Seattle City Council Select Budget Committee 6/24/2020 Session II

back to order and proceed with its business.

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

For the roll call, will the clerk please call the roll again?

Council Member Sawant.

Here.

Council Member Strauss.

Present.

Council Member Gonzalez.

Here.

Council Member Herbold.

Councilmember Juarez?

Councilmember Lewis?

Present.

Councilmember Morales?

Here.

Councilmember Peterson?

Here.

Chair Mosqueda?

Present.

Seven present.

Thank you very much, Madam Clerk.

We also have received notification from Council Member Juarez that she will just be a few minutes late, so she should be joining us soon and we will welcome her and any other Council Members who do join us later.

Council Colleagues, this is our part two of our Select Budget Committee today.

As you know, this is the part of the agenda where we devote our conversation to looking at the upcoming I would like to welcome you to the 2020 rebalancing budget package and continuing our inquest into the Seattle Police Department's budget.

There are three items on today's agenda, including the responses asked from the Seattle Police Department's budget presentation on June 10th.

A follow-up presentation on the questions asked or call analysis of 911 calls.

And finally, the city budget last night, yesterday afternoon.

I know a lot of people have been busy trying to read through the many pieces of legislation, I believe 15 pieces of legislation.

So we do not anticipate that everyone will have all of their questions for today.

This will be part one of a two part series, we will hear a presentation from central staff today and the CBO, the city budgets office.

But just note that if you don't get a chance to ask all of your questions, you will be able to revisit those in detail.

at the next budget hearing, which is next Wednesday afternoon.

With that, I just want to see if there's any additional questions or comments on the remainder of our agenda today.

It was already adopted at the very beginning.

Okay.

Hearing none, let's go ahead and open up our second part series for our public comment.

Again, at this time, it is our intent to open remote public comment for session two.

You are welcome to speak to any part of our agenda that's included for the AM or PM sessions.

including access or including comments on progressive revenue.

We will have one minute for each of our speakers again this afternoon with the intent to have 30 minutes of public testimony.

Please introduce yourself at the beginning of the presentation.

We will call folks three at a time and you will hear a notice that you have been unmuted.

That is your indication to start speaking.

You will also get a 10 second chimer to let you know to wrap up your comments.

Our intent is to try to prioritize those who are living and working within Seattle.

We will do everything we can to get through as many people as possible.

Please remember that we have public comment every single committee meeting.

At the beginning of the meeting, we know that it is hard to ask folks to hang in there on the line.

So we want to do that at the beginning of every meeting, which we've done so in every meeting we've had this year.

As you wrap up your comments, please note that you will have to hang up the line and call back in either to the listen line or watching on seattlechannel.org or any of the listening options on the agenda, including at Seattle Channel's TV channel on local cable.

The public comment period is now open, and I want to turn it over to see if the folks who are here are able to I'm sorry.

If our IT folks are able to unmute the following people, we will go ahead and get started.

The first two speakers are Allison Isinger and Joseph Sergay.

Allison, welcome.

Thank you very much, council members.

Good afternoon.

My name is Allison Isinger.

I am the director of the Seattle King County Coalition on Homelessness, and we are proudly and strongly in support of the Jump Start Seattle proposal I want to encourage everyone to seize the moment and obviously build on the strong support in our community for progressive revenue, but also maintain the focus on building hundreds of homes for people who have none and who are attempting to survive on a few hundred dollars, if that.

We all know that no single tax is going to be sufficient to address our affordable housing crisis or the additional crises that have been laid bare.

by the COVID-19 pandemic.

That was true six months ago, and it's true now.

No single tax is going to do it all, but we are now having a conversation about much bigger amounts than we were having even 12 months ago.

I want to thank you for that and pledge that we are going to support this and other parallel work to

Allison, thank you so much.

I'm sorry to cut you off.

Please do send the remainder of your comments and we appreciate your time.

Joseph, welcome.

Hi, can you hear me?

Yes, we can.

Hi, my name is Joe.

Great, thank you.

My name is Joe.

I'm a member of UAW 4121 and I'm a music teacher.

I'm calling to support the movement's demands to defund the police by 50%, not 5%.

I don't think the mayor is listening to the movement and what people want in this proposal to defund by 5%.

We should instead be putting money towards things that actually keep us safe, like public education and community centers and mental health services.

I also think that we truly need community control over the police.

which would mean the ability to hire and fire the police and have that controlled by the community, not the establishment politicians.

I think Mayor Jenny Durkan has shown that when the establishment politicians have control over the police, they tear gas people in the streets.

I also think that we should be fighting for the Amazon tax put forward by council members Sawant and Morales.

It raises much more money and there's no sunset clause.

And I also want to tell people about the people's budget tomorrow online at 6 p.m.

Thank you very much.

The next three people are Alicia Lewis, Eric Ackerman, and Stacey Johnson.

Welcome, Alicia.

Hi, yeah, I'm Alicia Lewis.

I'm a member of Socialist Alternative, and I'm calling to demand that the City Council defund the Seattle Police Department by 15% immediately and reinvest that money into community-led restorative justice.

Under pressure of the mass movement that erupted from police brutality, Mayor Durgan, who just weeks ago allowed the brutal tear-gassing and pepper-spraying of her own constituents, has now proposed cutting funding to Seattle police by a mere 5 percent.

I think this is outrageous, and a slap in the face to the movement in Seattle, which is demanding the police budget be cut by no less than half.

We have had enough of symbolic gestures.

To everyone listening, I want to emphasize that we cannot put our trust in the establishment that, with the exception of council members that want, has voted to increase the police budget year after year.

We have to continue organizing to win defunding the police by 50%, a strong Amazon tax to fund our communities.

And I want to invite everyone, like Joe was talking about, to join me in the movement tomorrow for the People's Budget Town Hall at 6 p.m.

in Cal Anderson Park.

Thank you.

The next three speakers are Eric Ackerman, Stacey Johnson, and Teresa Hohmann.

Eric, welcome.

Hello, my name is Eric Ackerman.

I'm a rank and file member of MP, District 3. I'm wondering how, based on its actions, how committed the City Council is to the values of Black Lives Matter.

The Sawant Morales proposal provides An average of a thousand housing units a year over the next 10 years versus around 300 for the other proposal.

The it is also a permanent commitment compared to a lesser time commitment of about eight years.

I don't understand why leave a future Seattle again.

It doesn't make sense to have a sunset on excessive revenue.

Also, the other proposal incentivizes keeping compensation under $150,000 a year for employees.

Why do that?

Why incentivize low pay?

Doesn't make sense.

So is the council committed to 30% for the future?

How much of a commitment does the council really have?

We'll know by...

Stacey Johnson, welcome.

Hi.

Hello, I'm Stacy Johnson, Georgetown Tiny House Village resident and kitchen coordinator.

The Georgetown neighborhood is classified as a food desert.

There's no grocery stores within walking distance of the village.

We're lucky to be able to go to the gas station next door to get a few things, but a diet rich in fast foods, not only unhealthy, it's incredibly expensive.

When the plague of this new millennia hit us, we were fortunate and started receiving one meal per day per person, thanks to Operation Sack Lunch.

This meal allowed most of our vulnerable visitors to stay, villages to stay close to home and self-isolate.

I would implore the city council to fund Operation Sack Lunch so they may continue providing meals to us and to other villages for the rest of the year.

To stop now would surely be devastating to some of us.

We appreciate and thank you for your support.

Everything really does help.

Thank you so much for your time.

Appreciate it.

Theresa Holman.

Welcome, Theresa.

My name is Theresa Holman, and I And I supervise the tiny house village staff for Lehigh.

We enthusiastically support all three progressive revenue proposals.

And I wanna thank council members Morales, Sawant, Gonzalez, Lewis, Herbold, and Strauss for the work on these.

This will be a big help to funding more affordable housing in tiny house villages that will help our unhoused neighbors.

We would also ask for 156,000 for food in our four existing villages.

Villagers just don't have enough to eat, like the one just mentioned at Georgetown.

Thanks so much.

Thank you very much.

The next three speakers will be Josh Castle, Ellie Cassidy, and Katie Rhodes.

Josh, welcome.

Hi, I'm Josh Castle with Lehigh.

We enthusiastically support the progressive revenue proposals that are being put forward.

And I just want to thank all of you guys work on that, particularly Council Members Morales, Sawant, Mosqueda, Gonzalez, Lewis, Herbold, and Strauss.

And I'm just hoping that this can go towards more affordable housing, more services to help the homeless in our tiny house villages that will go a long way towards helping fund those programs.

We also, support the call from African-American faith leaders for 1,000 affordable homes to combat gentrification in the Central District and to start bringing some of those residents back and to combat basically racist policies that have been in place for a while.

And we also urge you to add more food to the budget for several of our villages.

These were not added to the budget by HSD.

the residents needed for food security and to be able to shelter in place so they can.

Thank you for your time.

The next speaker is Ellie Cassidy.

Hi, I'm Ellie Cassidy.

I am a resident in the third district and a small business owner.

And I want to remind you when you're thinking of creating tax laws that Remember that our President Trump bragged about tax loopholes, that we need to be clear.

The tax structure dictates how businesses will utilize their staff to look at and to lean into loopholes and use them well.

The income threshold is a message to pay less.

The Sunset asked them to run the numbers and see how they can benefit for waiting things out.

We need to support communities.

both the working and the most vulnerable long-term and immediately.

Let's not give a small token to this movement.

We need council members who are for the people and not protecting the profits for big business.

Thank you very much.

Haiti, welcome.

Hello, my name is Hattie Rhodes.

I used to live at the Georgetown Tiny House Village before recently becoming housed.

I'm here to thank you for your support of Tiny House Villages.

They are a safe and dignified option for those experiencing homelessness.

I know the need is great for more of these villages.

Every day, people in desperate situations call the village and inquire how to get in.

I wish we could say, come here and become part of our community, but we can't.

Use the funding from the Federal CARES Act and state-sent funding for shelters to create 20 more villages in the next two years so that others can have the same opportunity to rebuild their lives that I was given.

Thank you.

Thank you for your time.

The next three people are Ellen Anderson, Danielle Slothauer, and Chris McDaniel.

Ellen, welcome.

Hi, I'm Ellen Anderson.

I'm a member of Socialist Alternative and a District 2 resident.

Right now, there are two opportunities right now that the city council should be absolutely jumping on that is able to make Seattle a more affordable and open place for all people who live here.

We need more than ever to cut the funding of the police by 50% at the absolute minimum.

This is the demand that has been put forward undisputably by the movement, and it is absolutely ridiculous for the mayor to be putting forward anything less than that.

And 5% is just uh, just throws in the face of all of the people who have been out risking their lives, um, demanding this of the city.

We also need 500 million a year, uh, without a sunset clause, uh, so that we are able to not just, uh, leave COVID in a desk, but also be able to continue, uh, by having a good union.

Sorry, you got cut off.

Thank you for your comments.

Please do send those remaining thoughts in.

Chris, I'm sorry, Daniel Slothauer, please go ahead.

Hi, I'm Dan Slothauer.

I'm a resident of the First District.

I want to talk today about the police funding.

I think 5% is woefully inadequate and insulting.

I think 50% is a dead minimum that we need to cut.

I don't think, especially in this time when we have budget problems, spending $380 million on violence workers is a good thing to do.

I would also like to point out that if those National Guardsmen had been stationed in Raqqa using tear gas would have been considered a war crime.

And so Mayor Durkin, Chief Best, and individual members of the SPD don't believe Seattleites deserve the same protection from these vile weapons as members of the Islamic State are offered.

I'd also like to point out that there were reports of babies and toddlers around that area seizing and foaming at the mouth because of the indiscriminate use of tear gas.

I just want to talk to the council finally.

If any of you votes for a budget that does not cut the police by at least 50%, you're saying Seattleites of color, I don't see you, I don't hear you, and I don't care about you.

Next three people are Chris McDaniel, Alice Lockhart, and Naomi See.

Welcome, Chris.

Good afternoon, council members.

My name is Chris McDaniel.

I'm one of the leaders at Georgetown Tiny House Village.

On behalf of all the villagers at Georgetown Tiny House Village, I would like to urge you to fund Operation Sack Lunch for the village, at least through the end of the year.

It was life-saving for us.

We only have a gas station main mart to buy food at with no good source for healthy food without traveling two or three miles.

The lunches have made life at the camp much better.

We had times where we didn't have anything to eat because the gas station wasn't even getting restocked.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Alice, welcome.

Hi.

Hi I'm Alice Lockhart speaking today for 350 Seattle's big business team.

We absolutely must defund SPD by at least 50 percent to begin to realize real public safety.

But the need is so much greater than the savings we'll realize.

Homelessness food and rent insecurity lack of mental health services and our continued failure to address the climate crisis all make people profoundly unsafe.

Austerity budgets will expand and prolong missuffering.

And that's why we need additional public revenue at a scale commensurate with the many problems.

We understand that the jumpstart legislation has broad council support, but it so needs to be substantially strengthened to more like 500 million.

There needs to be an end to the sunset clause, and there needs to be direction of significant funding to our Green New Deal program.

I'm so sorry, Green New Deal programs that we need for both a safe climate and economic recovery.

Our volunteers have been working gathering signatures for a progressive revenue ballot initiative.

Please honor their.

Thank you, Alice.

Naomi C., welcome.

Hi, my name is Naomi C., and I'm a student at the University of Washington.

I want to speak on behalf of passing progressive revenue and commend the council members for their initiative and tenacity in making this happen.

We can never fully right generations of wrongs against marginalized communities.

But what we can do is provide dollars for community-based organizations to do the work they are already doing with minimal resources to support youth, provide opportunities in education and employment, and build desperately needed housing.

Specifically, I want to speak on behalf of the letter that the faith leaders from the central area put forth to support the central area housing plan and develop 1,000 units of affordable housing.

This proposal is a critical step towards providing the necessary resources to combat displacement and reverse the trend of disinvestment in communities of color.

Organizations and institutions seeking to provide critical resources should not have to compete against one another for resources.

Please pass progressive revenue.

Thank you.

Okay, thank you.

It does look like we will have the ability to get some folks in that are calling in from out of the city, since we are going to be able to get through all the public testimony today.

The next three people are going to be Afomya Assefa, Abdirahim Youssef, and Lisa Myers.

Afomya, are you with us?

Yes.

Can you hear me?

Yes great.

Go ahead please.

Okay.

Hi.

My name's Afomya.

I am part of the District 4 of Seattle.

I'm here to advocate for the minimum defundment of SPD by 50 percent.

This is not negotiable for the people.

Any attempt by Jenny Durkan to take the movement away to say she doesn't understand what people are demanding she knows.

The demands have been out there.

like the government is laughing in our face that everyday people are risking their health by being on the street marching.

There are daily marches to the West Precinct, if you're not aware, show up.

Also, I would like to point out that there are council members in this group that have taken money from the SPD.

I'm asking you and urging you, are you going to return that money and reallocate it to community funds, direct funding of black people, and show us that the SPD doesn't control you with the money they've invested in your run for office?

Thank you.

Okay, thank you.

Abduraham Yusuf.

Good afternoon, council members.

My name is Abduraham Yusuf.

I am a community organizer with Thought Communities Organizing for Racial Equity.

We are over 20 community-based organizations led by people of color.

I am asking the council to do everything in your power to defund the alibis.

At least 50%, anything less than 50% is an insult to everyone who's been on the streets who have been calling for defunding the alibis.

We need to invest in community-led help and safety strategies and it's not The 5% the mayor proposed, it's not going to do that.

It's unacceptable.

I'm also here to support the Charms Act to raise the new money for community service, including the Equal Quality Development Initiative.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Lisa Meyers, welcome.

Hi, my name is Lisa Meyers, District 2. I'm a property management professional, registered voter with three registered and voting young adult children and a hate crime survivor.

I'm calling to ask the council to vote in support of defunding the police by at least 50%.

The 5% recommended by Mayor Durkin is insulting.

As well, this council should support the measure to tax Amazon without a sunset clause to address racist gentrification and fund housing for black and brown people and create jobs.

Evictions must be investigated by the judges that are granting them In King County, they're often illegal and exacted on Black and Brown people.

I'm also demanding that Governor Inslee order an investigation into hate crimes committed against Black women on Mercer Island.

Hate crimes are being suppressed by Mayor Benson Wong, Mercer Island City Council, and Mercer Island City Attorney, and the racist Mercer Island Police.

911 calls are not responded for Black women on Mercer Island.

Police reports are not created for Black women when they call or go to the police department for help.

Thank you so much.

Please do send in the rest of your comments.

Appreciate it.

The next three people are Ruby Gabale, Daniel Wang, and Leah Moreno.

Ruby, welcome.

Hi, can you hear me?

Yes, we can.

Hi, I'm calling like many other callers to ask you to draft and support a measure to defund Seattle police by at least 50%.

I agree with previous callers that the 5% offered by Mayor Durkin is insulting and doesn't address any of the concerns of the protesters in Seattle and across the country.

I want those funds to go towards education and behavioral health and services that will actually strengthen the Black community and other communities that are oppressed in our city.

We want the council to put forward initiatives to show how to meaningfully invest in black communities with housing, with jobs, with property.

And I also want the council to explain why there has been no effort that I can see of engaging in listening sessions with the constituencies that are particularly oppressed right now and that these protests aren't supportive.

I would really like to know what the council is doing to meaningfully connect to those constituents.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Daniel, welcome.

Hi, I'm a student in District 4 and a member of Socialist Alternative.

It seems like the budget gap we're looking at for the year is $378 million.

In context of this and the demands to defund the SPD by at least 50%, Mayor Durkin's 5% budget cut is a complete joke and honestly insulting.

People in Seattle who are hurting from this recession do not need armed patrols and homeless encampment suites.

They need rent relief and mortgage freezes.

They need unemployment checks and free health care.

They need affordable housing and food assistance.

No austerity right now.

Defund the SBD by 50% and use that $200 million to continue funding crucial social services.

And pass the Salon Morales payroll tax.

It is the strongest progressive tax on the table that will raise the most progressive revenue to plug our budget holes.

One last thing, as other people have pointed out, People's Budget 2020 meeting is tomorrow at 6 p.m.

It's online.

You can find information about it on Councilmember San Juan's Facebook page.

We really want to make this movement and our demands heard.

Thank you.

I receive you all.

Thank you.

Leah, welcome.

Hi.

Hi my name is Leah Moreno.

I'm a registered voter of District 5. First regarding the first session I applaud the progressive nature of the tax proposals but the jumpstart bill just doesn't raise enough to address the budget shortfalls and the overdue public needs.

It needs a bigger footprint like the bill proposed by Salant and Morales.

I'm also growing concerned that the council is hoping to rather than Support the proposal by one morale is there hoping to fill the gap using budget cuts to the fpd which is not quite what the call to defund the fpd are about what we really want is to be in that reinvesting in our black and brown community.

And to undo the harm and rethink public safety on a more fundamental level rather than just doing a short-term correction to our current shortfall.

Thank you.

You have my time.

Okay.

Thank you so much.

Justin Allegro, Chris Boylan, and Saira Sos.

Welcome, Justin.

Thank you.

My name is Justin Allegro.

I am in District 7. I'm a member of the Queen Anne Community Council's Board of Directors.

I support rebalancing a budget that includes a minimum of 50% reduction in Seattle Police Department general funding.

in the current fiscal year.

And I think this probably means that the chief in the short term will need to lay off sworn officers earning over $200,000 a year, and I'm okay with that.

I don't support moving investments from other critical needs at this time, and I do support new progressive revenue.

I strongly support the Sawant and Morales revenue proposal.

I think at least seven city districts support this proposal, and at least seven council members can get behind it and force the mayor to publicly reject it.

I want to thank Council Member Mosqueda for the jumpstart proposal as well, although I don't support the temporal sunset on that proposal.

And I just want to say that even up here in Upper Queen Anne, there is a clamor for action on defunding the police and on big progressive revenue.

Thank you.

Great, thank you.

Chris, welcome.

Hi, thank you, Council Member.

Hi, thanks, council members.

My name is Chris Boylan.

I am a resident of District 4, and I recently graduated with a master's degree in climate policy from UW.

I'm calling today to express my support for the Tax Amazon initiative.

When we talk about progressive policies, we can't leave climate out of the discussion.

Otherwise, we aren't truly making progress for the future.

The Tax Amazon proposal would set aside money for Green New Deal jobs, which is not only more progressive, but also falls in line with Seattle's past and aspired history to continue leading the country in terms of dealing with climate change.

I'm also calling to echo the demands of the community and King County Equity Now to defund SPD by at least 50% and invest those funds in community health and safety.

Every process I have attended in Seattle has included unanimous support calling for the defunding of the police.

So I implore the city council to not stop at listening to the residents who they serve, but to actually act on their demands.

Thank you, I yield my time.

Thank you.

Saira, welcome.

Saira, apologies.

Yes, hi.

Could you hear me?

Yes, we can.

Go ahead.

Thank you.

My name is Saira, and I'm with the Refugees Organization, and I support the Jumpstart Build to raise new money for community services, including the equitable development initiative.

My community has been impacted by COVID-19, from businesses closing and for elders who have been sick and need care.

We need the City of Seattle to provide essential services to support our community.

We know the best way to prevent displacement is through equitable development and the most trusted service providers are our community cultural centers.

It is time for large businesses that can pay high wages especially the ones that profit from our current economy during a public health crisis to pay their fair share.

We support and stand for raising new revenue to take care of our community.

And we want 10% dedicated to the equitable development initiative.

Thank you so much for your time.

Thank you so much for your time.

Appreciate it.

We are able to get through everybody who is present and signed up.

So I'm going to read the last five names here.

Kyla Jackson, Aaron Whitlatch, Uma Raghunath, Sujata Romney, and Tina Eke.

So the next person is Kayla Jackson.

Thank you.

Hi my name is Kayla Jackson.

I'm a District 2 resident and program manager for the CREST program at Puget Sound Sage.

I'm calling to tell you my support for a 50 percent cut from the Seattle Police Department budget.

This money can truly go to keeping our community safe and put it including putting land directly in the hands of Black and Indigenous communities and organizations who are truly accountable to Black and Indigenous folks.

I'm also calling to support the new new progressive revenue especially proposals that give at least 10 percent for the equitable development initiative.

We need this equitable development initiative funding for a long-term community control and ownership of land that will lead to long-term community health.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Aaron, welcome.

Hi, my name is Aaron Willach and I live in District 6. I first wanted to show my support for defunding the police by at least 50 percent.

But really, I want to bring up something that I feel like hasn't been discussed a lot recently, which was, you know, a couple of weeks ago, three council members sort of put forward the idea that if Mayor Durkin wasn't going to show any support to defunding the police or actually listening to the voices of the people, that she should consider resigning.

Now, it's a couple of weeks later, and she's just sort of slapped everyone in the face by saying she supports a $20 million reduction, which is absurd.

And the Seattle Police Department is now just lying to the public, which thank you, Council Member Herbold, for calling out.

But I guess this raises a question.

Are we now revisiting impeaching Mayor Durkin?

Like, this is absurd.

You guys have the power to do it.

Take six of you.

Correct me if I'm wrong.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Uma, thank you for testifying.

I'm sorry we weren't able to get to you earlier.

I see that you're on the line.

We're coming back up to you.

Uma, welcome.

Yes, thank you.

My name is Uma R and I'm a tech entrepreneur in Seattle District 7 and not representing the boards or the companies I advise.

I'm representing CSIA.

We support and follow the lead of the BLM movement and support defunding SPD by 50%.

I'm calling in favor of the sub on Morales and on tax legislation that would tax the business at a rate to bring in $500 million a year beginning immediately to fund covid relief which will help thing in the green new deal.

It would be a permanent tax with no sunset clouds.

What we need to sunset is the deeply unjust redressive tax system that we have in the state.

The affordable housing crisis and the gentrification we have right now.

I'm not in favor of the Democrat-Amazon proposal that would only raise less than half of the money, but outrageously has a sunset cost, meaning the tax on big businesses would expire after 10 years.

In other words, Seattle would return to being a tax haven for the rich and powerful.

This is simply not acceptable.

This is why I strongly want City Council to pass this event, more or less.

Thank you.

Sujatha, welcome.

Hi, my name is Sujata.

I represent the Coalition of Seattle Indian Americans today.

We strongly support and follow the lead of the King County Equity Now Coalition.

We want Seattle City Council to pass the Savant Morales Tax Amazon legislation without any corporate loopholes.

Reverend Carrie Anderson, pastor of Seattle's First African Methodist Episcopal Church said, simply put, if black lives matter, then affordable housing for black families in the central area should matter.

The Democrats' tax raises far less and has an insidious sunset clause.

They are designing the end of a taxation without even having begun it.

This speaks volumes on their intent and sincerity on any progressive taxes at all.

Our movement, Amazon Tax, would create 10,600 affordable homes in 10 years, versus the Democrats' Amazon Tax, which creates 3,000 in 20 years.

Pass the sovereign Morales and Amazon tax that will enable the funding needed.

Black Lives Matter.

Thank you.

Okay, the last person that we have is Tina Ek.

Welcome.

Hello, can you hear me?

Yes, thank you for waiting.

Yes, this is Tina Ek.

I'm the president of Seattle Indivisible.

And I'm here to lend our organization support to the demands of Black Lives Matter Seattle King County and the King County Equity Now Coalition.

We believe that the proposed $20 million cut to SPD's budget by the mayor is just not reflecting the transformational change in policing that Black leadership is demanding and that frankly Seattle deserves.

The SPD budget has increased almost 40 percent in the last five years.

Not because we've gotten a lot more police, but all these attempts at reform, which frankly have just failed.

We've been trying to so-called reform the SPD since the 1999 WTO debacle.

And in the 2012 consent decree, then U.S.

Attorney Durkin said it was a sea change in Seattle policing now in 2012. It's just not working.

When former Chief Norm Stamper was interviewed about all of the abusive tactics being used now after the protest of George Floyd, he said, quote, we really are.

Tina, thank you for your testimony.

I'm sorry we got to the end of our time there.

Please do send in the rest of your comments on sure folks would be very interested in reading those, along with anybody else who did not have the chance to conclude their comments today.

We did get everybody in for public testimony today.

I'm not seeing anybody else on the line that hasn't had the chance to speak.

So that is exciting.

At this point, we will close out public comment and appreciate everybody for weighing in and providing their public comment to us.

Again, every Wednesday at 10 a.m.

and 2 p.m., we will have the chance to hear from you.

sign up starts at 8 a.m.

and again at noon for our afternoon session.

At this point, Madam Clerk, will you please read into the record item number two on our day-long agenda?

Agenda item two, responses to questions asked at the Seattle Police Department budget presentation on June 10th, 2020 for briefing and discussion.

Wonderful.

Thank you, Madam Clerk.

Council colleagues, this item and item number three on our agenda are two elements that continue our discussion about the SPD budget inquest that we've launched.

We've now had three meetings that have begun to look into the police department's budget and the demands from community organizers and organizations.

Those demands have been clear.

Defund SPD by 30%, invest in communities by 50%, and invest in communities.

Two weeks ago, we had a primary, let me try that again.

Two weeks ago, we had a preliminary review of what it looks like to look into the Seattle Police Department's budget.

Last week, we heard from council members across the country who were moving towards defunding the police and reallocating those funds into upstream investments like housing and child care and support services.

The focus of today's meeting will be an analysis of 911 dispatch data that will center around public safety calls that could potentially be answered by a civilian or crisis response team.

Additionally, we want to hear from council central staff and the CBO on some answers to the questions we've posed over the last two weeks.

The purpose of this inquest and the committee meetings is to actually address and understand the black box of the Seattle Police Department's budget.

And for us as elected officials and for the larger community to truly understand the roles and tasks we have placed upon our police department.

Over time, we have increased the number of situations that we expect our officers to show up to.

while simultaneously disinvesting in important social safety net services that stabilize communities.

What we are doing here is laying the groundwork for a process to strategically reallocate resources, funding, and responsibility away from the traditional sense of what policing is and towards community-based models of safety, support, and prevention.

We must look at the things that led up to the flashpoints of violence and harm and really interrogate what constitutes a safe community.

If we really take the time to thoughtfully reinvest into black and brown communities, we will see a drop in the number of public safety calls.

We have seen that data over and over from other cities and areas that have invested in this more upstream model.

When people have their needs met, the community is not only safer, they feel safer and there's a greater sense of trust.

Council colleagues, I want to just pause for a quick second to see if anybody else, including the budget, I'm sorry, including the public safety chair and or the council president or anybody else have any additional comments at the top of this agenda item before we get into some of the questions that we've heard.

Council Member Herbold.

Thank you.

I actually don't have any opening remarks.

I'm just looking forward to digging in and continue to work with you, Chair Mosqueda, in developing, in particular, the police department part of our budget discussions.

Wonderful.

Any additional comments?

Okay, seeing none.

Today, we have a presentation I'm sorry, your video is frozen.

I hear you, though.

Go ahead, Councilmember Sawant.

Sorry, I didn't realize the video was frozen.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

And I just want to do very quickly but importantly say that absolutely the community in Seattle is saying we need to defund the police by at least 50%, and I appreciate you echoing that as well.

And I must say that the people who spoke in public comment are absolutely correct.

For Mayor Durkan to say that maybe she will cut the police budget by 5%, first of all, we cannot call that a defund.

That is not a defund.

Defund, the word defund applies only if it's a substantial cut to the police budget.

5% is not a defund.

And on top of that, it's a slap in the face of ordinary working people, but especially communities of color that are facing the brunt of police violence and racism in our society.

And so absolutely, I think this council has to set a different tone and be committed to defunding by at least 50%.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member.

Any additional colleagues?

Okay.

Hearing none, we have with us today Greg Doss, Central Staff, Cara Main Hester, City Budgets Office, and Angela Sochi from the Seattle Police Department.

Thank you so much for joining us today.

Greg, I will turn it over to you, and I want to thank you for your time.

We also acknowledged at the beginning of our meeting earlier today that a revised PowerPoint had been sent around by Patty, and it will be posted to our agenda immediately after this committee meeting.

Council colleagues, please look for that email with the slight revision in there to the presentation and Greg will walk through it with us in real time.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Greg Doss, Council Central staff.

I appreciate your introduction and first want to start by again thanking my co-presenters, Angela Sochi, SBD's Budget Director, and Caramane Hester from the City Budget Office.

They did the hard work of putting together the information that we're going to cover today.

We're going to spend a few minutes and go over a short presentation that will answer questions that were posed by you all at the June 10th first SPD budget inquest meeting.

And so with that as an intro, I'm just going to go ahead and share my screen.

And is everybody seeing this now?

Yes, we are.

Thank you.

Okay, great.

Well, I'm not going to spend too long on this presentation today because I know I'm the warm-up act for Director Noble's presentation, and so I'm going to try to move through these slides fairly quickly, but please do launch in if you have questions.

So, start with the first slide.

When we last talked, SPD did not yet have any data about the hours and costs that went into staffing the demonstrations.

As you can see in this slide, the SPD now has that data and has said that it was 1,296 sworn and civilian hours.

that were dedicated to the demonstration, and that that was executed on a 12-hour deployment model on the sworn side, and that, oh, I'm sorry, it was 1,296 sworn and civilian employees that were deployed, 72,000 hours, and the total cost of the demonstrations was $6.3 million for those overtime hours.

What I have put on this slide, there's a couple things I want to note.

First is that SP doesn't specifically budget for large-scale unplanned demonstrations.

The department typically has about $60,000 set aside for what they call unusual occurrences, which obviously this goes way past.

So the $6.3 million that was used for the demonstration is going to have to come out of other areas in the overtime budget or elsewhere in the department.

and as you may recall, the entire overtime budget is about $30 million for the year.

Okay, Greg, one second.

I see a hand, Council Member Herbold.

Thank you.

Just flagging that the number of hours of overtime is a extremely large number of hours and the dollar amounts associated with it likewise are very large, $6.3 million for about 73,000 people.

hours.

I'm wondering whether or not it's possible to see the amount of overtime and hours and dollars on an FTE basis.

Turn it over to Angela on that one.

Is that some data that the department can provide?

Yeah, are you are you requesting basically per cost per employee or an average or exact costs?

Um, I mean, if you can do it, uh, the actual cost per employee, that would be super helpful.

Okay.

Yeah.

Um, that's certainly the information, um, is available.

Thank you.

So I was just going to say that SPD, um, does have a budget allocation for planned demonstrations.

And that is part of the events category for overtime.

And we're gonna talk about that in one of the upcoming slides.

But just for some perspective, the table at the top shows planned demonstrations, how much the department has spent over the last few years.

And as I said, we'll get to where that budget is housed in a moment.

So got a bit more information on riot gear and crowd control weapon spending.

Uh, when last we presented before you, there was a $67,000 estimate, uh, for riot gear.

Um, that is for 2020 and the numbers for the less than lethal weapons, tear gas, and flash bangs were still being developed.

That is, that is still the case.

But have some historical spending here to provide you a little context.

As you can see, the tactical equipment and rime gear in 2019 was $191,000, about $192,000.

And that number has varied a little bit over the last couple of years.

It is still the case that the crowd control weapons were not a great expenditure in terms of SPD budget.

And then, of course, you asked for the vendors that were selling the less than lethal weapons, and those are listed on the slide below.

Okay, I see two folks that have questions.

Council President Gonzalez and then Council Member Sawant.

Thank you so much, Chair Mosqueda.

Greg, on this particular slide, when it lists other less-than-lethal weapons, which is separate from tear gas, pepper spray, and chemical agents, you know, and those three different categories are technically less-than-lethal weapons, can you tell us what the other less-than-lethal weapons are?

Well, coming right away to mind is probably the 40 millimeter and the rubber bullets and the OC spray, but Angela and Cara put the list together.

So I'll throw it their way again.

Yeah.

So what you're seeing here is we, we tried to call out what we thought might be of interest in that other less than lethal weapon category, Greg spot on that, that includes the 40 millimeter launchers and associated ammo.

Council President.

Sorry, Council President.

No, I did.

Yes, I think that.

Yes.

Can you hear me?

Now I can hear you.

Sorry, I'm starting.

Okay, I'm starting to have internet issues again, predictably.

I would appreciate getting an itemization of what types or classes of less than lethal weapons is included in that other less than lethal weapons line item that we're seeing on this slide.

Excellent question.

You came through loud and clear.

Any other follow up questions or response to that before we go to Council Member Sawant and then I see Morales.

Council President, anything in following up?

I would just.

Sorry, I would just say I'm assuming that they can get that to me, so that's probably the only response that needs to occur there.

But I would also say that it Are there any other tools, equipment, vehicles, items that are used for crowd control reasons or crowd dispersal reasons that is not listed on this chart?

So I would say with this particular list, We can include or exclude whatever it is that's of interest.

When you're talking about police, it's challenging because tactical equipment can be interpreted very broadly or narrowly.

What we did to get at this is we used the list of search terms within our accounting system.

The city's accounting system has limitations.

We did a manual search.

I'm happy to include the list of search terms that were used to get at these numbers.

If we are limited, though, by the item descriptions.

So in order to try and be as inclusive as possible, we also did a vendor search using the commonly used vendors and reviewed all of those purchase orders as well to make sure we were including the relevant items to the extent possible.

If you're seeing something that's missing that you would expect to see here, tasers, for example, could or could not be interpreted as, I mean, they're less lethal, but not typically deployed in a crowd management environment.

So I'm happy to work with you to make sure that you have what you need.

So just, we can follow up through Greg, I can follow up through Greg to make sure that you can review the search terms that were used to come at this particular list, if that would be helpful.

I'm happy to provide anything else that meets your needs, to meet your needs.

Yeah, I appreciate that.

And the distinction of the taser is an interesting one.

I think it does daylight the fact that this is not an inclusive list of all of the gear or weapons that are currently within the possession and inventory of the Seattle Police Department.

I am having a little bit of a chicken and egg challenge with our dialogue right now because I I feel like the onus is being put back on me to define what might be used tactically in the course of a crowd control.

And I'm trying to find out what you all have.

And so it's hard for me to respond to that inquiry that you just made, Angela, without feeling like I'm leaving something on the table, I'll be honest with you.

So it's just based on my last four years as the public safety chair, I have found that I haven't always gotten the most direct responses from the police department.

And then, of course, in the 10 years where I was actually filing lawsuits against the Seattle Police Department.

I certainly have the experience of not always getting a direct answer to some of my questions.

So I really want you all to tell us, as council members, what other weapons, gear, vehicles, or equipment, as broadly defined as possible, that the police department believes or have policies in place that would allow the department or an incident commander to deploy those items in the course of controlling a crowd or getting a crowd to disperse.

And so I'm trying to pose that question in the broadest way possible because I Don't want you all to hold back information that you think I'm not interested in.

So, I mean, I'm happy to have conversations with you offline about a little bit more granular detail, but I'll give you one example.

I've definitely seen a military style tank looking vehicle.

that belongs to SWAT, but I don't see that listed here.

And I'm not sure why.

And as we are looking at this inquest for the Seattle Police Department, I think it's important for us to understand exactly what the value of that type of equipment is as we are considering these budget questions around defunding and reallocating these funds to other places.

I would be more than happy to go through and take a first stab at it, break these out into some more granular categories and itemize what's included.

As far as our standard issue equipment, I know in the initial question we received, it asked us to exclude all standard issue equipment.

So I'm happy to expand that.

Certainly not trying to dodge the question here.

I want to make sure that we're fully responsive.

So we can rework this.

This was also the merging of two questions into a table.

So I'll take another stab at it, and we can try and get you what it is that you're looking for.

Thank you, Angela.

Great.

we have a request for a full list of inventory of all of the types of weapons or any of the equipment that is issued.

That is very helpful.

Thank you, Council President.

We have Councilmember Swant next.

I do think you are still frozen on the video.

Let's see if we can hear your audio.

I have questions about slide one and slide two, but before that, I just wanted to note how stunning it is to see how much money could be made available for social needs if the police are not given the dollars to brutalize communities of color and protest movements and ordinary people.

And I also have to say, it's really difficult for me taken an even-toned conversation and hear phrases like standard issue equipment being used in relation to barbaric weapons that are used as an army against ordinary people protesting for a better society.

So I just want to register that that's just really out of touch with what society is demanding and also the situation that we are facing.

The police do not need any of the weapons.

And it is really important that the city council voted unanimously on the historic legislation that our movement brought forward, which was to make Seattle the nation's first city to ban the use and purchase of any of the chemical weapons, rubber bullets, flashbang grenades and all the so-called crowd control weapons.

Seattle is the first city to have done that, and it's really important that other movements and other cities are also able to be successful in passing similar legislation, because the – and I always say so-called crowd control, because that's – that phrasing itself, the framing itself is political gaslighting from the police department throughout the nation and also the political establishment under whose watch the police have been carrying out the violence.

Because protest movements are not crowds.

Protest movements are genuine people, families with children who come on the streets demanding social change for a better kind of city or a better kind of country.

And when the police say crowd control, What they are really talking about is weapons that are used at the behest of the political establishment and the ruling class to try and quash social movements, to try and intimidate people, scare people into not coming out and protesting.

And I must say it's shameful that the Seattle Police Officers Guild has said that they think that whether or not they get to use or purchase chemical weapons is a question of mandatory It's an item for their contract negotiations.

As a rank-and-file member myself of the labor movement, I completely disagree with that.

And unfortunately, they have actually shown the legitimacy of the rank-and-file of the King County Labor Council, expelling the SPOC from the labor council, because there is no room for racism inside the labor council.

And I also think on that note, it's really important that people are calling on Jenny Durkan, Mayor Jenny Durkan, to resign because any mayor that allows teargassing of her own people cannot be allowed to stand.

And as far as the budget is concerned, and here I come to my questions, the mayor has announced that she is cutting $20 million from the Seattle Police.

First of all, as I said before, that is not a defunding.

We're talking about at least $200 million.

this is a slap in the face of people who are demanding a change but furthermore my staff have looked at and I'm happy to for staff to correct us if this is not accurate but my staff have looked at the budget that was sent down by the mayor's office and It doesn't show up anywhere in the ordinances that have been sent to the council.

I accept that many cuts might be administrative and not show up in the ordinances, but if so, then that needs to be explained.

And I also, just mathematically speaking, I don't see where those cuts are coming from.

It's not in the central staff spreadsheet of itemized cuts that add up to 69 million, and 69 million is what Ben Noble is reporting cutting from the budget.

Of course, the mayor could always ask the Seattle police to use less overtime.

But again, where does the math work out when so far they're actually using more overtime to abuse protesters?

So in other words, not only is this not a defund proposal that the mayor has sent down, but it seems to me, unless we are mistaken about the numbers, that as far as the $20 million cut is concerned, she is simply asking us to trust her because there's no legally binding proposal that I can see.

So on that note, on slide one, just to note the $6.3 million in police overtime, that was spent using military-style abuse against ordinary Seattleites and the Justice for George Floyd protests, of course.

And just to put it in perspective, that is more funding in a couple of days, in a few days, than the entire equitable development initiative gets in one year.

So not only is it a waste of 6.3 million, it's actually doing harm.

And the city council didn't vote on the use of $6.3 million to use harmful weapons against protest movements.

So the question, and maybe this question was asked, and if so, I will just echo that.

I would like to know where that the city of Seattle.

I am wondering where the money is coming from.

Will the mayor be coming to the Council to add funding to the Seattle police during a supplemental budget?

It is frankly infuriating to me that this money was used carrying out such violence and it could instead have been used to more than double the equitable development initiative.

And so these are not minor questions and we need answers for them.

And just on slide two, very quickly.

Why don't we have information about the purchase of crowd control weapons in 2020?

Was that question asked to Seattle police?

And if not, we should, and if so, did they give a reason for not answering?

Thank you.

Many questions there.

Let me see if I can take on some of them.

The spreadsheet that you got from central staff should have the SBD cuts in them.

They add up, I believe, to about $16 million and there are a variety of cuts that are everything from overtime reductions to civilian hiring freezes.

They're going to be discussed in detail by Ben Noble, Director Noble, when we've concluded the SPD presentation.

I believe you're right.

There's no legislation that reduces appropriation such that the cuts are enacted in a way that council would take a vote on.

I believe that is administrative in nature.

In terms of where SPD will take the $6.9 million unbudgeted hit to their budget.

That's something that probably Director Sochi needs to answer.

We may have an opportunity for that as we move into the next slide that's going to be talking about the overtime budget and events and other places where the department spends money.

Oh, and the last one is, I think that SPD is still working on getting the data for 2020.

If I can add on to that, there were purchases that were handled through FAS Central Accounting.

And so if I was to run an expense report right now, it would not be inclusive of all of the expenditures.

And for the sake of completeness, I wanted to make sure that we were capturing all of those before we reported them out to you.

OK.

Council Member Morales, you had your hand raised.

Yeah, thank you.

Um, I have, so on slide one, I thought we were going to be, uh, yeah, thanks.

Um, I thought where this was going was that we were going to get sort of a item by item, um, of how much we've spent so far on the demonstrations.

Um, this looks like it is only about overtime.

Um, and so I would be interested in also knowing how much just in salary, uh, you know, payroll, um, for the staff time that was spent there.

Um, and then on the next slide, I'm confused about, um, thank you.

Um, so the 2020 column, um, is this, I thought this was how much we had spent, uh, during the demonstration, but it looks like based on the asterisk comment that this is, um, what is budgeted for 2020. to be spent or is that what was spent already?

SPD doesn't have the numbers for the riot gear that was purchased yet this year or the other items for 2020. So it's an estimate of the of the riot gear that was purchased based on the number of recruits that they had graduating.

They automatically equipped those recruits with the riot gear.

And then, as Angela said, she needs to search the accounting system to see how the department has ordered either through their quartermaster or through FAS the other items to figure out how much the department has spent on that.

they don't have the numbers yet.

Okay.

So, um, so I would again, be interested to know how much we actually spent in that two or three week period, um, on this type of gear.

Um, and I know we did ask for that information.

Um, so do you know when it will be available?

We're currently going through it right now with central accounting to divide up.

There were multiple departments involved and some city expenses captured.

So they're trying to split up the purchases so we can report on the SPD specific items.

But that's certainly.

The last question I have about this part is why it is so erratic.

I can't tell if this is something that you budget on an annual basis, or if some years it's higher because you have responded and bought more.

I just don't understand why the numbers aren't a little more consistent.

So this was, I don't know if you recall from the last presentation, but we reported or estimated the cost of riot gear in an itemized list.

the 2020 number was pulled from that and added to another table.

As far as the 2017-19 numbers are actual expenditures.

For some of these items, you see fluctuation in the expenditures because the items are replaced.

They have expiration dates, they're only replaced as they're used or as they expire.

In years where we had more expire or fewer used, you're going to see some fluctuation between the different cost categories.

Okay.

Thank you.

Council President Gonzalez, I think you have a follow-up on that.

Yeah, I have two follow-ups.

One is a follow-up to Council Member Morales' question about when we can expect to receive this information.

you, Angela, you told us what you're doing currently to evaluate the information, but you didn't answer Council Member Morales' question about when your analysis will be done and when the council can expect to receive actual numbers for the 2020. So when will you be able to complete your analysis and get that information to us?

I'll have to check in with our accounting team to find out when they expect those purchases to post.

I can circle back with Greg.

later today with an estimate on that.

I don't understand what the difficulty is in giving us an estimation of when you will get us the information.

What's the challenge there?

It's not my, I don't own, I don't oversee accounting the process from a processing standpoint.

I just, I don't, um, I don't know offhand, but I can certainly look into it.

Okay.

Um, I just, I find that, that response very frustrating.

So, um, I think, you know, Greg, if you can give us a sense by the end of today, when we can, when exactly we will get this information, um, I would, I would appreciate knowing that.

Yeah, council member, I'll do that.

And, um, I'll provide you with updates over the next few days as I get more information.

I'll start with today.

Yes.

Thank you.

The second question I have is on this slide that we're on now.

It says spending.

How is spending being defined in terms of the numbers that we're seeing in front of us?

Greg, would you like me to take?

Yeah, go ahead.

These are totals of expenditures tied to specific purchase orders that were paid in 2017 to 2019.

Then when we're looking at these numbers, this is the total dollar amount of everything that the police department purchased in that year for that category.

Correct.

Okay.

Um, so this isn't a situation where, you know, if it says flash bangs, um, $22.99, it's not that we just spent, i.e. used $22.99 worth of flash bangs.

Or does that number 2299 represent the full inventory of all money spent by SPD on acquisition of that weapon, regardless of whether that weapon was utilized or issued?

I'm not sure I follow exactly.

We did a search of our accounting system for the term flashbang and any purchase order matching that description is the total cost or the total amount expended for those purchase orders that fell under that search are included here.

I guess what I'm trying to get at, Angela, is whether there's a difference between whether the way that the accounting system works that is funneling this information to us, if there is a difference between acquisition of these weapons and the dollar amount associated with acquisition, or if what is what is being listed on the purchase order are only things that were acquired and then deployed.

This would be inclusive of anything that was purchased, regardless of whether it was deployed or not.

Got it.

Okay.

Thank you.

Okay.

Council colleagues, I want to do a quick time check.

We have two presentations on the SPD inquest portion of our agenda.

and my hope is to have done those before 4 p.m.

today.

So what I'm going to do is I'm going to ask the central staff folks, Greg Doss, if you could lead us through the presentation, and then I will go through the roll call and ask people to ask the questions that they have.

Angela, I'm going to flag for you a question that we can come back to later, but you said in trying to get the rest of this information, some of these were city expenses.

That led me to think that SPD may have other dollars that they're filtering into their universe of total dollars that they can get.

I'll come back to this at the end, but if this is a matter of not just showing what the city is allocating, but any additional dollars we might be getting from federal grants or state efforts or anything like that, I think we need to know the entire universe of what the SPD has to operate with.

And then I want to just make a note before we move on.

I know other council members have talked about the less than lethal weapons category.

Just, I want to say, first and foremost, these are not less than lethal weapons when we've seen people's lives be taken.

And that includes with the chokeholds that have choked people to death.

That includes the ways in which people have been hit in the body and in the face with gas canisters, which have caused heart attacks and near-death experiences, if not led to other deaths in other situations.

And specifically, it includes my concern and others concern around us using tear gas and pepper spray that affects lungs during the time of a global deadly pandemic when the CDC and our local public health has said that that could create more susceptibility to COVID-19, which affects the lungs, which causes death.

So I just wanna sort of put that out there as a reframe.

I know Council Member Swan and others have said that as well, but the reason that we are continually concerned, and this was stated two Mondays ago, about these types of strategies and weapons is because they have proven themselves to be lethal.

So just want to make sure that I'm on the record saying I don't necessarily think that this category that's been listed here or the way it's been described as of recent is accurate, especially in the context of a deadly global pandemic.

With that, Greg, I'm going to ask you to go through each of the slides, and then I'm going to ask each of our colleagues to hold their questions until the end.

We'll do a roll call at the end to make sure everybody gets their last questions in.

recognizing we do have the CBO budget to get to as well.

So please take us away.

Okay, we'll do that.

And council members, I should say that the title of these slides, the crowd control weapon spending, that was a title that I put in.

And so I'm hearing what you're saying about it not recognizing the lethality of the weapons, and that was not my intent, but I just wanted to say that that was my doing, not the department's.

No, no, no motive intended.

Just wanted to make sure we clarify on that.

No problem, Greg.

So I'm going to move on a little bit.

There were several questions last time about overtime events and emphasis patrols.

I'm going to have you skip past this first table and go to the first bullet where I'm going to talk a little bit about how much the department spends on events.

As you can see, the budget in 2020 for events is $6.8 million, and that's about what they spent last year.

The events category includes dignitary protection, concerts, street fairs, parades, fun runs, all the various events that you're familiar with.

What's also important to note is that this category covers the planned demonstrations that we were talking about earlier, and that's the $1.15 million that was spent in 2019, but does not include unusual occurrences such as the protest.

So what you're seeing here is a rather large category for events that our overtime is normally expended for.

It is the case where there is not a budget for unplanned demonstrations.

And it is likely that we're going to hear from Director Noble later today that some of this events money is going to be repurposed for the demonstrations.

But we'll leave that to him to discuss.

I want to talk a little bit about cost recovery.

There was interest in cost recovery last time.

And as you can see in that second bullet, obviously there are no costs recovered for planned demonstrations because they're First Amendment events.

cost recovery for other events is it varies widely as you can see in the bullet between 9% and 86% and that's because there are several different methods that the city uses to recover costs for events everything from individual contracts with the Seahawks or with down to just sponsorships, say, for the Macy's parade.

That was the 9% level.

On average, if you looked at athletic, commercial, and citywide events that the auditor studied in 2019, there's a cost recovery rate of about 27% of SPD's wages.

If you just look at the athletic and commercial events, it's a little bit better.

It's about 60% on average.

But the cost recovery is quite low.

Some of it is mandated by the Seattle Municipal Code.

And the cost recovery rate in the SMC was developed about five years ago and hasn't been updated.

So this is an area where there's a lot of variance in how SPD recovers cost for its overtime events.

You also asked about emphasis patrols, and now I'll direct you back up to that table at the top.

This is emphasis patrol spending over the past four years.

The emphasis patrol budget for SPD is $2.25 million.

And that includes $847,863 that the council added last year during the budget session.

That was a continuation of the funding for emphasis patrols and patrol augmentation that was done.

to respond to the violence last summer.

I believe it was called the Pre-Summer Emphasis Patrol, and then it sort of morphed into the Summer Emphasis Patrol.

And so that money was added to continue that amount or that service.

Going on, there were questions about SWOT and Homeland Security budgets.

The SWOT budget is $5.54 million.

Most of that, again, like SPD in general, is $5.27 million in personnel costs, overtime benefits for 29 FTEs.

And then there's some non-labor expenses in there of $271,000.

You asked for a detailed breakout of the Homeland Security budget, and that is what you're looking at in the table.

The outlier there is the $10 million of overtime.

When we were talking about events overtime a few minutes ago, this is one of the places that SPD stashes its budget for events overtime.

And so out of its $30 million overtime budget, there's an allocation here for $10 million that is used for various kinds of events.

The rest of the table shows spending at the more detailed level for the Homeland Security line item in the budget.

So I'll leave that up there for just a minute so that you can see it.

And then, and you should have all this information distributed to your offices yesterday.

So if you have any specific questions about any of these line items, that's something that either Angela can answer at the end or we can get for you later.

You asked questions about school resource officers and the navigation team.

Start out with school resource officers.

There are five of them.

There are four that are broken up amongst elementary and middle schools and a fifth that is at Garfield High School.

They make about $141,000 a piece for salary and benefits.

That adds together for the $705,000 figure that you're looking at.

And the only costs for that program are the personnel costs for those five officers.

And we know that we're not receiving any revenue from the Seattle Public School District for that program.

The navigation team includes one lieutenant, two sergeants, seven officers, and two officer vacancies currently, and the adopted budget for the navigation team is $2.4 million.

Year-to-date actual overtime associated with the navigation team is an additional $47,000.

And so one thing I wanted to point out with regards to this slide is that the numbers you're seeing, the $705,000 for school resource officers, if the budget were to be cut for school resource officers and that money were to be captured for savings outside of the budget, it would not be quite that much.

The cost of the $705,000 here is the cost for the five officers that are currently working in those schools and those officers are paid at higher rates because they are officers that have been with the department for a long time.

If the savings were captured for this program, it would have to be done either through attrition or through layoff, and those would produce lower value amounts than the $141,000 that I said each one of these officer makes.

So I wanted to sort of give a disclaimer that when you're looking at reducing budgets, these numbers are not the exact numbers that you would get.

The amounts that you would get would be lower.

And final slide, the four-month hiring freeze.

As we talked about last time, since April, SPD has implemented the hiring freeze because it's had a higher pace of hiring in Q1 and Q2.

and is on track to fulfill its funded FTE level, I think basically by June, by about now.

So part of it is that they're running out of money to hire more.

And then, of course, the other part is more recession-driven.

There's decreased attrition and a slower pace.

And of course, we talked a little bit last time about how the April and July tests for recruits had to be canceled because of COVID.

Again, this is mostly information that we had last time.

The new information on this slide is this last bullet.

And this last bullet is the number of recruits that we talked about last time, 21 recruits that will be added in the fourth quarter.

And then about 60 officers that would be needed to be hired in 2021 if you wanted to keep the department even with its attrition level.

So that's about 81 officers.

And it's my understanding that the mayor has announced a hiring freeze, not just for this year, but through the next year.

And so this title, this slide is, title is a bit misleading because it's saying four-month when I, when I created the slide.

I didn't have the benefit of the mayor's announcement, but now that the announcement has been made and we know that there's 60 officers that will not be hired in 2021, Angela is prepared to talk a little bit about the level of savings that that will create next year.

And so that's my quick overview.

I guess I would turn it over to Angela right now, if that's okay, to talk about the the hiring freeze in 2021 or any other questions that are appropriate for SPD budget.

Excellent.

Thank you so much, Greg.

That was very helpful.

Angela, we'll turn it over to you.

Council colleagues, I have Council Member Herbold first in the lineup after we hear from Angela.

And so let me know if you would like to ask any questions as well.

Angela, turning it back over to you.

Thanks.

Yeah, so naturally, as we contemplate hiring freezes, there's always the question of how much savings that's going to produce.

So for 2021, as Greg said, initially we were planning on at a minimum backfilling for attrition.

We were on track to generate about, I think, $10.3 million under that scenario.

If we were to implement the hiring freeze, to 2021, it would generate about 18 million in savings.

I don't know if there's, if you want me to elaborate on that more, I'm happy to, but otherwise, I'm happy to let Council Member Harbold.

Great.

Thanks, Angela.

We have Councilmember Herbold and then we have Council President Gonzalez.

If you have a question, okay, Councilmember Morales, we'll get you in the queue.

Councilmember Herbold, please go ahead.

Thank you.

So first on slide four, as it relates to the overtime budget, Thank you.

So just wondering, yes, that one.

How the overtime budget for events relates to what actually has been spent?

Most events have been canceled due to COVID-19, and there's 6.8 million in the budget associated with events.

So that's for slide four.

And then for slide five, as it relates specifically to the navigation team assistance, I thought what we had asked for was total expense, not just overtime associated with encampment removals.

and so this would include removals done by bike patrols and community police teams.

I remember in February at a select committee on homelessness meeting, we talked about the fact that the data from 2019 showed that the navigation team was only asked to provide service connections to about a third of those removals.

So we know that a significant number of removals have occurred without navigation team participation.

So I'd love to get a better understanding of the full cost of non-navigation team encampment removals.

And just the text for the original question was, how much does SPD spend on encampment removals annually outside of the navigation team?

So this should include encampment removals conducted by bike patrols, community police teams, and any other entities, officers that are involved in encampment removals.

And then we ask for what some of the assumptions, number of officers involved, number of hours spent on outreach activities, number of hours spent on obstruction mitigation, number of hours spent on encampment removals, and number of encampment removals.

Those are my questions.

Thank you.

Well, I think I can take one of the first ones, which is on the events budget.

As I was saying, I think that Angela can get us the amount that has been spent on events so far this year.

And yes, it's probably there's some significant savings there.

I'm guessing that is the piece that is going to be redirected towards the demonstration costs that don't have any budgets associated with them.

And then on the navigation team, I think what you're asking for is an assessment of regular time paid to CPT officers and other officers who assist with encampment removals and what the cost of their regular salary and benefits would be, which is something that SPD would have to get back to us on.

Yeah, just again to clarify, that's not just what I'm asking now.

That was, as I recall, and as my staff sent to me, that was the question that we submitted.

Yes.

Thank you.

Angela, do you have anything to add?

As far as the navigation team goes, We did receive the question.

I would have to revisit it.

But I believe we don't necessarily track the regular time, if I remember correctly.

But we certainly can circle back on that piece.

As far as the event overtime goes, we anticipated a significant decrease in the amount of overtime that was going to be necessary through the summer as a result of the event cancellations.

Those, the overtime reduction, associated with that was modeled out and included in the rebalancing package.

That's already been accounted for.

We do not anticipate receiving an increased appropriation this year to cover any of the recent costs.

That will have to be absorbed within our budget by cutting back in other areas, which is why we're looking into things like extending hiring freezes through the end of the year when we had originally planned on picking up hiring again in the fourth quarter.

We're looking to derive additional vacancy savings from civilian, from extending the civilian hiring freeze as well.

So we will have to find ways to mitigate the cost increase there and don't expect an appropriation to cover it.

Thank you.

Council President Gonzalez.

Thank you so much Chair Mosqueda for leading us through this conversation.

I had a, can you guys hear me?

Yes.

Okay.

Thank you.

I have a quick, I have some, some questions around, the SPD budget in general.

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to join you all at the first meeting where a lot of these questions were posed.

But Greg, I and Angela, both of you, and Angela may be in a better position to answer this, but there are several bodies of work, I'll call them, that are embedded within the Seattle Police Department.

that are of a social work nature or case management nature.

And these bodies of work are normally done by people who are not armed.

So I'm thinking of, for example, the community service officers that we just funded.

victim support team, crisis response team, and there are probably others that I'm missing.

And that leads me to my question, which is, would it be possible to get information about those bodies of work and the associated budget amount with those bodies of work as part of this inquest process.

I think it's really important for us in this conversation to recognize that in the course of increasing the SPD's budget, that has also meant embedding civilian social work related bodies of work within the police department.

And I think it's really important for us to begin the process of disentangling armed law enforcement from bodies of work that don't necessarily need and shouldn't be coupled with an armed law enforcement response.

So I'd like to get information about the budget related to those bodies of work.

And I just gave a few short examples, but there might be more.

Is that something that the department can work on compiling for us in short order as we continue to have this conversation?

Yeah, I'm actually I'm happy you brought that up as part of the kind of re-envisioning SPD and contemplating the 2030 and 50% cut proposals.

We've actually already started down that track by basically dividing up the budget by SPD function.

I think we've captured all of those that you're describing, the CSOs, but also both the sworn and the civilian functions, and are well positioned to provide the budget associated with those functions, along with the FTE broken out by sworn and civilian.

So that work is, it's a work in progress.

We have, you know, there's the 2020 effort but we're also engaged in the 2021 budget process.

So looking at the significant cut percentages is requiring us to go down that route.

So I think we're well positioned to provide that information to you.

Great.

I would appreciate getting that information as soon as it's available and the sooner the better.

In terms of the navigation team numbers that we see on the slide that's before us, My understanding is that what you are giving us here in terms of numbers are just the costs associated with the folks who are SPD personnel, right?

Because are there non-SPD personnel costs associated with these NAV team numbers that we're seeing in front of us?

So if you're speaking about the larger city navigation team that has personnel and HSD and other parts of the city.

You're correct that that's not reflected here.

These capture only the budget items appropriated within SPD's budget for navigation team personnel assigned to SPD.

We have the year-to-date actual overtime for assistance to the navigation team, that $47,000 item, That captures the 51 SPD personnel who were not assigned to the navigation team, but assisted the navigation team in the execution of their duties.

Got it.

And when we're looking at the 2020 adopted budget of two point, I'll just say $4 million, $2.4 million for the navigation team, that includes one lieutenant, two sergeants, seven officers, and currently has two officer vacancies.

the money appears to be appropriated and being saved for that.

Can you tell me, what is the, what is the, what is the percent, when we look at the NAB team as a whole, with the other HSD non-SPD personnel, how much, what's the percentage of the total NAB team budget that is being allocated and spent on SPD personnel?

I think, Councilmember, we might have to get back to you on that, unless you know that, Angela.

I don't have the spreadsheet handy.

I was going to see if Kara might know offhand, but if not, we'll have to circle back.

Unfortunately, not off the top of my head, but we can circle back.

I know where it lives.

I might be able to get that fairly quickly here, though.

So in last year's budget, we received information on the NAV team.

And the numbers that the council received I just pulled up was that SPD staff was $2.4 million, the same that's reflected here.

HSD staff was $2.5 million.

HSD contract outreach was $762,000.

FAS cleanup costs were $1.3 million, and parks cleanup crew were $1.4 million for a total of $8.4 million citywide.

That was reflected in the 2020 proposed budget.

I don't recall whether there were any cuts made to that budget.

Council Member Herbold might know better than I do, but those are sort of the order of magnitude dollars that were associated with the rest of the city departments outside of SPD.

I actually recall there may have been a mid-year ad to backfill some temporary King County money that we had received in 2019, so it kind of uh that that mid-year ad uh my recollection is it sort of is a served as a permanent expansion of of the growth of an ad team if it would to be carried over in 2021.

So we can get you we can get you to more information on that with the ad.

Great I um I appreciate that I think it would be important for us to have sort of that holistic um information to um make sure that we have a clear sense of proportionally how much of the NAV team work is centered in SPD personnel and including in overtime associated with SPD personnel who is not technically part of the NAV team.

I think that gives us a better picture of what the city's expenditures are here that might be able to be or could be redirected in a different way.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

That is all my questions.

Thank you, as always, for your line of questioning.

I do think it's important to pause very quickly there.

There was and interview on May 21st, 2020 with the record on KUOW where the mayor was being interviewed and a caller called in and asked about the over $8 million budget and the response from the mayor was that that was not an accurate number.

I recall that being over 8 million, so just to set the record straight, it is 8.4 million total.

Appreciate that data point.

The next few folks that we have in the lineup are Council Member Morales and then Council Member Sawant.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

I have a couple different things that I need some clarification on.

The first is around, well, let me just put it all out there first.

I am interested to know what other sources of revenue the department has aside from general fund and and operating support, federal state grants, whatever else comes in.

I'm interested to know if the hiring freeze that we just talked about for 2020 means that there will be no additional officers added in Q4.

I know there are 21 recruits as I understand it.

Does the hiring freeze mean that they will not be coming on?

And then this issue of community policing, uh, you know, I'm trying to understand, we seem to have several different buckets of collaborative policing where we have the nav team, the outreach crisis response, the school resource officers.

And then we have, um, it looks like 10 FTEs officers and mental health professionals, um, who are part of the crisis response unit.

I'm just trying to get an understanding of, what these different components are, what they, how they comprise the budget, um, and, and how they are interchangeable.

I mean, we just heard that the NAF team might represent, you know, 2 million from the police department, but if you put everybody, all the other departments, it's 8 million.

There was a Director Noble said recently in a report about SPD, SDU and parks that it's actually 11 million.

So we need to get really clear on what we're spending on this activity.

And then I also think I just heard you say that the school resource officers, or maybe it's in this slide, the school resource officers who aren't working during the summer move over to the NAV team.

So I'm interested in how they, if that is considered overtime for them, or if their position just shifts.

And if we know there were something like 50 officers when the Weller Street encampment was removed, and we only have 10 officers on the NAV team, 12 FTEs on the NAV team, Those all those extra officers who showed up, as I understand it, because they wanted to, not necessarily because there was a request or an assignment, is that regular staff time or do they get overtime for showing up to an encampment removal, even if they are outside the NAP team.

So clearly this is a layered and complex issue and we're really trying to get clarity on how the city spends its resources on mental health issues and behavioral health issues and the police response to those so that we can get really clear on, as you said, what the appropriate way is to shift those resources into community instead of keeping them in the police department.

I think we're going to have to get back to you on some of those in the interest of time and in the interest of making sure that you get a complete answer.

And that is something that will extend beyond the SPD budget.

So I'll have to talk with my central staff colleagues and figure out how to take an approach at that.

Member Morales, any follow-up comments from you?

I saw you say no, thank you.

Even though your mute was on, I just want to reiterate, that is exactly the same question, line of questioning I had earlier when I said, what is the non-city expenditures that was sort of referenced.

So really appreciate you putting a fine point on that and asking directly about the universe of dollars.

Angela, I didn't want to cut you off.

I saw you take yourself off mute.

Anything else before?

Yeah, I was just going to, I tried to take notes of the questions.

kind of the low hanging fruit there is I can confirm that we're planning to forego the hiring of those 21 recruits in the fourth quarter this year, just given the current budget situation.

And also just the uncertainty around what the Seattle Police Department is gonna look like in the coming months and next year.

So also the sources of revenue, we can certainly provide you a list of all of the grant funding that's received.

And just for clarification, Council Member Mosqueda, I want to clarify the city expenses that I referenced earlier wasn't necessarily a reference to other streams of revenue that are coming into SPD.

It's determining what costs were, what things were expended by SPD and determining responsibility for those costs.

If those are costs incurred by the department, what should be paid by us and what should be paid potentially by other general fund departments in the city.

Thank you.

Helpful.

The last person I saw raise their hand was Council Member Sawant.

Your video is frozen again, but if you are able to speak with us, I think we can hear you.

Can you hear me?

Yes.

Thank you.

And I'm sorry, I don't know what's happening with the video.

So I had a question on and really a comment on slide six because I find it quite contradictory within the slide.

And it's really troubling that we're not getting any real information.

I mean, clearly Seattle Police department accountants and anyone else, and also people from the mayor's office are watching this.

I mean, why aren't they sending us answers?

I agree with council members, it's not at the doorstep of central staff and even civilian employees who are here, but the police department and the mayor's office is definitely the people who should be answering these questions.

And But before I get to the slide six, I wanted to ask a question on my own behalf and on Council Member Gonzalez's behalf, because we've seen this question appear on social media from our Seattle community members who are fighting to defund by 50%.

And the question is, why is the Seattle Police Department 10K to 24K donor to the Seattle Police foundation.

And we should note that this question is very relevant, just not only in general, because it's a question of if you're going to defund the Seattle Police Department by half, by at least $200 million, then that money has to come from somewhere.

And we have to ask questions.

Why are the Seattle police using their dollars in this or that direction?

But also specifically, I think this question is relevant because I'm sure many of you might have seen there was a recent article in The Guardian that was published on 18th June, which is titled, How Target, Google, Bank of America, and Microsoft Quietly Fund Police Through Private Donations.

And these so-called police foundations are a common channel through which big corporations donate money.

And it really exposes the nexus between the way the state works under capitalism and what the real purpose of the police is.

So I think The Seattle Police Department and the mayor's office need to answer this question.

Why is the Seattle Police Department donating to the tune of even $24,000 to the Police Foundation?

The other point, and this relates to slide number six, is I think, you know, at the end of the day, I mean, we're not getting real answers and we haven't.

I mean, I've seen this for years from the police department and from successive mayors, unfortunately.

And I think at some point the council has to say, you know, to the Seattle Police Department, your budget is now no more than $200 million, which is already too much because 50% is the at least that we are working with.

And so you, it's your job to figure out how you're going to use those funds in a way that actually protects people rather than in a way harmful.

And that is why eliminating chemical weapons is a very, very important, but one step towards that.

We also need to stop the sweeps, just stop the sweeps of homeless individuals and encampments.

We've been demanding that through the People's Budget Movement.

and also move all the non-criminal emergency response to community-based workers who are unarmed and are hired from the community and given living wage union jobs and not low-wage jobs is what I was meaning to say.

On slide six, I'm not understanding how the information is consistent because on the one hand, you say since April, SPD has implemented a four-month hiring freeze in response to the changing landscape.

And then as a sub-point of a hiring freeze, then you say the department, I'm quoting from the slide, the department outpaced its first and second quarter hiring goals.

SPD is on track to finish the year within one of its filled, funded FTE level, and SPD had been able to continue hiring in the wake of April and July recruit test cancellations because several candidates were already in the hiring process.

I mean, first of all, it's not clear whether there's a hiring freeze.

I mean, that itself, I think, I mean, I would be very dubious in taking at face value the word of the mayor that she's reducing SPD by 20 million, even though that even doesn't go far enough, and that she's doing it through a hiring freeze and less overtime, because it's not clear that there's a hiring freeze.

Also, the department ended up using more overtime, significantly more, dramatically more, to oppress the George Floyd protests.

So that's one thing.

And then the other thing is, if the hiring fees isn't actually going on, and we have to demand that the hiring fees absolutely go on, of course, and no more than $200 million as funds for the police, but we have to contrast that with the We have to contrast that preferential treatment with other departments.

I've mentioned this before, but I just wanted to present this as a contrast to the police.

The Office of Labor Standards, which does important work to employees that are truly committed to their work, upholding labor standards, really standing up for workers, and setting up the Office of Labor Standards was an important We were able to achieve as a council.

hire in order to protect workers from wage theft.

Similarly, the mayor is not allowing the Office of Sustainability and Environment to hire the Green New Deal staff person established by ordinance last year.

So I just think that there's a real contrast and disturbing contrast between the readiness with which the mayor's office is funding police, whereas the hiring freezes and austerity that other departments are facing.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Salant.

Are there any responses immediately?

Angela, do you want to address the hiring situation?

Yeah, I just I'll confirm again that we are not hiring police officers right now.

No police recruits, no students, no laterals.

I can confirm that there is in fact a hiring freeze planned through the end of the year at a minimum.

2021 is still being discussed.

Again, we're contemplating a 20, 30, and 50 percent reduction.

Just to put that in perspective for folks, a 20 percent reduction to Seattle Police would equate to a 406 FTE reduction, 30 percent would be a 616, FTE reduction, and a 50% would be a 1,036 FTE reduction.

So we're certainly considering all options at this point.

Any other comments on that?

Council Member Herbold and then Council Member Gonzalez.

And just to get some further confidence around the statement that there is a hiring freeze that we can be certain of through the end of the year, and then there's a commitment to continue it by the mayor next year.

The way I see it, the reason we can be confident that there will be no more hiring for this year's because SPD has expended its budget for new officers because we have, we, we budgeted for a particular number of officers.

Um, and we have, as I understand it, expended that budget for the entire year, halfway through the year, year to date, the budget was expended, um, pre, um, pre COVID.

rebalancing, we could have we could have supported additional hires.

Um, then with recent events that that became completely impossible.

So, um, those two things combined just didn't create.

We don't have the budget to support continued hiring for police.

Thank you.

Council President Gonzalez.

I think this will be just a quick question.

When you're talking about your, did you say 20, 30, 40% reduction?

Were those the numbers that you said, Angela?

20, 30, 50.

Yeah, it's 20, 30, 50. Okay.

So when you gave us the numbers right now of what that would mean in FTE reductions, is that primarily, are those sworn officers or civilians or a mix?

And if it's a mix, what's the mixture?

Yeah.

If we use the same ratio that we currently have of sworn to civilian personnel, that 406 is about 310 sworn and 96 civilians.

Again, I should emphasize these are early estimates.

We obviously have a budget process to go through.

There are other aspects of our budget that are being developed, but just as a broad stroke, The 30% would be 616 FTE, which would equate to about 458 officers and 158 civilians.

And then 1,036 FTE reduction using that same ratio would be 755 to 281. Follow-up questions on that, colleagues?

Okay, I'm not seeing anybody raise their hand.

Any additional questions?

Not seeing anybody raise their hands.

Obviously, we are very appreciative of this level of detail.

And I want to thank you, Angela, Kara, and especially Greg.

I know you've been working on this presentation for a while.

And there are, you know, key questions that need to be answered.

Still, I think some questions that were I know we have asked a lot of And this will help us to really respond to the community's request and to make sure that we have those dollars in hand.

Angela, I thank you for flagging that the exercise is already underway for us to have the 50% budget cut in hand.

So thank you for that work that you're doing so that we can continue the conversation about what a 50% reduction looks like.

I am going to make an announcement really quick, council colleagues.

We do want to hear from the CBO, and I had intended to start that at 4 p.m.

I gave Director Noble a quick heads up that we are going to be switching to them soon, so I just want to sort of filibuster for a second to let them know that the CBO presentation will be up next.

I'm going to ask that we hold over our 911 call response presentation I would also ask councilmembers, you have received a robust presentation from Greg.

I want to thank Greg for the work that you've done on this and also Christopher Fisher and Angela again for your work on that.

We will not put that on the back burner.

We will come back to that next Wednesday.

Before we move over to the CBO budget presentation, I saw Councilmember Strauss, please go ahead.

You have not had a chance to ask your questions today yet.

So on this piece, please go ahead before we transition.

Thank you, budget chair Mosqueda.

I just wanted to take a moment.

I've been watching and listening to this entire detailed presentation.

It's very helpful for me.

And I know that Dr. Fisher, Angela, Kara, and especially Greg Doss, you have fielded many of the questions that I've had, spent a lot of time with me going in detail.

And I really appreciate the time, expertise and level of detail that you've provided me as well as our colleagues here during this committee hearing.

That's really the message that I wanted to send Chair Mosqueda because I know that I've asked a lot of questions and you've provided really great answers or detailed answers I should say.

And just wanna take this moment to thank you for taking so much time with us.

We will continue to work these questions and get you information as fast as we can.

Angela and Kara have been fantastic at working as fast as they can to get this information, and you have our commitment to get you follow up on the questions you asked today.

Yeah, just really great work all around.

Thank you all.

And Dr. Fisher, too.

A thumbs up from other council members as well echoing that sentiment.

Again, thank you to central staff, Greg Doss for all of your work here.

Karen, Angela, thank you for your detailed walkthrough and for taking copious notes as we asked additional follow up questions.

And again, thank you to the folks who were slated to speak on item number three.

the 9-1-1 call and response presentation.

Colleagues, please do look through that so we can be prepared to ask any questions on that for next week.

Councilmember Peterson, did you have something?

I see you off mute.

Please go ahead.

A lot of cities have a 311 system for non-emergency in San Francisco, Chicago, New York City, and a 311 system, maybe this is the time for us to consider that one number that people can call for non-emergency.

Right now, if you ask somebody, what's the non-emergency number, it's hard to remember, but 311 is something that other cities have implemented successfully in our high-tech city.

I'm sure we could do it here as well to provide greater customer service and get, you know, to deploy counselors and social workers and others just as quickly as we deploy police officers.

So hope we consider the 3-1-1 idea.

Thank you.

Great.

Thank you so much for teeing that up.

And perhaps we can add that to our conversation next week about how many other cities really have a system like that.

I see doctor, I don't know why we keep giving you the doctor title.

You may be a doctor.

I may or may not be, but please don't use it.

Well, director is with us.

Do you want to save it for the budget presentation?

The problems that we are facing here, they are not new.

There's a longstanding record of racist violence and killings by the police department.

So in the spirit of defunding by at least 50%, I think we should call for also for a purge of all officers who have committed police violence and brutality, as well as those who gave the orders.

I mean, it's really time to clean house and I appreciate any support in making that happen.

I appreciate all the comments.

I think council members want, Greg, one last question that I would ask if, sorry, if you've already addressed this, the last question that I would love to put on our list of things to do is to ask the question, how much have we paid out as a city for grievances that have been found to be sustained against the city?

How much are we spending in defense and payouts from the city for issues related to officer interactions?

We can come back to that again in the future.

Thank you.

Okay.

Director Noble, we are relatively on time.

My hope was to have gotten to you by 4 p.m.

It is 4.07.

I apologize, council colleagues, for you and the public who are interested in the 911 data.

We have that presentation linked on our agenda.

We will come back to that presentation next Wednesday.

Thank you to Council Member Herbold, Chair of Public Safety.

I appreciate your flexibility in allowing us to bring that presentation next week as well.

As Council President, I appreciate you guys all being flexible with us.

We have a lot to cover.

Council Member Herbold, before we

I just want to add so the focus of the agenda item that we are deferring to next week, if we have room, we might want to couple it with some of the analysis that Council President Gonzalez was referring to.

What we were supposed to cover today was unique to 9-1-1 deployment, and whether or not some of the types of calls patrol officers are responding to are mental health calls or calls that a violence disruptor or interrupter could respond to, or other non-sworn SPD staff I think she has a broader question about some of the other functions.

And Angela mentioned that they're doing some of that work.

So if that other piece of work is ready, I think it would really complement the 911 discussion for next week.

Excellent.

We will do that and we will fold in Council Member Peterson's question as well around conceptually talking about a 311 number or something that's a little bit easier to remember.

I know we have a non-emergency number.

but I think the concept is really well taken.

How do we have a better distribution of those calls or a hub that allocates out somebody who is not necessarily, you know, wielding a weapon and instead perhaps a social worker or a mental health provider?

So we'll fold all of that into our conversation next week.

I'm sure central staff is taking notes.

Director Noble?

It has been, we are grateful for your time.

It's been a while that we've been waiting for this presentation.

Before we get started officially, I'm gonna ask the clerk to read into the record item number four.

Item four, city budget office overview of the 2020 rebalancing package for briefing and discussion.

Thank you, Madam Clerk.

Colleagues, yesterday, the mayor transmitted 15 pieces of legislation.

This is the package known as the 2020 rebalancing package.

Consulting with central staff, we really can't recall another time in recent history where we've had a mid-year rebalancing package, especially while the council was working remotely, and where we are in the middle of a long anticipated conversation about police reform, and we should also note in the midst of a global deadly pandemic.

So this is a lot of work for us to take on, and I appreciate everybody's flexibility and willingness to engage in this conversation to say that this is a lot to handle is an understatement.

During a very stressful time already, we appreciate the public's continued engagement with us as a council and the executive's office as we seek to address the rebalancing package.

Colleagues, I put together a budget calendar that I shared with you as well already to ensure that the deliberations that we will discuss related to the Mayor's 2020 rebalancing package are handled swiftly and transparently.

I'm also hopeful with this calendar, we can give central staff a chance to enjoy the long holiday weekend that is the 4th of July.

I know many of them have not had a weekend off since COVID.

became more present in our local community.

And we really want to respect their time and appreciate all that they have going on as well.

Director Noble, I know the same is true of you and your team.

You have been working around the clock.

I am sure that you have not had a weekend off or an evening off in a very long time.

And that is not to go unnoticed.

So thank you for your work.

We know that this has been a work in progress for the last few weeks, so we're going to turn it over to you, Director Noble, to talk more about the budget proposal that we have in front of us.

Council colleagues, you have a series of documents that have been sent down, and Director Noble will walk through a presentation with us.

Director Noble, we still have time, so please speak relatively slowly.

I know sometimes we try to go through this pretty fast.

Colleagues, I'm going to ask if possible, for you to hold your questions till the end.

And then I will go through in order of the roll call and ask for people to ask their questions.

So please keep a list of questions on you so we can get through this presentation.

As a reminder, this is part one of two presentations that we will have.

So next Wednesday, we'll have another chance to walk through in more detail.

If you want to hold your questions, you're welcome to, but I encourage folks to get those questions out today so that we can come back to any of those questions during our part two conversation.

Director Noble, I'll turn it over to you.

I think the biggest question that folks will have as you open up is given the delay and given the only 1% additional increase that we've seen in the Seattle Police Department's budget, really hoping you can help us have a better understanding of why the delay occurred.

And given that we understood that this was being held back to respond to the crisis of consciousness that we saw presented in the street in terms of demand for response to police, over policing or excessive force in policing.

you know, why it is we only see a 5% reduction when we knew it was going to be 4% to begin with.

So I know that that's a big question we all have.

I just want to throw it out there so that you can know that that is something we are thinking of as we walk through this budget.

And we also appreciate all of your team's work as you've been trying to couple federal dollars with state dollars and local dollars to address the COVID crisis.

That is the most, you know, urgent issue that we started with.

And then we also have the urgent issue of institutionalized racism and over policing our excessive force that is an equally important public health crisis that we are seeking to address in this budget.

So big tasks in front of us and thank you once again for your time, Director Noble.

Thank you appreciate the comments in the introduction.

I just want to note that I joined today by Julie Dingley from the CBO staff on as we get into the presentation of we on her for some specific points and and get some expertise in terms of answering questions.

With regard to your question about delay, first, I want to appreciate and thank the council's forbearance on that point.

Indeed, we'd hope to be here sooner, if you will.

And I'll talk for a moment about the necessity and actually some urgency around some of the funding proposals that were requests that we're bringing to you.

Two things in explanation.

One is we were in final review of the proposal we're bringing you with the mayor when the events of the past few weeks hit.

and just the operational demands of responding to the events were significant.

Distraction is not the right word because they were the thing that was most important.

And so wasn't able to close the loop with the mayor's office on some of the final sign off and final review while some of that work was underway.

In addition, it gave us an opportunity, we at the Budget Office, to go back and review.

And in the context of really a historic movement, raising questions about our relative priorities around racial justice and our investments in our budget, to be sure that we were bringing forward proposals that weren't gonna be damaging or any more damaging in the context of the just unrelenting financial pressure we are seeing.

And then also to consider, again, very specifically and more the demands coming from community and how they might best be addressed.

And as you have for the past two meetings and watched with interest scene, the police budget is both large and complex.

And I'll go in a few moments here, talk about some of the response that the mayor is intending.

that Angela, the finance director from SPD has alluded to, ultimately recognizing that there's a broader process here of both kind of technical engagement, but then also community engagement around SPD's budget and thinking about alternative forms and structures for public safety more generally.

So with that, I'm going to try to pull up a PowerPoint presentation.

I will succeed eventually, hopefully quickly, and use that as a basis to walk you through.

It's a good number of slides here covering a great deal of information, including one I really highlight in some level of detail, the investments we're making in response to COVID, because In addition to our revenue shortfall, and I'll highlight this now sort of ad nauseum, we have a spending challenge as well because of the need to respond to the health crisis and the economic crisis created by the health crisis.

So both those are dimensions that we'll be speaking to.

So I am going to try to grab the right presentation here.

And hopefully this is that.

It is.

Great, we can see that.

Thank you.

Yeah, and I'm going to try to get it to the right form and get back up to the top.

All of those things getting there slowly.

You can see lots of slides.

So let me begin.

So as described by you and reiterated by Mina, there are at least three major challenges that are facing us simultaneously.

One is the public health pandemic and the need to respond to protect lives.

Then also the economic impacts of that crisis, both to individuals, to families, to businesses, to non-profit organizations.

and to our budget.

So as I'll highlight in a moment, we're looking at $300 million just in 2020 of lost revenue.

We actually just recently completed an update to our revenue forecast that I give you a more formal one in April.

We've just taken another look at numbers for June and we're seeing the same picture.

It's not significantly different.

particularly in our slow recovery scenario, which we think is the prudent one to plan for.

So actually the number is now 310 roughly million.

So that still remains a significant pressure.

We are starting to see some actual results in terms of tax receipts.

They're actually a challenge to interpret, because both the city and the state and the county have provided opportunities for folks to defer and to delay their tax payments, which is, of course, a perfectly reasonable thing to do.

It means it's very hard for us to interpret the data, because we're seeing lower than otherwise would have been expected projections, receipts, but we don't know whether that's because of the economy, per se, or because of the delayed payments.

I hate to interrupt you.

I'm sorry.

I know that's hard on Zoom.

Julie, I might ask you for a favor.

When Director Noble put the screen up, his audio became garbled.

I mean, we can still hear him, but it's very staticky.

I wonder, Julie, if you could share your screen, if that's possible, and then Director Noble, if we could turn your screen off.

That might help with the audio.

Apologies for doing this in real time.

Director Noble, if you're able to keep talking as Julie pulls up this slideshow, I think that could help us out a lot.

Yeah, I'm going to stop sharing mine.

I'm actually, hang on one sec.

I'm going to try to get there just for myself.

So the other obvious challenge that we are facing is a historic movement to demand anti-racist action and for us to divest and to rethink policing and public safety and to end institutional racism generally.

So those are three big challenges that we are facing together.

I'm gonna have to do that move slide request now so one more Julie.

So wanted to highlight and you've made this point already chairman skater that normally we would be in scotts in the 2021 22 budget process we would be developing our proposals internally here at CBO and just beginning review with the mayor.

That process has actually been delayed.

We're still gonna have to deliver a budget at the end of September.

So we're now moving quickly to that.

But we're coming to you with this rebalancing proposal because we are facing, in terms of the city budget, a challenge of not having sufficient resource to meet the spending needs and demands that we are facing.

So we need authority from you twofold, at least.

We need both to reallocate resources from, and you'll see the proposals that we have in mind for doing that, We also need to free up new resources, so to dip into the rainy day and emergency sub funds to help support activities.

Further, and this is all reflected in the legislation we have sent, there is federal and state funding that is going to help us manage the COVID response, but we need We need authority to accept those grants and to allocate those monies.

So as it stands now, we do not have sufficient resource to fund city operations through year end.

And we don't have sufficient authority from you to support some of our COVID work.

And there's actually some specific urgency around some of that.

So this is a very unusual situation and challenging in many ways.

Next slide.

In terms of the COVID response, and we'll talk more in detail about this, we have focused on addressing the immediate needs of those who are struggling, so food, utility assistance, rental assistance, childcare, other essential needs.

We're making significant investments to protect the homeless population, those living without shelter, both to provide shelter and to minimize their health risks as well.

We're doing what we can to assist small business, nonprofits, other organizations.

There are some significant limitations in terms of state rules and authority around that.

And then at the same time, we are also supporting first responders and again, making further investments, just recently setting up citywide testing for the population as a whole, as we respond to the health components here.

Next slide.

I do want to talk specifically, you've asked, about the SPD budget.

So the reductions that we're proposing for SPD are, in terms of the general fund, the largest.

That's consistent, perhaps, with them being the largest overall general fund entity.

But we're looking both at operational resources and some capital resources.

I think, though, more importantly, and this is that we have been given specific direction by the mayor, and Angela referred to this earlier, myself and Chief Best working in conjunction with other staff to develop what it would look like proposals for reductions at 20, 30, and 50% for SPD's budget.

Again, as you have seen, the budget is large, it is also complicated.

There is a recognition, and you're beginning to explore this yourselves, that there may be opportunity to shift some resources that are now being spent in a uniform response to some other form of response.

But that is not a small shift.

It needs to be done thoughtfully.

And so we're moving forward with that.

Did not think that two weeks was sufficient time to develop meaningful and responsible proposals in that space.

But again, we have engaged that work.

And at the same time, I was on a meeting, actually Julie and I were on a meeting an hour before we came to here to talk about that work.

In addition, the mayor's office is working with SPD to engage a community process around that re-evaluation, if you will, and re-examination of SPD's budget.

The intent here is to implement for 2021. As things evolve, perhaps something could happen sooner, but there is no shortage of focus and energy in that area, nor any sense of a lack of direction or sense of purpose, if you will.

So that work is underway.

Again, meeting today, in part, Angela, I had numbers for you today around what it would mean to have 20, 30, and 50% reduction, because those are produced in response to the work we're doing currently.

So that's underway.

Next slide.

And obviously, the short time we've had since the movement has really gained voice, again, a historic movement and one that I won't make my own personal comments.

It is a tremendous opportunity we have as well.

Can't have responded meaningfully in two weeks, but do want to highlight that the proposal we're bringing for you and steps underway are certainly informed by what we are seeing and the voice that is being spoken.

So the COVID-19 response is very much in service of communities in need, including BIPOC communities.

And again, we'll talk more about what those services are.

We are working, although there is widespread reductions, we're working to preserve programs identified here that invest in the community, things like the Equitable Development Initiative.

The dedicated funding sources for EDI are actually falling short.

Even in these times when we are short on other revenues, you'll see we're looking to backfill to prevent any reduction there.

Worker opportunity, the levy, families education and promise levy.

In addition, as you know, the mayor is committed to invest $100 million as part of the 21 budget.

And we are evaluating funding sources for that and beginning to, mayor's office beginning to develop an engagement process around identifying what those investments would be and how they would be made.

A process to be driven by the community itself.

Next slide.

There are some, again, near-term things to be aware of.

As I mentioned, the work we're doing now to develop options for the SPD budget.

In addition to the operational reductions, we're putting a halt to planning work that otherwise had been funded for options for police facilities in the North Precinct.

That frees up $4 million in what's called real estate excise tax money, but capital funding that could be repurposed for community needs.

We've identified unspent resources in the education levies, both the current and the previous, that could be available to direct towards mentorship programs.

Conversation has started with community about how those resources might be invested, including as early as this summer.

In addition to the savings that we've identified to help rebalance the budget, we've also identified some resources in SPD that can be reprogrammed to support community engagement so that we are not just asking folks to show up on their own time, on their own dime, but rather to invest in the community voices we need to hear from as part of that engagement process.

And then, work underway to expedite some land transfers of properties in the Central District, Bird Bar Place, the Central Area Senior Center, FS6 is shorthand for Fire Station 6. So work underway to, those are processes that have been ongoing for some time, but trying to reach a conclusion as fast as possible on those.

And beginning a process for a new vision for the East Precinct and potential for partnership with the community around that facility and its environs.

So again, steps underway in just a few short weeks haven't brought necessarily to completion, but not a lack of focus.

Next slide.

So shifting, talk a little bit more about the rebalancing.

Again, as I've indicated, we have financially there two big challenges, both the revenue shortfall and the cost of the COVID response.

So general fund was expected to be about 1.5 billion.

We had balanced to that assumption.

It is now expecting that to be $200 million, roughly less.

In addition, there are a number of related funding sources, things that support general fund activities, things like the soda tax, the short-term rental tax, commercial parking tax, and then what would have been earned revenues at Seattle Center and Parks Department that are also falling short.

So in total, revenue shortfall of more than $300 million.

And then at the same time, having to respond to COVID and to do so quickly and effectively and thoroughly.

And as you'll see, we now expect to spend as much as $233 million by year end on that response.

So the presentation that follows from here really focuses on these areas and the steps we're taking and proposing to balance.

Next slide.

Again, at a high level, and we'll get into detail as we go here, there are a number of resources that we're going to call upon.

So, for COVID response, resources from the state and federal governments.

We were fortunate enough to finish 2019 relative to the good compared to our expectations, so there's one-time fund balance there.

The proposal we have for 2020 calls on about 25% a little bit less of the city's emergency funds, the rainy day and the emergency fund.

The reason it's not more is that we're proposing to hold the rest to deal with the 2021 challenge, and we'll touch on that as well.

And at the same time, we're using existing city resources, shifting staff and the like to COVID response.

And then you'll see we have budget reduction proposals that are designed to minimize impact on the ground, but to achieve significant financial savings.

And we have proposals to reprioritize uses of the transportation levy, the library levy, education levy, as well as the Metropolitan Parks District.

Next slide.

This is a very complicated slide, and one that is designed to try to capture the true nature of what's going on here.

and I'm gonna take some time to walk through it.

On the left, the gray bars, we're trying to highlight the two challenges that we have and in some ways, the ways that they overlap.

So identified a total budget shortfall within the general fund of 210 million.

It's actually a little bit, the revenue shortfall is about 185 of direct general fund.

But as I described, there are various other revenue sources that are falling short of expectation, the earned revenues, short-term rental tax, And we feel a need to increase general fund allocation to make up for some of those losses.

So the total revenue again that we're shortfall we're seeing describing is $210 million.

At the same time, We're spending $233 million, and we'll show this in more detail, on COVID response.

A portion of that is money that we're going to use is city resources that are being redirected to that purpose.

About $65 million of that $233 million are city resources directed towards COVID response.

So when you add those things together and acknowledge that there is some overlap between the two, that $65 million of overlap, the total challenge is $378 million.

And on the right side, the colored pieces here, we highlight the resources.

And we'll go through them through the rest of the presentation.

But I wanted you to see them, if you will, literally stacked up here.

The things on the top, the various shades of green, are the resources most directed at COVID, so that's why they're mapped horizontally, if you will, to the $233 million in response.

And I just want to talk about each of these a little bit, and then we'll get into more about describing what the components of the $233.

So there are a good number of, a good measure of what we're responding to will be eligible for FEMA reimbursement.

So FEMA reimburses at a 75% level, you then need 25% local match.

Conveniently, you can use other federal dollars for the local match, and we'll talk about that in a minute.

But a lot of the work we're doing in shelters, some of the work we're doing around food is eligible for FEMA funding.

The process there is that we seek pre-approval, so we have some indication, reasonably strong indication that we will receive funding.

we then spend and then they reimburse so that there is some risk in that reimbursement and we'll talk about that some as well so that is a significant source of funding for particular elements.

There's a grant from the state Commerce Department for 13 million.

We've said to legislation actually last week and we'll talk about today.

That has the potential to particularly serve it in the areas of of homelessness and permanent support of housing.

The cares act so that increased federal funding that has come to us in the form of community development block grants.

And yes G emergency service grant you've actually already appropriated some of this money but we're going to try to show you the full picture here.

There are some non general fund resources that we've been able to apply here as well.

We want to you can see the overall picture.

Examples here actually using education education levy resources that might have otherwise been on spent to help operate emergency child care facilities or childcare facilities for essential workers.

As well some utility resources to allow forgiveness of of interest costs and the like And then the biggest single source is the Coronavirus Relief Fund.

And I will slip along the way here and start calling it the CRF, Coronavirus Relief Fund.

And we've pictured it here in the middle very much on purpose, because what we're proposing, and we'll describe this in greater detail, is to share that funding in two ways.

One is to fund a set of new activities, supporting community agencies, purchasing stuff outside, out the door, if you will.

We are also proposing to use roughly half of it to support city staff who have been engaged in COVID response.

That includes firefighters, parks workers, a variety of folks.

The rules, the federal rules allow us to use these dollars that way.

And we need to use those dollars that way because we do not have sufficient resources because of the economic downturn and the shortfall in our revenues.

We don't have sufficient resources to pay all the city staff, all that we had planned to pay them.

So without redirecting some of these resources, we can't have sufficient city staff to populate and to do the COVID response work.

So again, we'll describe that yet again in further detail.

The lower part of the column on the right, and I'm actually gonna go from the bottom up, are the resources we're using to fill the revenue shortfall.

And again, we'll spend more time here.

They're one-time resources, comes with how we finished last year, dipping into the rainy day and emergency funds, the 69 or I'm going to probably refer to I am going to refer to as approximately 70 million.

Those are reductions in the repriorization of levy resources.

And then a piece that we'll come back to as well of some additional required savings that we've yet to fully identify for 2020. So I'm going to move forward to talk more about the COVID response.

The next slide.

We've tried to characterize the response into these six areas, and we'll dive into them in greater detail and show you the funding amounts of each.

We're gonna show you the total spend here rather than per se the funding sources, although we'll give you some indication of, at least for some of them, about the resources, where they're coming from.

But we've been responding to the health aspects.

That's this first category.

Actually, go ahead, advance the slide, Julie, sorry.

So this is that same list of items, but it shows you the dollar amount.

So we've been responding on an emergency basis to the health impacts.

We've been responding to protect the homelessness, the homeless community.

So that's 38 million.

So again, those experiencing homelessness and the need to protect their health, 39 million.

Essential household and community needs.

So things here like food assistance and making sure folks can pay for their basic utilities.

because the state rules minimal assistance, but what we can for small business and cultural agencies, first responders, and then as I indicated, the support to the city employees, so we have sufficient resources so that they're able to respond to COVID, and also that we're able to protect the city workforce from health risks here at work.

I happen to be in the office today, unusually, and then also to the community when they come to seek services from the city.

The next slide, we're going to go through each of these with a little bit more detail.

I want to note a lot of people probably have a lot of questions.

Please make a note of the slide title, given that there's not slide numbers on these.

So for example, that previous slide, I know there's probably a lot of questions there.

Please just note the slide title as you're making a list of questions.

And again, we'll go through the roll call at the end if folks do have questions.

So again, this is an area where we're particularly responding on the health side.

And I'm not going to try to go through every line item here.

I just was trying to give you a flavor.

We've provided detail to you and your staff as well.

But things like sanitizer and cleaning services, hotels for essential workers, child care for essential workers.

just standing up a broad-based testing program, ambassadors to help maintain social distancing in the parks.

I do want to highlight the last item, emergent COVID-19 response needs.

This is essentially a contingency set of resources of $15 million.

The things that we're trying to hold a contingency for a twofold one is a concern that we may not that he may reject some of our proposed spending again we sought pre approval but that's not a guarantee items that they reject will be on the hook for a 100%.

In addition and maybe even more importantly.

We don't know when the emergency will end.

And when it does we'll get cut off from the funding that we're using to support a variety of things that most you know most immediately shelter and food.

We want to be sure we have resources later in the year.

Should that funding no longer be available because we do not see again.

And so that the federal government may view that this emergency is over before it's really over.

I think the nature of that concern should be understood.

Next slide.

This is funding in the area serving those who are experiencing homelessness.

Again, you're aware of much of this, but what we're laying out is the funding needed for the next few months to sustain this.

So hygiene facilities, shower trailers, garbage, just more recently reopening bathrooms and libraries, shelter, again, We have worked to de-densify shelters.

There's a proposal that we'll get to in a few moments.

Actually, Julie's available to do it, walk you through the proposal for the Commerce Grant that includes a request for some additional funding for shelter needs and permanent supportive housing.

And then also in this category, we've included the work we're doing to prevent homelessness, particular rental assistance and ongoing support for permanent supportive housing.

And again, part of our proposal for the coronavirus relief fund is some increased funding for rental assistance.

There's also an opportunity to use some of the resources to make up for shortfalls.

Permanent supportive housing was otherwise going to count on resources from the short-term rental tax to pay for operations.

Short-term rental tax has fallen well short of forecast.

There's an opportunity to use some of the federal, in this case, some of the state resources to backfill there.

Next slide.

Showing this slide only for illustrative purposes, if you will, this is actually the same, if you look at the right column, this is the same funding levels we showed you in the previous, but I wanted to highlight the work we have done to mix resources and revenue streams so that we have an optimal allocation of resources to achieve our goal.

So, different funding sources are eligible to be used in different ways.

And it's a complex set of considerations to get us to specific recommendations about how to fund individual items.

So this is really to highlight that.

Again, provided all of this information to central staff and happy to walk through in greater detail with you as well.

Next slide.

A couple categories here just to highlight.

The first one about essential household needs.

Again, this is food and utilities.

Proposal to use some of the CRF resources that remain to continue the successful grocery voucher program that we've initiated.

Also to provide food delivery programs for seniors.

And again, as noted here, we've reduced financial pressure on those that are unable to pay their utility bills in the near term.

And the bottom piece here we've been able to reprogram some of our arts funding towards immediate assistance to agencies and then to use some community development block grant money so we can use federal money to support business.

We can't because the state Constitution use state or local money.

But we have directed the community development block resources that we've been able to identify for business support.

Next slide.

In terms of first responders, I just highlight that the city deployed its firefighters to do testing in congregate senior living environments.

Because obviously, all the data show that that is the highest risk population.

And no other entity was stepping up to do that work, and we did.

And that's put some pressure.

There's an opportunity to help recover some of those costs through the CRF.

We've been buying a lot of personal protection equipment for first responders as well.

So this gives you some idea there.

Next slide.

And again, this is again to highlight that we've redeployed city staff to response.

So we have parks employees who would have been lifeguards at swimming pools, working at community centers that have become shelters.

We've incurred both regular time and overtime costs associated with that.

We also have a number of workers who are, you know, would have been frontline workers who are high risk themselves, and we do not have a safe place for them to work.

Those have been able to telecommute.

We have telecommuting, but not all of them can.

So there's some real expenses there.

And we are proposing to hold $10 million not in reserve, but expected to deploy by year end, to invest in ensuring that the city workplace can be safe, both for city employees as we begin to reopen, but then also for residents who are coming in to seek assistance from the city or seek services from the city.

So physical changes to customer service counters, making masks available.

I mean, those of you who come into city hall now, I'm happy to be here today.

There's a mass dispenser and a hand cleaner available at every door, if you will.

That's not without cost.

So next slide.

This is just a revisit to highlight that it's all those components that total that $233 million of expenditures.

Do not want to talk about some specific elements of that and specific funding sources.

So next slide.

And Julie, if you can unmute and talk a little bit about the details of what we have proposed.

And this is legislation we sent down last week, but is part of the overall balancing package and against emergency here about getting these dollars out the door.

Sure.

Good afternoon, everybody.

I'm Julie Dingley.

I'm the team lead in the Budget Office for Homelessness and Housing Spending, broadly.

And The proposed State Department of Commerce grant was a $13 million grant that we were able to secure from State Department of Commerce that's pretty flexible in nature, but primarily for homelessness response.

So we are proposing a three-part approach to using these funds.

So the first is that we would propose to sustain the emergency response for the period after FEMA more or less ends the emergency.

As Ben referenced previously, we don't know when FEMA is going to call time on the emergency.

and we don't know how much notice we're going to receive before they do so.

So they could end it two weeks from now and we could get that much or we could get two months lead time.

We just don't know.

So these funds would provide us two months of response for hygiene and shelter de-densification efforts for that transition period.

The second part of the approach is that we have current contracts that support our PSH providers.

And they were previously backed by short-term rental tax revenues.

And those revenues have gone down considerably.

I think then, you can correct me, but I think it's somewhere north of 50% reduction.

And so this allows us to continue that critical support.

So that's the 3.3 million to support those contracts.

And then we have in the third part of the approach, some critical new needs that we've identified through engagement with providers.

So the first is to fund to provide funding for nearly 2600 meals daily at the city's permanent supportive housing locations through the end of the year.

And the second is to provide new funding for shelter and PSH needs that would have sort of a two-part benefit.

So one, it would provide an equitable approach for existing providers that may not be very well connected to the city, but we could really ensure that everyone's voice had equal footing at the table.

And then the second benefit to running this as a very quick RFP process would it be that it would allow us to identify provider expenses that they may be incurring that are actually FEMA eligible, and we should be including them in our FEMA response and may not just may not know about them yet.

So this would be focusing on those non FEMA eligible costs that they have incurred thus far.

So Ben, if you don't have anything to add, I can move on to the next slide.

That'd be great.

Yeah.

So this next slide is the proposed allocation of the CRF, the Coronavirus Relief Fund.

At a high level here, I want to highlight, I mentioned before that FEMA covers 75%, but we need to cover 25%.

And again, we can't do this out of our base budget because we didn't expect that expense and we don't have the revenues to cover our base budget even without that additional expense.

So, local match of about 11 million.

You can see we've highlighted the specific areas where that would be, where we're matching.

So that's homeless shelter and hygiene, the time of the testing and the cleaning.

Again, you can read this as well as I, so I won't go through that detail.

There are a number of expenses that we're incurring that are not FEMA eligible, but that we think are very important.

both minimizing the health impact and providing services.

You can see that list there, things like face masks for the community, the social distancing ambassador program so that we can operate open spaces in a safe way and the like.

I'd mentioned before the next item, the $15 million item is this contingency and also for we're going to continue to do that.

we're going to continue to do that.

we're going to continue to do that.

we're going to continue to do that.

then and then funding to continue the food voucher program through October.

The the funding cycle of the year after the required to get get resources out the door by the end of October that that that timeline.

the city's budget.

We have $1.5 million in rental assistance as well.

And as I indicated, roughly half the resources to support the city's budget so we can pay for the city workers and city employees and other resources that have been directed to covid.

Again, without this, we don't have the resources to meet payroll and to pay for our other expenses.

We are taking in less So I do want to highlight that there are additional resources that have come onto the table that we did not anticipate as we were developing this balancing proposal.

And I want to note that there's $26 million in new federal money and $11 million that we think, in partnership with the county, we are eligible from the state, so in total, $37 million.

And I think what we know now, ever more, is that the COVID-19 crisis is going to have a long-lasting impact on the design, and all of this funding is for homelessness and shelter.

that the COVID-19 crisis is going to have a long-lasting impact on the design and the operation of our homelessness response and the regions as well.

And things are going to look differently going forward.

You know, we've implemented things on an emergency basis now, but clearly they can't go back to how they were.

So we think that collectively we need to work the city and the county together to to identify how to allocate these resources going forward as partners in partly in the context of the new regional entity.

I guess it's an opportunity to both transform and stabilize our response to homelessness in the context of COVID.

So the city, King County, DCHS, Public Health are all gonna need to work together together and together with the service providers to identify the best way to allocate these resources.

And we have begun those conversations.

We also think that it's going to be critical to engage not just the existing service providers, but in the context of the movement around racial equality to reach out to communities that haven't always been part of that conversation.

So the work is on this.

These resources have only recently become available.

And we are now working in partnership with the county providers, public health, to identify process that is more inclusive of community to identify how to allocate them and how to allocate them on a going forward basis to a transformed homelessness system if you will so more on this to come.

But note that the resources are available to spend over a longer period of time not just by your end.

And Ben, if I might jump in to note that this slide is actually missing one other piece of information, which is that the county is, so in the way that the city has been awarded 26 million additional dollars for ESG, the county has also been awarded $11 million for ESG.

There is then this separate bucket of 11 million through the State Department of Commerce.

So all told, it's nearing 50 million of additional resources that will be available to spend in the homelessness space.

Dr. Noble and Julie, I want to note for folks on the viewing public, whether you're watching on television or online, that the PowerPoint presentation that we received does have page numbers.

So we are on page 22. There are two sections to come, which is the COVID response and the 2021 outlook.

I understand you want to cover as much as you possibly can today.

My concern is that we do have two sessions slated for this.

So if you can cover a portion of that next session, prioritizing what you'd like to cover, I hope we have you booked on for time next week.

Okay.

will always be available.

Okay, all right.

Um, so I just want to flag for folks that we have covered a robust amount of information already.

There's these two sort of follow up sections.

Director Noble

Let me try to move through it with deliberate speed is the classic phrase here.

I'll pick it up and I get it.

I don't want to speak too fast so that folks can't get it, but I know that there's a number of questions that we already have and we have a lot of time next week as well.

So please do cover what you'd like to on these next few sessions, but what are next to a few slides here.

But I would like us to really focus on the robust amount of information in the first 22 slides.

I will move forward quickly here so so we've talked about covid response now I want to talk about really the blue pieces here so what what are the resources were using to balance just on the revenue side.

So there are a number of one-time resources so we finished finished 2019 to the good.

And there's some other one-time pieces that we're going to call upon so that's almost 30 that's 36 million to more than 35. As I mentioned, a portion of the rainy day emergency fund, and then a portion of the CRF, we were just talking about that.

That's 130 million of that challenge, again, which is roughly 200 plus.

Next slide.

This is highlighting the reduction.

So as I mentioned, there's $69 million in reductions.

I want you to see the components of those.

The biggest share is holding vacancies.

And those are not without impact.

I want to be very clear.

But as you'll see, we are facing shrinking the city's workforce significantly for next year.

So hiring now, unless really, really needed, and we do have a waiver process, doesn't make sense.

We're proposing to reprioritize levy and NPD resources.

Talk about that in a second.

training travel not ideal to lose but not critical functions now similarly consultant contracts.

Neighborhood matching fund is probably the biggest policy cut here if you will impart that we're doing that because it's hard to engage community at the moment given the covid issues and also the staff would be involved here are actually right now detailed to lead to help in business assistance.

So next slide.

Because it's a significant part of the legislation we sent you, I do want to highlight reprioritizing the levies in the park district.

The way I think about this is that the levies in the district were intended to be additive to a base level of funding provided by the general fund and other resources.

That base level of funding is just not possible given the revenue hit.

So what we're proposing here is to is to re prioritize with a levy levies in the mpd would be used for to shift them away from adding on to release.

So supporting the base instead that they largely involves in the case of parks and transportation delaying capital projects and shifting capital funding to an M.

for families and ed, it's resources that we couldn't spend this year because schools weren't open, so there's opportunity there to shift some resource to cover base activities.

Similar story at the library.

The library levy was gonna expand services.

With libraries closed, there was no way even to do that.

So there are impacts here, but this is a way to minimize operational impact, have the city maintain city employees to assist in various forms of response.

But these are legislative actions that are required on your part to to reprioritize next slide.

Get out to just real quick some of the departmental highlights we've talked about SPD just to mention some other things we haven't talked about talking plan is to free spending on new vehicles while we reinvest reevaluate how big and what form the force takes slow down on I T investments.

As we mentioned hiring freeze and then we also talked about budget reduction proposals at 2030 and 50%.

Wanted to highlight that there are no reductions proposed for CPC, OIG, and OPA in the context of recent events.

They will need to be fully funded to work and fulfill their duties.

Next slide.

HSD, no reduction in services, quite the opposite given the COVID response.

So just taking advantage of some vacancies and travel training.

Minimal reductions at DLN and OED because of their critical role in response.

OPCD, here I wanted to highlight, we have actively chosen to provide backfill funding for the EDI program, the Equitable Development Initiative.

It was to be reliant on the short-term rental tax.

If that was its only funding source, it would have had to have been cut by $2 million or more.

Proposal here is even given short resources to provide assistance so that EDI can remain intact.

The EDI group at OPCD is working with the community who oversee these resources to direct them towards COVID response and relief issues.

You can read about library in Seattle Center again.

Seattle Center is another place where we're actually proposing additional general fund support because revenues have been wiped out.

Next slide.

Parks and Recreation, again, they're suffering significantly loss of revenue.

We're proposing a shift in the priorities for Metropolitan Parks District.

Again, this is another place where we're actually going to propose that there be potentially some increased general fund support over what we had otherwise planned.

I do want you to know that they are making discretionary cuts.

So you'll see there'll be less service in the parks this summer, less mowing and weeding, less cleaning of facilities that we don't expect to be used necessarily as much, but there are operational impacts.

SDOT is struggling through really probably the largest percentage reduction term, percentage reductions of any city department because there's decreased general fund, but then also there are dedicated funding sources like commercial parking tax and the like.

and they have to deal with the West Seattle Bridge.

So they have paused a number of capital projects as they complete an analysis of what tactically makes sense to move forward.

I did want to highlight that one of those being paused and don't expect to restart is the Center City Connector that allows $6 million of resources that would have been spent there to be reprogrammed elsewhere.

One department I don't have on this list, but I do want to highlight the fire department did identify a number of spending reductions, and we're actually going to pursue those reductions, but we're not going to take them as an overall net reduction in their budget because they need additional resource to provide additional service in West Seattle because of the bridge being down.

There's no way to get backup vehicles to West Seattle quickly.

So to provide a sufficient and adequate fire service, we're going to temporarily stage equipment there that has an additional cost.

So our department is gonna address those costs by taking some of the reductions that otherwise have been planned.

Next slide.

I just wanna highlight again, there is still $11 million.

I'm gonna put that pink there piece in the middle of required savings that we have not identified a source for yet.

We think there's a potential as we hold vacancies longer to achieve additional savings.

we have a lot of work to do.

As you will see for 2021, the hole we have is large enough that we think it is also appropriate and we have had initial conversation to engage the city's unions to think about potential labor savings that might be citywide that could help address the shortfall we are seeing.

That is potential there.

If we are unable to achieve those savings, we can still balance the budget.

It just means the hole for next year will be a little bit I'm going to skip this this is legislation is a highlight of the legislation we sent the number of elements that we need your your action on in order in order to complete what we're proposing.

So acceptance of grants and like but real quick on 2021. This is similar graphic a little bit simpler that highlights what we see in 2021. Revenue shortfall again of almost $300 million.

A bulk of that is the general fund, but we're again concerned about other resources that support general government activities, and expect that the general fund would otherwise want us backfill for those.

The top piece, the light blue, are one-time resources that under this plan we would have available in 2021. So almost $100 million of the rainy day fund and some additional one-time resource from the mega block sale, that could close $130 million of the gap.

But that relieves $164 million gap for 2021, which represents more than 10% of what the general fund used to be, and well more than what the general fund will be.

The we've asked departments are reductions at the at 10% level from for most those savings and those savings those reductions would generate something like 90 million that we'd still be well short of balance.

Is again why we're going to need additional tools and I've noticed that revenues could be part of that and I know you are you are considered some options there as well and the mayor is looking at some progressive revenue options both to fulfill the commitment to commute to BIPOC community and potentially to address this shortfall.

Next slide.

This highlights again the strategies around 21. And I wanted you to see this because it's important to understand one of the reasons, for instance, that we're not proposing to drain the rainy day fund this year is a need for next year.

We really need to consider this in a multi-year context.

So we will continue to advocate for new state and federal resources, both generally and particularly in the context of COVID.

We would draw down the rest of the rainy day emergency fund in 21, which would leave us in a risky position for 22 and beyond.

But we have a crisis today that we can't ignore.

So again, as I mentioned, new revenues could be part of the solution and I think may well need to be.

But even with them, the $90 million in reductions that we've asked our city departments will involve significant reductions in city services.

And for the next bullet, we're spending something like 65% of the general fund, actually probably now a bigger percentage because we've cut a lot of non-labor costs.

So if we reduce by that much, it is inevitable that we will impact the city workforce.

We can management right is simply to lay folks off the opportunity working with the city unions with the partners that they have always been and continue to be to identify other strategies to reduce labor expenses potentially.

We are highlighting that I've just been engaged in the past couple weeks or more and will continue for the next few weeks in a new process to bring the department directors together to review proposed reductions to see how we can minimize their impact on the ground.

We're breaking some silos down here and looking for opportunities to be thoughtful.

Because again, there is There's simply no way that the city footprint, our financial size doesn't get smaller, even with some margin of new revenues.

And we're going to need to be smart about that, because we're going to end up with less service being provided.

And we want to be careful about who we impact as we do that, ever more in the context of all that has gone on.

And another point I want to make here is that ever clearer that the forecasts are showing that this is not a transient thing that we are likely to see.

And it's another reason that we need to think about adapting the city to a smaller footprint, if you will, because this is not going to end overnight.

And we need to think about what the city looks like and how it can serve the whole city and ever more BIPOC communities that have been historically neglected.

And as we shift resource to those communities, how can we maintain appropriate balance of resources overall?

So again, just wanted to highlight all of those challenges.

Look forward to working with you and your staff.

It's a very complicated picture overall.

indicated a number of pieces of legislation that are required to implement this and undoubtedly lots of Q&A and look forward to that.

That's what I have.

Julie, anything else from you?

I appreciate the flexibility that you both have shown with getting through that presentation relatively quickly.

Colleagues, again, on your PowerPoint presentations that we were sent and I think that are linked online, folks should have slide numbers on those pages.

So feel free to reference that as you talk about the slides that you have.

I have a number of folks who have indicated that they have questions.

I think in order for us to get through them all, we're going to go through the roll call.

Council Member Strauss, you are up.

I know you just took a bite of an apple, potentially.

So we will hold on for a second.

Thank you.

And then as you collect yourself just for one second, folks have also said that they have a lot of questions that they would like to be submitting in writing.

So Director Noble and Julie, please note that we are going to collect questions as per our conversation this morning.

I'm going to put a 10 a.m.

on Friday deadline on that with the hope that we can get those questions to you in anticipation of the weekend so that you can have some time to work on that on Friday and then early next week in case there's any follow up.

And then we will work with all of the council offices to collect those questions as well and help get those to Ben through folks in central staff and our team.

So we'll send out more information about how to submit questions and also just want to make it easier for us to get through this discussion going forward.

On the agenda, this was listed as part one of two parts.

So this today, this Wednesday and next Wednesday afternoon, we will still have the chance to get into this detailed presentation.

Council Member Strauss, any questions from you?

Thank you, chair Mosqueda.

I do have a number of questions being cognizant of time.

I will just focus in on one question, which was I believe you said page 22, which was the emerging state and federal dollars.

And my question there is, is that already included in the slide with the two columns representing the COVID expenses and shortfall and federal and state resources that we've already received?

So just to

And I completely understand what question a simple answer.

No.

So these are new resources that are above and beyond what we have here.

And as your budget director, I couldn't be more excited about the prospect of having additional resources to invest in these critical areas.

I mean, one thing that we, again, I think we need to be thoughtful about is how we sustain the investments we've been making into 21 and beyond.

Again, as I've shown you, as I looked at that, I just showed you the 2021 picture.

that does not include significant new spending in that space.

But these are new resources we did announce about two weeks ago, and we did not anticipate them as we are working through the rebalance.

Excellent, and I heard Julie loud and clear say these resources could be continuing or they could stop next week and the receipts that we have today may not be reimbursable if we're not careful.

My only other question for baseline setting is, You mentioned each department had been requested to make cuts by 10%.

Did I hear that correctly?

And I'll just rephrase my question, which was how much has each department been reduced in this budget?

So let me make an important distinction.

For 2020, we didn't have specific targets for departments.

We asked them in early March to close off discretionary spending that wasn't associated with personnel.

We imposed a hiring freeze.

And then we went to work with them to figure out, OK, what can you save?

What don't you need, given those stipulations, if you will?

And also, where discretionary did not, we didn't want to cut off COVID response stuff.

So that's what we did for 2020, and that's produced that roughly $70 million, including the reallocation of levy resources.

For 2021, as we planned for the 2021-22 budget, we gave direction in a similar timeframe to bring forward proposals that would be sustained budget reductions and We gave a blanket target across departments, not with the expectation that we were going to do necessarily 10% across the board, if you will, but as a way to bring forward ideas that we could then evaluate and ideally trade between.

I have to own that we didn't send out targets that were big enough.

We did not know how big this problem would be.

And that's one of the reasons we pulled department directors together and that they've been anxious.

They've actually asked to be pulled together so that we can look across and be thoughtful about where cuts are proposed for 2021. And I don't want to be melodramatic.

I cannot highlight enough how difficult this is going to be.

we, everything is in the city.

Everything in my experience, and I've been at this a while, stuff that's funded in the city budget is funded for a reason.

It's providing services to community or it's the back office of the city that supports those services.

So it is inevitable in my view that we will end up with less city service.

And the folks who enjoy and rely upon those services will feel that pain.

There's going to be, again, we're going to feel it in lots of ways across the city, individually, collectively, and alike.

Thank you.

That really helps answer my questions for the baseline.

I have many, many other questions, but in the interest of time, I will follow up in writing.

Thank you, Director Noble.

And Julie.

Thank you, Council Member Strauss.

Next up, we have Council President Gonzalez.

Any questions from you, Council President?

Not at this time.

Thank you, Chair.

that.

Thank you.

Thank you, Madam President.

Next up we have Councilmember Herbold.

Councilmember Herbold, I know you have some questions.

Please go ahead.

I do.

Thank you.

This is a restatement of a concern that was mentioned earlier on in the Council presentation by Councilmember Sawant.

And that relates specifically to slide five.

The statement on the slide is It's not clear that there is a cut to the SPD budget included in the legislation sent to council.

And, you know, there are several bills with clearly defined cuts to the 2020 city budget for departments such as SDOT and parks.

So just want to clarify that there is a cut.

proposed to the council that is not just an internal spending reduction, one that can come with some assurances that it's substantive and actually part of the budget action that the council is going to be taking.

So just, that's one question.

Another question relates to the, again, the 2020 proposed $5 million in mentorship programs for, with BIPOC youth on slide seven.

I'm just wondering, is this a new unbudgeted, thus far unbudgeted investment for 2020?

And can you just talk a little bit about which programs to the city of Seattle.

wondering whether or not this is something that is more accurately categorized as lost revenue versus COVID spending.

Do we believe this is reimbursable from a state or federal funding source?

I have some questions related to the Commerce Grant, but I'm going to hold those questions because Budget chair Mosqueda and I have I think worked out an arrangement that we're gonna We're gonna talk about that in budget, but we're gonna hear it separately from the from the budget process So I'm gonna hold those questions for now we are anticipating.

As it relates specifically to the, let's see here, the reprioritization of levy and MPD resources, just want to flag, you might not have this information now, but I'm very interested to know which move levy and parks projects we are actually, there's two more slides, sorry.

On slide 29, I'm really happy to see that we're still projecting $15 million from the mega block.

for mega block project for EDI projects, but as it relates specifically to the human services department on that slide, do we anticipate any impact to the human services, sorry, the homelessness services transition to the regional homelessness authority in terms of timing and staff levels?

And then lastly, on slide 30, related to the Center City Streetcar, I want to flag that the document from the executive says that $8 million will be saved and the I'm interested to know the cost associated with that and whether or and potentially removing this project from the S.C.I.P. as a way for the council to, in this budget process, signal our hopes that we are not just pausing the project, but that we're canceling it.

Thank you.

I was scribbling notes, and hopefully I can take those all on, and they may require some follow-up.

One high-level point, you're absolutely correct.

There is not a proposal to legislate a change in the SPD budget.

We actually are not proposing to legislate changes in most of the department budgets.

This wasn't meant as a, it was a practical issue.

The executive can underspend, so in some ways, If this was only a spending problem, it could be handled without engaging you.

Not that it should be.

I'm just saying it's a technical matter.

It could be.

It is more than that, though.

As I identified, we need to be able to shift resources around in ways that require your approval.

So SPD isn't alone in us having not a proposed legislative reduction in spending.

And the reason we didn't do that is that this whole thing remains incredibly dynamic.

I had a revenue update to internally in May that would have been much worse.

Things have come up to look a little bit better in June that could get worse again they could get get better again so we just we don't have to keep coming back and forth to legislate spending level changes the reason we brought you the ones and there's a simple explanation for both parks and that's not actually has to go back has to do with the levy.

the levy reallocations, there's a minimum funding level required in legislation for both those departments, and we thought that since we were not going to meet that spending level, that we ought to at least be very explicit about that, and in fact, be legislatively explicit about that.

So that's why they were handled slightly differently, but it was, in general, we've got some level of flexibility.

If council, I would ask candidly that in the context of SPD, I understand that there's a different dynamic there, if you will, but if we try to do it for every department, the level of effort required to do that, and again, we are way behind on starting 21-22 would be a challenge.

But that's why.

On the mentorship issue, what I can say there is we've identified unspent resource in the previous, actually leftover from the previous education levy and some resource I believe from underspend this year.

The plan here is to engage community and to develop a full proposal to bring you, so there is not, .

I'm not a fleshed out request at this stage, but there is a goal to get there very quickly, but only through engagement of the community.

Your question about characterizing the interest forgiven as lost revenues.

is absolutely accurate.

I thought about the same thing as I was going through the slides actually yesterday, and it was a little too late to change.

I wasn't trying to over inflate, but was wanting to identify a piece that was an important policy change and that does have financial impacts to the utilities and will lead to financial stress at the utilities.

Again, not inappropriately, but what they are seeing both a decline in demand and in fact, people, a higher level of delinquency on top of that in an understandable way in the context.

So a fair point.

We do have information about the specific projects in parks.

and in Estat that are either, that are, we know for sure we're being deferred or that are on, we're putting on pause while we further evaluate which one should stay on longer term pause in which we may be able to restart.

There's challenges at both parks and Estat to fully understand the revenue impacts.

We don't quite know how parks, for instance, is going to operate for the remainder of the year.

And that's both from a cost side and a potential revenue side in terms of use of facilities.

Sorry, I'm looking at notes here.

Commitment remains to standing up regional entity.

I need to get back to you on timeline.

I think some of the original goals of having a fully independent agency at the beginning of the year are potentially not realistic, just given the fact that all the folks involved have been heavily distracted, again is the wrong word, because it's the primary work, but have been focused, their primary work on COVID response.

And it has been difficult to focus elsewhere.

And I don't have a hand that detailed in the Center City Connector, but obviously, actually a written question on that only because I didn't take enough notes, but it would be appreciated and we will follow up.

Councilmember Herbold, if I could just put a finer point on Ben's answer to the question about the regional authority.

None of the spending dedicated to the regional authority for standup has been reduced, so that remains at the adopted levels.

But the question of timing is something that we can get back to you on.

Very appreciated.

Thank you.

Thank you, Julie.

Okay, Councilmember Herbold, thank you for your questions.

Councilmember Juarez, I believe, was going to send written questions.

Councilmember Juarez, any comments for you right now or questions?

She may be on mute.

I believe she was going to send written questions from her message.

Councilmember Lewis, you are up next.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

And Dr. Noble, thank you so much for this presentation today and for all your diligence in getting this together.

And I know you have all the work to look forward to in crafting the next set of budget presentations once this is over with.

So all of us are grateful for your diligence and your hard work in this.

I have a couple of questions.

And I'll be completely upfront about the premise of where I'm going with this and what my ultimate goal is.

And that is a shared commitment that I have with a number of my colleagues here.

to really look for how we can nail down and scale up more placements for folks who are living in an unsheltered situation that has become just very, even more visible and urgent in the wake of the COVID crisis and something that all of us on the council have been talking a lot about.

And I want to drill in a little bit to some of the homelessness investments.

And I don't remember the slide that they were on, though it looks like someone is diligently searching for it.

So one thing that isn't popping out at me in all of the data and all the charts that have been presented is a hard per unit sort of expansion of what we are seeing, not just in terms of the general goal of de-intensification, but in terms of total increased units, and also what type of units we are funding capacity for as an emergency response.

And, you know, I'd like to have a conversation throughout this I think it is important to think about not just in the budget correcting process but also in the fall about ways we might stand up some more transitional shelter options with the anticipation that to be scaling up permanent supportive housing.

We've got a lot of proposals here on the council that are really focusing on doing that.

And I know it's a priority of the executive as well.

But in the meantime, we do have this massive crisis of our neighbors living unsheltered that we need to get into some kind of transitional placement.

I am fairly open to deferring to the experts on the placements that they think are most appropriate.

And one thing I've really honed in on and I think a number of my colleagues here as well have as well as a lot of service providers, is tiny house villages being a good short-term response, popular with caregivers, popular with people experiencing homelessness, popular with shelter operators, service providers.

And I wonder if there might be scope given that relative to other investments in the housing world, tiny house villages are fairly affordable transitional shelter investments.

They've proven to be adaptable in the COVID environment at maintaining very hygienic camps that have not had outbreaks of COVID.

And I know that actually the city was very adept at scaling up the investments that were funded in the fall for the for the current budget and getting those stood up to get folks inside the expanded South Lake Union Village as well as standing up the new village in Cherry Hill.

So that's a very long way of just kind of saying for my first question on this, is there scope in here with some of the investments, be it from the commerce grant, which I know we're going to get into in some future hearings, I think it is just a matter of can we the amount of money in to support the camp at a cost of a little over a million per camp, as I understand it, per year.

And I wonder if you could guide me to some of these assets here, what looks promising for that, and what are some strategies you may be able to use to work on something like that?

I'll say a little bit and Julie, I can have more to say because this is an area where she spends a good deal of her time.

I mean, as we've identified, there are these additional resources.

We have actually done some expansion, and I don't have the slides in front of me.

We actually did a presentation to providers around some of these issues, both the funding challenges and then the additional investments we've made.

But that, I think, is definitely potentially part of this conversation that I was describing.

that we're suggesting happens with the county, with public health, not that that's part of it, you know, with providers and with community, broader community about what is, what does support for those living unsheltered look like going forward?

So, and I think you're absolutely right.

There's tiny homes have proven to be a successful strategy, not the only strategy, obviously, but, and a relatively cost-effective one of that is your budget director might observe.

But Julie may have more to say here.

Sure.

Thanks, Ben.

So to answer, I think, part of the earlier part of your question, we have stood up 95 net new shelter beds in the form of the tiny home villages and then Bitter Lake facility through this.

So where you see the shelter investments represented here is in what we're calling non-congregate shelter.

And this distinction is important because it's a FEMA distinction that they make.

So FEMA typically funds, in an emergency environment, congregate shelter.

You know, you picture a flood and they just throw everybody into one big tent.

This particular emergency is unlike any FEMA has ever tried to tackle before, where you actually needed that social distance and sometimes physical barriers to be present.

And so we've done both, right?

We've opened additional non-congregate shelter.

We've partnered significantly with the county as they worked to stand up isolation and quarantine and assessment and recovery centers.

And then we also have congregate shelter on here, which is where we've put, where we've used all of our, try to de-densify shelters.

So that's where you've seen it, Miller and Garfield Community Center and Fisher Pavilion and other places where we've been using that.

I think that is a great question.

I think it is a great question.

Does the combination of those answers meet your needs?

To respond briefly to both of you, Julie and Director Noble, thank you for those answers.

I think it partially answers and taking advantage of those resources, but I think, and Ben Noble, to go back to your response too, I totally appreciate as someone that's on the King County Regional Homelessness Authority board and who is committed to a regional response, I'm totally there for the heavy lift on scaling up permanent supportive housing, on creating a comprehensive system, but I guess what I'm talking about more right now and still want to address here, and want to address with this budget conversation as the instrument to make some progress on it, is how can we get, like, $3 million more of tiny house villages?

And because, Julie, also just to respond, you know, the 95 units of village expansion, as I understand it, were not new, they were previously budgeted by the Council.

We stood them up a lot faster because of the exigency of the emergency, but those were not new responsive placements because of COVID.

Those were placements that were funded in the last budget.

So I guess my question is, is there some scope for a lot of the new resources that we are getting I think it's a good point.

I think it's a good point.

I think it's a good point.

I think it's a good point.

that is something that I just think we need to have a bigger sense of urgency on where, you know, I don't necessarily want to wait to have this big visioning exercise with the county when we know what we need to do.

And we actually have a lot of community stakeholders who have assets that it can bring to bear to help.

So I think for this, what I see as a smaller ask of a smaller amount of money, being surgically spent now to expand those tiny house village placements.

I'd like to do that through the vehicle of this budget in addition to this work that's already being done that I'm appreciative for, but it's clear that we still have more to do and that there's an exigency to it.

Absolutely.

So I would just, if I, if you, if I may, I would just add that, um, the $4.85 million proposed in the commerce, um, grant for that RFP for shelter providers, um, would be to impart, uh, meet their needs for whatever permanent changes they would need to their original structures that they have in place.

Um, so as they transition, uh, permanent is hard word in here, but as they transition out of the community center space, what are those physical structural changes that need to happen to be able to provide sufficient distancing between folks so that everybody can remain healthy?

And then to the new resources that are coming, we have almost $50 million between what's coming to the city and what's coming to the county or jointly to both of us.

And it's really incumbent upon us as we embark on regional governance to make those decisions jointly and make sure that we're holding hands and make sure that we're really leveraging those resources to our best ability.

And so there are no shortage of opportunities there to look at not only how we have done business, but how we could do business in the future and what changes we might want to make.

in partnership with community and centering voices that we don't typically hear from.

And then also in listening to providers and that have been our trusted partners in this work for a very long time.

I appreciate that.

And Madam Chair, I have a related question and then I'll be finished with my line here.

We can go back to one of the earlier slides and this is sort of related to my previous line of questioning.

I want to talk about this North Precinct $4 million in capital funding that has been kicked loose.

And I understand that that is those were originally refunds or maybe Director Noble will let you clarify that in just a moment.

I guess my question would be on that capital money that was going to the North Precinct, what are some of the sideboards that are set on that as REIT money?

Like, is that a potential source of money that is flexible enough that could sustain some kind of tiny house village expansion?

$4 million is a pretty good amount of money for a project like that, given that it's not a massive amount of money in the scheme of things.

But for the price of the tiny house villages and the price to sustain and operate them, it appears to be an interesting thing to float, at least.

So I wanted to kind of get your thought on that kind of idea and sort of what the sideboards are on that money, because I'm actually not familiar.

Yeah, no, happy to do that.

So just by way of explanation, there was roughly $4 million that had been identified to begin work in planning and community engagement around new police facilities for the north end of the city in the context of, well, enough said.

So those are real estate excise tax dollars.

They were eligible, they could be used for that purpose because the intent was to build a community, a city-owned facility, general government facility.

And that is, those are the general restrictions on those resources.

that it has to be used for capital, it has to be used for a city-owned facility.

So it's actually not likely an eligible, county homes are not likely an eligible source of use of that funding.

Sorry, confusing uses and sources there.

So more likely the sort of thing that we could use to invest in some city facility so that it might better serve community in some other way.

It's typically, you know, money we use to build or renovate community centers and libraries to, you know, do less, perhaps less entry, less entry to things like replace roofs and the like.

Candidly, I would say that we could be creative and, you know, redirect money in one place and free up money in another.

But we have done a lot of that with the real estate excise tax dollars.

So I'm actually one of the pieces of legislation we're bringing you is just to give you a flavor for that is one that would allow us to use real estate excise tax dollars to pay debt service that otherwise the general fund is paying.

And I think we're exhausted that potential, but I just, we've tried to be very creative about this.

I am up for engaging you and central staff and ever more creativity.

And the only other thing, again, and I'm not trying to be, I'm kind of playing with the role here, with respect to additional investments around, you know, sustainability and just make sure that we're considering the, because again, we have an ongoing funding challenge of epic scale.

And I think, you know, are areas that we should be ideally increasing, certainly not cutting and certainly not cutting proportional or anything like that.

But we're going to have a real challenge sustaining much of what we're doing now.

Great.

And Madam Chair, I don't have any additional questions.

Thank you so much.

Council Member Lewis.

Next up we have Council Member Morales.

Any questions from you, Council Member?

Yeah, I'll try to make this quick.

Um, and so I have two questions about SPD and then one, um, probably more of just a comment about, um, the emergency solutions grant, but, um, uh, I didn't hear it in the previous, uh, presentation.

And I don't think I heard from, uh, from you either what the remaining balance is for SPD for 2020. Um, so in other words, what amount is being reduced by $20 million for the balance of the year?

Is that something that you have available?

As you keep asking, I may be able to pull it up on some email that I saw today.

If not, I'll be able to answer it certainly tomorrow.

Okay.

Um, and then, uh, as you were talking about the, the planning, um, that you are about to engage in for what the, uh, 2021 budget for SPD might look like, you talked a lot about, um, community engagement and I'm just curious who's leading that process for you as you start to plan and deploy that engagement process.

So it is being planned now.

The mayor's office is leading that effort.

Deputy Mayor Rosanigan is working with outreach team and most specifically in looking to engage community in that work.

And I don't, I'm not immediately close to that as of today, if you will.

But that is just getting underway as we speak and in terms of identifying a process and who to include.

So I just want to, I think what I saw on one of the slides was that there was a plan for about $500,000 for that process.

not sure how that is intended to be spent, but I do want to point out that, um, decriminalize Seattle and the King County equity now coalition are also planning, uh, community engagement processes around what these priorities for the police department should be.

Um, and I think that, uh, those organizations, community organizations like them really need to be part of this conversation.

And if we're going to be investing money in a community engagement process, The community groups that are on the ground doing the work should be resourced to do that work because those are the voices we need to be hearing anyway.

And, you know, they will understand.

There obviously will be some challenges given the COVID crisis, but if we're going to do this in an authentic way and really hear from these community members, they will need to be resourced for meeting space and childcare and translation services and all of the other things that, um, that our communities need in order to participate in these kind of, uh, of processes.

So I just want to flag that we'll definitely be looking at how that, uh, is structured.

Um, I just want to say a thousand percent.

I mean, that is exactly what, what, what we have in mind that, um, if we're going to engage community, we need to resource community to engage with us.

It is not, It is not fair to ask people to come on their own time and to arrange to take care of their children in some other way.

That is exactly what we were talking about.

Just recently became, as of today, became aware of the work that you were describing.

And I'm not getting intimately involved, so I don't know if those are the exact agencies, but I think we'll be in contact.

And I just want to add that I see a role in the context of of these conversations for the budget office in cooperation with SPD to bring information to the table and expect that we will, that is our responsibility, and expect to play that role, that role, and then to arrive with very big ears, if you will, and to hear from community about those priorities.

I do, I can't answer as we speak.

So Spencer committed 195 million to date of SPD's budget.

The areas that we think we sort of have saved about six and a half million of the roughly 20 that we were intending otherwise to save.

So do some quick, you know, it's about, 215 million remaining and and proposing to us and not spend if you will about 15 million of that of that so it's someone quick math you know the neighborhood of 7 to have 8% of what of what remains for the for the year is what's on the table.

Thank you for that.

Um, and then the last, uh, really just a comment, um, as you, as you were talking about the obvious need in the, uh, given the COVID crisis to completely change the way we, uh, manage our homelessness, uh, crisis, um, and, and D intensify, um, I think just to council member Lewis's point, an important way to do that is either with, taking advantage of the opportunity to use hotel rooms.

We know we have a program that is already in place that is trying to launch those opportunities or by increasing the number of tiny home villages.

I'm not totally familiar with the limitations or constraints of the emergency solutions grant, but I can tell you that with $26 million, we could build about 18 tiny home villages and help 1,000 people or so get off the street.

So I think we will definitely be looking at how we can ramp up those things, as Council Member Lewis said, that we know are successful, that have proven to help people stabilize, and that people, in fact, are eager to get into if given the opportunity.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Morales.

Director Noble or Julie, any comments on those last points?

Duly noted and heard.

Great, and I agree and want to echo those as well.

Councilmember Peterson, you are up next.

Any questions from you as we look at this first round of our two-part analysis of the budget that's been submitted?

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

working my way through the 14 pieces of legislation that we received last night.

And, um, you know, I, I, it's not easy to balance a budget.

I want to thank the mayor.

Uh, thank, thank you, director Noble and all the city departments that were trying to figure out how to meet the immediate budget deficit that, that we're facing.

So appreciate you putting this forward to us finally, so that we can, we can dig into it.

just like my colleagues have already started with their questions and appreciate your laying the groundwork for more authentic ongoing engagement with marginalized communities to reimagine public safety and community wellness.

I've heard it referred to as the $20 million as a down payment toward a more meaningful reallocation of dollars.

I look forward to that.

I know there'll be some You know, more discussion now.

I also understand the rationale for why a lot of that may have to take place in the 2021 budget discussion in the fall.

There'll probably be some disagreement among my colleagues about that, but I understand that rationale.

Regarding transportation, I have been working through what's in the SDOT, what's being reallocated.

in general support of what you're trying to do there.

I want to echo the comments of Council Member Herbold regarding the Center City Streetcar.

I support pausing that project due to the cost overruns and redundancy and would love to see, you know, someday see private sector support for that type of program, since I know that a lot of downtown businesses support that, would like to see them chip in for it then.

This, I think, reinforces the need to renew our Seattle Transportation Benefit District, which is expiring this fall so that we have that revenue source continue for essential workers using transit.

It's still going to be an affordable option.

Also, a lot of needs for the 100,000 people in West Seattle, including several of our council members here.

You know, as we look to the long process of trying to replace that, that high bridge.

So I just, I don't have any direct questions now, but I'll probably get back to you about transportation tomorrow and in the coming days.

Thank you.

Look forward to that engagement.

Thank you, Council Member Keterson.

Appreciate those comments and questions.

Council Member Sawant, let me know that she's going to submit her questions via writing as well.

I want to thank Lisa from Central Staff who's working with Director Ernestad.

that we will be able to collect the questions from the council colleagues that you've heard today.

If you can send those to Lisa by 10 a.m.

on Friday, that would be great.

We'll submit a handful of questions as well.

I do then want to wrap up with a few additional questions from me.

And again, to reiterate, Council Member Juarez is going to submit her questions by writing as well.

So we will have a handful of questions Director Noble, as you know, we've been raising concerns about possible layoffs.

The PUA is about to expire and we lose an opportunity for city employees to have been made whole through the unemployment by way of furloughs.

While the city itself is self-insured and we do want to ensure continuity of services, we would experience cost savings through furloughs and any conversation about layoff ensures discontinuation of city services.

I know some of the internal city conversations are private, but Director Noble, I'm hoping you can walk us through the cost saving for furloughs and why we aren't looking to save more money now to prevent layoffs when so many cities across the country, as well as our state government, is looking at furloughs now so that we can couple this with federal assistance.

So we have been looking at and considering furloughs.

The short of it is that because of the that we are self-insured that aren't significant savings and in fact because we've been able to have flexibility in the workforce.

Some of the folks that we had thought about for allowing we have we have begun to redeploy and other critical functions.

But we're continuing to evaluate that opportunity.

Recently heard some additional information the state that may make may make that opportunity more financially advantageous, in terms of the cost of our our self-insurance costs, but ultimately, given the time frame for which the additional federal support was needed, and given the staffing needs we have, and also concern about how equitably furloughs could be implemented, we determined that right now wasn't the time, but we continue to look at that tool going forward.

So it's...

It's among the things that we are considering as we're looking at opportunities, as I mentioned, to achieve labor savings or overall cost savings for this year and next.

Okay, thank you.

I'm looking forward to following up with you on that issue.

I want to direct this next question to slide number 15 on my end.

The title is protect.

You don't have to pull it back up.

It's okay, Julie, because when we do that, it's hard to hear Director Noble for some reason.

You sound like you're underwater, so we'll work on that for next time.

Slide number 15, protecting our most vulnerable neighbors experiencing homelessness and addressing housing insecurity.

You have a chart that shows the various federal grants, starting with FEMA, CBTBG, ESG, HOPWA, etc.

I think I want to flag in this, in our initial walkthrough, you know, we had had a long conversation about holding back 1.4 to be placed into the de-densification strategies that Councilmember Lewis and Councilmember Morales and others have referenced when we're talking about other strategies to get people into safe housing or safe rooms so that they can avoid getting contracting COVID or being exposed to it, especially with vulnerable conditions.

Is it accurate to say that you have not place that $1.4 million into dedensification strategies and put it back into what was originally proposed to the council?

Well, the funding we're proposing out of the commerce grant would cover, again, we imagine as an RFP, would cover shelter services in general, and there's potential for those resources to be allocated in exactly the way that you described.

Our goal was to get some additional information from providers about what their needs were and what the opportunities were, so that would remain as an option for presumably a portion, not all, but at least theoretically a portion or all of the resource that we would allocate from the Commerce Grant to shelter services overall.

So we've not precluded that.

The goal is to get some additional information about the range of opportunities and to do that as quickly as possible, in fact.

And I'll just add if I might that, so we do with this proposal reallocate the CDBG back to the originally proposed rental assistance and homelessness prevention purposes that we had originally proposed because we had that even greater resource available in the commerce grant.

Okay, I'm going to just flag, I'm frustrated by that.

Frustrated because we had worked on this over a month ago with that sense of urgency driven by the feedback that we had received from homeless service providers, specifically folks who were trying to get people out of congregate shelters.

We worked with you all to try to get those dollars out as fast as possible.

So it does sound to me like the money, even though it's the color of money question, it hasn't necessarily gone out the door yet.

Is that accurate?

I believe that is accurate.

Sorry.

Oh, you're fine.

Welcome.

Yeah, I've been enjoying the tiny visitors for what it's worth.

I believe that is accurate, but we will confirm.

So that is the point of frustration because we did want those dollars to go out much sooner than this.

I understand we all want to get the commerce dollars out as fast as possible.

We know that that's been available dollars for us for at least two months, if I'm correct.

And the council had taken action to allocate those other dollars previously, specifically with an ongoing conversation around getting more dollars into non-congregate shelter settings.

I think for me, I'm just going to flag overall, this is a point of frustration as the council constantly puts money forward.

We know we cannot force you to spend those dollars the way that we want you to, instead of provisionally every single penny that goes out, wanting to work in good faith to get those dollars out, but especially now, In a moment of COVID, I'm frustrated that those dollars have not been spent and that we're seeing in this slide a change, again, in the color of money and having those dollars be put back to what the executive originally proposed.

That's a point of frustration.

So I'll be following up with you on that.

Understood.

And obviously the goal was not to frustrate.

So I apologize for that.

And honestly, do look forward to working together and working together better in this context.

So I apologize and noted.

Um, the strategic acquisition question, a lot of questions were asked about tiny homes and the use of hotel motels.

I have a question on a strategic acquisition of potential motels or hotels that may be vacant.

We saw, for example, Lehigh purchase the Aloha Inn years ago that is now used as a place to offer affordable and accessible shelter for folks that is not in a congregate shelter setting.

We've seen this model be successful recently in Renton with the Red Lion.

Is there anything specific in the proposed budget that's come down for strategic acquisition of hotels and motels to allow for more people to get off of the street quickly in a more stable setting like a hotel room?

Not in what we have proposed immediately here.

I mean, there are resources at the Office of Housing.

We had done some work with the state to help secure acquisition of a resource that could have been used that way.

I'm not sure the current plans are for that facility.

So, not specifically in what's here, but our potential resources and partnerships that could take advantage of those opportunities as they emerge.

Okay, and then I just want to close with an opportunity here one more time.

When we started the presentation, and I know that the budget office, specifically Director Noble and Julie, you have been working day in and day out on this issue.

I don't expect you to answer this on behalf of the mayor, but as representatives of the executive team, if there's anything else that you can provide to us for context on why the delay when we really are only seeing a 1% increase in the reduction in spending for the SPD budget, my understanding was it was being held back specifically to try to address that.

Are you saying that while the funding doesn't show the reduction, your process has been replicated or reflected The PowerPoint, I guess I'm confused as to why we have a delay here and not a significant reduction in the funding for SPD.

The delay was not specifically around, at least not for me, but specifically around SPD.

I don't think that a two-week time frame would have been realistic to develop responsible proposals about the kind of shift.

What we're describing is a historic shift, potentially, in the way we think about public safety and the way we provide those services.

So there were a couple things that we were doing in that window.

We had brought a race and social justice lens to our proposals, but we went back and took a sharper look again, because I personally can be learning every day.

We wanted to be ever more thoughtful about that and we should have been more thoughtful before but there is nothing like community voices to make you realize that you that speaking personally, that we need to be ever more thoughtful.

So that is a piece of work we did, and you don't see them, but there were some minor changes.

They're not obvious, minor changes that followed from that.

One of the things that we had done towards the end, though not in the last two weeks, was to restore the full funding for EDI.

As we started, the original proposal that I had developed, and I got direction from the mayor's office that it wasn't good enough, would have, would have reduced funding for EDI because the short-term mental tax had fallen short.

Instead, we moved some things around to make it so that that would not be the case.

We did want to make sure that we had a path forward on the SPD budget, and I described that path forward.

So in the last two weeks, actually in the last I have to go back and check my calendar and my email, but I think it was in the last week, got the direction to develop proposals for 2030 and 50% reductions at SPD.

And at the same time, again, this part's not my expertise, so I indicated to Council Member Morales, do expect the budget office to play a role, but at the same time, the mayor's office started to engage community about a public and community engaged and led process around looking at SPD's budget.

Those were things that we wanted to better understand and better see the opportunities.

And that is work that has gone, it's only preliminary work, clearly, but that is work that has gone on in the past two weeks.

And the other piece that I just, I wanna highlight as well is that this is, work had been fluid throughout and we had still, although we were scheduled to come to you, we were still looking for an opportunity for a final check in with the mayor and the mayor's office and the events on the ground.

were, again, a distraction, is not the word, because they were the first priority, and review of the budget proposal was not the first priority, and they needed an opportunity to take a final look there from a policy perspective to be sure that they were comfortable with what was being brought forward.

Ultimately, they were, but again, that's what's gone on, so it is a combination of focus elsewhere, and then specifically working in response.

And as I described, establishing processes to work better in response.

Because personality doesn't matter.

This is an historic opportunity, and it's going to take real work over a long time to get there.

And we need to be thoughtful and careful about how we do it and how we do it well.

Thank you, Director Newell.

Colleagues, any last questions, comments?

Okay, it might not feel like it, but we are on time.

It is six o'clock and I wanted to make sure there was a hard stop at six.

I know a lot of people have put much of their life on hold as we have been engaged in these very detailed and tough conversations over the last few months.

So thank you all for your time.

Director Noble and Julie, thank you for walking us through this presentation.

I appreciate you being available next week as well as we- Thank you, Lisa and Kirsten for collecting those questions.

Again, please do submit those questions by 10 a.m.

on Friday.

I see all of you on here still.

So I just want to say have a great night.

Really appreciate your time.

And with that, our meeting is adjourned.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Bye bye.