be postponed, such as the creation of memory loss training for staff working with older adults.

and the launch of the Age-Friendly Business Initiative.

The reduction would also impact printing outreach materials, translation, and interpretation for virtual and in-person events.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Are there any additional comments?

Okay.

Madam Chair?

Yes, please.

Council Member Warren?

Please go ahead, Council Member Warren.

I'm sorry, I should have got this on my list to you.

We would actually like to assist or sponsor Council Member Herbold in this logic ask as well.

Thank you.

I am not seeing any additional hands.

We have a lot of folks who have joined on the forum here.

So to summarize, Council Member Herbold is joined by Council Member Morales Juarez.

Strauss, and Lewis.

Excellent.

Thank you very much.

Let's move on.

Agenda item five is HSD 2A1, which is sponsored by Council Member Sawant as the primary sponsor, as well as Council Member Juarez and Council President Gonzalez.

This item is a statement of legislative intent that would request that HSD carry forward unspent funding for senior congregate meal programs to 2021. As you are aware, at the end of the year, The city budget office works with departments to identify any underspend and determine what should be carried forward into the next year's budget through the annual carry forward ordinance, which is passed by council.

This budget action would request that any unused funds for senior congregate meal programs that were unable to be used in 2020 due to social distancing requirements be carried forward and added to any 2021 funding for that purpose.

I will now turn it over to council members to want to discuss further.

Thank you.

Councilor Song.

Thank you.

This proposal, as was mentioned, would authorize the Human Services Department to extend its contracts with community nonprofit organizations, such as Asian Counseling and Referral Services, or ACRS, for congregate meals and community activities from 2020 into 2021. ACRS acts as fiscal sponsor for nine senior programs, Vietnamese Senior Association, Lao Senior Association, Hmong Senior Association, Seattle Korean Elder Association, Korean Senior Club, Duoc Su Temple, Kent Bhutanese Group, Samoan Wellness Group, and Club Bamboo.

In 2020, Human Services provided 126,000 $227 to ACRS to support congregate meals and certain cultural activities for the seniors served by these programs.

However, due to the social distancing required by COVID, many of those funds could not be used for their intended purpose and Human Services has told ACRS that if the funds are not used by the end of the year, they will no longer be available.

And so we think this is an important amendment.

I've had the honor of attending events organized by the Vietnamese Senior Association, one of the nine senior organizations funded by ACRS.

And it's an incredibly important service for seniors to prevent isolation and stay connected to their communities, in addition to vital access to meals and also culturally appropriate activities.

They are anxiously looking forward to restarting congregate meals and activities once it is safe to do so and they hope that at some point in 2021 that will become possible.

ACRS has asked Human Services if they could carry forward those funds and the department essentially have informed them that it's not possible without a budget amendment and the format of their contract is HSD has authorized ACRS to fund these congregate meals and senior activities.

And ACRS is reimbursed by HSD for those expenses.

If ACRS does not use those funds by the end of the year, then they are no longer eligible for reimbursement without this budget amendment.

ACRS would rather wait to use the funds when it's safe to do so.

And of course, I think that is completely reasonable and correct of them.

And so I hope the council will support that because I think that's the correct thing to do.

So this budget action would authorize the human services department to allow ACRS to use the 2020 funds in 2021.

Thank you, Councilmember Sawant.

Are there questions on this item?

Okay.

Councilmember Sawant, thank you.

I am not seeing any questions at this moment.

I do see two additional we have three additional co-sponsors.

So thank you very much, colleagues.

I'm going to summarize those, and I want to thank you for bringing this forward.

Council Member Swann is joined by Council Members Herbold, Morales, Juarez, Lewis, and Council President Gonzalez.

Thank you, Council Member Swann.

Next item, please.

The next item on the agenda, item six, is HSD 3A1, and is sponsored by Council Member Morales as primary sponsor.

as well as Council Member Herbold and Council President Gonzalez.

This item would add $85,000 ongoing general fund to HSD for statewide lobbying, focusing on poverty alleviation.

This contract was funded with $85,000 in 2020, and the proposed 2021 budget reduces funding to $25,475.

This action would increase the contract to a total of $110,000, sorry, $4,475 in 2021. And I will now turn it over to Council Member Morales.

Hi, okay.

We're all running around today.

Good morning.

So this is, as we discussed last week, for statewide lobbying contract.

This would restore funding.

for a really important ongoing contract that has made a huge impact for Seattle and for people across Washington State and would bring the contract up to $110,000, which reflects the traditional level of increase.

And just as a reminder, over the last few years, this funding has helped the city to advocate at the state level for an increase in TANF benefits, for expanding housing services for people with disabilities, for making it easier for folks who are previously incarcerated to reenter their communities.

So there's a lot of really important state-level work that has to happen, and so we really rely on these.

these folks to help with our local needs at the state level.

So I am hoping to have support so that we can continue this work.

The legislature is going to be in session very soon, and we need to make sure that we've got folks advocating for the most vulnerable in our community.

So I'm hoping my colleagues will offer their support.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Morales.

Are there any additional questions or comments?

Council colleagues, I am not, oh, there we go, okay.

Council Member Sawant, please go ahead.

Sorry, I was just going to say that I had raised my hand on the Zoom feature a while ago and I hadn't seen it pop up, but it did.

Thank you.

There you are.

Thank you so much, Council Member Sawant.

And perhaps I was moving too fast as well.

So I'll make sure to pause before we go forward to make sure all the names are reflected.

It's a good reminder.

So Council Member Morales, speaking of getting our pages together, Council Member Morales has already been joined by Council Member Herbold and Council President Gonzalez.

Also joining is Council Member Lewis and Council Member Sawant.

Thank you so much all.

Let's go ahead and move forward.

Okay, agenda item seven is HSD 4A1.

The primary sponsor is Council Member Lewis, who is joined by Council Members Peterson and Juarez.

This item would add $46,800 ongoing general fund to HSD to provide safe services at a cultural center serving the native and indigenous community.

These funds would be used to hire a third shift security guard.

And I will now turn it over to Council Member Lewis for more information.

Thank you, Council Member Lewis.

Thank you so much.

So, you know, I brought this forward in collaboration with some of my colleagues and Chief Seattle Club just to really make sure that we are able to give HSD the resources to adequately increase our investment in an incredibly underserved community in the city of Seattle.

You know, I think that this is a pretty modest budget ad relative to the impact that it could have.

And I really want to make sure that even as we're making tough decisions, we're still We're still able to move forward in this budget on increasing our investments to truly provide justice and service and dignity to all the people of the city.

And I think that that's really what this goes to.

And I don't really have very much.

In addition to ad, we've discussed a lot about these ads over the last couple of days.

And there is some overlap with some of the other I will leave that as my comments for now.

It looks like we got everybody.

Wonderful.

Thank you for those sign-ons and those comments.

Council Member Juarez, the next one is yours.

I'll turn it back over to Amy.

Sure.

Item eight is HSD 5A1 and is sponsored by Council Member Juarez as primary sponsor, as well as Council Member Lewis and Council President Gonzalez.

This item would add $33,000 one-time general fund to HSD and $67,000 one-time general fund to the Department of Education and Early Learning for programs supporting Native and Indigenous children and families.

The funding at HSD would fund foster care support programs, and the funding at DEEL would support the preschool program at Daybreak Star Preschool in 2021. It does not, but doesn't continue on to 2022. And I will now turn it over to Council Member Juarez for more information.

Thank you.

Thank you, Amy.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

And thank you, Council Member Lewis for your support and Peterson and all of you who supported item number seven.

I have some prepared notes, but I'm going to kind of go off script a little bit because I want to give a little bit more context to United Indians.

As you all know, you've heard us say United Indians of all tribes is a social service provider, community center and cultural home for urban Indians since 1970. But they operate many social service programs.

And on today's agenda and budget requests, we will be discussing their requests for pre-K money and their Indian Child Welfare Program.

Starting with the pre-program, United Indians has requested $100,000 from our budget process to support their efforts to continue providing services during the pandemic.

In regards to the pre-K program, big thank you to Council Member Gonzalez for assisting us and directing us to DEEL for those funds.

$67,000 would go towards supporting the Daybreak Star preschool program through DEEL.

During the pandemic, families are experiencing greater unemployment, battling food insecurity, and struggling with remote learning for families with students.

Current state subsidies don't adequately fund program needs, and that is why I'm here today in support of United Indians.

Daybreak Star Preschool is the only Indigenous-run, Indigenous-serving early learning program in the city of Seattle.

The preschool program provides culturally appropriate activities and nutritious meals.

Families depend on United Indians to help their children develop cultural identity as they become kindergarten ready.

Unsurprisingly, these same families cannot afford the cost of private child care.

United Indians are adding a third classroom just to respond to the need for a culturally responsive remote learning space for children with opportunities for outdoor play while families are at work.

They have designated this additional classroom for child care focus for ages 5 to 7. The second piece of this is a little bit more complex, and if you can just indulge me, regarding the Indian Child Welfare Program.

The remaining requests for 33,000 would go towards their Indian Child Welfare Program through HSD.

Our Indian Child Welfare Program, their Indian Child Welfare Program, they will be providing additional incentives to encourage families to become licensed and to support the children placed with them.

Now, I just want to give a little bit of background here because we don't actually spend a lot of time talking about I think people culturally know what United Indians and Daybreak Star does.

Dr. Mike Toohey, who is the CEO, who I've known for years, and of course I've been involved with United Indians since the day we took it over when it was Fort Lawton.

I've been their lawyer.

I've been on their board.

I've been involved.

So I want to give a little context here about the Indian Child Welfare Program because it's really important, particularly a lot of the fact that they're only asking for $100,000.

As I shared before, the Indian Child Welfare Act was passed in 1978, and it was enacted in response to a crisis affecting Native children, Alaska Natives, families, and tribes.

Studies revealed that large numbers of Native children, Indigenous children, were being separated from their parents, extended families, and communities by state child welfare and private adoption agencies.

In fact, research showed that 25 to 30 percent of all children that were being removed, that 85 percent of these children that were taken outside of their families and communities, that there were willing and fit relatives available.

So United Indians, with this money, does the outreach, the contracting, contacting the tribes, does the training, So children are placed with willing relatives and extended family.

So the reason why this is important, because it's a federal law and a state law and you have organizations like United Indians and Seattle Indian Health Board that often implement federal and state law through state and city money.

So when you go back and you look at this act, congressional testimony documented the devastating impact that was having upon indigenous children, families, and tribes.

And that continues today.

The intent of Congress under ICWA was to protect the best interest of Indian children and to promote the stability and the security of Indian tribes and families.

And this is why I say that, because United Indians, again, is promoting and implementing the values and the intent of this federal law through state law on the ground to address removal practices, to ensure the protection of ICWA to assist families, to train families, to do outreach, to identify potential homes and licensing and training, which is no easy feat.

Trust me, it's very difficult to work with the state to get money in the door, to get families lined up, to contact tribes, to place these children in Native American homes, and also to work with the tribes to find willing extended family members.

So when you put all this into context, 33,000 really isn't a lot of money, but it is a good use of funds to ensure that Native children are placed with Native families, that we do the outreach, and that we recognize and honor the Indigenous people, the first Indigenous people of this land.

So thank you.

Thank you very much, Council Member Juarez.

Are there additional comments or questions?

Council Member Juarez, I'm not seeing any comments or questions, but I am seeing a lot of hands raised to be added to your list here.

So in addition to Council Member Juarez is the prime sponsor and Council Member Lewis and Council President Gonzalez signed on, we see that there are even more hands raising now.

So let's make sure to capture them all and we'll get that recorded for the record before we move forward.

So let's see here.

Okay, I'm gonna wait one more second, because you guys are amazing, and everybody is working hard to get signed on here.

Okay, I think we've got everyone.

We have Council Member Lewis and Council President Gonzalez, also Council Member Strauss, Peterson, Sawant, Morales, and Burble.

Thank you very much all, and we will move on to the next item.

Thank you, Council President, I mean, Council Member Borges.

Agenda item nine is HSD 681 and is sponsored by Council Member Herbold as primary sponsor, as well as Council Members Strauss and Lewis and Morales, I believe.

This item is a statement of legislative intent that would request that HSD provide a report on the demand and cost for citywide diversion programs.

This report would be due to the Public Safety and Human Services Committee by August 2nd of 2021, and I will now turn it over to Council Member Herbold.

Thank you.

So just as a bit of background, you may recall that the Council passed Resolution 31916 a year ago, not quite, but almost, in November 2019. This resolution acknowledges the city's inherent responsibility to reduce unnecessary justice system involvement.

acknowledges that pre-arrest diversion programs, such as LEAD, represent a harm reduction evidence-based approach to reduce recidivism and provide for the public safety.

Again, pre-arrest diversion programs in the public safety investment planning model that Asha and Carlos provided last week is a intercept zero type of a program, meaning the investment in the intervention occurs before the interaction with law enforcement.

The council also declared our intent and our commitment to ensuring that these programs receive public funding sufficient to accept all priority qualifying referrals citywide.

Again, one of the elements that is unique about the city's pre-arrest diversion program is its ability to take calls directly from community members and receive referrals from folks who are representatives of our business community, representatives of advocates for open space, representatives of people who are concerned about the contamination of our waterways.

It allows LEED to interact with folks who in some cases might be homeless, in other cases are likely to be criminal justice involved, but to take those referrals directly from community members, thus not relying on the 911 crisis response system.

The city intends that the LEAD program operate at scale by 2023. Again, this is something expressed in our resolution passed last year.

At scale by 2023 means that the program will have the appropriate funding to accept all priority qualifying arrest and social contact referrals citywide.

The slide ensures that budget decisions are guided by well-supported projections as council works to take LEAD to scale over the next several years with a report on projects of referrals and funding and implications for the 2020 budget due in early August.

LEAD has built and activated community referral channels where community members can directly request response to chronic law violations that could but do not need to be responded to through a law enforcement lens.

Many, many people in Seattle support alternative responses to public order crimes that are related to behavioral health and extreme poverty.

There is no increase in the lead budget proposed for 2020. I'm not proposing an increase, but I do think that we need to be intentionally engaged as we are reimagining our public safety response system for the city, that we are intentfully engaged in planning efforts to increase funding for this part of what is now the LEAD program is now part of our public safety system.

Thank you.

Are there any additional questions?

Okay, Council Member Herbold, I don't see any additional questions.

I do see a handful of folks who have signed on to provide additional support.

Council Member Herbold is joined by Council Members Morales, Strauss, and Lewis, also joined by Council Members Peterson and Council President Gonzalez.

Thank you very much, colleagues.

Let's move on to the next one.

Next budget item is item 10 on the agenda.

It is HSD 7A1.

Council Member Juarez is the primary sponsor with Council Members Peterson and Strauss also sponsoring.

This item would add $80,000 in one-time funding to the 2021 HSD budget to fund commercial sexual exploitation services at an organization such as Aurora Commons.

This funding would replace one-time funding that was included in the 2020 budget.

I will now turn it over to Council Member Juarez.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Sorry, I was trying to race back to my desk before my teapot went off.

So, Aurora Commons, yes, we've been talking a lot about Aurora Commons.

As you know, I'm a big cheerleader for Aurora Commons.

Just some basic information very quickly, and then not much more to add.

As you know, Aurora Commons was founded in 2011 and it provides specialized services every day to help women in the sex trade industry who are commercially or sexually exploited or victims of human trafficking.

Over 500 women a year access their drop-in services more than any other of their partner organizations combined.

Most of the clients, which includes both men and women, are experiencing homelessness and many are facing addiction and mental illness as well.

clients are frequently fleeing domestic violence and or recovering from sexual assault.

Other key partners as I've shared before are Harborview Hospital's Madison's Clinic and Neighbor Care and Seattle King County.

Seattle has invested $80,000 in Aurora Commons every year since 2017 and this request is for continued funding.

We have so many success stories when we go to their dinner every year and so many women who have used these services, have got into treatment, have got clean, have gotten jobs to the point that Rural Commons has even hired some of their former clients.

Needless to say, these are critical services, particularly given the increasing number of people who are homeless, the severity of the conditions and the impact of the pandemic on this population, which we are seeing more and more along the rural corridor.

So I'm hoping that we will continue to support the Rural Commons since they have become the success story that they are.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Are there any additional questions?

Council Member Juarez, just a quick question for me.

I know that the Aurora Commons was discussed yesterday as well.

That was more related to the capital efforts.

Can you remind us?

Yeah, the capital efforts, I think we were asking for the 1.6 to help purchase the $3.5 million building for the capital side.

And this has been an ongoing, they've only always asked for 80,000 since 2017. They've never asked for more, they've used it.

So they're two separate ones.

So you see the 1.6 on the capital side, and then the continued 80,000 on the programming side.

No increase to continue the services that they've been doing.

Got it.

Thank you very much.

And thank you.

And I assume that they're on a calendar, your budget overall.

So this is a potentially facing this program going away in January.

Absolutely.

And that's what my big concern is, again, you know, we have this momentum.

And if we are being what I know, I mean, I'm just gonna say this, because I think it needs for me to say this.

I know what kind of deficit we're facing, and I think all of the requests that were put in and that we looked at, which was you shared yesterday, Madam Chair, over 150, all of those requests are honorable.

I mean, I would love to sponsor everything.

So what we have and what I'm trying to do, what our office is trying to do, and what I try to do is be strategic about what are we focusing on.

And what I have been and what we have been focusing on is the homelessness issue, public safety, and social services.

What is the best use of those funds that go directly towards that?

And that's where I have been placing not only what I am promoting, but what I'm sponsoring and what I'm supporting.

It doesn't mean, obviously, just like you shared yesterday, Madam Chair, that I don't agree or I'm against any other, some of the other items.

I'm just trying to focus on I know what works and Aurora Commons works.

So thank you.

Thank you.

Okay, Council Member Juarez is already joined by Council Member Peterson and Strauss, and joining them is Council Member Herbold, Morales, Sawant, Lewis, and Council President Gonzalez.

Thank you all very much.

Let's move on to the next item.

Chair Mosqueda.

Oh, I'm sorry, Council Member Sawant, please go ahead.

Oh, I just, I forgot to- On the previous item?

Yeah, the CAR, Report on Citywide Diversion Program.

I just wanted to add my name to it.

Can you say that again, Council Member Sawant?

I'm sorry.

It was the agenda item related to the report on the Citywide Diversion Program, Report on Demand,

Okay, number 11. Number 11, yes.

Sponsored by Councilmember Herbold.

Okay, just for the clerk's record, we are looking at item number 11. Thank you very much, Patty, for pulling that up.

That was the slide, and we will make sure that you are included.

Thank you, Councilmember.

So, and then just for the viewing public, we're going to item number 12, which is what we just discussed on Aurora Commons by Councilmember Juarez.

And now we are on number 13 from Councilmember Herbold.

Councilmember Herbold, I'm sorry.

Amy Gore and then Councilmember Herbold.

The next item on the agenda is HSD 8A1 and is sponsored by Councilmember Herbold as the primary sponsor and Councilmember Sawant and Council President Gonzalez.

This item would do three things.

First, it would cut $10 million from Finance General for the Equitable Communities Initiative.

Second, it would add $10 million to HSD for community-led public safety investments.

And third, it would impose a proviso on that $10 million.

As you recall, as part of the summer budget revision, council appropriated $4 million for scaling up gun violence intervention and prevention efforts and $10 million for scaling up community-led safety programs.

In a letter from Deputy Mayor Fong, the exec stated that the $4 million would be spent in 2020 but that the 10 million would not be distributed through an RFP process.

I'm sorry, that it would be distributed through an RFP process, but that distribution would not occur in 2020, and therefore that appropriation would lapse.

The letter also stated that the 13.1 million Interfund Loan authorized by council to cover both ads would not be executed.

This budget action would cut the 10 million from the 2021 budget for the Equitable Communities Initiative and add those funds to HSD to fund scaling up community-led safety programs as intended in the 2020 budget.

We're still working on the action required to fund the remaining 3.1 million of the 4 million appropriation in the 2020 budget.

I would also like to make one quick note about the proviso language in the council budget action.

My intention was to apply the same proviso that was included in ordinance 126148 to the proposed 2021 funding, but I inadvertently used an earlier version of the language in the CBA I'll be able to update the proviso language to reflect council's intention as adopted in the ordinance in the next version of this budget action.

And with that, I'll turn it over to Council Member Herbold.

Excellent, thank you.

Council Member Herbold.

Thank you so much.

Appreciate the reminder that this is funding that the council has voted twice to provide.

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

Many thanks to my co-sponsors, Council Member Swant and Council President Gonzalez.

This, commitment to distribute these funds through HSD, I think has been received in our letter from Senior Deputy Mayor Fong.

But again, there isn't a clear path for how this would be funded because the council's action during the rebalancing process over the summer was to authorize an interfund loan that the executive has stated that they do not intend to take, thus creating an unbalanced budget for 2021. So the $10 million is a high priority and a key request of the Decriminalize Seattle and King County Equity Now coalitions during our process over the summer.

I have been speaking to the executive both the mayor's office and the Human Services Director about the plans for allocating these funds.

I met with Director Johnson just yesterday and understand that Director Johnson has shared a proposal to the mayor's office to discuss the next steps forward in developing the RFP.

I'm continuing to monitor the progress, and I believe that HSD is acting in good faith as it relates to specifically developing the RFP, just as a matter of detail that might be useful for folks.

The commitment that we received in the letter from Senior Deputy Mayor Fong back on September 30th, indicated that HSD would be working with community in developing the RFP itself.

So rather than HSD issuing the RFP without having a deep engagement with the community around the public safety investments that they propose, this is going to be a collaborative process with community and with service providers.

I have actually requested that Director Johnson consider the intercept model as a way of doing a gaps analysis for where we need additional investments and really taking a look at where we want to put our greatest investments along the intercept model.

And Director Johnson has expressed an interest in considering using that model sort of as the framework.

So with that, I appreciate receiving any additional questions and hope to get your support for this high priority community and council investment.

Thank you, Council Member Herbold.

Are there any additional questions?

Council Member Swat, please go ahead.

So, yeah, I've already co-sponsored this amendment, so I definitely support it.

Just wanted to note for members of the viewing public, one ongoing major problem with the public accountability of the city budget is that the council, the city council, which votes in public can only do what is called allocating funds and does not actually, it's not the body that spends those allocated funds.

Allocating means the funds are placed in a bank account available for a particular purpose, but then it's the mayor's office and the departments that serve at our behest who, And their work, those decisions are not made in public, but it's the mayor who has the power to actually spend those funds.

Earlier this morning, we talked about the $30 million intended to address displacement, of which Mayor Durkan has invested literally no dollars.

This year, the mayor announced $100 million to be allocated again allocated for investments in communities of color.

But again, there's no guarantee that those in those investments will happen or rather that the community will see those funds.

This budget amendment moves $10 million of those funds out of one bank account that the mayor controls into another bank account that the mayor controls.

I mean, effectively, that's what's happening.

It does include a proviso that limits how the funds can be invested, but legally, there's nothing that requires the funds be invested.

Ultimately, it's a question of holding the mayor's office politically accountable.

So I just wanted to point that out.

And just in closing, as I said, I have co-sponsored this budget amendment.

I think it's important.

And I would also like members of the public to keep in mind that ultimately the only thing that will successfully hold the mayor accountable to invest these funds will be the vigilance of a grassroots movement.

Thank you very much.

Councilmember Herbold, I appreciate your creative thinking on this.

I know that there's many people in the community who are eagerly awaiting these funds, and as we scale up community investment to make sure that there is appropriate response capacity in the community, this is a critical step in that process.

Is it fair to say that you've identified a fund source because of that lack of of action.

Maybe that's the wrong way to put it.

Lack of certainty that the fund source that we originally identified was going to be acted upon and that you're open as well to other fund sources.

Yeah, absolutely.

During issue identification, the central staff identified potential fund sources.

They also suggested that if we thought that the mayor's office would have a change of heart in 2021, we could authorize a 2021 in our fund loan.

But given that I don't have an indication that there's been a change of heart in the mayor's office to do what we asked them to do for 2020, to do so in 2021, I did propose the use of this particular fund source.

Again, another, this is, you know, again, one of the options that has been provided by central staff, but it's also something that we're hearing from community around this particular fund source as well, is that the commitments that the council has made prior are a higher priority.

Thank you for that.

Any additional comments or questions?

Wonderful.

Thank you for that clarification.

Council Member Herbold, I see this as you wanting to make sure and the co-sponsors wanting to make sure that this $10 million commitment is followed through on.

So, I appreciate that clarification.

Okay.

Colleagues, I see Council Member Herbold, who was joined by Council Member Sawant and Council President Gonzalez, also joined by Council Member Morales and Lewis.

Wonderful.

Thank you so much.

Let's move to the next item.

Thank you.

The next item on the agenda is HSD 9A1.

Council Member Herbold is the primary sponsor, with Council Members Morales and Lewis and Council President Gonzalez as additional sponsors.

This budget item would cut $1.4 million from finance general and add $1.4 million to HSD for health services for people who use drugs and impose a proviso.

These funds were originally appropriated to set up the community health engagement location, but have not yet been spent.

This action would transfer the funds to HSD with the expectation that they would be included in the city's contract with Public Health Seattle King County to be dispersed to community organizations.

I'll now turn it over to Council Member Herbold.

Thank you.

Despite rumors to the contrary, this is not a new effort.

This is our ongoing effort, many years long now, dating back to 2018, to support and appropriate funding for community health engagement locations.

These are locations where under supervision, narcotics can be used with access to key health and social services in order to reduce and promote health, including but not limited to overdose prevention.

In the 2018 budget, that's when the council first appropriated $1.3 million for this purpose and added an additional $100,000 in 2019, both of which carried forward to 2020. Just this summer, as part of the 2020 rebalancing package, the council unanimously restored the $100,000 from 2019 that we added, which was inadvertently admitted from the carry forward ordinance.

Uh, the public defender association and ACLU, um, attended my September 27th, 22nd public safety and human services committee, uh, to, uh, along with King County public health, uh, to brief the council on a proposed.

new approach to the CHEL model.

And this new approach is simply not relying on establishing and building, constructing a new bricks and mortar location to provide these services.

provided that this new approach is, I have informed, I should say, this Director Johnson of this new approach and asked for feedback.

I understand that that information has been shared with the Mayor's Office and we may some of you may have seen recently that the Seattle Times reported that the mayor's office said that the mayor was interested in learning more about how this proposal could work.

And just for now, this action just simply moves the money from Finance General to the Human Services Department so that we can begin having these conversations.

Thank you.

Are there questions?

Council Member Swatt, please go ahead.

Thank you.

This is, I've indicated my support for this already.

This is another example of funding that Mayor Durkan has year after year failed to the city council's budget decision.

The original allocation of that $1.4 million was a budget amendment fought for and won by the people's budget movement.

I would urge the mayor to stop delaying the investment of these funds and I hope all councilmembers support this.

Here we are working on it for the last year of my first term here.

So let's see if we can get additional comments.

Council Member Strauss, please go ahead.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda, and thank you, Council Member Herbold, for bringing this forward.

I'm just simply checking my understanding.

Is this a program that is already existing, and this is adding dollars to that program, or is this standing it up?

No, this is funding that the council allocated and basically parked in Finance General in 2018 in order to develop and build CHEL locations.

And so the plan endorsed by King County Public Health at the time was to build standalone facilities.

The money has been parked in finance general.

The plan now is not to build standalone facilities, but to fund existing organizations that provide drug treatment services to provide this particular suite of services.

And so this is not an existing program.

It is funding for a program that, again, we earmarked back in 2018 that has not been allocated yet.

Thank you, Council Member Gold.

And what I heard as well was the question of, actually not Shells, but we're funding existing programs, right?

We're not standing up new programs with these funds.

Is that correct, Council Member Hermel?

We are not standing up, I mean, I guess it depends on how you define programs.

We would be funding new services.

Existing organizations.

Correct, correct.

Okay, any additional questions?

All right, here we go.

I see Council Member Herbold, which had Council Member Morales-Lewis, and Council President Gonzalez.

Also joined by Council Member Morales, Council Member Strauss, and Council Member Sawant.

That's everyone, thank you so much.

Let's go to the next item.

And number 13 is CBA HSD 50 A1.

This adds $200,000 in general fund to HSD to increase harm reduction programs and imposes a proviso.

This is put forward by Council Member Juarez with, I'm sorry, by Council Member Herbold with Council Members Juarez and Lewis co-sponsoring.

Essentially, this would increase the type of the services that existing agencies could provide that reduce harm Some examples have been given to expand the hours when some services are currently offered, perhaps increasing staff to offer new types of programs or at additional locations.

And by new programs, some of the examples that have been discussed are peer and community outreach, good neighbor agreements that would incorporate things like syringe pickup in the area, also providing participant incentives or exploring the possibility of Medicaid reimbursement for certain types of services.

With that, I'll turn it over to Council Member Herbold.

Thank you.

Council Member Herbold.

Thank you.

Similar to the previous item discussed, this does not so much create any new programs, but it does expand the access to services of existing programs.

Really appreciate the advocacy and leadership of Just Access to Help in developing this budget.

to combat the steady rising overdose deaths in King County since 2011. The committee meeting I mentioned earlier heard data on the rise in overdose deaths just last month, again, from public health.

For the benefit of the viewing public, just want folks to understand that Just Access to Health is an organization that recommends immediate solutions For drug user health, that also increases the safety and health of all of our communities.

They recognize that the war on drugs has had a disproportionate impact on BIPOC communities without contributing to public safety or health.

And they advocate for using resources on proven responses that lack funding.

So this budget action would increase funding to organizations that use a harm reduction public health approach to serve drug users with the goal of expanding the availability of services for drug users.

This includes organizations such as REACH, Hepatitis Education Project, and Aurora Commons.

This is designed to be flexible and allow the organizations to propose the type of expansion they believe would be most impactful as mentioned earlier, that could include expanding staff or service hours so that organizations could engage with people at additional, more people at additional times.

It could include adding a location.

It could include adding a service at a facility that they don't currently have, such as medical consultation.

And as mentioned, one organization is considering launching a good neighbor peer program, which would put peers to work doing good neighbor outreach in their community, including encampments and picking up dirty syringes.

this funding could help them launch that program or similar efforts that would increase public health and safety.

And I just as it relates to that last point, the city auditor's report from last year around the provision of better hygiene throughout the city and the collection of garbage and provision of health programs in response to the proliferation of outdoor encampments and RVs, has identified other cities that actually, as part of their contracts with HSD providers, actually include this commitment to this type of good neighbor agreement that the providers will then work with folks in the areas surrounding the physical location of the organization to do things like syringe pickup, garbage pickup, and just building relations with folks who live and work nearby.

This is something that I had lifted up through a slide in last year's budget process.

It did not actually move forward because the chair was thinning the number of slides in the final budget.

But I'm really excited that a service provider is considering launching a Good Neighbor program like this and using these funds to do so.

I just think it would be really a good way to promote these best practices.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Are there any additional questions for Councilmember Herbold?

I'm not seeing any.

I do want to ask, Councilmember Herbold, is there a nexus here as well with the item that we just considered, similar type programs?

Yeah, I think I did ask that question of our community stakeholders, the suite of services as recommended.

Through king county public health that led to the recommendations are very are distinct.

And so that funding that that the council appropriated in 2018 is distinct for that suite of services.

This proposed 200,000, I think, is intended to be a little bit more flexible.

and not tied to implementing those King County public health recommendations, but more tied to working with the providers and their clients to figure out what other things can we do to better serve clients and also address needs identified in the community.

Excellent, thank you.

Okay, I'm not seeing any additional hands at this time, so we will summarize.

We have Councilmember Herbold as a prime, joined by Councilmember Juarez and Lewis already.

Also joined by Councilmember Sawant, Council President Gonzalez, and Councilmember Strauss.

Thank you all very much.

And just confirming my list over here.

Yep, that looks like it.

Thank you very much, Councilmember Herbold.

Let's go on to the next section.

Good morning, Councilmembers.

For the record, I'm Carlos Flugo with your Council Central staff.

And the next item on the agenda is CBA SFD 1A1, sponsored by Budget Chair Mosqueda, with additional sponsorship by Councilmembers Lewis and Strauss.

It would add $337,702 general fund, add two positions to Seattle Fire Department for Health 1 expansion, and it would impose a proviso on the Human Services Department to support the Health 1 program.

What I will say is that I had a deeper conversation with the sponsor and I'll work to update the CBA to better reflect her intent.

However, as a general overview, what I can say is that the update would reduce the number of HSD staff members assigned to the HealthONE team in the CBA from three to five, and it would also eliminate the proviso on HSD as SFD and HSD have a staffing arrangement through a memorandum of agreement.

I'm working with CBO and HSD to determine whether there's existing HSD staff that could be refocused on HealthONE work or whether it would require pre-position as to HSD, and the next version of the CBA would reflect that information.

Finally, this updated CBA would also exempt the Seattle Fire Department vehicles from any planned fleet reduction.

And with that, I will turn it over to you, Budgeter Mosqueda.

Thank you very much, Carlos, and thank you for your ongoing work to update the form as well.

Appreciate the clarification this morning.

I want to thank our co-sponsors, Councilmembers Strauss and Lewis, and I know that Councilmember Juarez has also signaled her interest in signing on to this.

Thank you, colleagues.

Folks who have had the chance to either do a HealthONE ride-along or read up about this award-winning program know that the HealthONE program is part of the Seattle Fire Department's Mobile Integrated Health Response Unit and that this started just in 2019 but has already shown significant reduction in the number of calls from the police and firefighters and freeing up our first responders to respond to emergencies that they've been trained for.

This program helps divert 911 calls that are for low acuity medical related calls.

And what is our sincere interest, along with the members of the fire department, is making sure that this is not just in pockets of the city, but really can be spread throughout our city to provide effective and targeted trauma informed care to those that they're serving.

Forty two percent of medical calls received by Seattle Fire Department fell into that category, meaning that a full rollout of the fire engine was both important and helping to free up individuals who are already facing severe personnel shortage given the compounding crises both in our city but across the country as well.

We want to thank our fire department members who have been deployed to other states like Oregon and California who've been picking up and helping other departments with fighting fires there.

We also want to thank our fire department members who have been providing additional support at the COVID testing centers, people who are pulling multiple shifts in a row to make sure that there's sufficient personnel out there.

We have a sincere interest in making sure that there's enough firefighters to do the jobs that they've already signed up for and to make sure that we're scaling up this incredible system that we've already invested in through HealthONE.

HealthONE is staffed with a team of two specially trained fire department personnel and one civilian social worker.

And we had the chance to ride along with the existing HealthONE team and are very appreciative of the fact that the proposed budget from the mayor included scaling up to two teams.

However, we know that with additional needs throughout our city, it is incredibly important for us to do everything that we can to make sure that there's additional personnel to respond to issues like non emergency medical issues.

Those who need access to services individuals who are suffering from substance.

addictions and this is also true for our housed and our unhoused neighbors.

HealthONE has limited availability currently and would like to expand the program to all five areas of the city.

Their program is scalable as we've heard directly from the chief and from folks who work within HealthONE and our goal here is to bring the expansion in 2020 one from two vans in up to three vans three units by mid-year next year.

So as you heard from Carlos this program this proviso would add two firefighters and one to the health one team by mid-year and assign two social workers with case management experience from HSD with experiencing serving people with diverse needs, including chronic conditions experienced by members of our community.

And that also includes services for individuals with disabilities in our elder community as well.

This would also include, as requested from our conversations with the team at HealthONE, an administrative support specialist to provide behind-the-scenes triage, coordination, and referrals as they expand the number of units that they have.

We want to make sure that they have the back-of-the-office support to make sure that those assignments are going out.

I'll just also note that even though HealthONE is only about 10 months into its first year running, it already has strong partnerships, most notably Chief Seattle Club, Asian Counseling and Referral Services, and is continuing to expand and express interest in working with additional BIPOC community-led organizations.

Current client makeup of those who have received care and ongoing services from the HealthONE teams is about 50% people of color.

They provide case management and referrals to mental health counselors, housing services, and they help to triage to make sure people aren't just experiencing a revolving door at Harborview.

I want to be clear that they are not seeking to duplicate the King County mental health model, nor is this intended to be a duplication of any of our community led, especially BIPOC led organizations who are experienced in harm reduction and intervention strategies.

This is complimentary, especially because it's already integrated into our 9-1-1 response system.

They have the ability to send out medically trained personnel to show up for low acuity issues, and do warm handoffs to other community organizations, and make sure that it is them, the HealthONE team, that's showing up first when those calls come in to 911. Again, this program is scalable, it's ready now, and is fully capable of being a strong partner with our BIPOC-led organizations, providing an additional way to ensure that there is a non-armed individual signing up, sorry, showing up when what we really need is a harm reduction model.

Currently, our firefighters are answering the low acuity issues, but this helps free up those firefighters to fight fires.

And really excited about this partnership here.

And from a public health intervention model, I think it is I would like to understand a

what their role would be, because as you mentioned, Chair Mosqueda, The HealthONE unit communicates when they have needs greater than those that they can assist with, they communicate with our community service providers to provide those enhanced services.

So I'm just not quite sure I understand why we need to have HSD to provide social work and case management services when what I think what we really want is we want to support the community-based organizations that provide these services?

That's correct.

So Council Member Herbold, There is not actually five HSD members.

Carlos mentioned at the beginning that this form is going to be amended.

So that was a typo on our end.

But do you want to clarify?

Absolutely.

This team does the handoff to community organizations that really have You know, trusted partnerships in diverse communities and working with organizations that do housing assistance and ongoing case management.

But the current model is a memorandum of understanding with HSD to allocate a caseworker to be part of the initial team that shows up.

So, for example, The current team right now is two firefighters and one caseworker who go around in the actual van and show up and serve people in triage on the spot in community.

So the proposal here would be to allocate two additional HSD caseworkers to be part of that initial team.

but not to do the ongoing case management through HSD.

It would just be part of that team.

And then the third person would be an administrative support person behind the scenes.

So the current model is a memorandum of understanding with HSD to provide the case manager that is part of the team.

But I understand where the confusion is, and I apologize for that.

Does that help clear up?

It helps a great deal.

I just think one of the things that I had heard earlier was sort of concern that we're increasing funding for the fire department element of this program without, and maybe this was handled in the earlier version of the program, but people just didn't understand, but that the fire department doesn't necessarily address all of the needs associated with their response and they are really heavily reliant on accessing services that community based providers provide.

So thank you for the clarification and I'm going to raise my hand.

Excellent.

Thank you very much.

Any additional questions or comments?

I want to thank all of you.

I know that many of you have done the right along with the HealthONE team.

If you are able, given the current crisis of COVID, not everyone is able to go out there.

So really appreciate what you are able to do to support this and to lift this issue up.

Right now, this program is offering about 36 hours of service a week.

And so being able to expand to two, then three vans is going to be able to provide much more services across the city.

We know that since this program has launched, there's already been 834 incidents, about 25% of those have been direct referrals from the 911 system.

And 35% have been requests from firefighters on scene.

So this is a really great way for us to show up with that kind of compassionate care lens with the case managers and as Council Member Herbold said, then to really do the follow through.

So there's that warm hands off to community partners and it makes it so that people aren't just having to rush from scene to scene given the high volume of calls.

appreciate all your support.

So in addition to Councilmember Juarez and Lewis, I see Councilmembers Herbold, Sawant, Peterson.

Sorry, am I on the wrong page?

In addition to Councilmember Strauss and Lewis, we have Councilmembers Juarez, Herbold, Sawant, Peterson, and Council President Gonzalez.

Thank you all very much.

Let's go on to the next item.

Thank you, Carlos.

Good morning, Madam Chair and members of the committee.

Greg Doss, central staff here to walk you through the next four items on the Seattle Fire Department.

The next CBA is SFD002A001 brought to you by Councilmember Herpel with additional sponsors and Councilmember Juarez, Councilmember Strauss and Councilmember Gonzalez.

This particular item, as you can see, adds $383,000 to the fire department to fund external defibrillators, Lucas devices, and ballistic sets.

I think most folks know that AEDs are used to provide an electrical shock in the case of life-threatening cardiac arrest.

Lucas devices provide CPR compressions when it is unsafe for EMS crews to do so, and ballistic sets protect firefighters and paramedics at the scenes of violence.

Local 27, SFD's largest firefighter union, has indicated that the department is underfunded for AEDs and that all of this equipment is of paramount importance in the field.

And so with that as a description, I'll turn it over to Council Member Herbold.

Thank you, Council Member Herbold.

Thank you so much.

Greg did a great job of covering this.

The Union Local 27 has indicated that the department is underfunded to maintain and replace its complement of AEDs.

This is a high priority for Local 27. And just want to take this opportunity to make a note In case you're missing a previous form B that you may have had interest in from the earlier round of budget discussions, my form A for bunking gear is not listed.

We sort of tracked down through some questions to the budget office, and we've been assured that there's no deficit of what is called bunking gear.

and it is on a 10-year replacement cycle with all firefighters currently having two sets that are not expired, so that knowing that really allows me and hopefully my colleagues on the council to put priority emphasis on behalf of the Seattle Fire Department's needs on this item 15, the automated external defibrillators, lucas devices, and ballistic sets, as well as the action that will follow.

Thank you.

Excellent.

Thank you, Council Member Herbold, and thanks for the clarification on that Form A as well.

Are there questions here on the item in front of us?

Okay, I'm not seeing any questions.

I do see a lot of hands raised in support.

So, Council Member Herbold, joined by Council President Gonzalez and Council Member Strauss includes now Council Member Lewis, Council Member Juarez, Council Member Peterson, Council Member Swann, and Council Member Morales.

Thank you so much all.

Moving on.

All right.

The next item is CBA SFD 003A001 which would add 1.6 million general fund to the fire department to restore a recruit class and testing cuts that are in the 2021 proposed budget.

This action is also brought by Councilmember Herbold.

As I said, it would restore 1.6 million that was cut in the 2021 proposed budget.

About 1.3 million of that was for pre-employment testings, recruitment and equipment costs, and personnel costs associated with a 20 firefighter recruit class reduction.

So normally a recruit class for the firefighters would be 60 recruits and this would adopt a $1.3 million reduction and reduce the size of the class to 40 recruits.

In addition, this cut would also reduce the about $219,000 in overtime that is used to administer firefighter written exams.

again, on a one-time basis as the other cut would.

Just to put this in a little bit of context, the fire department has been experiencing above average attrition this year, and there are about 412 firefighters that are eligible for retirement.

So if additional unplanned attrition occurs, restoration of the recruit class and also of the testing funding would ensure that there's sufficient staffing and would ensure that firefighters don't suffer from burnout or fatigue having to work overtime shifts to backfill minimum staffing requirements.

So with that, I'll turn it over to Council Member Herbold.

Thank you.

Thanks so much.

I appreciate it, Greg.

And I just want to let folks know if I've been talking too much, this is my last item, not just for the morning, but for the rest of the day.

Thank you for bearing with me.

It's been clear for several years that we need to do everything we can to bring on more firefighters to address vacancies and the calming wave of retirements.

As Greg mentioned, we have a higher level of attrition this year than was projected at the beginning of the year.

Last year, we worked to expand the recruit class in the budget deliberations.

Unfortunately, those gains will be undone if we do not keep our baseline recruitment.

The number of separations this year have been 44 separations.

What was expected was 38. And just recognize that firefighters as well as other frontline workers and first responders are under a lot of stress on the frontline.

And I just want to acknowledge that firefighters have stepped up and an incredibly successful COVID testing operation, the first in the nation, in addition to doing its regular work.

The issue of attrition and separations of the fire department I think are unique from the discussions that we're having about the police department.

With the police department, we are talking about working to restructure the police department to do less of what it historically has been doing and the new duties that they have taken on.

That we feel that other non sworn non armed responses is more appropriate.

This with fire department.

That's a very different situation.

We need the fire department to do everything that it is doing and it is not a situation that we can simply address.

a higher than expected attrition rate by finding other people to do what the fire department does.

That is not something that we can do.

And so for that reason, I just hope I can get your support from my fellow city council members and want to note that this is, I believe, the highest priority of the Seattle Fire Department among our budget ads.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Herbold.

Are there any additional questions or comments?

I'm not seeing questions or comments.

I do see quite a few hands.

So let's see here.

Council Member Herbold was joined by Council Member Strauss and Council President Gonzalez.

In addition, we have Council Members Lewis, Juarez, Peterson, and so on.

That looks like everyone.

Thank you so much.

Let's go to the next one.

All right, the next one is SFD 003.

Excuse me, Chair Mosqueda.

I'm sorry, Council Member Morales.

I'm sorry about that.

I see you now.

Thank you very much.

Okay, thank you.

Just wanted to check.

No problem.

So for the record, I'm on number...

What number were we on on Council Member Herbold?

We were on SFD 003.

Okay, and then on my chart over here, that's number, now number 18, but number 17 originally.

So we got you on there, Council Member Morales.

Thank you so much.

Okay, so the next one, SFD004-A-001 is a primary sponsor by Council Member Lewis and co-sponsored by Council Member Morales and Council Member Strauss.

and Council Member Sawant, it is adding 141,001 FTE to add a consulting nurse to the fire department.

To provide some background, when a call comes into Seattle's 911 center, a call taker screens the call to determine whether fire, medical, or public safety services are needed.

If fire or medical services are needed, the call is transferred to the fire alarm center.

And there it's answered by a firefighter who determines what services are needed and then dispatches the appropriate SFD responders.

A consulting nurse would assist the firefighters in answering the calls and in triaging the calls in providing medical advice and helping to determine what kind of dispatch is needed.

So with that as a basic description, I would turn it over to Council Member Lewis.

Thank you, Greg.

So I'll just be brief on this one.

This is a ask that comes from Chief Scoggins as something that they want to pursue.

They have a hunch that having a consulting nurse will lead to being able to resolve more things over the phone at dispatch rather than needing to dispatch a paramedic team or even the HealthONE team, as discussed earlier, and that this could have an impact on on conserving resources and also just on fatigue and firefighter well-being in terms of how many calls they need to respond to and how frequently they need to be responding to those calls.

In terms of the structure, it's likely that ultimately, if this becomes a bigger part of the practice of the firefighter dispatch, they would need more FTEs.

We can't have sort of one consulting nurse in sort of a 24-7 capacity, obviously.

So I think it's appropriate to sort of treat this a little bit like a pilot to put forward the one consulting nurse FTE, monitor what the impact of that consulting nurse service has been, and then talk in future budget cycles about expanding that service to be a more comprehensive 24-7 component of the firefighter 911 dispatch.

So I think this is a good start, especially given the limited resources of this year, and can have a really big impact for the community and for our firefighters who are constantly responding to things and may be able to carve out some of those responses that are very low acuity and can be resolved over the phone by talking to a professional.

Thank you, Councilmember Lewis.

Are there questions or comments?

Yeah, I do have a quick- Madam Chair, I do want to just clarify, this was not a formal request that was made by Chief Scoggins.

This is something that he had mentioned to me way back in February as something that would be a useful addition to 911 dispatch, but it was pursued by the own volition of my office.

I don't want to put him out there as like, That he like called me up and specifically requested it, but it is something that has been mentioned in the past by fire department leadership as something that could be useful.

So I decided to explore it in this cycle.

Absolutely and I think that this is also something that we've heard from frontline firefighters as well as members who experience showing up to calls that are medical in nature and really having a consulting nurse be able to triage those calls is something we've definitely heard from frontline firefighters as well.

I also think it's important to clarify because apparently there's been some confusion out there that this is not providing a consultant or a nurse to answer calls that are for non-medical related issues.

As Greg covered in the last presentation, and perhaps Greg, you can give a reminder to folks, the council is very aware that when somebody calls 911, if it's a medical related issue, it gets triaged over to the firefighter department side.

At that point, my understanding is where this form would come into play.

If there was a call that could be handled by a consulting nurse at that point, they would then handle the call.

There's no confusion here on council.

We're not trying to have all 911 calls answered by a nurse.

This is specific to medical related calls and helping to reduce the need for our firefighters ladders to be deployed out or even calls that could be handled by a nurse instead of Health One.

We're asking for that nurse to be situated on that side of 911, which is on the firefighter side.

Greg, would you add anything to that or any additional clarification?

Nope, I would say you have now as you have always had a perfect understanding.

Excellent, thank you Greg.

Appreciate the clarification and hope folks who have been covering this issue are paying attention to that important distinction.

Councilmember Lewis, we have a number of folks who have signed on to provide additional support for this.

So in addition to your lead sponsorship, we're now being, and we're already joined by Councilmember Morales and Strauss.

You also now have Council President Gonzalez, Councilmember Herbold, Councilmember Swann, and Councilmember Peterson signing on as co-sponsors.

Just pausing very briefly to make sure I got everyone on this.

Okay, sounds like we did.

Let's keep going.

All right, so the last one on the fire department is SFD005A001, sponsored by yourself, Madam Chair, and then co-sponsored by Council Member Herbold and Council Member Lewis.

This is adding 150,001 FTE to fund a crisis counselor for SPD.

The crisis counselor would provide trauma-informed services, referrals, and training that would focus on de-escalation scene safety and evasive defense to keep firefighters safe and increase positive interactions with persons in crisis or suffering with mental illness.

This new position would also provide firefighters with assistance in managing the stresses associated with the traumatic environments that they face every day.

And so with that, I would turn it back over to you to Madam Chair.

Thank you very much, Greg.

In my conversations with frontline firefighters, members of IAFF 27, Chief Scoggins, and others who've been interacting with the fire department, they speak of mounting and compounding crises.

The health crisis, the COVID crisis, we already talked about the number of individuals who've been experiencing potential health crises and 911 being called for people who are symptomatic with COVID.

our firefighters who are providing time during their non-firefighter shifts over at the testing center.

People who are also experiencing the crisis of having lost their jobs and the trauma and the mental health trauma that's created with the economic crisis that is being made worsened by the COVID presence.

And also the fact that we now have increasing numbers of folks who are living housing insecure, both those who are worried about evictions and those who are living homeless in our street.

This is something where a 911 is called and if it's a health related issue, our firefighters are showing up.

This is in addition to everything that they're doing to fight fires, both here and with our partner states.

There's a number of individuals within our firefighting team who have expressed that they themselves have seen increases in the number of people who are experiencing mental health crises.

And on a daily basis, they respond to those calls.

We want our firefighters to have the benefits of being safe, both on scene and also having the health protections that they need when they go home and they're processing everything that they've seen during the day.

We in the labor movement have been working for a very long time to make sure that firefighters have the health care that they need given the high numbers of individual firefighters who have been exposed to toxic chemicals when fighting fires.

We know that they have high numbers of cancer cases and die at earlier ages.

And I see this type of form supporting the health of firefighters as well.

Not only are they inhaling toxic chemicals, they see toxic scenes on a daily basis.

And we want them to be able to have the benefit of having a crisis counselor to provide trauma-informed training, to provide that across the department, and to also make sure that there's counselors available when they process scenes that are really challenging and difficult in the moment, and be able to process those so that they can be at their best for their families, their community member, and the people that they serve.

This is important not only for making sure that we're taking care of the individual and holistically caring for those who are caring for our most vulnerable in the community, but also it informs how firefighters interact with people on a daily basis.

We want them to be able to help process the stress that they see and to be able to provide trauma informed care to the individuals on a daily basis.

One example has come up recently, and I asked folks from the IAFF 27 if I could share this story.

And I think it's really telling of why we need trauma-informed care and crisis counselor to be available for our entire department.

Given the compounding crises, many people in our community are experiencing high levels of mental health crises, experiencing increased number of domestic violence situations, Those who are veterans or with PTSD are having compounding crises as well.

And so we're seeing this manifest in the street itself.

In talking to Chief Scoggins, he mentioned that many of the firefighters just a week ago were responding to a call where a young teenage girl had hung herself and having the firefighters have to see that and then be on at 100 percent to show up to the next call.

That's a very hard situation to process.

And we know that that that type of experience is not unique to what's going on during COVID, but we've seen increased numbers of sort of these trauma and crisis calls come into our firefighter department.

And it affects how they respond to individuals.

And so having that type of crisis counselor to inform the type of care they receive is critical.

Here's a really great example of where our firefighters have put that trauma-informed care into action.

And if I could read this, if you all bear with me for a quick second, I'd really appreciate it.

firefighters responded to a call.

Multiple people were yelling, she's underwater, she's underwater.

This is at the pier on our front on our waterfront in downtown Seattle, pointing in different directions to under the pier.

The firefighter rescue team swim and jumped off the pier and swam underwater to try to find this individual.

The firefighter noted that there was approximately only 30 feet of clear visibility underwater and didn't see a body underwater.

He then swam to the pier and saw a woman hiding behind a piling.

In his own words, He says, it appeared she was going underwater and was actively avoiding me.

I cautiously swam towards her.

She looked up scared and ready to go underwater again.

I introduced myself and asked if I could help.

She stared at me, her eyes and nose just above the water and did not reply.

I asked if I could hold her hand.

She responded by holding out her hand.

I reached for her hand and in accordance with my training, I started to pull her in to initiate the rescue.

She resisted, pulled her hand away saying, that's not holding my hand.

I released my grip.

and interlaced our fingers.

She again completely relaxed.

I asked if she needed a hug.

She said, a hug is exactly what I need.

I got my arms around her shoulder and I gave her a hug.

I started swimming again to initiate the rescue and she pushed away from me, grabbing the piling and said, that's not a hug.

I stopped.

I was just floating around her.

I then said, you're right.

I put my arms around her, and I actually gave her a proper hug.

She was stiff, and I thought she was gonna push away.

And then I lift, and bolt.

I lifted her arms around me, and I said, will you put your arms around my shoulder?

Give me a real hug.

She did, and she squeezed me hard.

She said, I'm just so sad.

I replied, I know, a lot of us are sad right now.

I then swam her to the ladder, and put her on the pier.

We got out of the water together.

This is an example of where it's not just responding to the fastest call.

It's not just about putting the training for life-saving mechanisms in place.

It's about trying to meet the client or the individual, the resident, where they're at, and using that trauma-informed care to really understand where they're at.

Later, the firefighter explained that the patient was definitely having a mental health crisis.

And we, I think, want to make sure that we're providing as much support as we can to firefighters to respond to situations like this so they can offer the best trauma-informed care and that they're also able to process the scenes that they're seeing and the situation like the one with the young woman who committed suicide so that they can be at their best and also help address the mental health needs of our firefighters, hopefully address the ongoing attrition that we've also seen, and make sure that they have the full support, mind and body, as they go to serve our most vulnerable across the city.

This proposal would add one FTE to the Seattle Fire Department to hire a crisis counselor that would provide trauma-informed counseling, referrals, and training, and will focus on de-escalation, scene safety, evasive defense to help keep firefighters safe, and also increase positive interactions with persons in crisis.

in crisis or suffering with mental illness.

This is a new position that would allow firefighters with help to manage stress and process traumatic environments and events on a daily basis.

Thank you very much and thanks to the chief, the HealthONE team and members of IAFF 27 for their examples of how this could be put into place right away and hopefully to be in place for all of calendar year 2021. Additional comments or questions on that?

Okay.

Thank you for bearing with me as I read that story, and thanks again for your time today.

Council members, oops, if we could go back one slide real quick just to summarize.

Council members Herbold and Sawant, Strauss, and Lewis, and Council President Gonzalez, thank you very much for your co-sponsorship.

Okay, does that conclude our firefighter department items?

Yes.

Okay, excellent.

With the council's indulgence, we have about 40 minutes.

I would like to see if we can get through the OS...

Sorry, colleagues, I was muted.

With the council's indulgence, I would like to see if we can get through OSE items.

If not all of them, then many of them.

We have about 40 minutes left.

Not hearing any objections.

Madam Clerk, could you please read just the Roman numeral for the first item that was slated to be in session two, just for the record, so we have that, and then we'll turn it over to Yolanda.

Yes, Chair.

Roman numeral five, Office of Sustainability and Environment.

Excellent, thank you.

All right, so we have Councilmember Lewis.

Councilmembers Morales and Strauss.

This proposed statement of legislative intent would request that OSC, the Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections, the city budget office and the Department of Finance and Departments are requested to assist with developing the specifics of the proposal, which will include, at a minimum, carbon emission thresholds, tax rates, potential exemptions, recommendations for the use of tax proceeds, and resources required to administer the tax.

The SLI anticipates that legislation will be developed and refined in the first quarter of 2021, with the goal of having legislation ready for a council consideration by the end of June, and anticipates that the legislation would be referred to the finance and housing committee.

Thank you very much, Yolanda.

Councilmember Lewis?

Thank you very much for queuing that up, Yolanda.

I mean, I would add to it, you know, in addition to the consultation of all those critical departments who will have you know, the mechanical expertise to make sure we get everything in place for something to work.

You know, I really think that putting front and center too, it would be my intent to really have this conversation be community driven on the substance of the policy.

And I'm not being prescriptive at all in terms of what any revenue from this would go to.

I think that would have to fall under a community-driven process as well in terms of the feedback loop of where money raised from a carbon tax would be.

reinvested back in community and into a lot of the Green New Deal projects that we've been discussing in this budget cycle and debating where to potentially get funding from.

This could be a great source of funding sort of in the same vein or thinking as how we have a gun and ammo tax to go towards research for victims of gun violence.

and how we have a soda tax to go towards food, security, healthy eating, and the other associated projects that the soda tax goes to pay for.

This could be in the same vein and principle of taxing CO2 emissions and greenhouse gas emissions to go into a lot of these community-driven Green New Deal proposals Um...

And I think it's really something we should be looking into.

The only groundwork that I've done is just sort of investigating if the general kind of legal framework of doing something like this, kind of the legal sandbox we'd be working in is sound.

I'm convinced that it is.

But in terms of filling in all of the details of rates, where the revenue goes and all those things, that's something where I want to Shepherd the process, but I want it to be, you know, as a council member, but really have it be driven by community and by stakeholders on what this could really mean as an additional tool.

Again, like the soda tax and like the gun and ammo tax that goes to a tight nexus.

of these kinds of investments.

So, you know, with that, it's been great to have the cooperation of those various departments to really start looking into this.

I've been doing a lot of meeting with potential stakeholders, and there is a lot of community interest in really diving into this to see if something like this could pencil out and raise significant enough revenue to underwrite a lot of these Green New Deal projects.

And, and we'll see where that process goes next year.

And I think it's time we finally explored this and, and, you know, finally, it could also be a spur for statewide conversations around taxing carbon as well.

And we know that oftentimes when Seattle plants a flag, that is the spur that's necessary to start seeing broader action in Olympia as well.

So hopefully this could serve as an example, not just there, but to other major cities in the state and the region and would like to see if this can make a difference.

Thank you, Council Member Lewis.

Are there any additional comments or questions?

Okay.

I see Councilmember Morales and Strauss were already co-signed and now you have Herbold and Councilmember Sawant as well.

Excellent.

Thank you very much.

Just before you move on, Yolanda, I wanted to note just for the record on the previous item Councilmember Morales was having I see you on the line, Councilmember Morales.

I know your internet went out, but just for the record, I wanted to pass on that you were also co-sponsoring the crisis counselor for firefighters, correct?

You might be on mute.

That's okay.

You have an email?

Can you hear me?

Yes, we can.

Thank you.

Excellent.

Okay.

Thank you very much.

Just wanted to make sure that folks knew that for the record and that we also have all council members with us still though.

Your Internet is out.

I understand you can.

Raise your hand still with our scene.

I'm sorry.

You can just go ahead and send us a message as you have been if you need to, but I believe that there is a star function that you can hit for folks who are on the phone who wanna raise their hand.

Star nine on the phone to raise your hand.

Thank you very much, son.

Okay, council member Sawant, sorry for the delay.

Let's go on to your item.

All right, so OSC 2A1 sponsored by Council Member Sawant and co-sponsored by Council Members Morales and Peterson would add $132,000 of general fund for the Green New Deal advisor position in OSC.

The position and funding was added by the council to the 2020 adopted budget to provide administrative support to the Green New Deal Oversight Board established by the council last year and help coordinate interdepartmental efforts to reduce the city's carbon emissions.

The position was not filled in 2020 due to the hiring freeze in March and would not be funded in the 2021 proposed budget.

There is, however, $40,000 general fund in the proposed budget that would be available to provide financial hardship stipends to the board members.

So only funding for the position itself is needed.

OSC has indicated that should the council adopt this proposal, it is prepared to initiate the recruitment and hiring process later this year or early next year.

Filling this position would allow appointments to move forward for the board, which is intended to provide the mayor and council recommendations on how to implement the actions identified in the Green New Deal for Seattle, which are intended to accelerate the transition away from fossil fuels to renewable energy while centering communities that have historically been most harmed by racial, economic, and environmental injustices.

The board is also expected to provide recommendations on how to allocate the portion of payroll expense tax revenues intended for Green New Deal investments in 2022, which is about 9% of those proceeds or an estimated $20 million.

That's from SWAT.

Go ahead.

Thank you.

And thank you, Yolanda, for the description.

And thank you to all the council members who have indicated co-sponsorship.

I really appreciate that.

This budget amendment, as Yolanda said, restores, and I would say yet again, the funding cut by Mayor Durkin for the Green New Deal Oversight Board.

As I mentioned during the issue identification phase, The good news, and as Yolanda also clarified, is that we have heard from the Office of Sustainability and the Environment that this time they have been authorized to actually hire someone for this position if city council votes to restore the funding.

To remind council members of the background, in the fall of 2019, climate activists and organizations, including indigenous activists, demanded that Seattle support the Green New Deal, and as a result, the city council passed Green New Deal resolution stating support for many GND projects and committing to ending greenhouse emissions by 2030. The council also passed an ordinance establishing a Green New Deal oversight board to be composed of climate justice organizations, impacted communities, labor representatives, and technical experts.

The Green New Deal oversight board was intended to hold the city establishment accountable for following through on the commitments of Green New Deal investments, including making recommendations to this year's city budget.

And it's unfortunate that Mayor Durkin cut the GND oversight board as part of the city's hiring freeze in 2020. Council voted to restore that funding in a 2020 revised budget passed this summer.

but the office of sustainability and the environment was not authorized by the mayor to spend that money until they see the council has again restored that funding for 2021, which is what this budget amendment would do.

This has been a key demand of indigenous and environmental activists and community organizers talked about it.

at the Sustainability and Renters' Rights Committee meeting that was chaired by my office last month just before the budget process began, and it's a demand of the Solidarity Budget and the People's Budget.

Thank you.

Any additional questions?

Okay, I am seeing no additional questions and a number of hands.

So in addition to Council Members Morales and Peterson, you are joined by Council Member Herbold, um, Morales, I'm sorry, Herbold, Lewis, and Council President Gonzalez.

Thank you, Council Member Sawant.

Let's go to the next one.

All right.

Next item, OSC 3A1, sponsored by Council President Gonzalez and co-sponsored by Council Members Strauss and Lewis.

This budget action would add $150,000 of general fund and a senior planning and development specialist position to OSC for the energy benchmarking and building tune-ups programs to support compliance and enforcement activities, which would be cut in the 2021 proposed budget, effectively suspending most of these activities for a year.

The 2021 budget does contain $45,000 of general fund to fund a technical assistance contract in lieu of providing in-house support, which is what this budget action would be funding.

The energy benchmarking program requires building owners of multifamily and commercial properties 20,000 square feet or larger to annually track and report building energy efficiency performance.

The building tune-ups program requires building owners of commercial facilities 50,000 square feet or larger that are subject to the energy benchmarking program to conduct tune-ups to identify and correct operational and maintenance deficiencies every five years.

On average, these measures can reduce building energy use by 10 to 15%.

This budget action would allocate about $100,000 general fund for the position and the and this position would provide technical assistance to building owners and would review building tune-up submissions.

The $45,000 already included in the budget would be used to support the balance of this position's costs.

The remaining $50,000 of general fund would be used to fund consultant services to promote compliance, such as proactive outreach to building owners, particularly those located in racial equity priority areas.

The OSC notes that they estimate that enforcement could generate up to about $140,000 in fines for both programs.

$110,000 of this would be then used to fund energy efficiency improvements and affordable housing.

We caveat that OSC has pushed out compliance deadlines, and so there is a little uncertainty with this estimate, but that was something I wanted to note for you all.

Thank you, Council President Gonzalez.

Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you, Yolanda, for the good work on this.

And of course, thank you so much to my co-sponsors, Council Member Strauss and Council Member Lewis.

During the department budget overview process, we had an opportunity to hear from Director Jessica Finkoven about some of the proposed cuts that they were making to that department.

This was one of the cuts that was identified to the OSC budget, which of course we know is is a very small office relative to other major departments and.

And back then I expressed significant concerns about this identified reduction to OSC's budget.

In large part, because we know from a report that was published in 2018 related to the city's strategies on climate action, that 30% of greenhouse emissions are actually caused by buildings 14% of that comes from residential buildings and 18% comes from commercial buildings.

So one of the city's key strategies to reduce emissions by 2030 and to effectively be carbon neutral by 2030 is to tackle this issue of building energy emissions.

So, again, 1 of the goals of the city as adopted in 2008, specifically states that 1 of the goals is to reduce building energy emissions by 38% from 2008 levels by 2020 by 2030. I worry that by pulling back, even for just a year.

In the face of climate change, and we know we've all been living the significant impacts of climate change, this summer was no exception with the air quality being consistently hazardous for approximately 10 days in the Seattle area.

I worry that taking a year off is just too long and too damaging to our climate action strategy goals as described in 2008 and as reiterated in 2018. I hope that colleagues will join me in this modest restoration of funds to ensure that the city can continue to tackle building energy emissions, which, again, make up 30% of emissions overall throughout the city.

They are the second largest emitter of greenhouse emissions throughout Our city, and I think it's really important for us to continue to advance this funding in order to continue to make measurable difference.

And since 2008, speaking of measurable difference, since we have implemented these programs around building energy emissions, we have actually seen a 13% decline in these emissions.

And so I want to make sure that we can continue to support the good progress being made in that particular sector.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you very much, Council President.

I'm not seeing additional questions.

Do you want to ask 1 question here on page 2 of the summary?

I'm sorry if you missed it, but can you repeat for me?

So this is this is actually revenue generating, correct?

We are to there.

Well, it's it's from fines for so what is explained is that they have spent years working on compliance with building owners and now.

with the building tune-ups programs, they are looking at potentially, you know, this will be the first year instituting the fines for not complying with the regulation.

So there's a concern that the expected fines of up to $140,000 would not be recouped by the city if this were not to be advanced.

Yeah, well, yeah, we would collect no fines in 2021 if this cut were if the hundred if the hundred and $50,000 is not restored for this purpose.

Thank you.

Council President anything else.

I would just say as a follow through on that and part of the part of the reason that that that concern exists is because.

Um, we wouldn't be engaging in compliance work anymore and enforcement work in this space.

And again, we have seen some measurable improvement in the area of building.

Energy emissions, and this is an opportunity for us to make sure we don't lose that muscle memory around voluntary compliance.

And in the instances where there are issues related to enforcement, I think it's important for us to.

that we don't lose another year of shifting towards enforcement in the way described by Yolanda and this CBA.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Excellent, thank you very much.

So Council President Gonzalez was joined by Strauss and Lewis.

Also joining us Council Members Peterson, Swann, and Herbold.

Thank you so much.

That concludes our comments on this one.

Let's go to the next one.

All right, next item is OSC 4A1, sponsored by council members Strauss and co-sponsored by council members Morales and Peterson.

This council budget action would add $140,000 of general fund for the climate policy advisor position, which would not be funded in the 2021 proposed budget.

This position is responsible for overseeing and monitoring implementation of Seattle's climate action plan, developing and implementing a climate impact assessment toolkit, creating policies to support green jobs as part of the economic recovery, evaluating racial equity impacts of building decarbonization and establishing building performance standards.

And on a related note, the council adopted resolution 31933 last month, which will add a required assessment of potential climate impacts and climate resilience to the city's summary and fiscal note that accompanies all legislation beginning on January 1st, 2021. This analysis was intended to be informed by the more thorough quantitative and qualitative greenhouse gas emissions evaluation that would be required by the climate impact assessment toolkit for major capital projects and purchasing decisions.

Initial work on the toolkit continued through early 2019, but I would note the timeline for implementation has slipped due to staff turnover.

With this funding, OSC would be expected to move forward with finalizing development of the toolkit and a pilot testing phase with select departments.

Thank you very much, Council Member Strauss.

Please go ahead.

Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Yolanda.

As Yolanda mentioned, the Climate Policy Advisor position within OSC was created to oversee the implementation of the Climate Action Plan.

develop policies to support green jobs, establish building performance standards, evaluate, as Yolanda said, the racial equity impacts of building decarbonization, and assist with that climate impact assessment tool that the council established in September with Councilmember Peterson's help.

Office of Sustainability and Environment had planned to hire this position this fall, but has not done so at this time.

The 2020 proposed budget, would unfund this position and delay hiring until 2022. And we just simply cannot wait until 2022 to implement our climate action plan, as we have limited time to make drastic interventions in how we are living, because the climate crisis is before us today.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Yolanda.

Council Member Strauss, I'm not seeing any additional questions on this.

I do see a handful of hands.

I guess I'll ask you a question just in the interim.

Is there a...

Is there synergy as well between this role and the Green New Deal advisor position?

I understand that Green New Deal advisor position is really dedicated to the board that we're creating, but is there synergy there, Yolanda?

I think, I mean, I would say the synergy might be closer.

So, OSC also has a vacant equity and environment initiative program manager, and that actually would be the person the Green New Deal advisor reports to so that I think there's a tighter relationship there.

I mean, I certainly think that there's a lot of overlap in terms of the climate work in OSC where, you know, they have a new climate justice director position.

So I think they are kind of orienting towards environmental justice and kind of that is a focus of all of their work.

But I certainly can see, you know, the complementary skill set for sure.

Thank you very much.

Anything else, Councilmember Strauss?

Okay, great.

So it looks like we have a lot of folks signed on to this.

Councilmember Strauss was joined by Councilmember Morales and Peterson and is now joined by Councilmembers Herbold, Sawant, Lewis, and Council President Gonzalez.

Great.

Thank you all very much.

The next item here in OSC, please.

Next item is OSC 5A1, sponsored by Council Member Strauss and co-sponsored by Council Members Lewis, Morales, and Peterson.

This budget action would add 1.8 million general fund to the FreshBooks program, which provides eligible households with vouchers to purchase fruits and vegetables at a variety of retailers, including farmers markets.

This program provides $40 a month of vouchers for 12 months for a total of $480 per recipient.

The 2021 proposed budget would allocate $5.3 million to the Fresh Bucks program, mostly funded by sweetened beverage tax proceeds.

I would note that the proposed $1.8 million addition would be enough to provide vouchers for all the people who are currently on the wait list, which is about 3,360 people, plus about an additional 230 people.

Thank you very much.

Council Member Strauss, please go ahead.

Thank you chair and thank you Yolanda as Yolanda stated, as we know, fresh bucks program is a vital program that provides qualifying residents who are below 80% of the area median income with food vouchers that extends their budget constraint and provides access to additional fruit, veg and vegetables.

at our neighborhood grocery stores, Safeways, and specifically our farmers markets.

We've seen this program be very successful at extending an individual's ability to buy fresh produce at farmers markets.

Now more than ever, it is important to ensure that our communities have access to affordable, healthy food.

Fresh Bucks currently, as Yolanda says, serves about 9,061 enrollees and has a wait list of about 3,600.

Beyond the wait list, OSC has been advised by community partners that there has been a significant increase in eligibility this year and need since that last enrollment.

period ended.

This funding would allow OSC to enroll the additional people on that waitlist.

So zeroing out the waitlist and sets them up to be able to also provide fresh box vouchers to folks who are now newly eligible.

This is one of my top priorities because access to fresh food and vegetables is so important, and this program already all of the hard.

hard costs, the overhead costs are already taken care of.

And this budget request was specifically set up to zero out the wait list.

And that is why the dollar amount is $1.8 million.

The intent is to zero out the wait list, provide a little bit of extra flexibility for new people who have become eligible this year to have access to fresh food and vegetables at our local farmers markets and our local grocery stores.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you very much, Council Members Strauss.

Are there any questions or comments here?

Okay, I just want to repeat something that I think Yolanda said.

So Yolanda, as also noted in the summary documents, this would allow for everybody who's on the wait list to be able to receive FreshBooks, correct?

That is correct.

Plus an additional 230 approximately.

And then so OSC would also then enroll a further 1000 to 2000 people on a wait list because, um, they're not every person uses all $480.

So they're able to kind of take that underspend to fund additional vouchers.

So that's why they actually carry such a large wait list is so that they can, they can, um, serve more people.

Thank you.

Are there additional questions or comments?

I am seeing none.

So Council Member Strauss, you were already joined by co-sponsors Morales, Peterson, and Lewis.

You also have Council Member Herbold and Sawant joining you.

Thank you very much.

Okay, Council Member Peterson, I see us going into the SDCI bucket.

I'm wondering if we should break here and start after our two o'clock break with all items SDCI and SPR related.

Would that be amenable to you?

But Chair Mosqueda, this first item is actually an OSC item.

I'm so sorry.

That's okay now our last our last osc item apologies all who needs a break.

Um Yes, let's do that.

Let's do this last item.

And then if that's okay with folks, um, And I see council member Strauss.

You're the first one up on sdci if that's amenable to you.

We'll take a break after this Um osc item.

Okay guys.

All right first thing.

Yes, we process that let's do this last item for the viewing public We are on our last item on osc

Yes.

It is SLY OSC 6A1 sponsored by Councilmember Peterson and co-sponsored by Councilmembers Herbold and Strauss.

This proposed statement of legislative intent would request that OSC consult with the Urban Forestry Commission and the Urban Forestry Interdepartmental Team to develop a plan to transfer all urban forestry functions into OSC.

Just for some context, there are nine departments that have a role in the city's management of trees.

And these efforts include maintaining trees in the public right-of-way, near power lines, and on city property, developing policies and regulations, conducting public outreach and education, engaging community members in tree stewardship activities, and permitting tree removal in the right-of-way and on public private property.

The plan should include a potential timeline for implementation, consider staff involved in all these various areas that I just named, identify code amendments needed to effectuate this change and provide an estimate of costs, including potential savings for implementing the proposed reorganization.

The response would be due to the Land Use and Neighborhoods Committee by September 15th.

Excellent.

Council Member Peterson.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

Thank you, Yolanda.

And I want to thank Councilmember Strauss for his leadership on the issue of trees and also for Councilmember Herbold for co-sponsoring this and the others who may be joining on.

Colleagues, as we know, Washington is the evergreen state, Seattle's emerald city, and trees provide numerous benefits, including carbon sequestration, absorption of rainwater to reduce harmful runoff in the Puget Sound and Lake Washington.

Shade for cooling during warmer months.

Proven health benefits.

The bigger the tree, the better.

As we take a long overdue serious look at racial injustice issues, we know some communities of color have fewer trees and are having them removed more often.

As far back as 2009, our city auditor determined that fractionalized management of trees and urban forestry issues was a problem in Seattle.

For the past 11 years, we've tried to make a multi-departmental approach to tree management work.

It still may work.

But during that time, I'm concerned we're seeing a decline in tree canopy, a loss of numerous large trees.

So this statement of legislative intent gives the executive plenty of time to produce a basic plan for potential of consolidation of the Seattle tree management under a single agency.

Right now, as Yolanda said, it's under nine.

It makes it very hard to track things.

So this would also have a preference for an agency focused on the environment, such as the Office of Sustainability and Environment.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Peterson.

Any additional comments?

Council Member Strauss, please.

Thank you, Chair.

And thank you, Councilmember Peterson, for putting this forward.

I'm happy to co-sponsor this request.

As you and I have discussed, we've received some concerns from OSCE and SDCI about this approach.

And I believe that those concerns can be addressed.

And I know that our staffs are already working and discussing how to accomplish this.

So I just want to take the moment to say that I look forward to working with you to ensure the parameters of the slide are appropriately determined.

And I really can't thank you enough for all you do to move us forward to protecting our urban forest.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Yeah, a good example with my neighbor I mentioned at some point in the last month.

The tree was down, affecting parking enforcement person who was on our street, but it was over the street right away, obviously a start and then the tree seems to be growing over Seattle City Light power line so who to call.

All right, thank you for the conversation on this, and I see some hands up.

So Councilmember Peterson was joined by Councilmembers Strauss and Herbold.

In addition, we have Councilmembers Lewis, Juarez, and Sawant joining on.

That looks like everyone.

Okay, now, I think colleagues, we are gonna go ahead and take a break.

We will resume again at 2 p.m., focused on SDCI.

And if there's nothing else for the good of the order, this meeting is in recess and we'll reconvene at 2 p.m.

Enjoy your lunch break.

Thanks, everyone.

you