Seattle City Council Finance & Housing Committee 7/19/23

for your presentation here today with us.

We are going to start the meeting of the Seattle City Council Finance and Housing Committee.

Today is Wednesday, July 19th, 2023. My name is Teresa Mosqueda.

I'm chair of the committee.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Council Member Herbold.

She is excused until 1030.

Council Member Peterson.

Present.

Council Member Nelson.

Present.

Council Member Lewis.

Present.

Madam Chair Mosqueda?

Present.

Madam Chair, that is for present and one excuse.

Thank you so very much.

Thanks to everybody for joining us here today.

We are going to have a conversation about the following agenda items.

A briefing on the policies and procedures for disposition of excess city-owned properties.

A briefing and discussion on the city budget office and central staff budget.

fiscal policy workgroup, a briefing and discussion on the fiscal note enhancement, and a briefing and discussion on the 2023 mid-year supplemental grant acceptance ordinance.

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

Hearing no objection, today's agenda is adopted.

I'm excited we have some special guests with us this morning, and we will get a chance to dive into the presentation and hear from our special guests here momentarily, but we want to make sure to open it up for public comment.

Madam Clerk, could you please tee up the video to roll public comment for us?

and we will go ahead and have everyone have two minutes of public comment and then we will have an opportunity to dive right into the agenda.

the traditional territory of the Coast Salish peoples.

The Seattle City Council welcomes remote public comment and is eager to hear from residents of our city.

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The public comment period is now open and we will begin with the first speaker on the list.

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Thank you Seattle.

Thank you very much.

Okay, well, we will go ahead and proceed with folks who are in the room.

Is there anybody signed up for public comment in the room?

Seeing none, let's go ahead and go online.

I do see somebody signed up for public comment.

Tiffany McCoy, you are up first and you will have two minutes.

Thanks, good morning, council members.

I'm calling in regards to items numbers one and two on the agenda today.

I wanted to talk specifically about the move from what I understand in the report to biannual budget.

And I'm asking that there be a consideration discussed before enshrining anything into new law for ballot initiatives.

As you all know, I-135 passed in the February special election by 57% of the voters.

And while we were trying to figure out during the implementation stages that there is actually a cap between budgets of $20,000 that can go towards citizens initiatives.

That hasn't been updated, that figure for decades, if I'm not incorrect, that was put into the charter in 1946. So if we're moving to biennial budgets and we're requiring just one or two council members to put forward amendments and find cuts to support citizens initiatives in the future, I ask for consideration to be made over increasing that cap in the SMC or having a carve out for ballot initiative.

Secondly, for the city's disposal of excess city land, I appreciate that this is happening and making sure that it aligns with what the voters mandated in initiative 135. I appreciate council member Morales reaching out to the campaign to ask for language around social housing.

So that can be part of the disposition policy.

and wasn't necessarily seeing anything specific in the presentation.

I understand that there isn't a law written on updating the disposition policy yet, but looking forward to seeing that when that does become public to make sure that it does align with what voters push.

Thank you.

Excellent.

Thank you so much.

Is there anybody else signed up for public comment here today?

Okay.

Wonderful.

Well, let's go ahead and move on to other items on our agenda.

Colleagues, it's my honor to be able to daylight a conversation that we are just beginning to have about how we are going to have an opportunity to look at our land disposition policies, and I will do my best to provide a quick summary of the land disposition policies.

It's a very wonky name for a very exciting policy that we were able to put into statute.

In 2018, we began the conversations and then included those into Seattle Municipal Code again in 2019. So I'm really excited that we're having a chance to have a conversation today, but I want to preface it by saying this is a very preliminary conversation.

There is some deep stakeholdering work that we want to do with members of our community, including members of our Native community.

and have government-to-government conversations with tribal organizations, tribes, tribal governments.

And we want to make sure that we're having conversations as well with our broader stakeholder and community organizations who were part of the original land disposition policy.

So very excited to, in a transparent way, be able to daylight some initial discussions that we're having today.

and to be able to give folks in the community a sense of how exciting it is that we were able to move forward on the land disposition policies a few years ago and get a chance to visit them again this year.

There is no time crunch that we're under to update these land disposition policies.

We confirmed that as well earlier this week that we still have an abundant time to have discussions with members of the executive team in the mayor's office, members of the community at large.

You heard from some folks calling in from Initiative 135 today.

Today, we'll also hear from our tribal representatives, council members who are here to have a government-to-government discussion about how we could potentially move forward with enhancing our land disposition policies in the future.

I'm excited to know that we have a long runway on this.

There's nothing that is requiring us to wrap up this conversation before budget even.

I was initially thinking that we had to wrap it up in the next four to six weeks.

Turns out we have a little bit more time, so that's always a good thing to make sure that we get policy right.

But this is a preliminary discussion about how we can work in partnership with governments in our region, our tribal governments, Native organizations, community organizations that are led by folks who are at highest risk of displacement.

I'm talking about our Black and Brown community members who really are trying to step into the world of building affordable housing through the community lens to serve communities at highest risk of displacement.

And here we are today for an opportunity to initiate a conversation that will take fold over the next few months and to ensure that we have a policy that is taking every opportunity we can for public land to be used for the public's good.

A quick background on this before I open it up to our community partners is to let you know that the land disposition policy that we had put into place really began in 2018 thanks to the leadership from Representative Frank chop who was Speaker of the House at the time.

He acted in 2018 and again in 2019 to change state legislation so that local jurisdictions like Seattle could have the opportunity to declare surplus property surplus and that we could, instead of selling it on the private market to the highest bidder, we could retain it in public hands or use it for the public's good in partnership with community organizations who are interested in serving the public.

In 2019, we updated our land disposition policy stating that when property is declared surplus for the city, we need to make sure that we're prioritizing affordable housing to be built on that land wherever possible and that we transferred land at low or no cost to affordable housing partners to create housing on site.

We also enhanced the policy to ensure that folks who were building affordable housing, who were led by and serving communities at highest risk of displacement, really were considered at the top of the line.

We did this as well with our funding policies through the administration and finance plan.

I'm looking at Council Member Nelson.

The policy was just passed.

housing levy policy that we just passed earlier this year includes it as well as our jumpstart housing directive as well.

So it's both about access to land but we also are complementing that with access to funding.

It's not just about the land policies when we know how expensive it is to build as well.

So that's just background to say that we are trying in every facet that we can through public policy to really support our community who is trying to serve communities at highest risk of displacement.

We know that's our Native community, folks of color, including our Black community, Latino community, API community.

And we want to do anything that we can within the city to further our efforts to really make sure that land is going into the public's good and that we're building access to housing as well as complementing it with cultural services like community gathering spaces, child care, small business opportunities.

Now, four years later, we have seen the proof that this type of policy is successful.

We have four sites that have been transferred to affordable housing providers and more in the pipeline.

We wanted to take this opportunity as a four-year review to take a look at reaffirming our commitment to supporting affordable housing through this policy.

And we, as you heard, are very interested in working with the Office of Housing, who has let us know that they have the administrative ability to move forward with implementing initiative 135 and of course when this policy is updated in the future we would want to make sure that language is included that codifies that and wouldn't move forward with anything on that until stakeholders have been included as well.

I do want to thank Council Member Morales for working with our office to help craft some initial language but I wanted to really flag for folks that this is a very preliminary conversation Well, we know we have one initiative 135 to incorporate in the future.

We also have some really exciting conversations that are happening in Washington state and Pierce County.

There's some great examples of the public health jurisdiction in Pierce County.

moving forward with providing tribal governments first opportunity for surplus land.

There's some really great conversations that I think we can have as we reevaluate this policy on how we can move forward to incorporate additional strategies to ensure that folks have access to surplus land that the city no longer deems necessary and that we're putting that to the best use for the community at large, especially our community who is at highest risk of displacement.

With that little bit of background and more recent information that we have a longer time frame to consider any possible updates, I wanted to let folks know that we have an incredible opportunity here today to hear from some members of our tribal governments that are with us and also the Tribal Affairs Director And this is just the beginning of a conversation that we know will be much longer.

Before I turn it over to our special guests and have an opportunity to talk a little bit about the vision of how we could move forward, I wanted to again emphasize there's not policy yet created on this.

Today is a conversation around values and vision for how we could potentially move forward akin to what Pierce County has done.

We have time to make sure that this is a thoughtful discussion and that nobody feels rushed from the community, especially want to make sure to get this right as we move forward, because it could be groundbreaking for other jurisdictions as well to look at.

So we have plenty of time.

This is not something that has to be wrapped up before the budget deliberations, but it is very timely given what's going on in Pierce County, our interest in revisiting the land disposition policy four years after it passed.

and because we have our Indigenous Advisory Committee that has been created and is a body that we can go to for advice in addition to our community partners.

I wanted to ask Tracy Ratzgriff if there's anything else you would like to add in terms of context for the land disposition policy of the past.

We probably won't go to the PowerPoint presentation because it's a little bit for background, but is there anything you'd like to add for context on the land disposition policy as originally passed?

No, Council Member Mosqueda, as usual, you have done a very good job of painting the context for this conversation, so I do not have anything to add.

Wonderful.

Thank you so much.

With that, I want to just say thank you again to our community partners and Patience Malaba from the Housing Development Consortium.

I wasn't able to be with us here today, but she did send a quick statement, so maybe I'll read that as an introduction to our special guests here today.

Patience Malaba, who's the Executive Director from the Housing Development Consortium, says, we are incredibly pleased with Councilmember Mosqueda's outstanding leadership in championing vital policy changes that directly address displacement and prioritize the right of first refusal to tribes and urban Native organizations.

Back in 2018, when we implemented policy adjustments, our primary focus was to ensure that underutilized city-owned land and properties would be considered first for the construction of affordable housing rather than being sold on the private market.

This bold change has fearlessly confronted the challenges posed by lack of affordable homes, available affordable homes, mitigating the heightened risk of displacement and ensuring that public land is made accessible at the lowest cost to create more affordable housing to our most economically vulnerable residents.

Thanks to these efforts, we have forfeited our commitment to building a vibrant and inclusive city for all.

Fortified.

Let me restate that.

We have fortified our commitment to building a vibrant and inclusive city for all.

Well, with us here today to talk a little bit just again about values and vision and lots of policy details to be to be determined as we go through this intense stakeholder process to initiate this discussion.

We are so thrilled to have Vice Chair Donny Stevenson from the Muckleshoot Indian Tribe and a member of the Indigenous Advisory Council here with us today.

And I see Tim Ranin, Tribal Affairs Director at the Office of Intergovernmental Relations, who also has an incredible history and resume on working with tribal governments.

And I believe we also will be joined by Jay Mills, Council Member Jay Mills of the Squamish Tribe and Indigenous Council Member as well, Indigenous Advisory Council Member as well.

Vice Chair Stevenson.

Would I be able to turn it over to you first for some initial comments?

Oh, your audio is not working.

Maybe we didn't get a chance to check that beforehand.

Oh, all good now.

Oh, excuse me, Vice Chair.

The clerk has been letting me know we have not read item number one into the record, so if I could do that first for procedural, I'll turn it back over to you.

It's actually item number one, policies and procedures for disposal of excess city-owned properties for briefing and discussion.

Excellent.

Okay, and thank you so much for your patience, Vice Chair.

I will turn it over to you now.

Thank you very much.

Good afternoon.

Donny Stevenson, Buckleshoot, Aapche.

Good morning or good day.

My name is Donny Stevenson, and I'm Buckleshoot.

I'm the vice chairman of the Buckleshoot Indian Tribe, as well as a member of the City of Seattle's Indigenous Advisory Council.

in way of providing some context for the council.

The IAC is a culturally grounded commission.

Vice Chair?

Yes.

So sorry, your microphone is a little staticky.

I think it's working best when you're sitting back.

I'm not sure exactly.

I'm not an IT person, but I thought I'd offer that.

Thank you.

Thank you.

So.

So the council is ultimately a nine-member council.

We advise the city on issues impacting tribal and urban Native communities, a range of perspectives on policy issues impacting Native communities.

This work with the Indigenous Advisory Council is separate from the city's commitment to engage in government-to-government relationships with sovereign tribal nations.

While there are several tribal leaders advising on this policy work, we also clearly strongly encourage these conversations to continue with offices of intergovernmental relations and tribal consultations.

It's an absolute honor and a privilege to be here today to represent my people who have come together regarding this, or good work representing all people.

In doing so, I'd like to acknowledge the spirit of collaboration and friendship on display, and I'd like to thank the honorable members of the finance and housing and consideration.

I specifically thank you, Council Member Mosqueda, for your ever-present collaboration, partnership, and leadership and advocacy on these issues.

I'd also like to honor and acknowledge our elders and ancestors.

Thanks to the cultural teachings and traditional values we've been gifted through their wisdom for literally thousands of years and hundreds of generations.

We indigenous people, the Muckleshoot people have remained the ancestral keepers of the very land that we're gathered to discuss today.

We thank them for this opportunity and for all they've contributed to our city and the region.

Indigenous history really is, and the story of our people, it really is Seattle's history.

It's Washington State history, and it's a vital chapter of the story of U.S. history.

I come before you today humbly, and again in the spirit of collaboration, and it's with this historic measure in mind that I offer several important thoughts and perspective.

Prioritizing tribal and urban Native communities, the land disposition, is a critical next step in preparing or repairing the ongoing harm of colonization.

The city of Seattle would be among the first jurisdictions in the entire country to move beyond land acknowledgements and towards meaningful action that cedes power and resources to tribes and urban Indian organizations, placing traditional Indigenous lands back into Indigenous hands.

this important step.

We look forward to the city to strengthen tribal sovereignty.

will increase opportunities in tangible, meaningful ways for culturally-attuned, affordable housing development.

As tribal governments and urban organizations, we absolutely know best how to serve our people.

We've done this for thousands of years and for hundreds of generations, really since time immemorial.

We also know and recognize that not all lands are necessarily suitable for affordable housing development.

And in these cases, the city is well positioned to prioritize tribes in reacquiring ancestral homeland and supporting urban Indian organizations in acquiring land that allows them the opportunity to continue to support diversity of the native peoples of the region.

Again, placing traditional lands of the original peoples back into those original peoples possessions for continued management.

Finally, the reclamation of indigenous lands is so fundamentally tied to the important work of growth and healing.

This principle represented daily in virtually all aspects of indigenous life by the recognition of indigenous identity, language and cultural revitalization, food sovereignty, indigenous environmentalism.

To be indigenous, really to be Muckleshoot, inherently means not only the preservation in this region is a part of us as a people, but inversely, that each of us are a part of the solar system.

What serves the land serves our people.

What heals this land also heals our people.

We're not separate nor distinct from one another, but indeed, we're one, sustaining, providing for, and ultimately, defining one another.

The measure before you and sort of the idea that's being discussed for your consideration, it really is historic.

It allows the city to take a small step forward in addressing the impacts of colonization and the chronic underfunding of federal health obligations and responsibilities that have left so many tribal and Indian urban communities with little to no access to land and constrained participation in the affordable housing sector.

In providing a brief clarifying glimpse of policy rationale behind parent designated members and communities, we must begin with first understanding that housing is a specific area of federal justice responsibility to the many tribes and our members, coupled with some of the unpleasant but very real history regarding local, regional, and federal policies that forcibly relocated and aimed to assimilate Native peoples, including forced removal and relocation to reservations that ended up locked in.

termination policies, they've all led to fractionalization and outright loss of tribal lands.

Muckleshoot, as a specific example, at our most challenged point, we only owned about a third of an acre of communal landholdings.

This was the law on which our tribal community center sat.

And when I'm talking about this, this wasn't ancient history.

Realistically, a single generation ago during the mid-1970s.

So this is a date reflective of being well within many of our lifetimes.

I think that the audio was cutting in and out, but we've been able to hear the content, but it's starting to get a little bit worse.

I wonder if the earbuds might if they came out, if that might help.

I don't know.

Oops.

If it's not possible, I don't want to cut you off from saying what you were saying because it was so important and we could hear the content.

I just want to make sure that if it was starting to.

Yeah, I'm sorry.

Technical difficulties.

That's pretty good.

That's better.

I'm almost done.

No problem.

I mean, honestly, we can hear the content of what you're saying, and it is so powerful.

I just didn't want anything to get lost, but we can definitely hear you still.

So ultimately, what I was talking about was that relocation policies.

So ultimately those were aimed at an attempt to assimilate Native people and populations in urban areas.

And Seattle is specifically included in those policies.

These histories and ongoing policy decisions have all led to major disparities in tribal and urban Native land ownership and access to affordable housing.

The city of Seattle is inherently an Indigenous city in nature.

Owing so much of its history and identity to the First Peoples of this land, today represents an important recognition and celebration of this fact.

We have an opportunity to be amongst the first in the nation to work towards legitimate and meaningful action in acknowledging our shared history.

All of this being said, it's an absolute blessing to be able to say, yá'yáh spícháh, that we are working on it.

in meaningful ways and in placing healing and reconciliation at the forefront.

In a world filled with problems, we get to be a foundation of solutions.

I'm incredibly thankful for this.

My hands are raised to all who have worked and discussed and talked to make this possible.

And to be able to be here today to speak to this is truly meaningful.

And it's a historic measure again.

There's an expression in our language that it honors people.

It honors sort of the sacred nature of work like that.

And I think it's appropriate in this case.

CCF, CCF, it means for all our people.

So I raise my hand.

CCF, thank you very much for the opportunity to share our thoughts and apologies for any technical difficulties.

Well, thank you very much.

Very powerful words.

And I think that the the content we could hear even when there was a little bit of static.

So I would love to receive those comments if you'd be willing to share.

And then we can share it with the council and we can share it with our newsletter as well, because I think that it's exciting.

to talk about the conversation to come.

And it's critical that we understand the foundation for why we need to have this discussion and the history that's gone into the reason these discussions are so imperative for us to right some historic wrongs.

So thank you for sharing your words and we will make sure that everybody has a chance to read through those as well.

With that, I want to say thank you, and of course, please pass on our appreciation to your colleague on the Indigenous Advisory Council.

Council Member Mills is not going to be able to join us today from the Squamish Tribe, but I wanted to say thank you for his interest as well.

And with that, I'm excited that for the first time in this committee, we have Tribal Affairs Director Tim Rennan from the Office of Intergovernmental Relations with us.

Tim, I'll turn it over to you.

Good day to you, honorable, noble people, my dear people.

My name is Tim Reynon.

I'm a member of the Puyallup Tribe, and I'm the Tribal Relations Director in the Office of Intergovernmental Relations here at the City.

My role here is to help facilitate the government-to-government consultation and engagements between the city and our federally recognized tribes, help build and strengthen those relationships, and to advise city elected leaders and staff on matters relating to tribal relations, as the title would suggest.

I want to just start out by thanking Vice Chair Stevenson for laying the foundation, the groundwork, the values around this policy and why this type of a policy, it's exciting to see the City of Seattle engage on discussions about the policy.

I was involved in discussions with folks down in Pierce County prior to coming to the city in development of the policy that the Tacoma Pierce County Health Department ultimately passed.

Prior to their adoption of the policy, Tacoma Public Utilities, I think, became the first government entity in the nation to pass a policy that provided opportunities for tribes to receive land back.

And And then after they passed theirs in twenty eighteen, the city of Tacoma followed suit and adopted a policy that provides opportunity for tribes to have a right of first refusal.

And that happened in twenty nineteen.

And then Tacoma Pierce County Health Department passed theirs last year in twenty twenty two.

So this is a bit of the background.

cutting edge type of policies that are are being developed right here in our region.

And so really, this is a great opportunity for us to work with them.

And and really, I'm extremely pleased with Councilmember Miskada and her staff for reaching out to the tribes.

And engaging with the tribes from the very beginning of the development of this policy, this is something that we recently discussed with tribal leaders at tribal nation summit that was held back in May and.

doing this, engaging with tribes from the very beginning, is the type of tribal engagement that we are trying to encourage and do here at the city, involving tribes early and often in the policy development process.

And so I just commend Council Member Mosqueda and staff and the city for this type of engagement for following through with the discussions that we've had at the Tribal Nations Summit.

And I just raise my hands to you and all of this committee and all those that are involved in this.

So I'll leave it at that.

And if there's any questions, I'd be happy to answer any questions.

And thank you very much.

We're really excited about the role that you have in the Intergovernmental Relations Office and very excited about your long tenure and history that you bring to the city of Seattle now.

And as you noted, very, very, very interested in working in partnership with you and the mayor's office and the broader community on how to continue this discussion that we've initiated.

Again, thanks to central staff and really to Aaron house on my staff who's chief of staff and in our office and who is lead on all things land and housing.

We wanted to initiate this discussion with community to see how and when the.

the land disposition policies could be updated.

Again, we have new information as of this week that it doesn't have to be updated by statute this year.

We do believe that the Office of Housing has indicated the ability to move forward administratively with the initial steps for 135 already, and so that gives us a little bit of time to further these discussions about other types of policy considerations like ensuring Tribal governments and Native organizations are also included in this conversation.

Director Reynolds, I wondered if you had any additional context that you'd like to provide on what Pierce County had incorporated into their statute and some of the lessons learned from there.

When you look at the three different policies down in Pierce County, there's kind of a progression that has taken place.

TPU's initial policy gave a right of first refusal or provided notice to both federally recognized tribes and other government authorities like the county so that governmental authorities and tribes would have an opportunity to obtain the land equally.

The city of Tacoma then followed theirs up, that provided written notice and a right of first refusal to the Puyallup tribe, which is the tribe that is located there in the city of Tacoma, a right of first refusal for the purchase of property to the tribe.

And then Tacoma Pierce County Health Department, most recently, they prioritize the interests of federally recognized tribes as the number one priority, returning land to the tribes.

And in their policy, they will negotiate an intergovernmental land transfer for full value with the tribe.

with all of these different governmental entities, the Puyallup tribe was involved in consultation, in negotiation, and discussions within the development of the policies.

So that's an example of, you know, how they worked with the tribe, the local tribe there to develop their policy.

Thank you so much.

Well, thank you for sharing the interest in this discussion to both vice chair and and our director here with us.

Thank you for helping infuse the historical context for why and the excitement about the future discussions.

and to the callers that dialed in, we know that there's a broader discussion to be had about the disposition policies generally.

We will continue the discussion over the next, I would say, three to six months.

I might not be here in the final days, but we wanted to make sure that we initiated this.

I see one hand from Council Member Nelson, and then we're going to move on to our next item.

OK, so we're not going to go through.

Then I'll just wait until the OK, so I'm glad that we're discussing this because I was inspired when I I joined Tim on a sister city trip to New Zealand and learned that the government of Christchurch does offer the first race right of refusal to the Naitahu, which is the corporate entity representing 18 sub tribes in on the South Island for for acquisition of property.

because a lot is available following the earthquake.

So that was inspiring and we talked about that a little bit and I will be, I just skimmed the presentation and I'll be interested in understanding more about how we define what, if property is transferred, surplus property is transferred, why it has to, why define what, a tribal government what might want to build their housing, or maybe a for profit enterprise or something like that but I will be.

I'm just really glad that you bring this forward because it is, it is important to really put some.

some intention behind our, uh, when we talk about, uh, land back, it's, it's, it's time to move this forward.

So thank you.

Excellent.

Well, thank you.

And speaking of timing, uh, we will really follow the lead of the community conversations that we have, um, and see what is possible, uh, in the near term.

And just want to make sure that we're intentionally setting up these discussions so that they are fully informed and thoughtful moving forward.

So lots more discussion to be had and thank you so much for getting us kicked off.

Vice Chair Stevenson, anything else on your end before we head out?

Again, just thank you for the opportunity, the occasion.

I think the historic nature of the dialogue is really important to be able to say when this conversation started, and that's an incredibly meaningful and powerful thing.

So thank you for that.

Thank you so much.

Excellent.

Thank you so much.

And more to come.

Okay, thanks, colleagues.

See you very soon.

All right, we will go ahead and move on to item number two.

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

agenda item number two, city budget office and central staff budget and fiscal policy work group for briefing and discussion.

Thank you so much.

And with us today, we are joined with the director of central staff, We have Esther Handy.

Thank you so much for being here.

We have our Director of the City Budgets Office.

Thank you so much to Director Julie Dingley for being here and for all of the work that you've done.

This is our opportunity to hear a report back from these two directors on a statement of legislative intent that was included in the budget process last fall.

Our 2023 adopted budget requested recommendations from the Council Central Staff and City Budgets Office Through a work group that was convened to analyze recommendations related to the annual budget process and the treatment of the general fund planning reserves.

I'm excited to have such esteemed leaders here with us today who have been working with their teams.

to provide recommendations to the council and the mayor's office on how our city process could be enhanced.

And I'm thrilled that we're going to have an opportunity to have both of them here with us today.

And we'll have a little bit of a discussion that will help tee us up for future budgetary actions and future fiscal note process going forward.

With that, Director Dingley, Director Handy, welcome.

And I think I'll turn it over to Director Handy first.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

I'm Esther Candy, Director of the Council Central Staff.

For the record, I'm going to let Deputy Director Ali Panucci pull up slides for us.

Director Dingley, do you want to introduce yourself for the record and then I'll dive in?

Yes.

Good morning, everyone.

Julie Dingley.

I have the honor of serving as the Budget Director for the City of Seattle's Budget Office.

Great.

So we participated together in a central staff and city budget office work group that met six times this spring in response to a statement of legislative intent 322A1.

Next slide shows the goals of our recommendations that we are putting forward before you today.

The first is to increase transparency in city budgeting and spending.

The second is to create sustainable budgets that maintain appropriate service levels and allow city staff and contractors delivering services to focus on service performance and outcomes.

So a little bit less time budgeting, a little bit more time thinking about what are the outcomes of that budgeting and sort of what's coming ahead for us in future years.

And the third in the context of our city's biennial budget process is to shift that second year budget, shift those goals towards financial monitoring and planning.

So really digging into those conversations.

How are new programs faring?

What is the rate of spending?

Where are cost savings being achieved?

What is our financial trajectory look like in the future?

We think this in turn will improve both our financial management and the information that our budget decision makers on both the executive and council side have to inform their decisions.

So in that context, next slide shows our first recommendation, which is one that you will be familiar with.

This is to institute new practices for a mid-biennial budget review starting in fall 2023. In this context, executive departments have been asked to balance new requests and needs within their endorsed budgets, and council budget actions will need to be self-balanced.

This process should look and feel more like a review of an endorsed budget, rather than the construction of a new annual budget, and we expect the scale of changes should reflect that spirit.

The next three recommendations on our next slide relate to mid-year budget changes, where we are striving for a more predictable cadence of this decision making.

The first is to accept and appropriate grants in a single standalone ordinance three times a year.

We collectively piloted this spring, and the second bill that looks like this will be in front of you today next to the Meteor Supplemental.

When we accept and appropriate in the same bill, it allows departments to more efficiently deploy their resources rather than accepting waiting for the next appropriations bill.

Collectively, we would like to establish in policy what has been involved in practice, which is the cadence on this slide.

That means the executive would transmit and the council would see a first-year grant acceptance and appropriation ordinance in February-March, the mid-year supplemental and grants ordinance mid-year, and a year-end supplemental and grants ordinance that come with the next year's proposed budget.

In the case of an emergency, both the executive and council would retain flexibility to pick up a bill outside this cadence.

But in quote, unquote, regular times, if there are such, this would be the rhythm that we are working collectively towards.

And finally, in this category, we recommend a small expansion of authority of the budget director to move funds mid-year.

So she currently has the authority to transfer up to half a million dollars or up to 10% of any individual budget control level mid-year.

As we sort of rolled up our sleeves and looked at some examples, we saw several where that 10% ended up being an unnecessarily low cap for small budget control levels.

So for these smaller BCLs, this proposed change would allow a transfer up to $250,000.

These are BCLs up to $2.5 million without that 10%.

I'm going to move to financial plans.

Before I do that, Director Dingley, do you have anything to add on these first couple?

OK, great, I will keep going.

Council members will raise your hand at any time, but we'll take questions at the end if we don't see hands go up.

Recommendation five is to standardize financial plan guidelines across all funds.

As a reminder, financial plans look at the financial trajectory of a fund in out years.

So the recommendation is that financial plans transmitted with the budget reflect current law or the proposed changes in law transmitted with the budget.

And this should include any projected growth that is known, including in contract provisions.

Plan should be informed by the best available information about revenue and spending projections with transparency about all the assumptions that have been used.

Our friends at the budget office have to make a lot of assumptions and in departments about what are growth and costs.

Those should be clearly written out so that council decision makers know what is underlying the assumptions.

And finally, we clarify what a six-year financial plan means.

It means the last year, the current year, the budget being developed, and three forecasted years.

And the goal here is by creating more consistency across all the city funds, we can increase the use of these financial plans to inform current year decision making.

Next slide is about financial monitoring.

So to better track spending throughout the year, Director Dingley and her team have developed a new financial monitoring program.

It has department finance staff, FAS accountants, and CBO analysts meeting regularly and looking at a standard set of questions about spending year to date so that variance can be understood, efficiently communicated, and acted upon.

The program is new, it's in development, it is a significant culture change to do something like this citywide.

As it becomes more robust, there will be opportunities for central staff to engage in those big year conversations.

And ultimately, we are hopeful that this will produce better data for departments, the executive and council decision makers about the cost to deliver city services over and under spend during the year and projections at year end.

Recommendation seven states our intention to review and consolidate the financial policies across the city to make it easier to track and use those policies.

These policies are currently included throughout the code and others sit outside the municipal code because they were adopted by resolution when the city created or updated a new fund.

We collectively acknowledge that there isn't current staff capacity to do recommendation seven.

And so our intention is to continue to revisit this as capacity is freed up and allowed.

So we think it is an important thing to get these in one place for all staff across the city.

The final conversation we had is about planning reserves.

We talked a lot about the ways that city reserves funding for future needs.

And I'll remind this committee that the city has two formal reserves.

The general fund emergency fund, which is to draw upon for unanticipated expenses during the year.

This is like a national disaster, a pandemic, public health emergency.

We also have a revenue stabilization fund to draw upon in the event of a sudden unanticipated shortfall in revenue from an economic downturn or similar event.

And then this third bucket is planning reserves, which are unappropriated fund balances that are held for current or future year costs.

The bulk of these are for things like labor contracts under negotiation or the judgment and claims fund, things the city knows are coming.

and generally has an aspect of confidentiality to them, so they are set aside until the appropriate time to spend them.

We made two recommendations here with the goal of increasing transparency about the size and scale of the budget overall.

and to develop a stronger sense of shared ownership between the executive and council about these reserve decisions.

So for the next biennium, 25-26, we recommend exploring a consistent way to brief the select labor committee on those labor reserves and creating an appropriated risk reserve for items with confidentiality considerations as some of our peer jurisdictions do.

So we look forward to kind of looking at those and bringing some best practices and ideas back about how we might do so.

That is all eight of our recommendations.

I'll hand it to Director Dingley if she has anything to add and then open it up for questions.

Thanks, Director Handy.

I just wanted to say a huge thank you to Director Handy and her team for the partnership that we have built between the City Budget Office and Council Central staff.

It hasn't always been smooth sailing between our two offices, but I think that we have set a new standard for how we can work together.

And so we're just really, really proud of the work that these teams have done to come together to create the recommendations that Director Handy walked you through this morning.

Excellent.

Well, thank you, Director Dingley.

Thank you, Director Handy, for walking us through this presentation.

I want to say how much I appreciate the quick work that went into this.

I know that this is very detailed discussions and you're doing this in addition to everything else that each division is working on or each branch of government is working on, frankly.

So thank you for your fast work on this.

I'm not seeing any hands.

It does bring to mind to me the desire to act swiftly to try to move forward on some of these recommendations.

And I do that for two reasons.

One is we have been in this role for three years now, we being my office.

And as chair of the Budget Committee, this is one of the first things that I saw as a need coming from having lobbied in our state capital for so many years, the desire to see both fiscal note transparency and longer term projections for fiscal impact was something that was a necessity.

And in addition to that, wanting to have a more reliable process that allowed for both community organizations, grant recipients, and our city family, including employees, to have a better sense of what the two-year trajectory was for our city, if not the six-year trajectory.

So moving towards biennial budgeting is something I'd be very interested in.

I understand that there's many processes that need to be updated, and as fast as maybe I want to move and our budget director might want to move and our to move in that direction.

I think that's a good point and I think that's something that the central staff director might want to move.

We can't do all of these things overnight, but I would like to take the opportunity to move forward on some of these recommendations given the conversation we've had over the last 3 years about wanting to move in this direction.

I feel like there's some considerations we could be moving forward on now and recognize that So with for I guess for the purposes of discussion, I'll just tee up with what reading the central staff memo and the recommendations brought to light for me and then and then ask for some additional work to come forward from this and to see if that also teases up any other questions for my colleagues.

I would like for us to move forward on two fronts at the very least here.

It seems to me that there's an opportunity for two pieces of legislation that this committee could consider as we head into the budget deliberations this fall.

I would feel like we are in a good starting place for moving forward on the whole suite of recommendations in the future.

The first one that comes to mind is a resolution to update and reflect the current practices for the city's annual budget process and mid-year budget changes.

Again, I want to say thank you to the budget director.

Director Dingley coming into this role really has a shared vision, I think, with our office and central staff for how we could be streamlining some of our budget processes, right?

Getting away from quarterly supplemental budgets was one of the first things that we did in this role because it didn't make sense to have a budget that you pass in November and then have another quarterly supplemental process in December just to take on a first year, a first quarter supplemental process in January, February, and March.

That just doesn't make sense.

It's a lot of extra work for folks and there's not a lot of stability with that.

So let's Let's at least have a resolution if not an ordinance.

I'm always interested in codifying through ordinance versus resolution where possible, but at least an ordinance to update and reflect our current policies for the city's annual budget process and the mid-year budget changes that we've made.

The second thing I'd like to do is in line with the fiscal transparency program that we have talked about through the recommendations and some of our current colleagues, are also interested in continuing to enhance the transparency of the system.

I would like for us to create a new fiscal transparency program in Seattle Municipal Code to codify certain fiscal transparency reporting requirements and processes.

with the intent to be that this be a package that memorializes the policy, the process, and the practices for enhanced transparency.

So to be a little bit more specific, based on the workgroup recommendation, I would like for central staff to prepare a resolution that would supersede the current resolution going into the city budget process.

So that's resolution 2885. and 3194. And instead of that, let's have a new process that covers these three areas.

First, biannual budget direction, including the approach to mid-year biannual budget reviews.

That was recommendation number one, and I think that's low-hanging fruit.

The second is the set of the and supplemental budget and grant ordinances.

So that would be around now in July.

And then at the end of the year in September, a year end supplemental and grants ordinance.

And that's again summarized in recommendations two and three.

And finally, I would love for us to define next steps for planning reserves, including the creating appropriated risk reserve that is operationalized in the 2025-2026 biennial process.

Again, that is recommendation number 8. So I think, you know, to get out of the weeds for folks who are reading the recommendations process to help us move forward on recommendations 1, 2, 3, and 8 at the very least just to get this ball rolling.

Yes, please go ahead Councilmember Nelson.

So my staff worked in Olympia, and so they do, they also like you have insight into different budgeting processes.

For me, I don't know how to respond to a lot of what we've talked about because I don't know what needs fixing.

but I am interested in doing so.

I think that I'll have to understand a little bit more what is happening right now that the recommendations that you just read will aid in fixing.

I do say that I thought that we were already sort of only doing mid-year supplemental, not doing quarterly, but if the resolution is to make that more concrete or that is fine with me because it doesn't seem to be time worthy to do it every quarter.

For transparency, central staff has heard me mention this before, but when we talk about deficits, we have revenues that go into specific funds that do not so that are outside of the general fund so they don't show up when we look at out year deficits.

And one thing that I was thinking about with that would aid in transparency would be to somehow figure those funds like jumpstart and soda.

I mean, the sweetened beverage tax and all those different revenue sources that we receive.

they should be more visible when we're talking about the health of our budget right now.

Because when we look at grabs of expenditures, those expenditures do include expenditures from those funds, but the revenue line does not show the incoming revenue from those special funds.

So that is one item that I'd like to have discussed when we talk about transparency and how we figure or show our budget to the public.

Yeah.

I see Deputy Director Panucci also on the screen, and then if central staff have some comments, then I'll also add to what Council Member Nelson just said.

Anything from central staff or our director from CBO?

No, just to say I think that One of the big challenges and agree, Council Member Nelson, is how do we effectively communicate about all of the city's funding sources?

What are the restrictions?

What is restricted by current law?

What could be changed with the change of current law to better understand what are kind of the full set of resources and choices in front of budget decision makers?

I think it's the sort of spirit of your question and one that we're happy to keep talking about.

Thank you, that was much more articulately stated.

Deputy Director Panucci, did you have something?

I was just going to add to your first point, Council Member Nelson, thank you, Chair Mosqueda, Alec Panucci of your Council Central staff for the record, that I just wanted to confirm that I think what you were getting to is that much of the recommendations are memorializing changes in practice that we have been implementing under the leadership of Director Dingley and Chair Mosqueda for the last several years.

And so this is an opportunity to both memorialize what we are currently doing and to set direction for continued improvement in the work we're doing together on the budget and fiscal monitoring.

Yeah, that's great.

And then to your point around transparency for some of the general fund adjacent revenue sources is I think the term we used last budget.

I agree that that would be helpful to see in our in our reporting documents.

We made that a little bit easier to do, a lot easier to do with Jumpstart.

For example, we created the Jumpstart siloed fund so we would have the ability to accurately see how much money was coming in and how much was available for Jumpstart priorities last year or the year before.

That was the similar intent of what you just described so that we would accurately see what was coming in so we could appropriate accordingly.

And I'd be interested in working with central staff on ways to formalize those reporting processes as well.

I think I would just say also that If I had a magic wand and I'm sure that if central staff and the city budgets office had a magic wand as well and we could do some of these things overnight.

The end goal for me would be to have a budget bill and for colleagues who worked in Olympia or have lobbied in Olympia.

I think that it is helpful to see a budget bill each year that shows a red line of what was included in the previous budget, what is either being enhanced or reduced by, you know, striking out an actual budget document that just evolves year over year.

And that way we can see what's being added if it's a proviso, a statement of legislative intent, The ultimate goal would be to have a 800 page budget bill as one cohesive document that just is updated every year so we can see baseline investments versus what has been the tradition in the city is my understanding of having summary documents for each investment or budget for each of the departments.

And I'm not impugning any of the great work that is done by city budget office, our departments, our central staff with helping to make sure that those budget documents are really well described and have as much detail as possible.

There's no hiding of the ball here or intentional information being left out.

It's just the process that we've historically had has been to update those one pagers, if you will.

or summary documents, if you will.

And that is just a different approach than the one that I think would be more preferable at some point in the future of having a large, complete, summary budget bill for general fund operations, capital investments, and any sort of transportation investments.

So, you know, three budget bills, if you will, just like the state legislature does so that we can see year over year how the budget is evolving.

that would be helpful.

One day that may happen, but I understand that that might be a ways out because of the existing systems that we have.

The second thing is I would very much love to see us do everything that we can to move towards this six-year financial planning or a six-year outlook for fiscal notes.

That is part of what I'm asking central staff to look into as part of the takeaway recommendations here.

But ideally, we would have a fiscal note that looks at the two year budgetary impact and then the six year possible impact so we can see three biennial cycles in the future what the impact would be to the city.

And that way we can start planning for it.

There's some really incredible programs that I know might have large price tags.

and that doesn't mean that we shouldn't do them.

We just need to plan for them and be cautious about the upfront costs.

So those are two of the things that I'd love to see.

And then I see Council Member Herbold.

Thank you so much for joining us, Vice Chair Herbold, and I'll turn it to you in a second.

Just in terms of visionary statements as well, one thing that I know City Budget Office is working very hard on right now and just want to for the purpose of transparency and discussion highlight for the community and my colleagues is I would absolutely love to see us have that real-time data that I know is so important for CBO to have as well about whether or not departments are underspending, how quickly they're encumbering funds that have been deployed in the budget, and that way we have a better sense going into the fall budgeting process.

where there is potential surplus funding in certain categories and how we can adjust for that instead of assuming that there will be surplus funding in various categories.

That real-time expenditure is something that I know our director has been interested in building the systems for, and we will continue to work on that.

And anything that we can do to move us in that direction would be greatly appreciated.

I also want to just say a huge kudos to the CBO team, Adam Schaefer, who's been leading up the reporting requirements that we have asked for related to the American Rescue Plan Act or Seattle's Rescue Plan.

We have monthly reports that show us the expenditures, the funding that's been encumbered and what is left to be spent.

That I think is a great example for how we could potentially move towards our traditional or regular budgeting within the city so that we all have a good sense of if the money is out there.

And on that point, our congressional members have applauded the city for that type of reporting out.

Every time I get one of those reports, I send it to our liaisons in the congressional team as well so that they can brag about the ways in which Seattle has And so that's what we're trying to do.

We're trying to make sure that the state has accurately accounted for the funds, but more importantly, spent the funding as Congress intended.

So huge kudos from our congressional delegation every time we send those out.

Staffer Christina has been monitoring and mentioned to me that one of the 2 of the areas of interest.

I have, we're, we're not covered.

So I'm going to take this take advantage of the remaining time here.

Chair Mosqueda, you may have when you're discussing surplus funds may have covered this.

But I think I just want to ask the question maybe a little bit differently.

Just wondering, are there recommendations that would give council a way to identify underspend as underspend is developing, I think for lack of a better word, instead of just simply seeing it appropriated in legislation the following year?

Is there a way that we can know maybe each quarter or towards the end of the year before budget, there are different options here, but if we can know and understand projection and just have that transparency because currently those underspend dollars are just going into the next year's budget.

That's, that's one question.

The second question is my long time interest in reporting on vacant positions in each department.

I know that CBO and central staff have been working to try to develop improvements to reporting and perhaps technology that might make it possible in the future.

Just wondering if you could provide an update on this work.

It's, I think, very challenging, again, from a budgeting perspective, to know that departments have funded vacant positions that they don't necessarily anticipate And again, that's just information that we really need to know as the body that deliberates and endorses the budget.

Thank you.

Councilmember Herbold, I'll start and then maybe on the vacancies hand it to you, Director Binggeli, and for anything else you want to add.

I'll say in general, the area that of our recommendations intended to work on this is the financial monitoring section.

That it is, as I mentioned earlier, it is still nascent, but this regular process of right now the executive teams getting together quarterly, looking at reports, tracking variances, is giving CBO a way to see citywide sooner where are those underspends happening.

is that we central staff can see it from a raw data perspective, but we don't have the information that informs is that vacant because it's not going to be filled or is it vacant and going to be spent in the next quarter, those kinds of things.

Our hope is that pretty soon this year, central staff is more deeply engaged in those conversations so we can start to both inform how that works and be getting some access to this data.

Ultimately, it is this investment in the financial monitoring program that could lead to citywide reports on a monthly, on a quarterly, sort of whatever the right cadence is that provides transparency both to the executive and council about that data that doesn't exist right now.

So that's sort of the investment area, even though I don't have sort of a tool to give you answers for the supplemental this week, as you might like.

Dr. Dingley, what would you like to add?

Yeah, thanks director handy I think Esther covered it well.

I think what has surprised me about this work is how much it is about culture shift, rather than technology and technology is of course necessary and wonderful, but so much of this is about how we set expectations how we manage those expectations.

And it's going to take a lot longer than you heard Chair Mosqueda and Director Handy allude to this earlier, a lot longer than I think any of us had initially thought to get to the point, the end state that you're describing.

But we're very excited to get to that end point.

The second part of your question was around positions and how can we better get greater transparency around positions.

As you well know, and we've all been collectively frustrated by, the city does not position based budget.

Fortunately, we had the foresight to think about in our human capital replacement project that is happening in our human resources department, that's going to be implemented at the beginning of next year so Q1 2024, we are going to have the ability to sync up the dollars with the positions in the budget.

So all three of those systems will talk to each other.

So we are, I am as nerdy as nerdy can get in excitement about being able to do that.

Again, that's gonna take yet more culture shift and change management as we move toward that.

So it won't be a light switch that'll flip on to be able to make sure that all those data are usable, et cetera, et cetera.

But we are definitely headed in that direction.

I'm very encouraged by all the work I've seen to date.

So I just wanna real quick, if you'll indulge me, thank my team who's been engaged in this work.

Zach Koontz, who's been instrumental in standing up the monitoring program.

Jamie Carnell in city finance, who's been working on the HCM replacement along with Amanda Grumbach and others.

And then I also just real quick, while I'm on the shout out train, thank William Chen, who's the lead of the Seattle Rescue Plan team for all of the incredible monitoring work that his team has done to really set that standard.

As well as Jeanette Blankenship, Caleb Wagner, everybody on the, uh, Trisha protect all that all the folks on the CBO team who have contributed to all the work that we're discussing today because they it's it's really there is that, uh, Chairman Mosqueda mentioned.

It's in addition to all the other core work that they're doing, so I'm very grateful for all of their contributions.

Excellent.

So, um, central staff.

Do you have any thoughts about next steps on this?

Um, I appreciate your direction.

we can get to work on a resolution, as you outlined, that works on recommendations 1, 2, 3, and 8, and we'll collaborate with the city budget office to get their input on sort of what that looks like to supersede the current resolution.

And there are a couple other pieces, like the change to the budget director's authority, that are appropriate to go in code.

We can make that amendment.

We can work on that legislation to be before the council here before budget, as well as exploring the idea of creating a fiscal transparency section in the code and talk about what might fit in there.

So happy to get to work on those work products and be collaborating with you on a committee schedule to bring them back.

Great, that sounds good.

We will definitely see you then again at some of our upcoming meetings and appreciate that you have done so much work.

So please thank the work group that was convened from the executive and the legislative branch to come up with these recommendations.

With that, we will go ahead and say thank you and move on to the next item on the calendar here.

I do want to just double check with our colleagues.

We have this meeting scheduled till noon.

I want to make sure that that time was held on your calendar too.

Okay.

Feeling okay about that?

I'm seeing a nod from Council Member Nelson in the room.

And we have two more sections basically of our agenda.

One is to do items four and five together and that would be a quick preview of some, excuse me, let me do that again.

One would be to do item number three as a standalone and that would be a quick preview from central staff on the fiscal note enhancements that I alluded to earlier.

And the second thing is to include items four and five together to really allow for us to start a preview of the supplemental budget.

So I'm thinking with central staff's encouragement here, we might just do item number three as like a 10 minute preview.

And then try to use the last hour for supplemental budget discussion.

Would that work?

Chair Mosqueda, I might suggest we just postpone the fiscal note enhancements discussion or move it to the end if time allows.

It's going to be difficult for us to compress that much with the content Tom has prepared for today, so maybe we do items four and five first, and if there's time, to take up the fiscal note discussion at the end.

That would be great.

If not, we can work with you and your team to find another time to have this conversation.

And I think we just got some initial direction from you in terms of overall what you're looking for in legislation to memorialize in code or resolution some of the components.

And we can meet with other committee members before we prepare anything related to the fiscal note.

That sounds good to me.

And also, please take a chance to look at the materials from central staff.

I want to thank Tom Mikesell, who has been really helping to spearhead this conversation with Ali Panucci, our deputy director, and myself in our office.

There is just a quick preview.

Like, there's so many wonderful things about our fiscal note and so many things that could be added.

to make it an actually, let me see, long term projection of the cost as I noted before.

So clearly my interest is in outlining the existing biennial impacts as we look at legislation, but also doing a preview of any possible projections for the next three biennium to come.

So that would be a six-year fiscal note outlook, if at all possible.

I know that there's some limitations on what we can do with our existing systems, but that is the goal that I'd love to head into, and the materials are available on our agenda here today.

We will package this item with the previous item next time, and we'll come back and ask for an update on language related to both of them, if that sounds good.

Okay.

Colleagues, then I'm going to go ahead and have item number four and five read into the record together, and we will move forward.

Agenda item number four and five, Council Bill 120617 and Council Bill 120618, an ordinance relating to funding from the non-city sources and an ordinance which adopted the 2023 budget for briefing discussion and possible vote.

Wonderful.

Thank you so much.

That was items five and six.

Five and four.

Five and four, great.

Okay, so the information is in front of us.

We're going to have a presentation from central staff as well.

Thank you again to Deputy Director Panucci and Eden Cicic from central staff for being here with us.

Colleagues, I want to make sure you know that this is not slated for a vote today.

We're going to have a preview today and have this for sure on our August 2nd agenda.

And if needed, we'll hold time later in August as well.

But my hope is that we could We're going to take a little bit of time to fully understand how some of the money has been moved around in the proposed supplemental, and we will have this on our August 2nd agenda as well.

And I'm going to really just turn it directly over to central staff to walk us through their analysis so far.

We're going to be doing a lot of work to make sure that we're getting to all of the questions that you might have.

And we will always take some time to meet with central staff in between this meeting and next meeting to go through any questions that you might have.

I'm going to turn it over to you, Director Panucci.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

I am going to pass it over to Eden to lead us through the discussion today.

I just want to note for people watching at home, the presentation and the previous presentation we just walked through will be posted to the agenda after the fact if it's not on there now.

And also just note that we are taking up in in order of the memo preparation.

And so item five will be discussed first and item four second.

They're both read in simultaneously, but just noting that.

And also just note for the committee members, we do have other central staff members on the line who have subject matter expertise in some of the specific items that are included in the supplemental budget, the mid-year supplemental budget ordinance.

And so you may see them pop in to help address questions if it goes beyond sort of the the information Ed and I have available at our fingertips.

And with that, I will pass it over to Edwin.

Good morning, council members and staff.

Edwin Sissage with your central staff.

And to build off the introduction, we'll be discussing Council Bill 120617, which would provide authority for city departments to accept and appropriate the expenditure of grant revenues from non-city sources, and Council Bill 120618, which would amend the budget through supplemental changes.

And there were two central staff memos sent on Monday that we just mentioned.

As the chair just mentioned, both are attached to the agenda materials, and this PowerPoint will cover the high points from that memo.

and I'll do my best to reference back to the memo as I'm able.

And I have some of my awesome central staff colleagues on the line to help answer questions regarding items covered in the presentation today in the memo or the ordinance themselves.

So we can go to slide one, please.

So referencing to page one in the memo, this table tracks all of the budget changes that are brought to Council and through the Finance and Housing Committee during the year.

Earlier in the year the Council received carry forward legislation, which makes up the bulk of the second column, the adjustments as of July 1. So there were eight other pieces of legislation passed to date, which are covered in the first two pages of the memo.

So I won't go over those in the interest of time.

However, as the table shows through July 1st, there are these various legislation pieces increased the general fund budget by 12% compared to the 2023 adopted budget.

And there's a 33% increase in all other funds combined.

resulting in a $2.1 billion change, going from the adopted budget of $7.4 billion to about $9.5 billion, which is a 28% overall budget increase.

Next slide, please.

Deputy Director mentioned, I'll present the Council Bills in reverse order.

So we'll discuss 120618, the Mid-Year Supplemental Ordinance first, followed by Council Bill 120617, which is the Grants Ordinance.

So this is the second Comprehensive Supplemental Adjustment Ordinance.

Comprehensive meaning a package of adjustments that affects multiple funds and multiple department budgets, which is what we're talking about today for both of the bills before you today.

And also referencing back to the state law, which provides the authority for the supplemental adjustment process to take place.

The city is permitted to make major appropriation changes to positions, capital, operating budgets for items that are to have been assumed to have been unforeseeable when the budget was adopted.

And in terms of the overall impact on the city budget proposed in the supplemental bill, it's a $139 million decrease.

However, the appropriation decrease is primarily due to technical changes.

which abandoned $230 million of capital budget appropriations.

And almost all of this is in Seattle Public Utilities and Seattle City Light.

Again, these changes are purely technical and do not free up financial resources for use on other budget purposes.

Just to explain it quickly, essentially City Light and Public Utilities appropriate their full budget during the budget process.

which is different than how most other departments do it.

And then they receive a carry forward due to the automatic carry forward of capital appropriations, which essentially is double counting.

So they abandoned that carry forward as part of this mid-year supplemental.

So after adjusting for these technical reductions, this bill would increase the budget by $86.8 million across all funds.

And this is all detailed on page 7 of the memo.

So, as proposed, this Council Bill would increase the 2023 General Fund budget by $16.9M, which is the net effect of General Fund spending proposals, abandonments, of carry forward grant-backed appropriations and transfer of resources to non-general funds.

However, another however, after accounting for the executive estimated general fund revenue increase of $3.3 million, and then if we exclude the $14 million on appropriated general fund planning reserves transfers to the judgment and claims fund, which I'll describe shortly, there would be a positive net change to the general fund balance of $359,000.

Basically, so this bill would increase the general fund balance by $359,000.

So this table provides a summary of funding for general fund appropriations.

The funding source and then categorizes them as one-time or ongoing.

and only includes general fund increases, which make up that total of $16.9 million.

So individual transfer items that are net zero to the general fund are not part of this table, but all general fund items are itemized and described in table two of the memo that starts on page three.

So as the table shows, the bulk of the general fund increase is paid from the executive managed planning reserves and the remainder funded from new revenue or reimbursements and reductions to other general fund appropriations.

And so you can also see that 4.4 million of the proposed changes include ongoing appropriations that would likely extend beyond 2023. So if adopted, 2024 and future years, general fund departmental budget would increase by $4.4 million.

And off that amount, approximately 2.6 million is revenue backed.

So the net ongoing fiscal impact would be $1.8 million.

And put another way, the projected $224 million operating deficit beginning in 2025, 2026 biennium which was presented on May 17 during the general fund balancing discussion, would increase to about $226 million.

And this increase is primarily due to the increase in insurance premium costs.

But going through the line items individually, the largest impact to the general fund is the $14 million transfer from the unappropriated general fund planning reserves to pay for Judgment and claim settlement costs, which are higher than originally anticipated for the year.

And the planning reserves are intended to be budgeted in the future, but are not yet part of the budget.

So, because they're not appropriated, this reads as an overall increase in general fund spending compared to 2023 adopted budget.

which is a point that we just made during the work group discussions.

And this was item number eight in that previous report.

And then we have the downtown activation plan.

So $2.2 million increase in office of economic development to implement a one-time expansion of cleaning services and to provide continued support for community engagement, strategic planning, and project delivery of the downtown activation plan.

And these appropriations are balanced by other reductions in general fund spending included in the bill, part of the $4.5 million line item.

So if these investments are not a priority for the council, these funds could be redirected for other on-time uses in 2023. and I'll provide additional details on this later in the presentation.

Next, we have the $525,000 increase in Seattle Police Department to enhance police presence, safety, and protection of the public, businesses, and property owners within the business improvement area boundaries.

The term of this contract was from July 1st, 22 to June 30th of this year, and the BIA will reimburse the City for these services in 2023. And we have the $256,000 increase in Seattle Police Department again for reimbursement of personnel costs for the Executive Director of Strategic Initiatives position.

So the incumbent employee is participating in a Department of Justice fellowship through the rest of the year, so their reimbursement amount will be used to fund the position backfill until the incumbent returns to SPD at the end of this year.

And then the $4.5 million of reductions, which partially offsets the increases in this table, include abandonment of grant authority that is no longer necessary, and funding shifts from general fund to other funding sources, which are described on page five of the memo, and include two CIP projects.

I'll cover those projects.

So $1.7 million decrease in Seattle Public Library for the installation of air conditioning at the northeast and southwest branches.

And I think it's important to note that this funding was originally added by the council in 2022 as part of the adopted budget as a climate adaptation measure.

And in 2022, the executive instructed Seattle Seattle Public Libraries to hold the spending of this $1.7 million for air conditioning as one of many spending holds on the general fund appropriations identified as necessary to end 2022 imbalance.

So because of this hold, in August of 2022, council allocated $1.7 million of Jumpstart funding and the legislation that allocated Jumpstart Green New Deal funds via an ordinance.

So the administrative hold limited the council's ability to repurpose those funds, which should be considered if administrative spending holds are proposed by the executive in the future.

And then the other CIP item decrease is an SDOT for the Center City Connector.

project, 2.4 million dollars of transportation network company revenue was appropriated toward this in the 2022 adopted budget and 2.3 million of unspent appropriations carried forward into 2023. So this proposed decrease is primarily due to real reallocation of TNC revenue by the executive to cover budget shortfalls and other programs.

And partly due to TNC revenue coming in lower than expected.

Separately, the executive proposal is increasing funding by $1.1 million for Center City Streetcar project.

development, which I'll cover shortly later in the presentation.

So those are all one-time appropriations now going into ongoing general fund increases.

911 call data recorder integration, $1.5M increase in community safety and communication.

And maybe before you get into that ongoing appropriations, we should take some questions on the one time subtotal.

And I'll also note that we have slides that correspond with many of these items.

So, for example, I'm going to hold some of the questions that I have about the downtown activation plan for slides that are coming up.

I do have a question about some of the insurance costs that you noted, so I'll ask that now.

But before I get to my question, I see Council Member Herbold has her hand raised.

If folks have questions about the one-time appropriations that don't have corresponding slides, let's go ahead and ask those questions now.

Council Member Herbold.

Thank you, and I'm sorry that there might be a corresponding slide it, it is related to the downtown activation plan it is the funds being used for it, specifically funds being taken from the two library projects.

So if my inquiry is more about that, is that appropriate now?

I think let's hold that for slide number six and just a preview for Edna as well.

I have a similar question that I'll be asking related to the funding that was originally appropriated for hygiene services.

So maybe we can ask those two questions as we get to slide six.

Absolutely.

Can I ask a quick question about the 9-1-1 excise tax revenue?

Yeah, I think that that'd be fine.

Great.

But again, if there's a separate slide, I'm happy to hold it.

I will cover that shortly.

Okay.

All right.

I'll just sit back and wait.

Thank you.

Good preview.

Okay, great.

I will jump in with this question because I don't think there's a corresponding slide.

Here you mentioned the factors around the insurance increase, the insurance cost that the city is bearing.

I am interested in anything that we can do to get clarification on what those factors are.

I know that this is a budget discussion and sometimes we include policy directive via sly and provisos here, but I'm really concerned about not having additional transparency about the factors going into increasing insurance costs and the attributable departments.

We know that from national coverage of other jurisdictions, there is a significant increase in costs related to policing and transportation issues.

And we saw similar, I think, public reports last year when we looked at the increased costs I think it was associated with judgment and claims.

So I'm hoping that we can find a way to get more transparency around the costs related to insurance and attributable departments.

Is there any initial thoughts you have about that?

Yeah, so the 1.5 million increase in finance general for higher insurance premium costs.

So we requested a breakdown and additional information on what makes up this increase and are waiting on additional details from the executive.

Though our initial research suggests that this $1.5 million is slightly overestimated.

And these are not health-related costs.

They're for things such as property insurance, excess liability, fiduciary, et cetera.

And the two items that are primarily driving this increased costs are the property insurance and excess liability.

Those came a lot higher.

What are the two things?

property insurance and excess liability.

Excess liability.

Excess liability is like insurance on insurance, insurance policy on top of the insurance policy if your original insurance policy exceeds the limits.

Well, thank you for asking for that additional transparency and clarity.

And let's revisit this at the next meeting as well.

And maybe I'll chat with central staff about if there's anything that we need to include in this budget specific to the excess liability costs.

I'm guessing that that is the same issue that other jurisdictions across the country are seeing as well related to police misconduct payouts.

That's something that's been a national trend in the news over the last year plus on local jurisdictions having to absorb more costs for their insurance given these violations or purported violations.

and the need for the jurisdictions to respond to the issues that have been imposed on communities.

So I would very much like to see us have an analysis of whether that is playing out here in the city of Seattle as well.

And thank you for already putting the feeler out to the departments to better understand why this cost is increasing.

we'll follow up on that.

Thanks so much.

Deputy Director Panucci.

Yeah, I would just on that point, we will we are continuing to ask for more details to better understand what's driving these costs.

But I will say, well, those are the two top it really is primarily the property insurance.

It looks like excess liability is like, less than $100,000 swing based on the data we have available, right, right now.

And so it is primarily property insurance, but we will get more details on what it is that is driving those driving those costs and follow up as well as additional details on if this isn't over more than what is necessary to pay for insurance in 2023. We'll share those details with the council members in the coming days.

Okay, great.

I think we can go.

Council Member Nelson, please go ahead.

When you say property, are you talking about damage to property?

Is that what's driving it up as small businesses have said in other contexts?

or is this just sort of normal across the board?

It's a national trend.

Ed and I don't know if you have much to add here.

It is, we have a line that says property insurance and I don't, I think it is the city's property, but we will get clarity on that and follow up with you council member.

Right, thank you.

Great, thank you.

Okay, next slide please.

We're still on this line.

Oh, you're right.

Let's go on to the second half of the slide.

Dense slide.

Okay, so the 1.5 million dollar increase in community safety and communication center to update 911 call data recorder integration with computer aided dispatch and radio network.

Don't know much about that.

This project would upgrade the CSCC's recording technology and integrate it with a radio network to which King County Public Safety agencies are in the process of transitioning already.

And the upgrade would be consistent with similar recent upgrades at SPD and Seattle Fire Department.

And this funding would be from the city's 9-1-1 excise tax revenues which are held in escrow by King County and dispersed as requested and permissible by statute.

And we already covered the insurance cost piece, so nothing else to add to that.

And the other CSCC items is the $1.1 million increase to support call taker salaries and consultant costs related to CSCC's establishment as an independent department.

Previously, the time needed to onboard a new CSCC call taker was six to nine months.

So the 2023 range has been three to six months.

So the department's projected vacancy savings are significantly lower.

And the request also includes funding for a consultant, that will examine CSCC technology and staffing needs.

And the same, this funding, the same as 911 call center integration would be from the city's 911 excess tax revenues.

Again, a full list of general fund items and supplemental are described on page three through pages seven of this memo.

additions.

So in addition to appropriation changes, this council bill would revise approved position totals across several city departments to add 81 positions.

And then 90% of those, this add is in SDOT, Community Safety and Communication Center, and Seattle Police Department.

I'll cover those 3 in a little bit of detail for each.

So, starting with SDOT's 56 FTEs, none of them require additional appropriations.

39 FTEs are to complete delivery of the Move Seattle levy projects.

And so these positions include new construction crew and project management staff that would sunset upon the expiration of the levy.

Again, no additional appropriations are requested as the positions will deliver on existing budgeted projects.

However, if the levy is renewed in the future, extending these positions could be considered and is subject to legislative approval.

Then we have 11 sunsetting positions.

They sunset in three years.

to staff curb ramp and utility relocations, utility restoration work in the right away.

The 2023 adopted budget includes $2.2 million for this program, which is reimbursable from Seattle Public Utilities and Seattle City Light as a three-year pilot relying on term limited positions.

Therefore, no additional appropriations are requested for this either.

And then lastly, now we have six FTEs to convert temporary positions to permanent positions.

These positions are currently filled and support the Transportation Operations Division and the Finance and Administration Division.

No additional appropriations are requested here and ongoing funding is included in SDOT's 2024 endorsed budget.

Moving to CSCC's proposed addition of 10 positions, which would support the implementation of the dual dispatch pilot program, including staffing the program on an ongoing basis and providing the basis for the evolution of the current CSCC into the civilian assisted response engagement care department.

These positions are funded via a transfer from an ongoing finance general reserve established for this purpose.

And lastly, we have six FTEs and SPD, none of which require additional appropriations at this time, including four positions in the public disclosure units that would be filled later this year and are funded by savings from civilian position vacancies.

According to the executive, these positions are needed because public disclosure requests have grown in complexity and number in recent years.

It went from 8,000 to 12,000 per year.

Department staff have indicated that public disclosure staff are currently averaging 80 hours of overtime per week to keep up with the workload demands.

And then there's also two strategic advisor, two positions to assist with SPD's recruitment and retention initiatives.

These positions would be added and immediately filled with employees that are currently working in the temporary positions.

And additional details on these FTEs ads are covered on pages 8, 9, and 10 of the memo.

So moving to the next, I'll go ahead, Ali, sorry.

Sorry, I didn't, I just want to flag.

I think Council Member Herbold, this might be a good time to ask about the 9-1-1 revenue source, because I don't think we touch on that again in that presentation.

Is that correct, Eden?

I'll pause here for you to have the opportunity.

We also do have Anne Gorman on the line to help if we need additional details.

Really appreciate that.

Madam Chair, may I?

Yeah, please go ahead.

Thanks.

So I appreciate the reminder that the excise tax revenue is held in escrow by King County until requested.

And I do think if I'm asking this question out of turn because we're getting a report on it, there may be a sly around this issue, but I'm wondering, do we know how much in total is available to the city?

And do we have a good explanation or comprehensive explanation of what the allowed uses are for this revenue?

I will defer to my colleague Ann Gorman for this question.

Yes, thank you.

Ed in and Gorman Council central staff happy to answer that as of a couple days ago, there was approximately 5.4Million dollars in the city's escrow account at King County.

We receive about a 1Million dollars every quarter on an ongoing basis.

That is anticipated to continue and these revenues can be used to support the modernization of 911 systems.

And the operational costs associated with the maintenance and operation of those systems, including some salary costs, delivery, receipt and processing of 911 calls are the activities that are available for reimbursement from those resources.

So that includes the salaries of call takers.

Thank you very much.

we're going to go ahead and move on to the next item on the agenda.

No follow-up.

Okay, I have a question here will first I want to underscore the comment that council her bold made in our previous item on the agenda it would be very helpful to know in real time, especially at the supplemental budget time whether or not any of the positions that we had budget request on top of already unfilled positions that the council had authorized and signed into statute by the mayor.

Is there any indication that we will have access to that type of information before the first part of August for this current year?

We can certainly request that information from the executive and see if they can fill out this table and add a column that has filled versus unfilled positions, if that would be helpful.

Absolutely, because if we're being asked for additional, is it additional funding or additional position authority?

So this is asking for additional position authority.

And some of these positions are a lot of majority of these positions are not asking for additional appropriations, but some are so we can separate those out.

Okay, and the concern that I think we have collectively and central staff has been raising this in the three years that I've been sitting here as chair and I'm sure Councilmember Herbold when you were chair as well, the concern was raised.

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But then these positions would ostensibly be filled in addition to other positions that we've already authorized which compounds our increased costs year over year.

That's part of the reason that we end up in a situation where we have a growing gap between existing revenue and expenditures when we don't have greater clarity on what the available funding is and the expenditures for the long, the expenditure impact over the long haul.

And it's especially concerning when it comes to positions.

We wouldn't want to hire somebody in a full-time permanent position for a position that's really only going to be five or six months at best.

I mean, we're mid-July at this point.

So I want to just flag that this is, you know, this is a significant number of positions and whether or not there's additional funding being requested, it has the real impact of compounding our revenue and budget gap in the future without having a better understanding of whether or not there's positions that are already sitting empty.

And that's not to take away from the work that's being proposed here.

I think everybody would want to ensure that we are moving forward with serving the public's need.

But the transparency issue is one that I'm trying to raise here again.

I did have a specific question related to the public disclosure positions that you mentioned, and I think you said that those are in the Seattle Police Department.

My memory is that we added more public disclosure officer positions in the budget last fall.

Are these positions that are to be added to Seattle Police Department and were those positions in last fall's budget already filled?

I see, if you'd like to take that good morning, madam chair members of the committee.

Yeah.

Thanks.

S. P. D.

received 2 public disclosure positions and the authority to fund those positions with salary savings in the 2021 mid year.

budget and then those positions were annualized in last fall's 2023 adopted budget and those positions have been filled.

They now have 24 total public disclosure positions on their team, their staff, and all of them are currently filled.

They're requesting additional public disclosure positions within SPD.

Yes, the four in this supplemental.

And Council Member Herbold, if you have any insight as well, of course, feel free to jump in.

Yeah, well, this is a topic that has been called out as an issue year after year.

The amount of time that it takes for SPD to respond to public disclosure requests in the large backlog we have done a number of things, both adding public disclosure positions to SPD as well as trying to segment the public disclosure requests associated with OPA's work over at OPA, as well as asking Seattle IT to fulfill the online-related requests, just like every other department in the city has Seattle IT that does the online searches rather than leading it up to the department.

So there's a number of things that we've done over the years to address this issue.

I believe there was also an audit finding at one point about this issue.

I think it's reasonable to conclude that there is more to do based on what we heard about the overtime hours that the Public Disclosure Unit currently experiences on average.

Eden, I thought you said 80 a week.

I'm assuming that's 80 for the unit, not per person.

Correct, for the unit.

Can you remind us how many are in the unit currently?

there's 24 council member that are in the unit, including the managers.

Well, perhaps more to come on this.

Thank you for that background.

Chair Mosqueda, I might suggest, since we have Greg on the on point right now and we've gotten a bit into this issue this is raised later in the presentation in the memo but it may make sense just to talk about that issue right now because it is a really excellent example of the challenges that the legislative branch has that the council has in providing oversight both on the budget and the position management because these four positions it for the public disclosure work are proposed to their ongoing positions that are proposed to be funded with one-time salary savings both this year and into next year.

What that essentially means is from my perspective, either those civilian positions that are currently vacant and are going to be held vacant next year are not needed and we should be abrogating them so this funding is freed up for the ongoing public disclosure work, or we need to be really clear as stated on page 15 of the memo that if at the end of 2024, all the positions are filled.

This will increase overall the SPD's budget and is contributing to the ongoing problem.

And it's not to say that it isn't needed and a good idea to add those positions now.

We just need to have the conversation about the trade-offs and priorities, because this is as Council Member Herbold and Greg was describing, this work is piling up and is needed.

And so I want to flag that.

And Greg, if you want to add anything to that issue.

But I will also just note that Greg is working to get additional details on the impacts of holding those other civilian positions open in order to pay for these new positions.

But we don't have all the details yet.

Yeah, thank you.

The only thing I would add is that it's it's sort of a two part analysis at this point.

I think you and your staff have have made this clear that it's it's figuring out what one time monies are available now in 2023. but how these positions are gonna be paid for in 2024. And as you've pointed out, it may require, it will require leaving purposeful vacancies in SPD next year, and there would be work that wouldn't be getting done.

And so that's a conversation, as Ali said, that will have to happen.

That's an analysis that is forthcoming and central staff will be able to have that conversation with the council soon.

Okay, let's keep going.

Okay, just one, sorry, one last point.

I'll just, to put a plug in for you, what your previous point, Council Member Mosqueda, related to the fiscal note, a longer term look in the fiscal note on some of these fiscal impacts would help us see how this impacts the long-term sustainability of the budget as you're considering these decisions.

Great, thank you.

And I mean, I also think this is a great example of where if there's positions that are vacant that the department intends to hold vacant that are no longer needed or are not part of the near-term planning, it is okay to abrogate positions in order to put funding into other priorities, either within the department that have been identified or in other areas that the executive and the council may agree upon and I think that that's a good way to ensure budget transparency so that funding is not sitting there tied to positions that a department has already deemed are not going to be filled and not necessary for the current budgetary process.

Another good example of the importance of having that transparent conversation and a budgetary tool of abrogation when a position is no longer needed.

we're looking forward to that.

Thank you.

More to come on this and appreciate that you flagged this in the memo and we look forward to additional information on the number of positions that are sitting vacant that have been funded in last year's budget overall and would love to as we consider this item going forward have a better sense of the fiscal impact.

Not just for this

All right, let's move on.

So, moving on into pre introduction changes, there are 2 of them.

Made by the chair to highlight sworn salary savings, provides a modification and general fund support to office of sustainability and environment for the living hotels ordinance.

So Council Budget Action SBD-201A1 restricts the appropriations in SBD's 2023 adopted budget for sworn personnel salary and benefits to only be used to pay SBD's recruits and sworn officers.

So the introduction, the pre-insurer modification to the proviso would authorize SBD to use sworn officer salary savings to pay unbudgeted sworn officer overtime expenses, as well as up to $815,000 to develop and integrate SPD's new online crime reporting system.

The modification gives SPD flexibility to spend salary savings on these two items, but the but expresses the Council's intent that they stay within their existing budget.

So, they should not spend the funding on the new online reporting system if they think they're going to meet these funds for overtime costs in 2023. Thank you.

Let's take a question from...

Sorry, let me ask you, are you done with that item?

Yes.

Okay, Council Member...

Councilmember Nielsen, I want to recognize that you have your hand up first, but I also wanted to make sure that I recognize if this is related to the pre-introductory changes that Councilmember Herbold discussed with me.

We do have two Councilmembers who brought up similar items.

and are very similar in nature, and we have made our best attempt to try to include language to get at the, I think, cross-section of those policy goals and budgetary goals here.

And Councilmember, I'm going to recognize Councilmember Herbold first just because it relates to the current legislation in the proposal, and then I'll recognize Councilmember Nelson because you had something very similar.

Councilmember Herbold, please go ahead.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I first want to thank you for including my request for this pre-introduction change.

This is a priority that I've been discussing with SPD, Chief Diaz for some time now.

There are updates to the online reporting system that are ongoing and they were able to fund the first phase of that work.

within their current budget.

But I think as many of us know, community members, particularly in the CID, have been requesting language access support in the online reporting system for many, many years now.

If you call the non-emergency line, an automated message in English requests callers to consider filling their reports online.

Although again, the online reporting system is only available in English.

The funds allow for the second phase of this project, which allows for language capabilities in that system upgrade to include the most common languages spoken in Seattle.

And, you know, we just cannot have a situation where constituents are being told to use an online reporting system that is not built to be accessible to residents with limited English proficiency.

We are in doing so just denying them to access to equitable access to public safety.

And everybody deserves access to all of our services.

Really appreciate that the police department has developed this project in phases to allow For funding to be made available for the 2nd, 2nd phase and appreciate the opportunity that this provides a modification provides for that purpose.

Thanks.

Excellent.

Thank you so much.

I'll have some comments on the pre-introductory amendment that we made here with Councilmember Herbold in a minute, but I want to recognize Councilmember Nelson had a similar concept that she had also flagged and I'll turn it to you for any additional comments that you'd like to make on this one and the item that you were thinking about too, Councilmember Nelson.

Sure.

Thank you very much for including this because this is an issue that I started to bring up with central staff in January or February, that it was clear that the proviso imposed by council last year was going to prohibit the use of salary savings on On expenses that could that are really important right now for the for Seattle Police Department, and so it is, it's clear that they were going to be going over their overtime budget, and I'm glad now that it so Councilmember her bold and I came to the same.

place.

Our office has been working with her office as well on this.

But basically, my original idea was just lift the proviso and let them spend the salary savings on emergent needs.

And it turns out that overtime and this reporting tool ended up taking up all that money.

So the end result is the same.

And I just appreciate the work with Council Member Herbold's office and also you putting this in so that we don't have to have this discussion later in the year, because it is very much needed right now.

So I appreciate this going forward.

Thank you so much.

I will start by thanking Councilmember Herbold and thank you Councilmember Nelson as well for flagging the concept.

I wanted to include the language related to overtime expenses for this two-step, multi-step process to create the web-based incidents for the 12 lower incident types.

And phase two of the project is going to integrate the forms, the form to make sure that it is available for the most commonly spoken languages as the council members have described Chinese, Spanish, Vietnamese, Somali, Amharic.

And we included a partial provides a lift because I think it's still important that we ensure that there is the monitoring of SPD spending to ensure that it aligns with the council priorities.

This is now the third year that we have asked for greater.

We have a lot of work to do to make sure that we have a clear and transparent transparency and assurance that the overtime prevention strategies and the partnership opportunities that exist be deployed so that fewer hours are needed for overtime.

and has been monitoring some of those strategies as chair of the committee.

I'm happy to offer deference about the need for this proviso lift and given its cross-section with trying to ensure that there's greater language access and transparency, it seemed like it was worthy to include.

I will say, I continue to have concerns, though, about the pattern of having to additionally authorize overtime.

This is the fourth time we are authorizing additional overtime.

We have been, I think, explicit through policy and our partnership that we want to reduce hours for overtime.

We have done this by fully funding the hiring plan.

The council has tried to ensure that that hiring plan and retention plan has been fully funded.

and so that we don't continue to see overtime hours used at the rates that they are.

And I think in addition to what the chair of public safety has done in the partnership with the department, we want to make sure that we're explicitly clear that we do want these parameters to be adhered to so that overtime spending We have a lot of questions and concerns about how that exacerbates overtime use and looking forward to doing what folks want to see, which is increased community safety, or if those dollars could be spent on other interventions that don't exacerbate the need to use overtime funds.

So those are just some of the things I would say.

Obviously, this is included because as chair, I support the efforts here to try to make sure that we are being flexible on the overtime dollars that are being requested.

There's transparency on the why, and the need for language access is something that I agree with.

but want to underscore I think the ongoing comments that this council has made via the budget statements and the statements of legislative intent that we really collectively want to rein in on those overtime costs.

Yeah, I'm looking forward to seeing the capability of the online reporting tool because this is being able to report incidents more easily will help small businesses just register what what they're experiencing out there and then I just wanted to follow up on something that you just said because I agree that it's untenable to always have to be authorizing more overtime when they go past their budget.

I think that maybe this fall, instead of provisoing salary savings, it might be good to just indicate that salary savings can be used for overtime because it's clear that staffing needs probably won't be solved until, you know, for a few years.

I don't believe that the use of overtime is necessary because of emphasis patrols.

My understanding is that they're, you know, they're still down 400 or so officers in service and what you did.

They're short staffed in every precinct, pretty much every shift.

And so what I'm trying to say is that it's not like they're they're using officers for extra emphasis patrols.

It's just that there are really extreme staffing needs and and allowing them to pay their officers for the work.

Performed, I think, is important.

Thank you.

any additional comments on this item.

Okay well thank you for yes Councilmember Herbold please go ahead.

I just want to say for the I don't disagree with Councilmember Nelson's larger point that the staffing challenges of the department are significantly driving overtime costs but I also just want to say for the public record that emphasis patrols are by definition over time.

So that is what an emphasis patrol is.

It is an officer on over time.

And as we've learned from the staffing reports that we received from SPD, that is one of the drivers among others, including as Council Member Nelson said, the reduction in officers in every precinct.

Thank you so much for that context.

All right, let's move on to the second item that was preempted introductory change.

All right.

So we have $50,000 general fund increase to offset sustainability and environment for the living hotels ordinance, which would support SIPA's work and other departmental costs incurred preparing the living hotels ordinance.

And this ordinance would develop standards ensuring the future of Seattle's hotel industry is built upon sustainable construction and operations.

And the legislation would use the Living Building Challenge and Climate Incentive Agreements as the tools to establish new environmental standards in the lodging sector.

And the increase would reduce the net change to the general fund balance of $359,000 described previously.

It would reduce that to $309,000.

I'm sorry, I see Council Member Nelson's hand.

Is that an old hand?

No, I have a question about this item.

Oh, you do?

Okay.

Well, before we go to questions, I'd like a chance to describe it.

Do you have...

Are you done with your comments?

Yeah.

Okay.

So, let me describe this just a little bit and then I'll take some questions on this.

I am excited about the ability to move forward on a concept that has been in the works for a little over a year, but is being.

It's being currently discussed right now within the departments.

And we just wanted to provide the opportunity to fuel and support some of that work, especially from our community partners that have been working with SDCI and with the.

What is the Environmental Justice Office called?

Office of Sustainability and the Environment.

OSE and SCCI have been in good conversation about some of the work that they have been trying to do to enhance some of our living building policies out there.

I wanted to take a chance to further those conversations.

If funding was a barrier to doing any of the environmental impact assessments that were taking place, we wanted to put in a hold so that.

that the legislative branch was clearly communicating to the executive branch our support for that ongoing work that the departments are doing.

So I want to flag for folks a few things.

One, this is a placeholder, and I anticipate that I will be coming back to you all with some amended language to include for this item based on feedback that we've received from Office of Sustainability and Environment, SCCI, and some community partners.

There's some really good work that is happening currently within SDCI on living building language.

And so if there's a way for us to enhance or further that analysis that they are doing in partnership with Office of Sustainability and Environment, I would be very much interested in making sure that they didn't have any financial barriers to furthering that analysis and policy development.

So number one, this is a hold.

we're going to have to wait until we can get some additional feedback from the executive office about the work that they are currently doing within the departments.

Number two, this is a really exciting, like, groundbreaking policy that they are embarking upon, and as we consider the environmental impacts assessments of looking at living building standards, I want to center us on the fact that this is really about creating opportunity We know, for example, that hotels, when they're created, they have much higher rates of energy use, water use.

And as we authorize additional.

creation of buildings in the city, specifically buildings that have high energy consumption.

It's a good opportunity for us to think about additional standards that we would like to impose to ensure that buildings of the future comply with helping us create a livable future for this planet.

So more to come on this, but there's a number of reasons that hotels specifically are being looked at.

And I also want to recognize that we've received some feedback post I think that's a really good point.

I think that's a really good point.

I think that's a really good point.

I think that's a really good point.

I think that's a really good point.

I think that's a really good point.

I think that's a really good point.

I think that's a really good point.

I think that's a really good point.

I think that's a really good point.

I think that's a really good point.

I think that's a really good point.

I think that's a really good point.

I think that's a really good point.

I think that's a really good point.

I think that's a really good point.

have a foothold in future policy discussions.

So anything that we can do that we can do as the legislative branch and as I as budget chair for pre-introduction can do to ensure that we're taking away any financial barriers is something that I'd be very interested in doing and Again, we will be following up with some modified language based on feedback that we've received from SDCI, OSE, and probably including our partners with public utilities as well.

So I see our public utility chair, public utility chair, right?

That's the city light.

Okay.

City light is you, Councilmember Peterson has public utility.

So more conversation to come there.

So I see two hands.

Councilmember Nelson, Councilmember Herbold, and please recognize that this is still in development with the departments.

Well, it's, it seems, you make it sound like there's a lot of talk going on between departments but I'm vice chair of the sustainability and renters rights committee I'm on land use chair of city light, and I, the first time I've heard about this policy is through some of those form emails coming in so it does seem strange to me that we are allocating money for a SIPA analysis for a policy that hasn't been discussed in committee.

I appreciate that you might know a lot about it.

I'm a big fan of the Living Building Pilot Program, which is an incentive program to achieve sustainability measures that are beyond the LEED standards.

So I am interested in learning more about this.

but it does seem premature to establish an expenditure for a policy that hasn't really been discussed.

Now, this is for central staff.

You noted in the memo that this work is still being discussed and OSC has not yet determined if 50,000 is the right amount of funding for this work.

And I think you mentioned that they haven't discussed taking on this work with the executive, which may mean that this funding will go unspent or repurposed for other uses.

Again, talking about money that, you know, transparency and budgeting and making sure that when we allocate money, it's actually getting spent.

So is it premature to be funding this work given those factors as well?

Well, thank you for the question.

And I would say that there is work that's currently going on within the department.

So the fact that it hasn't been discussed in various committees might be because it's work from previous years.

SDCI is currently in the process of looking at their living building project requirements.

I think that it is a good idea for us to ensure that as they look at enhancing and updating their current living building language, that they work in partnership with OSE to do so.

Those two departments work together often and we have been in conversation with some of the department directors to make sure that folks were aware that this is something that we would like to further.

Again, This is funding for an analysis, so not a directive on policy development at this point, just the analysis of if we could do the environmental impact assessments that I think would help create greener buildings, more sustainability in the future.

and happy to have a conversation with any of the folks that you work with in the department.

We had not yet reached out to City Light, for example, on this, more we're contemplating water usage and environmental sustainability and SDCI.

So happy to talk more about City Light as well.

Is it going to be an incentive program or is it mandated and what does it have to do with operations and does it impact existing hotels?

There is an existing building, living buildings project language that is currently at SDCI.

So it would be building upon that.

So it's an incentive program.

I am not directing them to come up with, I'm not directing them to come up with the policy.

We want to do an environmental impact assessment.

Let me just flag that we are still in conversations with the department, but I really think that the time was like yesterday, 10 years ago, to do anything that we can for the sustainability of our planet.

And as our city is allowing for greater density to come in and building hotels and other buildings, we should be looking with urgency about how we incorporate this language.

we're not going to be able to do that.

We're not going to be able to do that.

Given the midyear was happening the opportunity to include to further this concept.

I wanted to flag it here have done so in a transparent way will be coming back with language based on discussion with the departments to see what else we can do to further the concept here just to do the analysis.

I'm going to turn it to councilmember

really pleased that we are exploring this area.

There is an international green hotel association, but there's no certification of green hotels under that program.

And they say, I mean, right on their website, they say there's no certification because of the expense associated with certification.

I just think it's really important to guard against greenwashing.

And that's why I too am a big fan of the Seattle Living Building Program.

There is certification for that.

And Council Member Nelson is correct, there is an incentive built in.

Uh, for that program, but there's also again, there's also certification that these buildings are actually meeting the standards rather than just.

customers having to take the hotel's word for their participation in these programs.

So really appreciate the movement towards something that is confirming that hotels that are being built in our city are living up to these standards.

Thanks.

Thank you.

Are there hotels that have signed on to the living building?

What are you referring to, Council Member Herbold?

Are you saying that there are some hotels that have signed on or that they are saying that they are achieving sustainability, but they aren't?

I'm saying that there is a green hotel association and there are standards identified by people who are members of this association, but there is no certification.

that these hotels have met these standards, unlike the green building program for here in Seattle, which includes a certification process.

OK, well, maybe I maybe there can be a description of the living hotel proposal before we go forward on this, that would be helpful for me.

Well, thanks.

Thanks for flagging those questions and and my my interest is always in trying to include as much as possible before the amendment process so that people have extra time to look at the direction that I'm I'm interested in going and I think that it complements the work that the city has done, as Councilmember Herbold noted, existing policies out there.

This policy concept has been actually part of the city's work over the past few years, and I think it's at the stage where an environmental impact assessment, ensuring that the SEPA analysis can move forward, is great.

So much work has been done.

So let's move forward.

Let's take away any budgetary restrictions that might slow down the process.

That's really my goal here.

And just to provide additional context here, this is really an opportunity just to ensure that there's momentum around the ability for our city to move forward on this environmental review, enhance the policy and the program development work that's already in place.

Given the feedback that we've received to look at the existing living building standards within SDCI, my hope is that we can accelerate that conversation and really ensure that as we talk about downtown recovery, as we talk about economic recovery, that we do so in a way that doesn't look like returning to the status quo for a number of reasons, but specifically for the health of our planet.

looking at how we're supporting policy concepts with funding that allow for more equitable and greener development and a greener economy.

Through that vein, I'm excited that we're having this conversation.

We'll get more information from the departments about the work that they've already done on the living building project, the concept of incorporating this into the analysis or the process that the departments are going through with how they would enhance and expand that work.

And if folks are saying like, I don't get it, why would we do this?

Let's just look at a few facts here.

We know that hotels, for example, contribute 8% of the global carbon emissions.

We want to increase tourism and bring folks to the city.

And we also want to ensure that we're doing so in a green way that promotes climate justice.

So that's one area.

We also know that there is a large number of environmental benefits of this decision to help spur more eco-conscious travelers to come to Seattle.

Think about using this as a draw to this city.

We know that 83% of travelers plan or prioritize where they go based on sustainability in their travel choices, and 69% of travelers expect and want more sustainable options.

So we can do a few things.

Summarize those stats that I just said, share with you the source, and we can summarize the work that the city is already doing on the living building standards while we have further conversations with them about how they would like to see this policy enhanced.

So more to come.

I'm just really excited about the ability to further this work and if there are any financial barriers to try to take those away.

Well, it seems like there are, again, SIPA analysis on what is what I would like to understand better.

So the baseline that we are analyzing in a description of the program as it would be implemented at the city would be helpful going forward.

Okay, great.

We'll include that in a one pager as well.

Okay, let's keep going.

Chair Mosqueda, I just want to do a time check because we are just getting...

Oh, shoot.

It's already noon.

Yes.

Okay.

We probably have another, you know, 20 minutes or so of content.

So depending on your questions, that might be over or under.

So just check it in.

Let me ask my colleagues because we have this item on August 2nd as well.

Are folks running up to a time?

Yeah.

Councilmember Nielsen.

for my colleague who weighed in.

We are going to go ahead and ask for central staff to summarize here.

We didn't get to the downtown activation plan though, and I know that's important to you too, Council Member.

Do you want to do those questions and then we'll go?

I'm not able to see where other people are on their time crunch.

I just had a noon.

Okay.

I could probably cover the downtown activation plan and I'm seeing nods on the screen.

Thank you for that.

Let's go Okay, so this is a list of policy considerations and issues identified by central staff.

So in the memo we described proposed spending in the mid year and administrative changes of this plan.

and focus on the proposed spending.

Well, I won't focus on the proposed spending, but the memo includes three pages of information on the subject.

So starting on page 12. So in April this year, the mayor announced the initial components of his downtown activation plan, which is a new initiative to revitalize and reimagine Seattle's downtown.

And to reiterate the point made in the memo, any spending on The downtown activation plan today should be considered in the context of the projected annual operating deficit in the general fund of about $224 million beginning in 2025 and the trade-offs of reprioritizing existing resources.

So the executive has indicated that any new spending in 2024 on this initiative will likely be funded by the Jumpstart Fund.

as part of the economic revitalization work, which has a reserve in finance general.

So since we're likely to see new appropriations for this in the mayor's proposed 2024 mid-biennium budget adjustment, this would be a good opportunity for the council to provide policy directions for the initiative.

And again, I plan on covering the new spending in detail, but I won't do that in the interest of time.

And since I touched on it earlier, but the information is in the memo.

But in addition to new spending, using existing appropriation authority included in the 2023 budget, the executive has redirected $1.8 million of existing general fund appropriation authority in the budget.

force SPUs to increase graffiti abatement services, which is an 87% increase on graffiti spending compared to the $2.1 million program for graffiti control in the adopted budget.

And this is identical to an earlier proposal that the council removed from the 2023 budget.

So in the 2023 proposed budget, the executive proposed a $1.2 million increase and three FTEs for an expanded graffiti control and abatement program.

And then during the deliberations last fall, the council approved a council budget action that removed the proposed funding and new positions for this.

So the supplemental reverses that decision and advances the proposed expansion of the graffiti abatement program.

And I'll just note that because the contract with Upland Northwest is already executed and the positions have already been filled.

Council options are limited.

Can I cover the other items on here real quick before we order?

Yeah, that sounds good.

Great.

So, 1.1Million dollars is proposed to increase the next thought to complete a delivery assessment of the center city street up street car connector to update cost estimates and develop financial plan for the project.

which is $250,000 of general fund and $805,000 of Transportation Benefit District fund.

So if this is not a priority for the Council, the Council could redirect these funds for other purposes.

Just want to note that Transportation Benefit District funds can only be used for certain transportation expenditures.

We already covered the SPV position vacancy savings, but I'll just reiterate that additional general fund budget appropriations will be required if or when existing vacancies are filled alongside the newly added positions, which could increase the projected $224 million general fund deficit, which is exactly the point that you were making earlier about positions, Chair Mosqueda.

For the Jumpstart Fund, so due to continuing revenue shortfalls caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2023 adopted general fund budget relies on temporary support from the Just Start Fund to balance.

And in Ordinance 126719, which provides for the temporary backfill in the 2023 budget, requires that Jumpstart transfer be reduced by the amount of any 2022 general fund ending balances as authorized by ordinance or state law and plan reserve amounts.

So the general fund balance amount was $34 million.

So the general fund financial plan information provided by CBO it may suggest that executive intends to administratively reduce the 23 transfer from the jumpstart fund to the general fund by an additional $4.7 million for a total of 38.7 million.

So the council could legislate the reduction required by ordinance 126719, which is 34 million or the higher amount the $38.7 million to ensure that the funds are not used for other purposes.

And this covers everything for the mid-year supplemental bill.

The next slide will be mid-year grants.

All right.

Thanks so much.

I'm conscious of folks' time, but I do want to take some questions.

Council Member Peterson.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

I haven't spoken the whole committee, so I did want to say thank you to central staff.

This is where, I mean, central staff shines all year long, but when it comes to the budget, you really shine and help us in our separation of powers vis-a-vis the executive branch.

So thank you so much for this exhaustive analysis.

I appreciate also when you're talking about the deficit that you're talking about.

That it's actually 2025 it's the general fund it's not now it's not the whole, it's not the whole budget that, so we'll have some discussions I'm sure in the fall, especially about that issue.

So in reviewing the more than 150 requested changes in this midyear budget supplemental, I realize there's a lot of work that's been done by our city budget office and the various departments.

I appreciate that.

I want to say off the bat, again, I do support nearly all of the proposals of the downtown activation plan.

I support the expansion of graffiti abatement.

There is, however, one requested change in the approved budget that stands out to me like a sore budget thumb.

Item 7.6 is that proposal from the executive to spend $1 million to study the expensive First Avenue streetcar proposal, also known as the center city connector.

which has been recently rebranded as the cultural connector.

And as I've highlighted previously, I'm concerned that the center city connector streetcar proposal is becoming a mobile money pit because it would cost more to build than originally budgeted, cost more to operate than originally anticipated.

And now potentially it would cost a million dollars to study it again.

And when people wanna get from point A to point B on that single downtown arterial, They can use a bus, they can use light rail, there are several other means of travel.

And when we have so many other transportation needs across the city, including safety projects such as Vision Zero projects to protect pedestrians, I just don't understand why we would spend another dime to study What would essentially tear up that street for two years, and the project would end up being a downtown disruptor.

This item 7.6 requesting over $1 million for the study.

It's a project that's been investigated by the federal government, it's nearly $95 million short of meeting its funding goals.

So even if we were to successfully if City Hall were to successfully convince other levels of government that this single streetcar on a single arterial is a top transportation priority.

I believe this expensive redundant project would tear up that key downtown street for two years.

It's just not the best use of a million dollars for our transportation needs.

I'm hoping that we can use our city charter authority to amend the ordinance and potentially redirect those funds to transportation safety projects, crosswalks, sidewalks, and other things to reduce speeds on arterials.

I look forward to collaborating with anybody else who'd be interested in such an amendment to redeploy those dollars toward pedestrian safety.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Peterson.

Council Member Nelson.

Well, I feel like I should defer to the chair of transportation on this, but I did have a question about the center city connector, which is.

If council does approve this funding, are there tools the council could use to require that outreach to businesses along First Avenue be included in the assessment?

Because I do think that the, as Council Member Peterson just mentioned, that there will be significant construction impacts.

And when I've heard talk of this project, there hasn't been an acknowledgement of of those impacts on the small businesses or on the Pike Place market.

And so I just would like to make sure that that outreach is conducted.

And ideally, if there could be ways of helping to fund the businesses that are impacted if this project goes forward.

Thank you so much.

Maybe we can take that offline and we can talk more about if there's a partnership or additional directive there.

Council Member Herbold, please go ahead.

Thank you.

First, I just want to signal my interest in working with you, Council Member Peterson, on increasing funding for pedestrian safety projects.

Appreciate your reference to the Center City Streetcar as mobile money pit.

I think there are many better uses in pedestrian safety, I think is one of the primary challenges of our city right now, as we heard in your committee yesterday, specifically related to very necessary equity investments in some of the parts of our city where we see the most Pedestrian fatalities bike fatalities that are also intended to be areas that receive.

equity investments, but yet despite the very passionate and effective advocacy of many members of the public, as well as the District 2 Council Member, those investments aren't being made.

So really appreciate you beginning this conversation, Council Member Peterson.

I did have a quick question about the use of funds from that the council allocated for the Northeast and Southwest Library branch investments that the council first included in the 2022 budget.

It's caught up in a spending hold last year, and then we allocated, of course, JumpStart dollars for that purpose.

I just get clarification to understand, Improvements to those libraries going to be made despite the fact that the dollars are being swapped dollars that were intended for that purpose.

Council member Herbold, our colleague Eric McConaughey is on the line, so I'm going to invite him to try to help answer that question, but thank you Eric.

Hello council members, thanks for the question.

In consulting with folks in CBO and also reviewing the Seattle Public Library reports, the report to their own board, Monthly, those 2 branches have air conditioning projects that are underway.

They're looking at, I believe, completing them in this year.

There are costs there that are yet to be finalized, but look to be increasing.

I just want to put these air conditioning projects in the context that the appropriation we're talking about is to the major maintenance.

CIP project for the library that would encompasses lots of other things, including air conditioning the other branches.

In 2021, the library got a report from a consultant covering, I think, pretty much all the branches about air conditioning and set priorities.

We know as of last fall that the first five or so of those priorities of different branches for air conditioning were considered either funded or underway, that sort of thing.

They said at the time that with the money that was proposed to the mayor's budget, they would take up the sort of next five and move right on through to try to accommodate better air conditioning across the board.

Across all the branches, so the short answer is.

It looks like it's underway.

It looks like there's some funding sources to fund those 2 projects.

Oh, I forgot to mention.

They're also in the running for federal emergency management agency grants to fund.

These things are yet to find out hopefully pretty soon.

So, considering the number of air conditioning projects that could be funded, considering that it's a rolling.

A series of air conditioning parties that the library would like to take care of and considering that female money is coming in.

I'm a little bit hard-pressed to say how is the library doing for all their conditioning, because I think that's a multi-year process.

For these two projects, it looks like they're underway.

I will note that there's a difference of about $400,000 between what was originally appropriated in general funds by the council and the $1.7 million that we're talking about now.

So there's at least a little bit of a shortfall there.

Maybe I'll stop there.

I threw a lot of numbers at you, and I'm trying to be concise, but this is one of those things where you crack it open, you start to find more details.

So I'll stop there.

My question is just, I care about the larger effort to install air conditioners in all of the libraries, but I think my question for our purposes is just simply, are the two projects that we funded for two years, are they fully funded.

I appreciate knowing that they're both underway.

I really need to know whether or not, I'm sure Council Member Peterson would like to know as well, whether or not they have sufficient funds to complete those projects in hand, not promise, but guaranteed funds.

My understanding is the answer is that they're looking for the grant funding that in the latest report that I read that is for the library board, that they're looking for some other funding to finish these projects because costs have escalated.

I'm just trying to put that in the context of the council's decisions for funding to this project last year, which was to pull some money out of that project.

So, I'm just sort of trying to put the context of your overall policy kind of we made a reduction ourselves.

Yeah, I'm trying to be.

Kind or polite or.

Yeah, I mean, we made the reduction because we were limited in our ability to make whole a budget hold that we didn't have any control over.

So, I think we, we did the best we could, given that the full funding had been scooped in the previous year.

but definitely appreciate that.

Madam Chair, I have one more question and I want to flag two amendments.

I'll be so quick.

I'll first flag the two amendments that I'm interested in, understand fully that all amendments must be self-balancing.

I have received a request from the Office of the Inspector General, for a half-time funding for a communications and engagement specialist to help fulfill their mission to meaningfully apply a racial equity lens to its work.

I've got more detail about that position, happy to share.

Secondly, I think folks are aware that in the mayor's April substance use disorder emergency order, The executive identified a need for a post-OD treatment facility.

The Seattle Fire Department is reversing overdoses of people in public places and then leaving people in the place where they cared for them, outdoors.

And so there's a need to find a place to transport people to for a short term.

And this is a goal that is identified.

There is a potential partnership with the county.

And I just want to flag my interest in finding some funds for a capital contribution from the city to match that of the county.

Then lastly, my question, I understand that the mid-year supplemental includes a $530,000 transfer within the Human Services Department from underspend in the RHA contract.

I understand it's supposed to come from TAP and TAP has been entirely funded with one time underspend thus far.

So just trying to figure out where the underspend actually comes from.

And I'm happy to take the answer to that question offline if we don't have it now.

Thanks.

Okay.

Thank you so much.

Thanks for flagging those interested to learn more.

And I have kept you all very long today.

So I will attempt to try to wrap up here.

I want to flag a question that I'll be following up with central staff on and that is related to the I'm not aware of a funding source for the downtown activation plan.

I'm concerned around initial analysis that the public hygiene budget is going towards that.

how we can ensure that the hygiene budget is still protected.

The second thing that I'm very interested in, and I know that this is probably not a surprise to folks, but regarding some of the comments that are made in a memo and was shared here by Eden as well in our presentation, I am very interested in ensuring that there is that transparency and accountability for the Jump Start Fund that I mentioned earlier this morning.

We want to, I think, ensure that there is clear direction that the jumpstart transfer, it should allow for us to do the jumpstart transfer in the general fund in 2023 in accordance with the flexibility funding that we authorize.

And I would like central staff to draft language and direction so that we can amend the policies to ensure that there is clarity that moving forward at a minimum, the true up happens mid-year, not just at the end of the year, and that the 2020 estimates that we had codified in statute according to our unanimously passed spend plan, that those dollar amounts are also codified moving forward and inflated annually for inflation as we intended.

So we talked a lot about the 2020 spend plan in last year's budget.

I think one way to ensure that there is a minimum threshold that gets The other thing I would like to point out is that a lot of the money.

Spent towards these priorities is to codify that dollar amount in the 2020 dollars and then adjust for that annually so that is probably all able to be fit within a supplemental budget this would be a corresponding legislation that I'd love to see worked up to

Yeah, very briefly.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

I just want to note for, in terms of the amendment process, yes, we need to know how they're balanced.

And if you have specific ideas of where to cut funds, we invite those to you.

But I also want to recognize, given the previous conversations, the council's at a disadvantage at understanding where there might be savings happening in departments right now.

So I just want to, in terms of getting information to central staff about your amendment ideas, We will work with you on figuring out how to balance those.

Let us know what you are looking for.

We will talk with the executive to help us find where their savings are, given we don't have access to that data.

So don't, please get us your ideas.

We will work with you.

We will do our best to figure out ways to help you achieve your mid-year budget priorities.

Thank you.

So with that, I'm going to turn it back over to you.

We will follow up on this fiscal note enhancements and budget transparency item and if there is urgency on the HSD 2023 annual action plan, we may have that on the agenda as well.

Okay, that concludes our long meeting for today.

So we will say thank you to everyone and meeting is adjourned.