Select Budget Committee 10/13/23 Session II

Well, good afternoon, everyone.

Thank you so much for coming back to the Seattle City Council Select Budget Committee meeting.

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

The committee will reconvene after recess and come back to order.

Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll on the attendance?

Council Member Herbold?

Here.

Council Member Juarez?

Here.

Council Member Lewis?

Present.

Council Member Morales?

Thank you.

Council Member Morales?

Council Member Nelson.

Present.

Council Member Peterson.

Present.

Council Member Sawant.

Council Member Strauss.

Present.

And Chair Mosqueda.

Present.

Seven, present.

Thank you so much.

And I think that Council Member Sawant is in the room, at least in the Zoom, and as well as Council Member Lewis.

I'm here, Madam Chair.

Okay, great.

We will note other council members as they join us.

Thank you very much, Madam Clerk.

The meeting is reconvened.

And thank you to Anne Gorman for beginning this conversation.

We do have two topics now that we'd like to cover this afternoon.

And that includes the final components of the Care Department, the Community Safety and Communication Center, And the care department that is being set up, we got to slide 2, right?

And.

All right, let's keep going.

We will go ahead and take additional comments as we get through and thanks to our.

Executive partners as well for dialing back in and being part of this discussion and Gorman from central stuff.

I'll hand it right back over to you.

Thank you very much Madam Chair.

I'm going to be prepared to step with purpose through the rest of the slides in this presentation, leaving plenty of time for SPD.

Council members are invited to follow up with me on any aspect of this presentation that we don't get to in the discussion today.

Central staff identified only 1 issue for councils consideration and that is the request to retain 600, 7000 dollars in unprogrammed funds to support the intended unification and alignment of existing city programs or put another way moving existing bodies of work from where they are currently performed into the care department.

This work is currently underway with the sole participation of city staff and under the leadership of the mayor's office.

It is possible that a specific expenditure will be identified later in 2024 and I want to note that the goal of the planning effort is to identify adjacencies among current city programs that would ultimately move into the CSCC, but CSCC staff do acknowledge that it could also find redundancies, which would, which could lead to layoffs and option C here is intended to give council members a visibility into that possibility.

Any, if there are no questions, I'll move right to the options.

Options for council members.

Options for council members include revise of the funding requiring council approval of a spending plan, redirect some or all of the funding to other council priorities, create a statement of legislative intent, requesting a report on findings from the planning effort or no change.

Okay, great.

I see Councilmember Nelson and then Councilmember Herbold.

Councilmember Nelson?

I apologize.

I have a question about the following slide.

Okay, no problem.

We'll get you in the queue for that.

Councilmember Herbold?

Thank you so much.

I just wanted to flag the interest that I had been sort of identifying for the Human Services Department as a potential sly because of the fact that many of the community violence prevention and response programs that are being contemplated to be moved over to the care department are currently housed in HSD.

And the idea that we had considered was a report from the Human Services Department on the results of their gap analysis that they've been doing working with King County Department of Human Services on their community safety and well-being recommendations.

There's a regional leadership group on gun violence that King County has been leading.

Electeds from Seattle as well as other folks in the region are on it, myself, Mayor Harrell's on it.

And there are recommendations that came out of that leadership group working in deep collaboration with community providers and partners on the front line.

And so they came up with something called the Community Safety and Well-Being Recommendations.

And we're, I think, interested in assessment of the gaps in the city's offerings, whether or not they live over at HSD or over at HSD, and where county offerings complement or duplicate the city's.

And so the analysis would be mostly of HSD and county health programs.

Some of those programs are, again, programs that are being considered to move over to the care department.

So I'm just wondering if this body of work could be done in conjunction with the slide that is recommended under option C.

I am not sure what, I don't, I don't, I'm not able to answer that question right now because I don't have a sense of

The degree of alignment between the project you just described and the potential scope of projects and programs that could move into the, into the care department.

I think there's, there's a lot of overlap with the.

community safety and well being recommendations, but there could be something that the mayor's office is is currently thinking about as as a candidate to move that's outside the boundaries of that previous program.

But I will, I will do some work and and follow up and.

let you know.

All right.

Thank you.

The HSD slide is really focused on the Seattle Community Safety Initiative programs.

And it's my understanding that those are also the programs that are being contemplated to be moved over to the care department.

So that's why I was thinking that maybe there's some overlap there, but I would appreciate some further looks into that.

Thank you.

I just want to caution folks from using the chat because it doesn't get captured for the viewing public.

and doesn't get captured for public records.

Amy, would you like to add what you just added into the chat?

Yes, I'm trying not to talk more.

I was just saying that Tanya Kim and HSD, Jeff, the folks that are involved in that are really close collaborators and a lot of the recommendations currently that are informing this slide are coming from HSD in context of that county initiative.

It's a very good point, Council Member Herbold.

Council Member Herbold, any follow-up?

OK, thank you.

I want to thank central staff for flagging this item on the memo that you created on page two.

Thank you.

And it says, quote, the twenty twenty two adopted budget for the CSCC included one hundred and fifty thousand for planning study that would have helped the CSCC develop policies, identify gaps as an independent agency and plan for the integration of civilian response and or alternative dispatch methods.

The executive did not use the funding for this purpose.

I'm concerned about when language gets included in a budget and a clear directive that gets codified by signature of the executive.

We should have an anticipation that it gets used that way.

So I'm concerned about this being another example of where funding doesn't get spent on the directed purpose for it and look forward to hearing more about additional safeguards.

Maybe that central staff has.

for how we can ensure that that type of pre-planning happens.

Because now looking at the $607,000, it is a higher amount and I worry about lost time and ways that our prior estimate could have appreciated or anticipated some of the planning.

Look forward to hearing more about the proposal in here and working with the Chair of Public Safety on some of the comments that she just made as well.

Let's go to the next slide.

All right, just to restate a lot of today's conversation so far, here is a sentence for council members to savor.

The CSCC's 24 proposed budget adjustments includes ongoing funding for a group of community responders.

This dispatch will begin on October 19th.

Best of luck to the new city staff in this important work.

And following up on Director Handy's remarks just before the break, Council added one time funding for a dual dispatch pilot in the 2023 adopted budget that was CBA CSCC 2B1 and that funding provided the lift finally to reify and implement this response.

There is 1.5 million included in the CSCC's proposed budget.

For this response, which will now be a permanent part of the city's public safety program.

There's also another 549,000 added for positions that will help grow the department.

Council member.

I think that was an old hand, but I did just want to say I appreciate and you mentioning the fact that the city council provided funding for this last year.

I do want to.

We've actually earmarked funding for the prior to 2 years.

1st, we put it in finance general.

I think then we were thinking it was going to go to triage 1 and then when that idea was was scrapped.

we've now allocated it to CSCC for the new iteration.

I only mention it to just say that the council has elevated this as a budget priority for several years now and just really saying so in the spirit of celebrating where we're at today.

Thank you so much.

We can move to the next slide if there are no questions.

The next contextual budget issue is call center staffing and particularly the call takers and dispatchers.

These staff members make sure that responders arrive at the scene fully aware of what's going on and how they can help.

And there has been recognition since at least 2016 that the city did not have enough of these positions to consistently meet call answering standards.

And to provide the staff with a good work life balance, including access to both mental health and training resources.

Currently, there is a mandatory overtime requirement of 8 hours a week for call center staff.

Council created a statement of legislative intent or sly in the 2023 adopted budget, and it asked the to expand on that 2016 study and make recommendations about the appropriate staffing level at the call center.

Uh, staff did this work in a very methodical way and recommended the addition of 33 call takers and dispatchers, but the proposed budget only adds 3 in this area.

Council member.

Thank you.

Um, so I notice, um.

and that there isn't an option developed for this contextual budget issue and that might be just in recognition of our current budget reality, particularly our budget reality as relates to ongoing general fund dollars.

I appreciate that CSCC care for 9-1-1 is Leaning more on the revenue associated with the, the excise fee and recognize that.

I believe from your paper that it's not as if there's.

unexpended funds there that we could use to add more staff to make sort of a bigger bite on the 30% increase in call center FTE recommendations.

But I'm wondering, is there perhaps some wisdom in a Another sly asking the executive how or asking for their, their good thinking on how to over the next couple of years address that needed 30% increase.

I think that's a slide that makes a lot of sense.

I think that the slide.

would probably note that funding would need to be identified to create these positions and to support them on an ongoing basis.

And on the next slide, I'll provide some information about why that is not going to be possible by means of the 9-1-1 excise tax revenues.

Thank you.

Yeah, I believe I recall not to steal your thunder.

You're going to go into a lot more detail, but that's a.

Potentially depleting resource while the costs.

Grow for the for the positions, but I would like to to be able to think about a road map for how we get to a better place with.

The the.

large amounts of mandatory overtime that historically call takers have been having to take and the impacts on their morale.

Thank you so much.

Yeah, I'd be interested in working with you on that as well, Council Member Herbold.

And then you mentioned that revenue source at some point and really appreciate that there's an interest in the outcome.

And if it's not this revenue source at this moment, then how do we accomplish that now?

So look forward to working with you on that slide.

Amy, did you have something to clarify on that piece before I go to Council Member Nelson?

Yes, I just wanted to point out that there's 2 significant technologies that we've invested in, and we don't know yet the impact on staffing and outputs.

So one is Nice Call Recorder, another is QWERTY.

We know that that's going to defray burden.

And there's also a strategy right now that's hyper-focused on retention, on culture, well-being, retaining the folks that we have.

And so in part, I prefer not to make more staffing recommendations until we know the impact in the first two quarters of next year.

I hear great things about QWERTY from the fire department call center staff.

Council member Nelson, thank you very much.

So I'll just basically state my, my position and that is that I, I. We need to have enough people to answer the phones and and dispatch whoever is sent to respond to a call.

So I'm just looking at the numbers and it, if my.

Understanding is correct there.

There's 2.5Million for call takers and dispatchers that 2.5 includes 3 new dispatcher positions 1Million in citywide adjustments and 1.1Million for improved staffing levels.

And so I just want to make sure that that's.

That that's enough because the basic call taking and dispatch services are still the core function of the department.

And I just, I want to make sure that that we're not peanut buttering a finite amount of resources.

I'm not.

I am not suggesting an issue identification option here.

I just am wanting some assurance that we are.

Really being mindful of of the staffing needs, given this slide also that we're not increasing it as much as the slide response says to so, and I might have a follow up if you.

Oh, yeah, I remember.

Has it been contemplated that there could be what once people know about the about.

the care department and it's in its broad mission or its mission that the call volume will significantly increase because people are aware that there could be responses to really important things going on out there.

So how has that been figured into the staffing plan going forward?

Ann, please go ahead.

Council Member Nelson, I think that you are looking at some change requests that were not included in the CSCC's ultimate budget proposal that came to us via CBO.

A file we received was misnamed, and I will follow up with you to make sure that you have only those proposals that are included in the budget.

If I'm recalling correctly, the total cost of the three call center position ads is $355,000.

And I don't have any information on an analysis of how call volume might increase once people are aware that there is this new response available.

I will happily hand that over to executive staff.

Thanks.

Anything to add, Amy?

Yes, a couple other implications right now.

On the calls coming in, we're looking at crisis call diversion.

So when calls come in, how do we redirect to 988 as appropriate?

That is new.

And then also might we use some of our mental health professional time to sit right on the floor and take shifts as well.

We've got six folks who are trained to do that.

That's the Durham model.

Folks rotate in one week a month.

They're co-responders.

And there are many benefits from that.

The basis of the recommendations is a 2016 Kimball study.

And what I've learned is that a lot has changed.

since that time.

So I'm very defensive of 9-1-1.

I do not like mandatory overtime.

It's bad for morale and it's expensive.

And so I'll be quick to make a recommendation once we have something accurate to recommend.

But there's a lot changing right now.

And Jake Adams, the deputy over 9-1-1, and then the Dispatchers Guild president, Devante, are working really hard on some innovative practices that should really improve our ability to facilitate calls efficiently.

So just more to come, just lots of things changing right now.

Okay, thank you.

Okay, let's keep going and.

Sorry, next slide please.

Okay.

Uh, the last contextual budget issue goes back to that 4.9Million dollar budget increase.

Uh, this is supported by 911 excise tax revenues, which are restricted in what they can pay for as the 1st bullet point summarizes.

And there's a lot more detail about these revenues in the overview memo.

I also invite anybody to follow up with me for more information before this year.

These revenues were used on an as needed basis for unbudgeted hardware software or training needs to or to address under budgeted salary costs, which support the call taking function in the 2023 adopted budget council funded to call taker positions.

on an ongoing basis with these revenues.

And that was really intended to be a first step towards using these resources to mitigate the longtime staffing deficit that we just talked about.

As an update, no more such steps will be possible.

That is because starting in 2024, the CSCC will essentially sweep all of the annual 9-1-1 excise tax revenues into its base budget, where they will support call taker position costs in the aggregate.

This is about 32.5 FTE worth of position costs in 2024, but every year it'll be incrementally fewer because position costs increase and this revenue is not expected to increase.

This use is consistent with the restrictions on the funding source since the total annual cost of the call taking function is much more than the revenues will provide.

but it is a significant new policy for the CSCC.

And the CSCC's rationale for this shift is that this use of $4 million for ongoing operations means that there will be an offsetting $4 million in unrestricted general fund made available to support the department's growth.

And this, this makes a kind of logical sense, 4,000,000, 4,000,000 on this side, 4,000,000 on this side.

But it also, it implicitly makes an assumption about counsel's future budget priorities for general fund resources.

And I will also add that the 2024 budget proposal includes 1 time use of 900,000 dollars of excise tax revenue account balance.

This resource will not be available in 2025, and this use of funds contributes directly to the overall 2025 general fund imbalance.

That was the subject of Tom Mikesell's presentation on Wednesday.

And the conversation before the break also identified all the ways that the new care department could expand in the future, increasing its service to vulnerable populations.

And that expansion too, is 100% contingent on the availability of sustainable funding.

Okay, Council Member Nelson.

So, just to clarification, and I was referring to page 154 of the budget in the, in the care department, and it does say increase operating costs for improving improved staffing levels.

1.1Million.

So, you mentioned before it wasn't an approved change request or something, but that is in there.

And so I, maybe we can follow up and make sure that that, you know, how many positions that would cover so that we're making sure that they are.

That there are people that answer the phones.

I will I will do that.

Thank you.

Thanks.

Any additional questions on this.

Okay, I'm not seeing any additional questions.

And that's it.

That's all I have.

Thank you all very much.

Well, thank you for carrying over an additional 25 minutes.

I'm sorry.

You had to wait through the recess folks who were on the line earlier.

Um, good to be with you this morning and this afternoon if there's nothing else for the good of the order on this topic, we'll say, thank you to our central staff and executive members who've been part of this discussion and we will go right into the last item on our agenda.

Okay, let's go directly into SPD and then we'll conclude with any additional departments that folks wanted to flag.

I mentioned that we would come back to that this afternoon, but instead of inserting it here, let's continue with the flow and the theme of public safety and go right on in.

Madam Chair, that'd be me.

Madam Clerk, could you please call or read into the record agenda item number three?

Agenda item three, the Seattle Police Department.

Okay, wonderful.

Thank you.

And as you see on the screen, we have Greg Doss who is here with us in addition to our deputy director of central staff.

Thanks for being here with us.

And Greg is going to walk through the full presentation this afternoon.

In addition to Greg for technical feedback and department level questions, we have chief Adrian Diaz and Angela Sochi from Seattle Police Department.

Director Julie Dingley from the city budget's office and Tim Burgess, who is our deputy mayor from the mayor's office.

Thanks for staying with us here.

Council member Herbold, I'd invite you to offer any additional comments before we turn it over to central staff.

Thank you, Madam budget chair, just just some opening remarks don't want to.

Start on on a down note, but but I'm going to, although.

General crime and.

General violent crime across types has been the lowest that's been since 2021. We are all too aware that homicides and shots fired are up already exceeding last year's rates.

And last year was a year that was already a heartbreaking record breaker with 57 deaths in 2022 as compared to 63 homicides this year.

As Deputy Mayor Burgess's memo notes, although black and African American individuals make only.

6.8% of the population in Seattle.

They account for 52.5% of total homicide victims and 55.6% of non-fatal shooting victims.

And I know that we all agree with Mayor Harrell as stated in the aforementioned memo that addressing crime that disproportionately affects communities of color is imperative.

As a reminder to the viewing public and to set context about our upcoming discussion about SPD staffing, the council has robustly funded recruitment and retention plans, hiring bonuses, and fully funded SPD's hiring plans in each 2021, 2022, and 2023. Nevertheless, funding isn't solving the hiring and retention challenge yet.

Not here, not in other cities.

We might see gains.

I know we have some bright spots coming out of hiring.

The Police Executive Research Forum reported Years ago, that meant with more than 500 officers from 2019 to 2021, resignations in those large departments increased by 43%.

And in departments with more than 500 officers from that same time period, 2019 to 2021, retirements increased by 24%.

And in those same size departments for that same time period, hiring decreased by 5%.

A new study out of the same organization, the Police Executive Research Forum, shows that hiring seems to be picking up as responding agencies reported hiring more sworn officers.

than in previous years, but agencies are still losing officers faster than they can hire new ones.

So total sworn staffing in cities is continuing to decline.

Resignations are still increasing and responding agencies report nearly 50% more resignations in 2022 than before the pandemic in 2019. Police serve as a vital function in our public safety network, responding to the most dangerous calls, putting their lives on the line for the safety of our city's residents, workers and visitors, and policing is changing.

Seattle is on the front lines of that change, building a police department of guardians, not warriors.

I know my office has been participating in some of the micro-community policing plan dialogues and have met recruits that my staff report to show that they are excited to be part of that change.

The challenge of our city is how we continue to innovate policing and police accountability.

and improve community relationships while recognizing that there is a national police officer shortage.

We need to support police staff, sworn and unsworn, and part of that support is refining responsibilities, supporting programs and initiatives that reduce the number of calls we're sending them to, stretching them thin across the city and programs like we discussed in the morning session.

With that, I'm happy to hand it over to the central staff.

Excellent.

Thank you very much, Councilmember Herbold.

And it echoes a report that we saw recently from the Washington Post just a few months ago that said, given that jurisdictions across this country are experiencing the same decreased levels of interest in applications, And turnover in their force, it calls on us to really rethink what we're asking officers to do.

And as we rethink what officers are being asked to do, that could be a successful recruitment tool.

So that more people come into a position where they are showing up to solve crime and address crime versus solving.

showing up and having to respond to person down calls and calls that they don't have the skills or the ability to respond to when there's no landing zone.

So definitely goes hand in glove with the conversation we just had this morning and really appreciate your putting into context the way in which this council has year over year for the last 4 years supported both the full hiring and retention plan and also tried to alleviate some of the upstream issues that are Resulting in people interacting with officers in the 1st place, both are needed.

So, with that, I appreciate the council lead on public safety, our chair, public safety, because we're herbalist context setting and I really appreciate central staff who's been working with us like many jurisdictions across the nation to try to respond to the need for additional upstream investments and responding to the trends that we see across the country.

I'll turn it over to Greg Doss as well.

Thank you Madam Chair and members of the committee.

Good to see you this afternoon.

Before I get going, on the theme of thank yous, I want to thank Director Sochi for working with me so closely on this budget.

I just really couldn't do all the things that I do for you without her help and transparency.

The Police Department is very open with information and data and she is so helpful to me understanding the budget in a short time period.

Also want to thank Deputy Mayor Burgess for his memo and a briefing that he gave to central staff about the crime prevention pilot.

I hope that you all have had a chance to read it.

It is in the appendix on my staff report.

And so with that, I will jump right in.

Next slide, please.

All right, so we'll start out with sort of some big picture changes, movements between the BSLs.

There is very little unsupported new funding in SPD's budget.

I'm going to provide a high level overview of the changes here.

The largest increase in the BSLs that you see is an 8.5% increase in the Chief of Police BSL.

This is happening because the executive is moving into this annual budget about 5.7 million in revenue-backed grants that are normally accepted and appropriated in standalone legislation.

This ad is also contributing to a 5.6% increase in the leadership and administration line, but these are revenue-backed added grants, so not an effect on the general fund.

There's a couple other things going on with the leadership and administration line that's going up by 5.6, and that is a general fund add of 1.3 million to support some public disclosure positions that were added by the council and the executive in the supplemental budget this year.

And then also a $1.3 million add for central cost adjustments.

So really just some technical stuff.

Then really the last incremental change external to the budget is a $1.7 million cut to the school zone camera program.

You can see there's a 44 percent reduction there.

I'm believing that you talked about that this morning.

There was a reduction in revenue, fine and forfeiture revenue that supports those cameras.

It didn't materialize the way the city thought it would, and so this reduction here, is a reduction in the appropriation that would have supported the adding of new cameras.

Again, that's more of a technical correction than anything else.

So go ahead and go to the next slide.

Oh, wait, one second.

Can you flip back?

Thanks.

The last thing I was going to point out is that you will see between some of the BSLs here, some internal moves that SPD is making.

And really what's going on there is there's about $8.1 million in salary savings that SPD is realizing due to some Problems that it's having with its staffing plan that Council Member Herbold and Council Member Mosqueda mentioned at the start of the presentation.

And that is mostly a movement that you'll see between criminal investigations, which is going down by 4.8%, and the precincts, which are all going up slightly.

And then lastly, and then I'll get to Council Member Herbold's question, there's an increase in technical services.

That's a redistribution of some of the salary savings for the crime prevention pilot.

And that's sort of a big picture of all the moving dollars.

And we're gonna go into each one of those separate budget actions as we move through the presentation.

But I wanted to make sure you saw it at the BSL level.

So stop for questions.

Great, thank you.

I was just popping my hand up, because you'd turn the page without talking about the increase in technical services.

So it's covered.

All right, Council Member Peterson.

Thank you chairman is okay.

If I ask a question about this right now.

Oh, absolutely.

Yeah, please.

Sorry.

No, that's okay.

So the school's own camera program.

Yes, we did talk about this at length during our presentation on transportation and we're still.

Having central staff, look, look into this further.

I do think though it is a policy choice, and an administrative choice on the part of the executive to do this.

to the program, I would not personally characterize it as a technical correction.

In terms of the revenue estimate, I'll be very interested in seeing what comes out next week with the updated revenue forecast.

It's not clear the Office of Economic Forecasting It's not clear what their assumptions were in putting together the estimates for that program.

And so I know that they know there's a lot of tension on this program now.

And so even though the dollar amount might seem small to them in the context of the entire budget, it is important because it does impact safety.

It does impact Vision Zero.

And so we'll hopefully the estimate will be more refined and perhaps higher when it comes out in the next week and then and then we can make that technical correction to increase the funding.

Hopefully for this program.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Any additional comments?

OK.

I do have a question and I I'm trying to remember right now, if you get into the chief of police department, additional staffing 8.5% increase in your later presentation, Greg.

I get into some of the grants that that we're going to talk about, but what additional staffing are you?

Are you well, I just remember last year that that line item looked relatively large as well.

And it was due to shifts in how each precinct leadership person was being categorized in SPD's department.

So.

I wondered if that is a continuation of the shift that Chief Diaz, I see you on the line, hello, that you had initiated last year as well, or if it's really largely due to the grants that you're talking, that you're going to be flagging in your report.

Yeah, in this case, it's just, it's the, it's the grants.

It's the difference between the endorsed and the proposed.

The differences that you were thinking of were between the adopted and the endorsed.

So nothing, nothing changed, nothing changed over this last year that would affect the 8.5%.

That 8.5% is just just the addition of the grants and the things that happened in this in this last budget.

Okay, great.

Let's keep going.

All right, so we can go ahead and.

I've already talked about the 1%, 1.7% increase and go to the next slide.

Okay, so, um.

I'm going out of order now.

I am starting with issue number three in my issue paper, which is sworn staffing.

And I'm doing that because I realized as I was putting together the presentation that kind of everything in this department is really flowing from sworn staffing.

And of course, you all know that because you prefaced the presentation with your comments on sworn staffing.

We're going to start here and move forward.

As you can see in the table here, in the very last row, the 2024 planned, the department projects that it will hire 105, or I'm sorry, it will hire 120 officers next year, make 120 hires.

and that it will separate 105 officers in 2024, and that will be a net add of 15 officers for a total trained force of 1,023.

And as you can see in the row above it, the 2023 projected row, that was originally the same at this time a year ago.

They were hoping to hire 120, separate 105 and have 15 net.

And updated, it's not looking that good.

It's looking like it's gonna be 73 hired, 100 separated for a net decrease of 27. Go ahead and go to the next slide.

So what does that mean?

That means that even if SPD is successful and can hire in 2024 a net of 15 new, then the staffing picture is not going to look a whole lot different.

As you can see in this chart, in Q4 of 2023, the department is sitting for fully trained officers, that top blue line, at about 1020. And if they achieve their staffing plan next year, they'll be sitting at 1023. So not a whole lot different.

That's if they get the 15 new officers.

You may be wondering, I just told you that they're down by 27, projected to be down by 27 this year.

How can they even be flat?

Well, part of that's because they are hoping next year as part of their staffing plan that 120 that they're going to hire to get 90 recruits and 30 laterals and those 30 laterals plug in immediately.

Unlike recruits that take a year to train, they can plug in those laterals directly into 911 calls.

They become fully trained officers, go right into that blue line, and they can hold it straight.

So if the department can get the 30 laterals, then that can sort of hold them in a straight position next year.

I'll stop and ask if there's some questions.

Okay, so go ahead and move to the next slide.

Switching gears, talk a little bit about this year.

So far this year, the good news is that through the third quarter, SPD is getting pretty good at predicting separations.

Through the third quarter of this year, we've seen a stabilization in the officers leaving the department.

Fewer officers are leaving the department unexpectedly.

We are at a case where the officer separations are stabilizing.

SPD had projected 72 and realized 77. So they were only five off and that's pretty good.

I think you'll remember that last year it was a lot more than five.

The bad news is, is that in the same period, SPD has been missing its hiring goal, missed its hiring goal by 36 officers.

They had planned on 82 and they got 46. Now within the hiring goal, the sort of the nuance there is that where they really struggled was in hiring laterals.

They had hoped to hire this year 30 laterals, but unfortunately they were only able to hire six.

So that has been a challenge for SPD.

And so in moving to how that translates in, well, let me stop and ask if there's any questions before I go on to salary savings.

Okay, moving on to salary savings then.

So how that translates to salary savings.

As the department misses its hiring targets and positions vacancies are not filled, the salary savings from those vacancies begins to add up over the year.

And as that happens, the department gets more and more salary savings and this year they think that the total will add up to about 4.5 million.

Now, next year, those.

vacancies will be open for the entire year.

The value of those savings is going to go up to about 8.1 million, so there'll be a lot more money next year.

We're going to talk a little bit later about how the department proposes to use that 8.1 million in salary savings next year.

I just want to track it all back.

The reason they have that 8.1 million next year is because of the challenges that they have had in hiring this year, and it mostly is hiring new positions.

It's very different than what we've been seeing.

It's the ability to attract officers rather than to retain them.

I think there's a question, Madam Chair.

Thank you.

Go ahead, Council Member Herbold.

Thank you the 8.1M is that inclusive of the.

Biennium that is inclusive of the 4.5.

Yeah, so the, it is the 4.5 is this year.

This year savings, and so they're going to use that to apply towards an overtime problem that we're going to talk about.

And then the year will start over again next year.

And next year, all the vacant positions that they have, the ones that they didn't fill this year, those will be worth 8.1 million.

Okay, so it's not inclusive.

Those are two separate numbers.

They're separate numbers.

It's the same positions, but they're right.

They're inclusive of the positions, not of the dollars.

Thank you.

Yeah, perfect.

That's what I needed to understand.

And so there is a proposal in this budget for both how to spend the 4.5M.

that has become available in the course of 2023, as well as a proposal for how to spend the $8.1 million that will become available in 2024 for just those positions that doesn't deal with what happens if they don't meet their targets for 2024.

Yeah, I think that's mostly right.

They're not really making a proposal for this year.

They're just gonna do it.

You dropped, the council dropped the proviso over salary savings, and so authorized the department, not dropped, authorized the department to use salary savings for overtime, and that's what they're gonna do.

Talk about that.

Yeah, amended the proviso, absolutely.

Or I think the proviso always allowed for, didn't it?

No, maybe not.

No, you're right.

It was amended.

Yeah.

We did amend it.

Yeah.

Okay.

All right.

So you're going to get to the use of those funds next.

Is that right?

Yes.

Right next.

Flip the slide, please.

Actually, not right next.

First, I'm going to come back to the staffing.

I will come back to the estimate on the 30 laterals.

Mentioned that 30 laterals was the plan this year.

Mentioned that they didn't meet it this year.

In fact, fell considerably short.

Instead of 30, they're projecting six.

So as you look at next year's staffing plan, and this is purely from an analytical standpoint, this is only looking at how history of recruiting laterals has happened.

One could say if they had the same problem next year, the council could say, reduce the funding for laterals by some amount, let's say 12 laterals and say SPD is not going to be able to hire those laterals.

Therefore, we're going to reduce their funding for hiring and reduce by $1 million.

I put this forward not as an option that I'm advocating, but purely as an analytical option because looking at the budget and the numbers, one might ask the question.

And as an analytical option, how did you arrive at the number 12 for 12 fewer laterals?

Leaving some cushion.

How many fewer did they hire in 2023 than anticipated?

22. 22, okay, thank you.

Welcome Chief Diaz, did you have something you'd like to add for context here?

Yeah, I did want to add just a little context.

We've actually had 127 laterals apply for this job.

And while we've only hired what Greg has noted the amount, it's really when you go after laterals, those are people that have already gone through a background check and they should technically not have issue.

But when we actually do a thorough, thorough background, we are finding issues.

And so next year's laterals might not have that same issue.

And so we we are accumulating a lot more laterals than we've done in the past.

So it it could be just the type of candidate that we had this year compared to what we might have next year.

So I just really want to make sure that that people know that nuance, that we've actually had quite a few lateral applicants.

It's just they have not met our standards of what we want in our police officer right now, this year.

Okay, thank you so much, Chief.

Thanks to Council Member Herbold for your questions and comments too.

Council Member Nelson.

I would recommend not eliminating this, obviously, because we do want to preserve our ability to hire laterals.

And I would like to know more about how the recruitment plan is rolling out and where we are in the next phase, et cetera, because it could be that we actually do attract the target number of laterals.

And so.

Now is not the time, I believe, to be discussing reducing money when we're trying to go after the biggest cost saver to fill our ranks back up.

So that is that would be my.

Recommendation, and I don't know if I don't see an issue identification here for the for proviso in salary savings again, but it seems as though some of this staffing conversation could lead to that that.

That effort again and I would also say that last year, I pulled that out for individual vote and only council member and Peterson and I voted against that CBA and sure enough, we ended up needing to spend that money.

to lift the proviso mid-year and spend it on overtime because obviously the less officers we have at our disposal, the more they're working overtime and there could be other needs that come up.

So just plugging right now that I hope that we don't have to engage in that effort again.

Thanks.

Council Member Herbold.

Thank you.

I'm just for transparency's sake and because it was raised, I do intend to propose a salary savings proviso.

I think it's a it's a good financial control as the committee chair for the Public Safety Committee.

I certainly had no problem introducing legislation.

to amend the proviso to allow for savings to be used on joint priorities of the council and the police department.

And of course, next year's council might want to eliminate it altogether, but I want to have it in place so that the next year's council can make that decision.

Well, what is the difference?

We're not going to have a debate about this right now.

This is an opportunity for folks to flag their interests.

So if you have you've already stated your comment on that, if you have additional comments, you're welcome to.

But I'm not going to engage in a back and forth between council members questioning each other.

Legislatively, is is a line in the budget saying it can own salary savings can only be used on overtime.

Does that have the force of law enough to obviate the necessity of doing another proviso?

Is that a question for central staff?

Anybody who would like to answer, but I mean, mostly the chair, I mean.

Anybody who would like to answer and ultimately, it comes down to what the chair is thinking.

Would that be an acceptable option?

And I'm not going to push back anymore.

I'm just throwing that on the table.

We can design a proviso on salary savings to create any limits that we want.

And those limits will have force of law and I'll turn it over to central staff deputies director.

Um.

Thank you.

Yeah, so a sentence in the budget book, I think is what you said, is stating sort of executive intent, but there is no, it is not law, they don't have to follow that, they would have flexibility, so a proviso would be the mechanism to make it legally required to only be used for certain purposes.

And as Council Member Herbold mentioned, it could be a proviso that is slightly different than previous years that allows for use of overtime, which is essentially what the council modified in the mid-year process.

It wasn't fully lifted, I believe.

It was expanded to allow the use of salary savings to include overtime and investments in another area that is escaping me at this moment.

technology, I think, online.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Follow-up question, Council Member Nelson?

No, sorry.

No problem.

Council Member Peterson, and thank you, colleagues, for helping to save the policy deliberations for later.

I appreciate that.

Council members just wanted to keep us on track with airing ideas and opinions and thoughts, so appreciate your receptivity to that direction, colleagues.

Council Member Peterson, please go ahead.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

Yes, with the severe staffing shortage that we have of officers and detectives and I think it's, it's more obvious now that it was in years past that if there is savings from a staffing plan that it's going to be needed for overtime and so I just want to ensure the department has the flexibility to use it for overtime in 2024 until staffing gets up to the level where we might want to have stricter provisos in the future when they're fully staffed and then if there's savings from things and we the council would need to lean into that but right now it's pretty obvious that they would need it for overtime so wouldn't want to micromanage them over a million dollars so maybe there is a way of of wording any sort of proviso if there if there needs to be one but ideally there isn't one but if there is I think just having that flexibility for overtime I would support.

Thank you.

Council Member Nelson.

I appreciate the expression of now is not the time for a policy debate, but this is the budget and there isn't, you know, we're not going to be, there isn't a specific day that we'll be discussing this in public and open session going forward.

So I'm just signaling that I recognize that, you know, You're not wanting a policy debate, but I just don't know where when else we can talk about this in a manner that is transparent to the public and so it doesn't have to be behind closed doors or sometime when we're not when we don't have the experts in the room.

Thanks.

Don't worry, there will be plenty of time for conversation.

This is very helpful and definitely appreciate the central staff analysis here.

We will continue to have central staff analysis and the opportunity for the executive, specifically SPD and the chief to provide feedback as we continue to have these deliberations.

But the actual policy discussions that we have about amendments to the agenda will be included in two weeks.

And then we have a chance again for another conversation around amendments coming up I believe the two weeks after that before anything gets finalized we'll definitely be able to come back to this but do appreciate that we have a good robust discussion here.

Our process as well is intended to be very transparent and for the viewing public you know and as a city budget director Julie Dingley and I have been talking about this is also a new opportunity for us to have both the executive and the legislative branch in these initial briefings To have both bodies here to provide these kind of conversation, but I just want to make sure that it's really intended to draw out the technical aspects of it versus a debate per se, which we will have plenty of time to debate and discuss later.

So, more to come on on the structure of how we structure these conversations in the future, but don't worry.

There will be plenty of time for more conversation on this and other topics.

I want to get back to Greg to keep us walking through the agenda, but I do have 1 sort of concluding thought on this and and I don't have a thought about preference on the options listed here, recognizing that central staff is listing options, not recommendations.

And some of our colleagues have already weighed in on their preference.

I appreciate you outlining the options for the council's deliberation.

I also appreciate that in your memo, you flag that central staff flag, the hiring shortage is not a unique Seattle problem.

We talked about that as this conversation started, but really, this is a national trend and a recent police executive research forum survey found that.

Out of 224 law enforcement agencies that responded to a recruitment survey, 69%, nearly 70%, indicated that the number of applicants for full-time sworn positions had declined significantly in the last two years.

So I think it's important for us to put what we're dealing with in the national context.

My colleagues have done that, and the department, I think, is very aware of that.

And it's important for us to center this national conversation on the solutions that we're looking at.

It would be remiss not to also comment on the number of appalling incidences that have been brought to light just this year within SPD.

And I know that that's something that the chief and this mayor take seriously.

But this year, plus the previous years, there is a lot more to do.

To ensure that recruitment is targeting specifically the individuals who we want to serve in our revised vision of what policing should be.

And it's not just about increasing the pay to get more people to come.

It is about finding the right people for that.

Focus public safety directive that we are continuing to evolve so that we can address the root causes disorder and prevent crime.

I also want to note that despite some of the confusing rhetoric or controversy, even misinformation from last year and the previous years, as the chair of public safety noted in her opening comments, the.

Full recruitment and retention plan has been funded every year for the last 3 years and the 80 positions that were abrogated in last year's budget were not missed in this year's noting that we are not accomplishing the hiring goals even out that were set out last year.

So we continue to fall short of our projections.

And I think it's important that we continue to identify opportunities to move unspent funding.

Into solutions that help prevent crime in the 1st place and also support the call for the full.

Retention and recruitment plan to be invested in as we've done year over year.

So appreciate the central staff memo that.

Exposes all of these items, and I think.

We look forward to having more conversation about how to respond to these national trends.

And before we conclude today, I will help try to find that Washington Post article that talks about other strategies besides just putting more money into recruitment that really have shown across the country ways to bring in more officers to respond to more modern policing structures, which I know it's very top of mind, given the last conversation we had in the earlier session.

All right, let's keep going.

Uh, thank you madam chair before I, I switched the next slide by way of analysis.

I have to say central staff can do math.

I just was looking at a number a wrong number.

It is 24 that they missed their recruit their lateral goal by 24 minus 30 is the 6 that they, they got.

I don't know why I said 22, but, um.

Uh, you know, I, I, when you look at this, this, um, just for context, when you look at this slide, you'll see that it says the savings wouldn't be available if SPD experience fewer separations and plan.

I do ask the department for feedback on these recommendations.

I'm very happy that the chief was able to.

was able to weigh in on this and to talk about the laterals and how the department has not been able to hire them.

The reasons that the department has not been able to hire them, that's information that just because the logistics of this week I did not get, but that is very important to the analysis as well.

So I want to say that the numbers are not everything.

The information that we got from the chief, I would have included here.

Had I had it, it just didn't work out.

So I'm happy he gave it.

Can move along now.

So we had talked a little bit about the 4.5 million in salary savings that SPD has this year and the 8.1 million in salary spending that they have next year.

The next issue that I'm going to talk about is a contextual issue for 2024. They have an overtime spending issue this year, I think, as folks are aware.

And as you can see in this chart, this chart compares overtime spending in 2022 to 2023 in the biggest categories of spending.

You have everything from criminal investigations to patrol operations, which is really a combination of the folks who call in sick and can't make their shifts, and so they're backfilled on overtime.

to the folks who need to get called in to make minimum staffing levels.

And so it is the case that SPD is running over on overtime this year, and we're going to talk shortly about how they are going to mitigate that problem.

Next year, however, they are going to, well, let's stick with it.

With this year, they are going to exceed their budget by approximately $9.3 million.

So their current budget is $31.3 million in 2023. And they are projecting that they're going to spend about $9.3 million more than their budget for a total of $40.6 million by the end of the year.

One of the things that I want to caution you on when you're looking at this particular slide is that the sporting events column, the one that is for 2023 really high, reflects a $1.8 million reimbursable event, the spending that the department did on the Major League Baseball All-Star game that occurred last July.

So that is why that is a little bit higher.

That $1.8 million was reimbursable, so the city got paid back for that.

Unfortunately, the department spent more than that $1.8.

They actually spent a total of $3 million on that game.

There was another $1.2 million that wasn't reimbursable.

And that was for the surrounding events on that game.

And that spending is in the events column, the one immediately to the left.

So both those bars are a little higher than they might otherwise have been by about $3 million because the baseball game.

And that will come into play later when we're talking about balancing next year.

The last thing I'll leave you with on this chart is to say that as we move through the rest of this year, the picture will change slightly.

Because we're leaving the event season behind us, you might expect that patrol operationals, criminal investigations, some of these other areas are going to start growing faster than the events will.

So the relationship between some of these things will change, but what won't change is that you can see the 2023 bars are quite a bit higher than 2022. So before I move on, I'll stop and ask if there's any questions on this year's overtime spending.

I think Council Member Herbold has a question.

You are on mute, Council Member.

I always race to put my finger up before somebody has a chance to tell me I'm on mute and I always miss it.

For the events, over time, both the 40 events and the First Amendment events and Seattle Center events, how does this gray bar compare to pre-COVID spending?

That's a good question.

You know, just sort of like, I don't mean like specific dollars, but just generally from your ongoing analysis in this area.

I don't know.

I want to get back to you on that.

That's totally fine.

It's interesting to me just because we've often talked about giving the chief the flexibility to have non-sworn staffing of events and would just be interesting to see how those numbers compare.

I think the department is ready to comment if the chair is willing, of course, chief Diaz.

Yeah, first I'll start off by saying, and thank you for highlighting the Police Executive Research Forum's workbooks.

I'm actually the PERF president.

It was just announced earlier, just about a month ago.

And so the direction of PERF is really just trying to make sure that we're leading nationally in this area of recruiting and hiring and a variety of different other areas.

So thank you for highlighting that work.

that I've been a part of.

The second component of this on this overtime spending is in the previous years we've also had quite a bit more staffing that we were able to use on duty resources for a variety of different events.

And this year we've had FLOTUS, POTUS, the previous POTUS, We've had APEC, we've had MLB All-Star.

So we've had a variety of different events along with large-scale concerts that we hadn't seen before.

Taylor Swift, obviously, was some of the biggest revenue that gets generated over that two-day period.

Beyonce.

So there's a variety of different things that we've seen as the city opens back up from the COVID restrictions this year that has really changed the dynamics of trying to make sure that were staffing these events.

Plus, at Capitol Hill Block Party, we had a mass shooting.

So even at some of these events, we are seeing sometimes potential violence at and around, even at a community event that happened down at Rainier Beach, we had a mass shooting.

And so, you know, trying to make sure that we are staffing accordingly for some of these events is sometimes very difficult, but we're also trying to make sure that we're using our resources as best we can.

And I think Angela can go into a little bit more detail from the previous years as well.

Thanks, chief.

I just wanted to add that we have.

Taken a close look at special event and compared year over year back to 2017, just to get a sense of how.

What to expect this year and in future years, what we've seen as an increase from even 2019 and the total number of events that is working.

We obviously have some staffing constraints, so we're not actually deploying as many to events, but overall, we are seeing an increase an event like is exceptional.

We're going to see much larger expenditures there.

We don't necessarily plan for a 3Million dollar event every year.

which makes that exceptional.

I wouldn't necessarily recommend building that into the budget, but making sure that we're doing a good job at anticipating what to expect on a normal year is what we're trying to do with this budget.

Deputy Mayor Burgess.

Yeah, I want to I want to jump on something that Chief Diaz just shared.

Council Member Mosqueda, you have, I think, two or three times today quoted something from the Police Executive Research Forum, which is probably one of the most prestigious public policy think tanks in the country around law enforcement.

And the fact that Chief Diaz was just elected president of this organization, I know the mayor is delighted.

We all should be.

And this shows that our chief is, in fact, one of the leading reformers in our country, and we're very proud of him.

Angela, did you have something you want to add?

No, sorry.

OK, great.

Uh, thank you.

Thank you for sharing that and congratulations.

Is there any additional comments on this slide?

I guess along that vein, and this could be for central staff or it could be for the chief of the department.

Is there anything that you can share with us about this ongoing interest?

And I believe it's shared.

I know the council has expressed it a number of times, but in in helping to move traffic safety out of police, I know that there's complications that you're working through, but the civilization of traffic safety functions or especially large events, you mentioned that.

there was some shootings at some of the events, but there was officers already there.

Is there a way for us to actually free up officers to not have to be at some of these large events?

And it's a conversation that we've been engaged in over the last four years.

I know that.

But for example, we know that there was a longer response time to the Wing Luke Museum, and many of those officers were deployed to the Beyonce concert at the same time.

And so You know, as we think about how we create faster responses and getting officers to the places that they need to be, even if it's at some of those events as well, or in other places of the city, any updates that you can share with us for the general public about trying to move in that direction to free up officers from even having to be at these large events or traffic in the 1st place.

Yeah, so we've actually upstaffed parking enforcement, I believe it's almost close to, if not fully staffed, pretty close to fully staffed.

I think there was just an adjustment of somebody being promoted to a supervisor, which then ends up opening up a position at the parking enforcement level.

But we've actually been utilizing our parking enforcement to really upstaff these events.

And then what we've also done is we've created what we refer to as a tier one, tier two and tier three system of events.

So trying to make sure that tier threes sometimes are community events or other events that we're really not able to do and that they have to focus on.

contracting with outside vendors, so that way we're not utilizing our on-duty resources or our resources on overtime.

And on tier two events, there's a mix.

You know, we're utilizing the parking enforcement along with sworn personnel, usually on an overtime basis.

So even on the night that you mentioned, those officers are being utilized and would not be necessarily deployed into a patrol setting anyways.

And so that is always trying to balance it out because 1 of the things that is is still a challenge is that by utilizing officers in an overtime basis.

We are trying to make sure that when we're utilizing it.

It, it does have an impact on their wellness because we're, they're augmenting multiple shifts and they're doing other things and so we're trying to balance that out to not, you know, not use them so much, you know, when people sign up for tier two events.

They're we asking them only to sign up for a certain amount of events and not, you know, not to work a whole bunch of events because we want to make sure that they get time off too.

So it's a balancing act to make sure that some of these events are safe, but also making sure that their staff.

with parking enforcement and other different resources.

And even at the University of Washington Huskies, if you go to their events, some of those events are a mixture of contracted outside agencies to use for traffic control with a very limited use of our resources.

And then coupled with that, some of our officers that are deployed in an overtime basis as well.

Thanks for that update.

Working through some barriers here.

Uh, let's keep going.

All right, let's move to the next slide please.

So we're going to talk about now how SPD is going to mitigate that $9.3 million overtime process.

There is a plan for mitigating the $9.3 million overtime over expenditure.

We've talked about a little bit of it.

We talked about the $1.8 million reimbursement that the department's getting for the MLB game.

That's going to help.

There is 4.5 million that we talked about in salary savings.

That's going to help.

And the council authorized the department to spend its salary savings on overtime via the amendment that was run earlier this year on the sworn salary savings proviso.

The recruitment and retention initiative is going to provide $624,000 in savings that's estimated to have accrued by the end of the year.

And that actually is good news.

The reason that that's good news is because I think the council is aware that the executive has been a bit slow to spend that money.

There was a course change a few months ago on the marketing contract and the approach with advertising.

That contract has now been signed and there are ads out there on television and so the money is now estimated to be on its way out the door and the remaining estimated savings, the $624,000 is primarily going to be left over from the hiring bonuses that won't be going to officers because they're not filling those vacancies.

And so that money will be used to help with this overtime challenge.

The department has had some problems, some challenges filling PEO positions.

And so there's going to be about a million and a half or up to a million and a half in savings from PEO positions.

Since they took the positions in January, as the chief said, they've hired a division director, a couple managers, and three supervisors.

And they also put out an advertisement in January and one in August, but they have had trouble staying ahead of attrition, and they've got about 22 positions that are open right now.

They have a plan to, and those are creating those vacancy dollars, and they've got a plan to fill those, but they don't believe that they're gonna completely fill them until about April of next year.

So that's going to create some salary savings.

And then finally, there's going to be about $876,000 in civilian salary savings.

And that is coming because the department has been relying on civilian salary savings to address unplanned emergent issues in the last couple of years with accounts such as separation pay or overtime.

things that I think that the council is aware of.

As some of those issues have self-corrected, like the officers treading and leaving the department, as soon as that has slowed down, the separation pay has self-corrected.

the department has been able to hire some of those positions.

The civilian salary savings is going to shrink.

There is 876 available this year, but projected going forward, that is going to shrink down.

There's not a significant amount projected for next year.

I looked at the positions that the department has open, and they are in the hiring phase or backgrounding phase.

So the department has plans to spend that money.

But this year, there's quite a bit left over.

And so all of that is adding together to help offset the overtime overage.

So stop there and ask if there are any questions on this slide.

I have a question about reimbursement.

I feel like this issue comes up every year and I, and I fail to remember the full answer here, but on the reimbursement for some of the large events, are we getting 100% reimbursement from the sports and concert events that our officers are being deployed to currently?

So, like, this 1.8M.

It's, it's really a mix.

So, if it is, if you're talking about the big stadium events, like, um.

The Seahawks or the Mariners or the crack and the answer is yes, we have contracts with them and we get pretty much 100% reimbursement.

Um, if you're in concerts for that matter to anything that that happens in a climate pledge.

It's where you have fun runs and permitted events that we have very low reimbursement rates, easily less than 25% of cost.

We don't have separate contracts with event promoters that do fun runs or special events.

They're instead charged a permit fee for police services, and that's capped at $67 an hour.

And so the reimbursement rate there is quite low.

Thank you for the reminder.

Okay, I'm not seeing any additional questions on slide eight here.

All right, so.

Now let's switch gears and talk about the overtime problem in 2024. I had told you that there's going to be about $8.1 million of funding, salary funding available, salary savings available in 2024. And we know that the overtime problem is likely to repeat itself again next year.

So what SPD is proposing to do in the 2024 budget, and this is a move within the BCLs in the mid-year adjustments that the council has before it, is to take about 6.3 million of that salary savings that we talked about and move it from salary savings into its overtime lines.

By doing that, it would adjust its overtime budget from 31.3 million to 37.8 million.

The math there works nicely because as I mentioned earlier, they're expecting to spend about $40.6 million this year, but they had sort of an outstanding event with the baseball game being a few million dollars.

If you take away that baseball game as an outlier, you get down to about $37.8 million.

So if there is no spending on a baseball game as an outlier, this is a range that potentially SPD could make or live within if they move $6.3 million into their overtime budget.

They would move it into three areas, patrol operations, as I mentioned, for a backfill for sick leave and for minimum staffing, criminal investigations for additional work on various kinds of investigations, and then special operations.

This is the smallest amount for special events.

The disparate amount there, the discrepancy between the 731,000 and the higher amounts above, that really reflects the fact that there's not a lot of salary savings that the SPD has to spend.

And so they have to make choices about how to spend it.

And they chose to spend on patrol operations and criminal investigations because those are core functions.

And so they get the highest amounts trying to make sure that they are staying whole and then the rest is going to special operations.

With any luck, they get to stay within 37.8 million and don't have an overtime over problem next year.

So stop and ask for questions.

Great.

Any questions on this?

I'm not seeing any.

Let's keep going.

All right.

Go to the next slide.

All right, so the next slide is the crime prevention pilot.

And talked about the 8.1 million.

If you take away the 6.3 I just mentioned for overtime, that leaves 1.8.

And the department proposes to spend that last 1.8 in salary savings on the crime prevention pilot.

that hopefully members have by now, as I said, had a chance to scan either my memo or the deputy mayor's memo on the proposed pilot.

As you can see in this slide, the basics are that about 280,000 will expand the deployment of the automated license plate reader technology to all patrol vehicles.

And about 1.5 million will be used for a CCTV pilot that also employs acoustic gunshot locator capabilities with the cameras.

In short, the executive has stated that the pilot will provide both a deterrence to violent crime and will allow police to gather evidence to better hold offenders accountable.

We'll mention that SPD currently searches for stolen vehicles by using automated license plate reader technology in its PEO vehicles and in some patrol vehicles.

The city council approved the use of this technology in ordinance 1236, I'm sorry, 126313 when it passed the surveillance impact report in March of 2021. So technically the executive would not need to go through the surveillance process again to expand this technology to all of its patrol cars.

Nonetheless, the deputy mayor has indicated that they would still submit a SIR and go through the process on the automated license plate readers to make sure that the council is aware of the expansion and the policies around them.

Thank you.

Oh, excuse me.

Did I interrupt sugar?

I was going to ask a flip to the next slide and then I'll pause.

Sounds good, but I'm ready to take questions.

Thank you.

I just wanted to refer to Deputy Mayor Burgess's memo on page 4. Appreciate, Greg, your flagging the discussion that you've had with the executive about adherence with the surveillance technology ordinance and the explanation that CC, I'm sorry, that the, plate reader technology is an existing technology, may not need a full-blown surveillance technology review.

Appreciate that the executive is still planning to do an updated SIR.

But under the guidance principles, number one, it says The technologies will only be implemented once the city's surveillance ordinance requirements are met.

And I believe the law, the surveillance technology, again, accepting the ALPR technology, the other technologies cannot be purchased, I believe, until the technology review is done.

Am I remember correctly?

The memo says only be implemented and I think I my recollection is is that.

The technology review has to happen before the purchase.

You are council member.

Madam Chair, if I might suggest, if we go to the next slide, one thing that might help move this discussion along quicker is if I just went over this pilot in its entirety, and then we opened up to questions.

There's a lot here, and I can sum it up pretty quickly, and then including what Council Member Herbold just asked, and then maybe open up to questions.

Uh, sure, we can do that and I see I'll keep Councilmember Herbold in the pipeline here along with Councilmember Lewis, whose hand I just saw.

Okay, so I'm going to go through this slide number 11 here very quickly.

I know everybody's got their hands up and then anything that I don't cover, folks can jump in on and I know that there will be a lot of policy discussion too.

Okay, so the first item, the cameras would be deployed on a temporary basis and may be moved after one year based on an evaluation.

The executive wants to create an omnibus surveillance policy that would only go through the council once that would allow the council or would allow the cameras to be moved from location to location without an update to the original surveillance impact report.

And that's important because it wouldn't involve the council anymore as the cameras were moved.

However, The deputy mayor has said that the executive would engage with each new community as cameras were moved to those new communities in an effort to build community cohesion around those cameras and to build support for the cameras as well.

Also, I'll mention when it comes to the evaluation that the city's innovation and performance team is going to perform that evaluation.

It will include a racial equity analysis that would be done.

According to the memo after the cameras pilot was going.

However, I would mention that a racial equity analysis is required as part of the surveillance ordinance process.

So that would have to be completed before the council would approve the technology.

And that would have to be part of the policies that the council would see.

So cameras would be live monitored in SPD's real-time crime center.

civilian staff potentially in the future would monitor the cameras.

Right now SPD has indicated in the executive that they don't have dedicated staff to monitor the cameras that they could potentially on loan staff from other places to monitor the cameras but right now they don't have anyone moving civilians into those positions in the future, it's unknown how much that might cost.

When SPD staff, civilians, or sworn in that real-time crime center see a crime occurring, they would dispatch patrol officers, identify video segments revealing criminal behavior, transfer those segments to the department's digital evidence management system, and inform follow-up detectives for further investigation.

So the question there is, which crimes would require the real-time dispatch?

The executive says that the technology would not be used to enforce low-level crimes.

The memo from the Deputy Mayor says that the need for ALPR, CCTV, and the AGLS technology would be used for the strategic deployment of SPD policies, and that it's driven by gun violence and persistent felony crime at specific locations, and that SPD's use of these technologies will focus on those crimes.

Now go to the next bullet.

Facial recognition technology would not be used.

Deployment cannot occur, as Council Member Herbold said, until after the executive completes the surveillance ordinance process.

That is true of the CCTV portion of the process.

It is a process that requires review of policies that would need to be designed.

and also reviewed by communities affected by the technology.

They would need to be reviewed by the by the city's community surveillance working group, and then ultimately by the city council, who would need to pass those policies in an ordinance to allow the department to begin using the cameras.

So that's a lot of process.

And I bring that up When you see that last bullet that says that the cameras might be installed by March of 2024, that that's the executive's goal for installation, it's a whole lot of process to try to do by the first quarter or the end of the first quarter of next year.

The last thing I'll talk about, then open it up for questions, is the budget.

The executives indicated that $1.5 million is that's the budget that they're working within, that that is going to shape the size and scale of this pilot program.

It's not known right now.

They don't know whether or not that 1.5 million is going to be sufficient to cover one spot, two spots, or three spots.

They have three in mind as possible locations.

You've seen in my memo the ones that they're considering.

It is the case that it's not known whether that would be a lease or a camera purchase that would drive the pilot, nor is there any cost estimate of what it might mean to bring this to scale or what scale would look like, whether or not it would be two or three locations that might rotate.

I talked about the pilot at the, talked about the crimes or the cameras being mobile at the beginning of this slide.

So there's a lot of unknowns around this.

It is the case that the executive is asking the council to move forward with this pilot, saying that it's going to be built as it's moving, including the policies that would guide how the real-time monitor and deployment is working.

So, that I've given my.

2 minute overview, thank you for listening.

Absolutely.

And thank you for your detailed memo.

Appreciate it.

Central staff.

I think member Lewis was ahead of me.

I don't have a question.

I just want to just clarify the memo that I referenced from.

Senior, I'm sorry, Deputy Mayor Burgess.

And the language on this slide are is identical, but I don't I want to find out whether or not my recollection is correct or not.

The slide also says deployment cannot occur until after the completion of the process.

And I don't believe that's accurate.

I, I believe it's, I mean, it's accurate, but but.

more accurate is that the purchase, I believe, cannot occur until after the process.

So let's just be really careful because this is a very sensitive subject matter for the public that we get it right about what the limitations are of the surveillance ordinance.

Thank you.

Thank you for that clarification, Council Member Herbold.

Council Member Lewis.

Thank you so much, Madam Chair.

Uh, make a similar observation from reviewing the materials as as council member herbal just initially as as level setting and I appreciate the clarification of of the law and, um.

And the understanding on that, um, but, uh, moving on to the crux of the policy, I do think going forward, we need to be exploring ways to do more with less.

We just had a conversation around, um, the challenges that we are facing with staffing.

And what I would like to learn more about as we go through this process, I'm intrigued by the proposal from the executive, because it leans into some of the place based emphasis strategies that we've been using on places like 3rd Avenue where there's definitely been a visible material result.

And obviously, little Saigon as another area of focus and.

Given the representations from the executive about the safeguards that would be employed in the pilot and the ongoing consultative posture with community, I think that going forward throughout the budget process, what I would encourage is that we really have that conversation that fills in a little bit more around how we expect the tool to be used and really the design of the pilot.

I think that this is a really innovative way for us to try to enhance with limited resources our presence in some of these areas in a way that can be complementary with things like the Third Avenue Project and the work that we're doing with We Deliver Care.

The multi-layered Strategies that we're using in some of these locations are yielding really strong results and ways to to maintain eyes on the street to be a deterrence on really, really concerning felonious behavior that we've been seeing in certain sectors is something that we need to be taking very seriously.

And this is a new way to bring a new tool to bear.

I also just want to highlight and lift up the identified source of funding from SPD salary savings is something that I appreciate the executive looking into.

I do think that being innovative with our salary savings is something that is important as we look at ways to enhance our public safety policies.

I'm definitely intrigued in developing this concept more, and I do think this is the kind of creative thinking that we need to be pursuing to get the results that we want to see, especially in some of the places in the downtown core where this is envisioned to be deployed.

Thanks.

Council Member Peterson.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

I really appreciate the remarks of Council Member Lewis and because our city remains short on officers and detectives.

And because our mayor and this department are taking the initiative to be responsible for public safety results, I personally think we should at the very least support their entire request to implement all of these technology solutions to prevent crime.

So I'll be supporting this budget request as is.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Nelson.

Thanks, I will have some remarks about the whole technology proposal later in toward the end of the slide series, but I did want to speak to the surveillance review process as chair of the economic development technology and city like committee.

I can say that I have confidence in the mayor's ability to in our ability to to meet the deadlines as laid out in the mayor's.

Timeline and I encourage my colleagues to review the central staff Q and a tracker, which in answer to question 73 sets out in minute detail how this would move forward and how that how that could be completed.

If we act diligently by the 2nd, quarter of 2024. so that's just some added information for folks to look at.

Thank you are those old hands that are still up there.

No, I had that's my president.

Please go ahead.

That's president again.

So, I just want to clarify and I want to thank the.

Central staff for putting together the obviously the memo for us and deputy mayor Burgess for putting together the memo on with my former colleague.

Can we just clarify for me anyway, on the whole pilot, I mean, the crime prevention, they're all the pilot program.

We already do the license plate reader, correct?

We already do that, right?

That's correct.

Yeah.

Okay.

So what we're really talking about on the pilot piece is the CCTV and the shot spotter.

That's what it's called, which we've rejected a few times, but that's what's back here.

Yeah, and in this case, the gunshot locator is paired with the camera.

So, it's a little bit different of a proposal.

Okay, it's a little bit more specific, which I appreciate now in the memo, it says could be used in these areas.

And what I'm looking at is, of course, the 3rd Avenue Belltown or Aurora and those are just are those just the 3. Issue are there any other areas or is it 1 of the 3 or 2 of the 3 or all 3 or are these all to be discussed or determined or by looking at what we learned.

What we learned from the last presentation where they would most be needed to combat particular crimes when we don't have enough officers.

On the street to do this.

This might be a good time for the deputy mayor to step in and talk a little bit about how he passed, how he picked those particular sites.

Because I think there was some, some process there.

Yeah, there was and I was yeah, sorry.

Deputy Mayor Burgess.

Yeah, thank you.

First of all, council member herbal when we say that this pilot cannot be implemented.

Until the surveillance ordinance is satisfied.

We mean, it can't be purchased or implemented or anything about that.

So you're absolutely right in in your position.

The, the focus of this pilot project.

Is gun violence, human trafficking.

and areas where felony crime is concentrated and has often been present for a long time.

We have done some analysis.

We've identified areas of the city where those conditions are met.

And at this point in our preliminary conclusion, we think that it will either be the downtown Third Avenue corridor a segment of Belltown or Aurora Avenue North.

The RFP process is going to help us decide, as Greg mentioned earlier, can we do one of those places?

Can we do two?

Can we do all three?

We don't know that yet at this point.

So, Madam Chairman, I have a follow-up.

Yes, please go ahead.

Thank you.

So, Councilman, I can't get used to that, Deputy Mayor Burgess, So now that we're all post-2020, and we see now things have changed a lot in the last three years, and we've seen that different types of crime and addiction and mental health and all the other things that we've seen are everywhere.

They're not just concentrated in any one particular neighborhood, but we do see that we have more violence and deaths south of the Ship Canal.

And in particularly in black and brown neighborhoods, and I appreciate the section that you dedicated to the racial equity, social and looking at that aspect because, of course, that's important.

So, is it fair to say then that some of these areas that you you're thinking of and could be more or less Aurora is a standard, but downtown 3rd Avenue.

Our belltown what these are the areas that qualified based on what we know now from the last 3 years.

as selection of areas or am I getting ahead of myself?

So the police department's data team and their analytics group does the analysis.

We told them what we wanted to focus on in terms of gun violence and human trafficking and areas where felony crime is concentrated.

And they came back with that analysis.

It's done on a weekly basis.

And we're looking at it constantly, so if this is approved, and we go through the process, and we're ready to make a final determination as to where it will be, that analysis will be completed within days of that decision.

Especially gun violence, you're correct, Council Member, it happens all over the city, but it is very concentrated in very specific places.

And we're keenly aware of that.

And those places deserve the city government to do what we can to stop that gun violence.

The same with human trafficking.

So the analysis is happening constantly.

And we'll make that final decision when we're ready to decide.

Right.

And so you made the distinction between low level crimes and felonies, of course, gun violence and all those those felonies and where you want to put the most resources for the most critical and severe crimes.

I understand that.

So are there other cities that have gone beyond done pilot or gone beyond a pilot?

where they've employed this type of technology to, because society always has to catch up with technology.

And it makes sense if you don't have enough officers, even if you did, to have additional tools for these serious crimes, particularly the gun violence and the sex trafficking and the things that we've been seeing, well, we see nationally.

So are we seeing this type of program either adopted or as a pilot in other cities?

So, we have looked at what other major cities do.

A lot of our peer cities employ these resources.

43 jurisdictions in Washington state use all 3 or 1 or 2 of these technologies.

We are taking a bit of a different approach.

However, most of our peer cities, when they deploy CCTV technology, they are blanketing large areas of their city.

We're not doing that here.

Our evaluation of the academic literature about CCTV cameras, we drew three conclusions from that.

The first is it's most effective when you are trying to suppress specific crimes.

Second, if you're trying to do that in a very limited geographic area, And third, that you're marrying that technology with other interventions.

Such as, you know, work that you would do, or increase police patrols or engagement of community folks and intervention strategies using community based groups.

All of those things amplify the effectiveness of the CCT cameras.

And so that's what we're trying to do here.

We're not wanting to blanket our city with these cameras.

We want to be very responsive to specific, very serious crimes that are harming our people and see if we can stop those and hold people accountable who are creating these problems.

So on page two of your memo, Your theory of change, and you talk about the pilot project for these technologies, obviously, is to bolster police effectiveness in public places, obviously, deterrence, and gathering evidence to hold offenders accountable.

So this theory of change, I've seen this.

It's not brand new.

I mean, we're seeing this.

You've just articulated, obviously, to tailor to our city, if you will.

So can you tell me a little bit more about how these discussions came about either organically or procedurally or systemically for SPD and the mayor's office?

I remember when I was called by Chief Diaz the night that the mass shooting had occurred in Rainier Beach at the Safeway.

And as I was driving there, I was communicating with the mayor, who actually beat me to the scene.

But when we were standing there talking about this, I asked the chief, what else should we be doing to suppress this gun violence, which is increasing dramatically in our city?

And we had a conversation about the various interventions we could employ, including cameras in specific places.

And I think that was kind of one of the beginning points of the conversation.

We also had conversations with the budget office kind of simultaneously that indicated that we might have some funds available to do a pilot.

We started doing the research.

We started talking to people in community.

And we got to the point where we submitted this proposal to the council.

So, if I can do 1 more follow up Madam chair to.

To Mr. President, take as much time as you like.

Some of your questions are similar to mine.

Please go ahead.

Okay, so we've all been around many of us.

Have you been in discussions with now?

I know since 2020 Seattle public schools made the decision to remove public safety officers.

And then after that, we had a couple of school shootings and one in my district in which a student was killed by another student guns.

And so we are seeing more of that in other high schools.

So are we looking at whether or not or will this pilot project produce more information if indeed a high school wanted this kind of technology?

you know, I'll just keep calling what we've been calling it for eight years, the shot spot or whatever you want to call it, if it's voluntarily or if it's a project, so that it's an immediate response rather than waiting for officers to get there and do lockdown.

Is that, I mean, that's really near and dear to me, I'm sure all of us, that we've seen here just in the last couple of years.

Is that something that the mayor's office is discussing with Seattle Public Schools or is that something that we can talk about at a later date or can be implemented or part of the pilot?

No, we're not having that conversation with the school district.

We have conversations with the school district about safety fairly frequently, but we have not raised the concept of introducing these technologies at schools.

Our focus is on public places, sidewalks, streets, parks.

For example, if we do employ this on 3rd Avenue, Westlake Park is there and we have had problems there.

So we would not be advancing this or recommending this for schools, no.

So on the facial recognition, which makes sense, because obviously no one wants that for any kind of profiling.

So, can you just share a little bit more, even though you have the 1 is the 1 sentence that says we will not be using facial recognition.

How would that work on the ground?

Like, because you're going to have to look at that.

I mean, you're not going to run run software.

Can you just explain that piece real quickly?

Are you asking how police will identify offenders?

Yes.

So you're right, we're not gonna use AI facial recognition for a whole variety of reasons, including the fact that it is not developed sufficiently to be accurate and to take care of the bias that's built in and often seen.

But detectives will do what they normally do.

They'll have an image of someone, they'll talk to people, they'll show that photograph to witnesses or whatever and try to identify who that person is. regular old police work.

All right.

Thank you.

Council member Strauss.

Thank you chair, and thank you colleagues for this discussion I will just share where I started with on this you know after the discussions from the past couple years I was not interested in revisiting this conversation, and after reading the memos that have been sent to us it got me to a place of neutrality and.

From this conversation just now, I would say that I'm inclined to support this pilot.

And so there are a couple things that have brought me to this position, which is the narrow focus, both of types of crime and locationality.

I think it is really when you're talking about third when you're talking about places in Belltown and Aurora.

That's very different than all the entire city or an entire neighborhood.

Those are places that we know need to have safety interventions, specifically around human trafficking and gun violence and that's.

It's really critical that we interrupt these cycles because the folks that I see at least, you know, who are caught up in these webs in my district, not so far from Aurora, there are the parts of Aurora that really have this the most is that there are predators out there exploiting people's weaknesses to keep them in the positions that they are in to either use them as human shields or to gain from them.

And if having a camera, if trying out using a camera can disrupt this, I think it's worth a shot.

Because, and what really helped, I guess what changed my specific positionality on this today is especially understanding that there's neighborhood input if these cameras are going to be moved.

The very tight focus on where they will be That facial recognition won't be used.

and that there will be a racial equity analysis on this and that it's not just, and Deputy Mayor, one thing that you just shared really is what moved my positionality about other cities in our state using this technology to blanket their cities or other cities that use this technology to blanket their cities and having that type focus of type of crime and locationality and then being thoughtful about moving it again and before you move it.

So there's neighborhood input.

Is this something that the neighborhood wants or not?

I would tell you that there are neighborhoods in District 6 that would want a camera.

Not the entire district for sure, but there are a couple of intersections where I think that that would be helpful.

So just wanted to share this since we're having a public discussion on the issue.

Thank you, Councilmember Strauss.

Additional comments on this item?

Councilmember Herbold.

Thank you.

So, for me, the issue that I focused on with my concerns last year were less about the privacy issues because we have the surveillance ordinance to engage the public and create safeguards.

And so I've always been assuming that any investment like this would indeed go through that process.

And the privacy safeguards that would come out the end would make for a better intervention and would make it a sound investment as relates to the privacy issues.

My concerns are really focused on the efficacy of the technology and the concerns I have about false positives, about the technology or the technology is limited.

usefulness as evidence in a court of law.

And that is really the area that I need to either see some new information from from what I was looking at last year, or be persuaded that there is an approach to deal with false positives.

So we don't, we aren't deploying officers to a location that the technology identifies as a location where shots were fired, but really it's a backfire or it's fireworks.

We don't, that happens already.

We don't need to increase the likelihood of sending a very short staff.

Police force to things that don't turn out to be.

Shots fired and then similarly on the on the evidentiary value of of.

the technology that is another area.

I need to see some different studies than the audits and the reviews that I've been seeing.

So I'm trying to keep an open mind here and appreciate The, the, the commitments in the shift in focus.

I do have.

1, specific question, we're calling this a pilot, but I seem to recall, I don't know if this was in Greg's memo, or maybe in the departmental Q and a.

Have we received.

verification that a contract, it is possible to have a contract for a small period of time.

Because if we're really talking about this being a pilot and then reevaluating before committing long-term, I think we need to make sure that the the vendor, if you will, allows for that type of a contractual obligation.

Or if you're in for a year, you're in for five years.

I don't know what our expectations should be and how that meets with the definition of this as being a pilot.

Council member, the RFP document addresses that specific issue and lays out requirements for those who are going to respond to the RFP to give us options along those lines.

I think your other comments about last year and previous times are primarily related to the acoustic gunshot locator systems.

The difference here is that we're marrying that technology with the CCTV cameras, which makes the combination of both technologies far, far more effective and of much greater evidentiary value in the case of a prosecution, for example.

Council Member Herbold, follow up.

It looks like you're on mute.

Conceptually, I can understand what you're saying, Deputy Mayor Burgess.

I would just like, if there are examples of other jurisdictions that do that pairing and have that experience, I'd love to learn more.

Thank you.

You bet.

Good to hear that.

Council Member Nelson.

So when we talk about the quoting from the memo complex race and social justice issues related to this technology, I believe we need to listen to the voices of people most impacted by gun violence and serious crime, and that would be the people who've lost a family member or loved one in a fatal shooting.

Like Divita Briscoe, who wrote in a Seattle Times op-ed in June 2021, she said, there's a need for police presence in communities that are overrun by violence.

When we critique police budgets, we must do so without further jeopardizing the safety of Black women and children who are most at risk of being sexually exploited and trafficked, as well as victims of urban gun violence.

And she ends her op ed by saying, there's good reason to continue passing reforms while working toward new approaches in responding to crime and crisis.

One is my brother killed by the Seattle police.

The other is my son killed by another teenager.

And I see this technology as a new approach.

And Davida now serves in the mayor's office, and I can only assume he's listening to her.

Or you could talk to Alicia Dasa, whose son was shot in Rainier Beach in 2020 and just started a local chapter of parents of murdered children.

She supports this proposal.

Or Kiana Pickett, who will hold a vigil on October 19th, marking the first anniversary of her husband's death, Devon Pickett, and she supports this technology.

So we've got, the point's been made, but let me just, you know, kind of bunch it all together here.

We've got 920 officers in service, the lowest since decades and decades.

I believe the number is 91. I could be wrong on that, 1991. There have been 60 homicides this year to date compared to 46 in 2022, surpassing last year's total.

And it's only October 63% of the victims in fatal shootings and 56 in non fatal shootings are black were black.

So, my point is, we're in no position to throw a tool out of the toolbox here and mayor Harold grew up in the CD and attended Garfield high where there was another shooting last week, leading to a lockdown.

So I trust he's listening to the community and wouldn't be putting this forward again unless people living in the areas where people are dying really want this.

And his persistence is the reason why we have body cam cameras right now, which wasn't without controversy back in the day.

and is now considered a critical component of police accountability.

And it's, I believe, very likely that after implementation of this pilot and analysis of the outcomes, we'll one day consider use of this technology as key to a safer Seattle.

So I understand that there are questions about false positives and evidence, etc.

But what I'm really motivated by is the community that's been asking for this for years and and the mayor given another go at it.

And so I support this proposal and I'll be, of course, voting for it if it comes forward.

Thanks.

Thank you, Council Member Nelson.

OK, we are getting towards the end of the day and the end of this presentation.

There's a lot of discussion here.

I think it's warranted discussion.

I appreciate the feedback deputy mayor Burgess.

Thanks for offering additional information, especially to our public safety chair.

I do have a few follow up questions here and obviously, I think this warrants a longer discussion, but I'll try to get these in for the purpose of initiating some of that.

And I want to also contextualize this discussion again, right?

We're in the midst of a.

Budget deliberation discussion where we know that there is an ongoing revenue gap and expenditure gap beginning next year in December, December 31st.

so this is really an opportunity for us to identify what to do with very limited resources, especially not knowing if there's going to be additional resources after.

December of next year to invest in ongoing government services that we currently have.

I said at the beginning of this budget process that I was going to be analyzing and scrutinizing brand new programs, brand new initiatives and pilots overall in all departments, knowing that we have an ongoing budget situation that we're trying to address for, and that doesn't take away from the importance of the issues that we're talking about at all.

It does help to provide some additional analysis that I can be universally applying to the various departments.

Greg, can you please remind me?

Is there what is the ongoing cost for this investment?

In the future years, assuming that it would continue beyond being a pilot.

It's not known right now council member.

Okay, thank you.

And I think that.

it would be helpful to have more of an analysis of which stakeholders were reached out to to discuss the proposal here.

I know the story that was shared about the impetus for wanting to do something along this lines is very moving, given that there is a direct nexus with gun violence and human trafficking.

I've previously served on the Statewide Human Trafficking Coalition.

I would like to know more if they were involved in addition to some of the other Organizations that work on gun violence reduction strategies across our city and state.

So we'll be reaching out to the executive and also those organizations to try to get additional feedback from them.

Obviously, this is an area where it sounds like there's some time prior to implementation, given a surveillance or ordinance would need to be passed and a racial equity tool would need to be passed.

part of the analysis from central staff that I would love as well is more of an understanding of like.

Let's say the racial equity toolkit came back with no concerns and a ordinance were to be updated regarding the surveillance technologies here.

I clearly, as I've applied this lens to all departments, would like to see what sort of proportional funding would be needed with a realistic timeline of a go date if it's not the end of quarter one, as maybe that's optimistic.

So, that would be helpful in terms of both stakeholders and timeline.

I also want to again emphasize, I think that the questions and especially want to thank my colleagues who've asked questions about sort of the origins of this, the impact.

None of this is intended to be a set up as a dynamic between council and the executive, right?

We've spent a lot of time talking about the importance of us coming together to work on a budget.

And to do so, especially as we approach a biennial budgeting process that really requires both government entities to be working together so that we can serve the ongoing and increased needs in our community, community safety, public health, investments in workers and small businesses, all of those share importance in the budget.

I wanted to emphasize that the questions that are being asked is not intended to be setting up an us versus them dynamic or a division or fissures within government.

This is really about transparency, accountability, and ensuring that every dollar that is available is going out the door and to immediate services that will be deployed.

I do have to echo some of the concerns that were raised about surveillance and the sort of enhancements that we see in this year's proposal.

I think we did have a pretty robust discussion about this concept last year and appreciate that the distinction that the executive team is drawing out is that there's a.

Noise plus vision, audio plus visual technologies combined think there's a analysis there that this is a.

enhancement over the earlier proposal that we saw last year.

But I do want to note that our city auditor said in 2016, quote, there has been little research to date on the efficacy of acoustic gunshot locator systems for reducing crime.

Moreover, although a few available studies have found that acoustic gunshot locator systems can result in slightly faster response systems by police, there's no evidence that these small gains in police response times have had a deterrent effect or have led to increased apprehension of offenders.

I look forward to hearing more about that analysis as it applies to acoustic.

gunshot or locator systems married with closed captioning television to see if there's any indication that the combination there helps to address those issues.

But we know from many of the discussions that we had last year, including the analysis from the ACLU of Washington, that there is significant concern across the city about deploying surveillance technologies and the concern about that amount of information being captured and thus also marrying that concern with whether or not this is going to result in more people being able to respond immediately once they see something or hear something on those technology systems.

Overall, that may be disproportionate impact for communities who have surveillance concerns.

Again, I'll be doing some follow-up.

I appreciate the transparency with the executive in this discussion today, but I wanted to flag those concerns about stakeholder engagement, ongoing cost, and the past data that we've seen on similar technologies.

And, you know, just in terms of process, where we are at in the budget and what still needs to be codified before this technology would be able to move forward, given the racial equity tool analysis and the surveillance ordinance that still needs approval.

Lastly, I will just ask, Greg, could you remind me, mid-year this year, when we did the update to Release the salary saving dollars what the total amount of like mid year salary saving funds were that we freed up at that point.

I'm assuming it was more than 1.8Million dollars.

If I remember correctly.

Well, actually, at the time, it wasn't that we were freeing up a specific amount.

We just altered, you all just altered the proviso so that the department would have the authority to spend on salary savings and on one of the technology projects that they were pursuing, which was online reporting systems and language access to the online reporting system.

It wasn't a dollar amount that you all freed up.

It was just allowing the department to spend their salary savings on those things.

At that time, SPD was estimating that they had around $3 million in salary savings, which now, as we know, it's about 4.5.

4.5, thank you.

Yeah, that's my recollection as well that it was near 3Million dollars mid year.

So I wanted to flag that as another option as we look into the rollout of such a proposal and making sure that it meets the merits of a racial equity tool analysis stakeholder engagement, passing the council ordinance, but there's also a possibility that there could be mid year funding freed up that.

is sufficient to meet the needs of the total year costs that's being projected in the budget.

Just thinking through some options as we look at the proposal in front of us to ensure that some of these questions do get answered in the context of the other budgetary investments that need to be made.

Let's take last comments on this from our executive team, and then I think we're going to move on.

Deputy Mayor Burgess, please go ahead.

Chair Mosqueda, thanks for your comments.

We welcome this kind of dialogue and the questions, even the tough questions.

We view ourselves as your partners and we look forward to you helping us make this pilot even better than we've thought up so far.

So thank you for that.

Deputy, excuse me, Director Dingley.

Thanks, I just wanted to clarify that this proposal in the mayor's budget is currently paid for with salary savings from the department so it is budget neutral so I just wanted to flag that.

Yes, thank you so much and I do recognize that, but I also wanted to sort of note that where the funding source was coming from could could could potentially still be a funding source for next year.

If there was additional salary savings, like the amounts that we're seeing in the last few years at some point, either in the spring or mid year next year again, just looking for how we answer some of these questions collectively.

and also weighing that with the other investments necessary.

Appreciate it.

Okay, let's move forward.

We have a few more slides.

It's about 4.15.

I know we can get done before five and we will free up on this Friday afternoon.

All right, so can we go one more slide?

So as your central staff, I am bound to give you options, and options you have.

And you all, as you have just heard, have a variety of opinions, so I'm inclined to give you a variety of options.

Before I give you these options, I want to preface that the use of this technology, as you have heard, jurisdictions have found that CCTV can be useful and effective as a deterrent and that it helps provide evidence after crimes have occurred.

When the memo that I wrote talks about creating complex race and social justice issues, much of that depends on how it's implemented.

When we talk about the executive developing policies where there would be real-time monitoring and real-time deploying, but it would only be focused on certain crimes, We're talking about those policies being transmitted to the Council in the form of a surveillance impact report and then the Council needing to adopt those by ordinance.

That process is not very dissimilar from the process that you all went through over the summer when you were adopting the state's drug possession law.

you were determining how police policy would be working on the streets, who would be approached by police, who would be arrested, and who would be diverted.

Here, it would be very similar in the sense that there would be crimes that would be seen by cameras And the surveillance impact report would be laying forth the policies that the police department would be using to determine who would be approached for what crimes, under what circumstances, and how the police would handle those crimes.

So it is a complex policy discussion that would be before you when you are approving the surveillance impact report.

And I want to point that out because when we talk about the timelines, it's not something that is likely to happen quickly.

And with that as sort of the overall context, I would say that some of the options here, reducing by a million and a half, the proviso or the pilot, one possible rationale for that is that the council would need to set these policies before the executive can even purchase this equipment, as council member Herbold has said.

And given the length of time that it might take for the executive to do the necessary community outreach, the work with the Community Surveillance Working Group, which includes the ACLU and other stakeholders, and to develop these policies, that's a choice that the Council could make.

The council could also just provide funding for the software that would do the license plate reading but not the CCTV or reduce the entire, as I said, the entire appropriation.

So that's the context that I offer these options within.

There is complex public safety issues that will need to be addressed by the council.

They're not easy issues to settle.

Great, thanks again for this analysis and thanks to the executive team for being part of the conversation today.

I, I want to just jump in with 1 more question because I forgot to ask it in my last comments there on the previous slide and.

This is very helpful to have you all on the line.

So let me just make sure that I have greater understanding here.

Is the live feed camera also going to have an acoustic gunshot locator ability?

Is that the same technology or maybe similar technology as gunshot or shot spotter?

Yeah, so the cameras are going to have the gun locator ability.

They'll hear the gunshot.

there will also be monitoring.

If the folks monitoring don't see the gunshot, the locator device will let them know, but the locator device will conceivably add the functionality of being able to provide evidentiary value of where the shot was fired and probably also type of shot, some other things the deputy mayor may be able to add some texture to.

We do see the CCTV and the gunshot system.

Co located and together, so it, um.

The co-location means that it registers loud sounds, or is there, like, a live audio feed?

That's part of the cameras.

There's not a audio feed if you're referring to, are we recording voices that we hear on the street or the sidewalk or something?

No, that is not.

Thank you.

It detects the sound of gunshots, or what it thinks are gunshots, and then it goes through a verification process to determine if it really was a gunshot.

The CCTV cameras, though, are recording constantly.

And that video is maintained for approximately 30 days and then recorded over, essentially erased.

So it's kind of a loop.

You have 30 days of video.

If the police detect that a crime occurred and they want the video evidence of that crime, they have to then take that and move it that segment of the video, move it to their digital evidence unit or to their management system that they have for digital evidence.

If it's after the 30 days and they go back and want to get evidence of a crime, video evidence, it's too late.

It's gone because it's already been erased over.

So there's an automatic purging of that video.

But the gunshot does alert the police, the locator system does alert the police that gunshots were heard.

I should also clarify, as we talk about the real-time crime center, it's not that there are going to be dedicated people sitting in a room watching monitors.

It's more if an incident occurs that the folks at the Realtime Crime Center are able to maintain situational awareness and be talking to officers in the field and that type of thing.

It's less than eyes on monitors 24 seven.

Very helpful.

Thank you very much.

Okay, Greg, I think we're going forward.

All right, and thank you for clarifying that.

I meant to say if they see shooting.

All right, moving forward.

All right, so I had told you earlier that there was 5.7 million in annual grant awards that are moving into the budget.

Not going to spend too much time on this slide, but you normally see these grant awards in separate legislation.

Some of them include rather mundane awards like the Washington State Traffic Safety Coalition providing funding for DUI patrols.

Some of them, however, contain grants that the council has typically taken more interest in, like the urban area security initiative, or the state homeland security program.

There are some, there's some information about these grants that is available to you at the back of my staffing memo.

There is some information, some detail provided on this, on these grant awards.

However, it's not the level of detail that you have seen in the past.

In the past, SPD has come and provided a pretty thorough briefing on all of the projects and programs that they would use Homeland Security funding for.

If the funding is moved into the budget and passed as part of this process that probably would not occur.

That's a policy decision for the council and their comfort level with allowing the grants to move forward in this budget or wanting to take a more detailed look at it.

One of the reasons that the executive wants to bring this forward as part of this process is because these grants are on an annual cycle and it happens to be the federal fiscal year.

And so by the time the council is able to do that more detailed review, we're halfway through the federal fiscal year and it makes spending the money on the Homeland Security a little difficult.

So the executive has requested to put those funds in this budget.

One happy medium under my options might be to proviso the funding on projects that you may have concern about or need more information on, and the ones that you don't, to not proviso.

So that is my explanation.

I'll ask any questions on this one.

Helpful to helpful information about the, um.

Federal contracting timeline.

Okay, no questions on this 1. Oh, excuse me.

Councilor Nelson.

So, um.

I would just so if this is what I'm thinking about, we did have a on February 23rd last year in 2022, we did have a report that was in response to slide 18 a that requested a report on the outcomes of the 2021 work that was facilitated by these grants.

If I'm so great, could you confirm that?

This is the same thing.

There were two things.

One is the UASI grant award that was done in early last year, where the department came and talked about the UASI award.

And you'll recall that that was the discussion about the Bearcat armored vehicle.

And in that particular case, those grants had been put in the first quarter supplemental.

The discussion about the Bearcat was facilitated by SPD.

And once the council's questions were answered, then the supplemental was passed.

There was a separate discussion.

that happened the year before on task force reimbursements.

That was the result of a sly, and Chief Diaz presented SPD's efforts on federal task forces.

There are a number of task forces that SPD participates in, and those are not in this budget, but they are part of the year-end supplemental budget, and that's actually the next slide.

that I was just going to make you aware there are a number of task forces that are being reimbursed.

Chief Diaz has in the past given a presentation on those.

The council seemed to be satisfied with the descriptions that he was giving of the officers work on those task forces.

And then last year passed the reimbursement for those task forces.

as part of the supplemental budget.

And the last thing I'll note on that is that that work has already been done.

So it really is the case that if and we'll go ahead and flip to the next slide here, is that if if this is this is the year and supplemental budget and that last item is the four hundred and forty six on the task forces really is the case that if the council chose not to provide that appropriation, then it just makes SPD's Budget not whole for work that they've already done and for money that the city's already received.

Okay, so if the, um, so I'm hearing that it is likely the same thing that we're talking about, then this is the, um, the FBI grants, the, um, D.

E. A.

these are the partnerships with the D.

E. A.

and the yes, that's the 446. Got it.

And I, and Angie will vouch for the fact that I kept at subsequent to this presentation in February, I kept asking.

So, you know, when is that reimbursement going to occur?

So, I just wanted to note, I, there are.

4 different task forces that are detailed in the, in the response to that slide.

It was, and this was presented at that meeting and I added up some of the outcomes of those grants.

I mean, of those task force partnerships.

In 2021, there were 40 kilos of cocaine, 105 kilos of methamphetamine, 90,000 pills of fentanyl.

Let's see, 93.4 kilos of fentanyl powder.

Right now, that seems like a small amount considering the volumes that we're dealing with now.

Heroin, 55 kilos.

And then 163 firearms, and I think that was for a shorter amount of time.

So I do remember thinking that these are very valuable partnerships that we that we've got going that are making our that that are handling that are.

that are doing some heavy lifting to make sure that the guns and the drugs don't hit our streets.

And so I hope that there is some appreciation for the work that these task forces do, and that we can make it easier for our department to get reimbursed for money that is already allocated, because these officers, I assume, are doing overtime to serve on these.

Some of them are to serve on these task forces.

That's correct.

Thank you.

So, that's the presentation.

Okay, well, you did a great job, Greg.

Thanks for your patience with us and to the executive for your feedback as well.

Just on that last slide, Greg, just so I don't misunderstand here.

Usually, when it comes to grant acceptance for Seattle Public, excuse me, Seattle Police Department, the council is in the position of accepting or denying the grants, right?

We don't really have purview over what happens with those dollars.

This is not changing that ability to authorize acceptance of specific grants or projects.

Yes, that's true.

Okay, great.

And that is true of both the supplemental budget grants here or the grants that the executive proposes to put in SPD's annual budget, the slide before.

Okay, great.

I am looking for any additional hands.

We are at the end of that presentation.

No additional hands.

All right.

Let me just say, thanks again.

Thanks for walking us through this comprehensive analysis.

Oh, counts.

Deputy Mayor Burgess, was that a hand?

No.

No, I was giving you a thumbs up.

A thumbs up.

Okay.

I thought it was a hold on.

Okay.

Thank you.

Thanks again to the team from the mayor's office and the Seattle Police Department for being part of this conversation.

Obviously, there's a lot of questions that we will be following up with you on, but I think very much appreciate this discussion that we've all had today and to Greg, Thank you and your colleagues within central staff who have dived and dove into the proposed budget and provided the comprehensive analysis here for us today.

Colleagues, we will have the opportunity to meet with you.

I'm going to be reaching out and talking to each of the council members on Monday afternoon.

Hope you will join us on Monday at 10 am.

if anybody wants to tune in, we're going to start with public comment as requested by our colleagues and then we're going to have 3 panels.

The revised agenda just went out some additional materials included in that agenda for Monday to hear directly from community partners.

Again, this is our effort to continue on the theme of transparency and accountability and measuring and showing where public dollars are going.

We'll have a tee up of that discussion on Monday.

And with that, I know there was many more conversations to be had here, but I want to thank you for your robust participation over the last 3 days.

And we'll see you at 10 am on Monday.

Hearing no objection today's meeting is adjourned.

We'll see you on Monday at 10 am.

Thanks.

Everybody.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Recording stop.