Select Budget Committee 11/12/21

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Sawant.

Present.

Strauss.

Gonzales.

Herbold.

Here.

Juarez.

Here.

Lewis.

Present.

Morales.

Here.

Chair Mosqueda.

I am present.

7 present.

Thank you very much, Madam Clerk.

Colleagues, we have a full agenda for us again this morning.

I want to thank you for the conversations that we had on Wednesday.

As you'll recall on Wednesday, we had an opportunity to have an overview of the proposed budget.

We were able to clarify some important questions and also address some misconceptions that are out there.

We are able to answer members of the public's interest in seeing their priorities reflected in our proposed budget in large part.

And today's meeting is an opportunity for us as council members to continue to go over the proposed budget and ask specific clarifying questions before the deadline for amendments, which has been extended to 2 p.m.

today.

As a reminder, council members wishing to amend the balancing package must submit and request an amendment via the online form.

directions were sent to all of the council members on Wednesday morning.

Any proposal that increases the appropriations must be self-balanced at this phase, meaning that it needs to either have funding that's identified through reducing another appropriation in the proposed budget or by suggesting increased revenue of some form.

Please note that the proposed revenue increases require, if it requires legislation, that the legislation also needs to be introduced and referred to the Budget Committee by November 15th.

Committee will vote on the balancing package and amendments on November 18th and 19th, if needed.

Only budget amendments that meet the appropriate meeting agenda timeline will, excuse me, only amendments that meet established deadlines on the budget calendar will be published on the appropriate meeting agenda, meaning that if there's an item related to the agenda for Thursday, those materials need to be on the published agenda by Wednesday and central staff has a tight timeline for all of that so that all of those publications can happen in a timely order.

If there is an amendment that would be discussed on Friday, that needs to be published the day before as well.

Budget amendments that are not included in the final agenda will not be presented in the Budget Committee unless circulated via email to all council members and central staff directors and deputy clerks by 5 p.m.

the night before.

If a member wishes to move an amendment and it's not listed on the published agenda on November 18th and 19th, the agenda must be amended by an affirmative vote of the majority of committee members present.

The final budget vote on the committee's consideration for the proposed council amendment, excuse me, the final vote on this budget will be conducted on the morning of November 22nd.

The budget committee will meet in the morning of November 22nd to make final votes on the budget related legislation.

And then the budget will be transmitted to full council for meeting that afternoon.

I want to pause there to see if there's any questions about amendments, timelines, or process over the next week before I move into an overview of today's budget for its, excuse me, an overview of today's agenda for its adoption and consideration.

Any questions about the timeline in front of us?

Okay, wonderful.

Hearing none.

I will go ahead.

We do have a packed agenda today.

We did spend quite a few hours as a committee talking through the tremendous amount of work that central staff has done and all of the work you have done as council members to identify budget priorities, to really make sure that Seattle families and our smallest businesses, those who've been affected by COVID and the economic conditions that COVID has worsened, are addressed in large part in this budget.

There was a lot of alignment from council members, alignment along the lines of increasing funding for affordable housing and homeless services.

connecting communities and making sure that we had thriving local economies, that communities were healthy and that they were safe, and that we had access to food for our most vulnerable.

Making sure that we had resources from every section of our budget was freed up by scouring the budget to see if there was any dollars that would be sitting in a coffer.

and not used for the purposes of 2022's recovery and resiliency.

I want to thank all of you for the work that you've done to make sure that we have amendments in this proposed budget that truly address trauma-informed care, create economic resilience, and invest in a more equitable and safe community.

Today's agenda is the same agenda as Wednesday.

I want to highlight that we will be first focused on four sections of that agenda.

We will open up by allowing for central staff to have an overview of the resources that are made available in this budget.

It is not as simple as just saying there was a $15 million shortfall announced two Wednesdays ago and thus we led to $15 million in reductions It is not as simple as saying that 10 million of that came from SPD.

That is not the case.

In fact, central staff will walk through again where the resources came from that were freed up in this budget deliberation process, tallying up to around $70 million that we were able to reallocate to council priorities while also addressing a $15 million shortfall.

This is an important reminder for members of the public as well that we had a extensive amount of work done by central staff to look at every section of the budget and every department so that we could free up resources to invest in council priorities, which are your priorities, members of the community's priorities, and make sure that we had a budget that aligns with the needs of the community.

We want to make sure that we go into the detailed explanation of those resources this morning again so folks have a better understanding in the community about how those calculations were made and how we took into consideration council member requests in addition to the shortfall.

The second thing we'll focus on is a clarification on the SPD investments.

We want to talk about what is included in this budget and how there was a increase in investments of nearly $7 million while we also adjusted for areas that we are suggesting in this proposed budget are going to lead to either dollars sitting on the shelf with not being used due to higher than calculated salary savings in the proposed budget, And also some technology investments and expansion of existing programs that were in light of the needs that we are trying to make in other areas of the budget invested in.

So we'll focus on SPD second.

The third thing that we will do is invest or excuse me to talk about our investments in housing.

and we will end with investments in homelessness.

Those two areas, housing and homelessness, we didn't spend a lot of time on Wednesday really talking about the importance there and tied into those.

are our investments in behavioral health.

I don't wanna conflate the two, but it's really important to remember the investments that we are putting forward to investments in behavioral health really do help those who are unhoused as well as those who are housed.

And I wanna spend a little bit more time lifting up some of the CBAs in housing, homelessness, and behavioral health services.

So those are the four categories, resources, public safety, housing and homelessness, behavioral health.

Council Member Herbold, please go ahead and ask your question.

I'm sorry, I'm not asking a question.

I'm just underscoring something you said.

Very frustrated seeing all the headlines saying that your proposed budget proposes a $10 million cut in SPD's budget.

That is not the case.

Your proposed budget proposes a $7 million increase over the 2021 SPD budget.

So just wanting to underscore that in case folks listening may have missed it.

Thank you.

Thank you to our chair of public safety for recognizing that.

And Greg Doss does have a chart that I shared with many of you.

We will share it on the screen.

We will make it available to members of the public.

Absolutely important reminder that as we looked for savings that were possible within every department, there are some savings that were accomplished within SPD, but there was requests for an increase of over $17 million in $17 million increase in the proposed budget.

We also accomplished some salary savings.

That is the distinction.

$17 million increase suggested.

A near $7 million increase in the proposed budget while also capturing cost savings in other aspects.

If there's no objection, we will then make sure that any other areas of the budget that you would like to highlight, there are so many great things from parks and city cleanup to making sure that our cities are connected.

Our city is connected in transportation investments using all forms of multiple transportation options.

If you have any clarifying questions that you would like to ask the central staff, that is what this agenda and the meeting is for today.

So again, our agenda includes the same agenda from Wednesday focused first on resources, public safety, housing, homelessness, behavioral health services.

Then we will open it up to any other areas that folks would like to lift up pieces that they've invested in through this chair's proposed balancing package or ask specific clarifying questions.

The clarifying questions are critical so that you have an informed understanding of any issues where there's still any ambiguity for you before you ask for a amendment with Central Staff.

Central Staff deadline again is 2 p.m.

today.

So this is our opportunity to get into those questions.

This is not a chance to talk about the specifics in an amendment you may be considering.

We will have two days focused on that next Thursday and Friday.

Any questions?

Okay.

If there's no questions, if there's no objections, today's agenda will be adopted.

hearing no objection, today's agenda is adopted.

Let's go ahead and move on into public comment.

At this time, we're going to open it up for public comment.

As folks know, we have tried to have public comment at the beginning of every meeting.

We'll endeavor to have 30 minutes here today, ending our public comment at 1010. You will have one minute to provide your public comment notes.

Please do start with your name and the item that you are addressing.

If you don't get to finish your comments, please send the rest of your comments to council at seattle.gov.

You will hear a chime at the end of your 10-second allotment.

That's your indication to go ahead and wrap up your public comment so that you do not get cut off.

At the end of your allotted time, you will be asked to hang up and dial in on the listen-in options or watch on Seattle Channel.

Again, thanks to everybody who's provided public comment.

This is in addition to four and a half hours of public comment offered on Wednesday night.

So let's go ahead and get started.

I'll start with the first two on this list, and those two include Howard Gale and David Hines.

Howard, good morning.

Go ahead, please.

Okay, Howard, I see you unmuted, but you might be muted on your own line.

Could you check your own phone, please?

I was, I am sorry.

That's okay.

Good morning, Howard Gale, speaking on failed police accountability and the failure of the proposed budget to even consider how these monies are misspent.

Last week, KOW published more information on the ongoing scandals with our police accountability system involving a failure of the OPA to properly investigate police abuse and a failure of the OIG to perform its mandated function of reviewing OPA investigations to ensure they are fair and independent.

The KOW report also highlights OPA Director Andrew Meyerberg's background as a defender of police abuse and as a city lawyer who, before becoming OPA Director, was willing to violate legal ethics in his efforts to protect police.

Then, just four days ago, Carolyn Bick at the South Seattle Lemur published further revelations about these failures of police oversight and accountability.

These whistleblower complaints and allegations of corruption and malfeasance remain uninvestigated and uncommented on by the City Council.

Despite these facts, the Council has refused to cut or reapportion the millions spent for this failed accountability system.

Please consider reapportioning this money and cutting funds from the Council.

Thank you very much.

Hello, City Council, can you hear me?

Yes, go ahead, David.

Thank you.

Good morning.

I'm calling about FG1B1.

It should be rejected out of principle because the city council is immorally and I dare say illegally stealing federal COVID relief money meant to solve the homeless crisis of no shelter for a second year of COVID while co-opting the federal money as jumpstart taxes with an unconstitutional spending plan that gifts middle class lifestyle payments monthly to non-citizens and foreign born.

Get no shelter for homeless citizens as city council steals $70 million to buy off protesters and politically connected nonprofits who help reelect council overseeing their budget.

It's obvious you're ignoring the results of the mayor's election and continuing your abuse of the budget to secure a re-election apparatus hiding within all the organizations and organizers who lobby and saturate City Hall, monopolizing the public comment.

If City Council goes through with this, there's an ongoing potential lawsuit to end the...

Thank you very much.

The next two speakers are Jake Thurns and Anna Williams.

Good morning, Jake.

Hello my name is Jake Vaness.

I use he him pronouns.

I live in District 2. I'm a grad student at UW Evans School and I'm a current intern at Duwamish Tribal Services.

I'm calling to support the solidarity budget and ask the council not take anything from the 10.9 million dollars that will support social services and community development.

First people to experience homelessness in Seattle were members of the Duwamish Tribe.

As a direct result of Ordinance Number 5 passed by the first City Council in 1863 It criminalized the president the presence of Indians in the city calling for the expulsion of Duwamish Tribal members from their homeland.

This city has a long history of authorizing policy that perpetuates inequity and displaces communities of color.

The Solidarity Budget provides an opportunity to choose a new path.

One that invests in Seattle's historically underfunded communities and leads toward a city that upholds justice and provides housing for all of our Thank you.

Thanks for calling in this morning.

Anna Williams, followed by BJ Last.

Good morning, Anna.

Good morning.

My name is Anna, and I'm a small business owner, a homeowner, and a mother and a resident of B4.

I look forward to hearing more about public safety updates, and I hope we can continue to hold true to the promise of reinvesting 50% of the budget to true public safety.

I wanted to thank you, Council, for opening up Wednesday to such a long public comment.

It felt like a marathon for me, so I can imagine what it felt like for all of you.

In a long, intense, and important process like setting the budget for a city, I can imagine it gets easy to get lost in the bureaucracy of things.

The emails, the meetings, the notes that must be written up.

You can hear my kiddo in the background.

So if it feels hard, if you lose sight, I'd love to offer you a quote from the amazing Adrienne Marie Brown.

I believe that all organizing is science fiction, but we are shaping the future we long for and have not yet experienced.

So I ask you to vote for the Solidarity Budget and its reforms to please the government, and I hope that you lead with your hopes of what is possible rather than your fears.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, and very nice to hear the second testifier behind you.

Congratulations.

BJ Laughs, followed by Julia Buck.

Good morning, BJ.

Good morning, my name is BJ last the Ballard resident and small business owner, I support all the solidarity budget amendments in the balancing package, including the $10.9 million reduction SPD budget that reduction allow the Council to expand investments in housing behavioral health food access crisis response public bathroom.

And a lot more, I really want to thank Council for positive growth of the CSO program.

Supporters of the CSO program should want to see the CSOs transferred out of SPD as soon as possible, since SPD originally killed the CSO program back in 2004 to use those funds to start a gang unit.

The CSO program only came back because council forced SPD to do it, and even then, SPD dragged its feet, delaying the launch of the program by over a year.

SPD has designed the CSO program, not letting CSOs be an alternative response to calls, and Chief Diaz's comments that CSOs will not replace officer contact with the community, indicate that SPD will kill the CSO program again and use its funding for something else as soon as SPD thinks it can get away for it.

For those reasons, I really encourage Council to transfer CSOs out of SPD into CSCC as soon as possible.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Julia Buck followed by Trevona Thompson-Wiley.

Good morning, Julia.

Good morning, Council, for the opportunity to provide comment.

I wanted to ask if Council could If council members could please question the attrition assumption in the current balancing package, because there's SPD's hiring assumption.

looks incredibly high.

It claims that it can hire 125 officers next year, which is higher than any other year in the history of SPD, including years where there have been significant hiring bonuses.

And that's also 50% higher than this year.

You know, hiring bonus program would necessarily support the increase since SPD's own recruitment and retention study in 2019 didn't indicate that officers were leaving SPD due to salary or that, you know, income was a barrier to recruitment.

SPD paid more than neighboring police departments.

So I just wanted to call that out as questionable.

Thank you so much.

Thank you very much.

Trevona Thompson-Wiley, followed by Maria Bateola.

Good morning, Trevona.

Hey it's Trayvon.

I'm a resident of District 2. I'm calling in support of the solidarity budget amendment priority for the 2022 budget.

And this means that 10.9 million cuts have to be budgeted and actually not going to Seattle Municipal Court and the city attorney's office.

As we all know the holidays are upon us and vulnerable residents of Seattle are seeing the impact of instability during these cold months.

We are in the break of a large eviction crisis more folks are helpless.

Food access is tighter with the rising cost of food.

Utility bills are piling up for poor folks, and we see the Seattle government continue to fail the community.

The $10.9 million cut has to be a very small amount compared to what the community truly needs.

These cuts can afford for our community to fund their basic needs.

And also just the fact that $1 million can give emergency housing vouchers for gender-based violence and family unification for 200 families.

While we're talking about divesting for STDs, that definitely needs the government's support and the city attorney's office.

The city budget is a moral document that shows what the city clearly prioritizes.

So make sure that we're divesting from harm.

Thank you very much.

Maria Bateola, followed by Chris Lemon.

Good morning, Maria.

My name is Maria.

How are you?

Thank you, everybody, for your rigorous work.

This is so important that you're shifting culture and the way we live.

I would like to speak to the oil to electric home deconversion.

We're asking to increase the mayor's proposal for $1.7 million to $13 million towards the full $240 million that it takes to convert 14,000 oil-fueled homes to clean electric.

We are very serious about this because most of the homes are in central districts, south and west Seattle, with majority in Beacon Hill.

You've worked hard on that Green New Deal.

Make this be the first demonstration project that will generate union, apprenticeship, blue collar, and trade jobs far more than any other sector on the horizon.

Generate those sales tax and materials purchase, and more importantly, lift the burden off the backs of our people of color and help our economic recovery and our community resiliency.

Thank you for the laser focus.

Bye-bye now.

Good to hear you.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.

Chris Lehman, followed by Jess Wallich.

Good morning, Chris.

Yes.

I'd like to ask all city council members to support the slide that asks SDOT to submit a report on street and bridge damage by overweight vehicles.

And a very important SDOT internal report, which has not yet been presented to the city council, finds that Much of the growing backlog from damage to roads and bridges is avoidable if steps were taken to discourage extra heavy overweight vehicles.

Doing so would free up funds for more creative transportation projects and also many other social needs.

So this is a very important urgent budget issue to ask SDOT to do this study.

I want to thank the city council members who have submitted, the three city council members who submitted that slide, and ask all of the city council members to include it in the balancing package, which it is not yet included.

Thank you very, very much.

And thank you very much for calling in this morning.

We have Jess Wallach, followed by James Williamson.

James, it says you are not present, James Williamson, so if you can call in, we will get to you before we conclude.

Jess Wallach, please go ahead.

Thank you and good morning.

My name is Jess Wallach and I'm an organizer with 350 Seattle.

Really appreciate all of council's work so far to make this year's budget process transparent accessible and equitable.

And we're not quite there yet.

Even with Green New Deal investments from Jumpstart we're on track to pass a budget that spends 26 times more on policing and climate action.

This undermines our city's Green New Deal commitments.

Our healthy future depends on climate action now with funding at the scale of the crisis.

The good news is there's still room to act.

In the proposed budget there's $14 million for one-time budget changes for SPD.

Spending that's undefined and unaccountable.

Council we urge you to reprioritize these funds for transitioning low income homes off oil heat.

This is a huge opportunity to tackle Seattle's climate solutions while improving the health of our communities building climate resilience and creating good living wage jobs.

All told it will cost over $250 million to transition all of Seattle's homes off fossil fuels.

The balancing package funds just 1.7 million.

This is a huge gap that our communities and climate can't afford.

Please fund transitioning low-income homes off oil heat.

Thank you.

Thanks, Jess.

And the last person was James Williamson.

James, it still says you are not present.

So if we don't hear you, dial in here in a second.

That will go ahead and conclude our public comment for this morning.

I want to thank all of you for dialing in today.

And I think we are going to go ahead and move on into items on the agenda.

Madam Clerk, will you please read item one into the agenda?

Agenda item one, initial balancing package for briefing and discussion.

Thank you very much.

Colleagues, I want to thank you for the opportunity to meet again here today.

This is our final day before any amendments are due.

I want to Just take one second before we begin.

Everybody could give a big, huge round of applause to central staff.

That would be wonderful.

So, yay!

Thank you very much, central staff.

Director Handy, thank you to all of your team.

Thank you, Ally Panucci, budget lead from central staff, and the around-the-clock work that you all have been doing to help prepare the amendments that our council has considered and that we are going to continue to discuss over the next week.

By this time next week, we will be through midway through our final day to consider budget amendments.

And then the following Monday, we will vote it through.

And I just want to again note the impressive work that is done in a very short time frame, the same type of deliberative process, as we know, done at the state legislature through each body of the that both the House and the Senate get about four months themselves, three to four months, depending on the year to go through the budget that's proposed by their executive, the governor.

And as the legislature does, they take the suggestions seen from the executive and then they recreate the budget themselves.

You all are recreating a budget document in a matter of eight weeks with a lot less resources than we see relative to our state legislative partners and with so much on the line.

cities are truly the place where community goes first to get their needs met.

Whether as you see in our budget, that means housing and food services, whether that means scaling investments into community safety as we also try to respond to the ongoing call for redoing how we engage with community and actually investing in upstream community investment.

So I wanna say thank you to central staff before we get started.

Council Member Herbold, did you have a similar comment along those lines?

Yes, I want to echo your thanks to Council Central staff, members of the public who have been so engaged.

And I want to thank you.

Madam Chair, for your foresight in leading the council to enact the payroll tax, we've talked a lot about how the payroll tax has made it possible for us to not have a cuts budget.

Um, over the last over the last year, but 1 point that may be implicit in the recognition of how the payroll tax has helped us.

We have not, I think, explicitly talked about the fact that.

The defense of the jumpstart payroll tax is so important to us moving forward.

As Chair Mosqueda and other council members have noted, the budget is predicated on the payroll tax.

A recent poll found 67% support in the city for the tax.

2% strongly so.

And we all know that the chamber has filed a legal challenge and the city attorney has thus far successfully defended the city in King County Superior Court.

The chamber has now appealed the ruling to Washington State Court of Appeals.

If the city's defense is not successful, the incoming mayor will be faced with the proposed budget will be faced with proposing budget cuts that could be up to $200 million or more, which would make it very, very difficult to avoid across-the-board cuts.

I'd really hate to see the incoming administration be placed in that position, and I don't believe it would be good for anyone at all just last year when Mayor Durkan had to respond to revenue shortfalls after the start of the COVID pandemic.

We ordered $20 million in cuts to the Seattle Police Department budget and a hiring freeze for new officers.

Just as background, the written briefs in the appeal case are due December 15th, so those will be developed under our current city attorney.

Oral arguments will be scheduled once written briefings are submitted, which means oral arguments will be made under the next city attorney.

And the city attorney's office says that this will likely be sometime in the first half of the year.

So just underscoring how important defending the jumpstart payroll tax will be in preserving a no cuts budget in 2022 and beyond.

Thank you.

Thank you very much, vice chair.

on our early conversations around Jump Start and the investments that were made possible with our Jump Start funded COVID relief package that the city passed in anticipation of the need and before any of the federal resources came down.

Thank you for highlighting that.

It does help to correct the record when you see things like the columnist from this morning's Seattle Times fail to acknowledge the importance of Jumpstart and the sheer need for us all to rebuild and build in a better, more equitable way, including for our smallest businesses, requires us to all build upon the investments that Jumpstart is making possible.

And year over year, we will be able to see stability as we are providing here with this year's budget.

When the revenue forecast continues to get better, we'll continue to see those percentage dollar amounts, the percentages that we've allocated equal to higher dollar amounts, thanks to your work on the spend plan.

We also in this budget are planning for the need for us to address any volatility in the upcoming year or years.

We are continuing to invest in our revenue options, excuse me, in our resource options by maintaining a healthy amount of investments into the emergency funds.

And that is critical as we think about the importance of keeping families fed and housed, our most vulnerable cared for, and our smallest businesses with the possibility of having additional assistance.

So because I couldn't do it better than the vice chair just did, I will turn it over to Esther to walk us through where we are at in the process.

And also then we will get into the resource conversation.

again the resource conversation is important this morning because there has been an attempt to deduce the type of changes that we have made in this budget to simply say that 10 million of the 15 million dollar downturn came just from SPD and we did a lot of work to scour every section of the budget to really fund council priorities as well to the tune of nearly over 70 million dollars so we want to make sure folks have a better understanding of the ways in which central staff and the council members have been working together to identify resources across the board and to invest those in the highest needs.

Thank you very much, Director Handy.

Very happy to have you back with us.

Thank you, Madam Chair, and good morning, Esther Handy, Director of Council Central Staff.

I will start with just the briefest reminder of where we are in the timeline.

We continue to be on step four, discussion of the balancing package.

This morning's conversation will be a continuation of the briefing that we offered to the Council on Wednesday morning about the items in the Chair's and Council's balancing package.

These are the topics you heard about in your public hearing Wednesday evening.

We will finish discussion on it today and then be in committee next week to talk about amendments to this package.

Patty, if you could jump to slide six.

I'll just briefly recap a couple of the, in our issue ID discussions back in stage two and three, we discussed these items.

Chair and Vice Chair just eloquently talked about the important of Jumpstart in the mayor balancing her budget.

Two of the key issues that we identified early on is that $148 million of Jumpstart was used to support the general fund.

That was $62 million more than allowed per current Jumpstart policies and reduced the capacity of Jumpstart to fund programs in a like amount in 2023 and beyond.

And another core issue identified was that there were 70 million of ongoing funding for equitable communities initiative, participatory budgeting and community safety.

Again, these are many priorities that the council shared, but they were put in this budget without an ongoing funding source to support them.

Next slide.

These issues at the base were sort of compounded by the revenue forecast you all received on November 3rd that showed a $15 million forecasted decrease for the general fund across 21 and 22, largely driven by a combination of delayed largely driven by delayed return to work, a combination of payroll tax, sales tax, and parking fines, $19 million projected decrease across other funds, and an increase of the real estate excise tax, which could be used for capital projects.

So next, we're going to recap the resources that were identified.

So Patty, next slide.

And when across these two tables, which we'll look through on the next two slides, the council identified a total of $70 million of spending in the 2022 proposed budget that could be paused or cut to be deployed for other priorities.

I won't go through quite the same level of detail as I did on Wednesday, but I'll just remind you what are in each of these buckets.

And then I will hand it over to my colleague Greg Doss to offer a more detailed explanation of the changes in the Seattle Police Department budget in response to many of the questions you raised on Wednesday.

So I'll do a high level on these.

Chair or other council members, let me know if you have questions as I go.

We're going to go through this revenue conversation.

We'll then turn over to Greg to address any themes or questions that have come up and offer additional clarity on SPD specifically.

And then we will go to central staff to talk through investments in housing and homelessness.

So those are the three policy areas.

And then we are going to address any additional questions in any other areas of the budget.

Is that correct in terms of flow?

That's correct.

Thank you.

Yes.

And I do also want to thank Council President Gonzalez, who joined us during public comment.

Thank you very much, Council President, for being here with us.

I failed to acknowledge you after public comment, but thank you for joining us and all that you do.

Great.

So on this resource list, the first place that the chair and the council looked for resources were items in the 2021 budget that were not going to be spent in 2021. So this is eight point six million dollars of funding that comes from the Human Services Department, Fire Department and Finance General.

Again, this is a redeploying community safety capacity building funds for community safety priorities in 2022. This is aligning the triage one.

emergency response new program start date to end of 2022, capturing money that was in the 2020-21 budget that could be deployed immediately for other projects, capturing some balance of COVID vaccine reserves that have not been spent by the city, and redeploying some rapid rehousing money for better leverage projects in 2022. Next is the chair's omnibus amendment, which restored jumpstart funding policy priorities to current policy.

Again, this allowed $85 million of jumpstart funds to support the general fund broadly and preserve existing programs while tax revenues recover, and $149 million in the defined jumpstart policies, the majority to affordable housing preservation and production.

This recognized that the city has capacity to use $30 million for the equitable communities initiative and participatory budgeting, not $60 million this year.

And overall, this action enables $41 million to be spent.

in 2022 on projects that are ready to go.

This action is the largest resource on this list and the most significant change in this budget at $41.5 million.

Great.

I'll keep going.

The next was identifying a new revenue source to fully fund the Seattle Promise Program at the mayor's proposed level using $4 million of underspend in the FEPP levy.

We scrubbed the budgets in the IT department.

There is $1.4 million of federal funding that's being used for projects in the IT department.

Those projects were extended for 2022. This continues to provide seven months of funding for those projects, but not the full 12. Also in the ITD department, the last item on the list assumes a higher vacancy rate.

So this was a looking across all aspects of the budget to find a set of resources.

And finally, the last one on this list is reducing the transfer to the Revenue Stabilization Fund by $1.5 million.

Any questions on these items before I go to the next slide?

Seeing none, Patty, let's go to the next slide.

Great.

At the top of this list is, again, a look at the Seattle Fire Department budget action in 2022 to align the standup of the Triage One program with the current timeline.

As discussed on Wednesday, this leaves $1.1 million in the 2022 budget for Triage One to hire staff, prepare vehicles for that deployment, but sets aside money that wouldn't get otherwise deployed in 2022. In just a moment, we will turn it over to Greg Doss to talk about the SPD budget.

Before we do that, I'll just touch on the two new revenue sources that are also on the table, $26.2 million of REIT, some of which is going down to pay for debt service to plug a hole that is caused by a downward forecast in the commercial parking tax, and the bulk of it going to fund one-time capital projects in transportation and parks.

And finally, recognizing $2.9 million of commercial parking tax revenue generated from a CPT rate increase of 2% in the proposed budget.

The last item that doesn't show up on this chart is using $3.1 million of REIT as initial debt service for a $100 million issuance of bonds in 2022. This package includes putting those pieces in motion giving the opportunity for the executive to come back in early 2022 to let us know what scale of bonds they can issue.

Any questions on overall resources before I hand it to Greg to talk about Seattle Police Department?

I think it's also a good reminder that this is a no stone unturned approach to finding every resource available.

As Director Handy said, to make sure if there was dollars that were not going to be deployable in 2022. Specifically, for example, the work that we want to do together with triage one.

If those dollars were going to be sitting there not actively helping folks in the midst of a pandemic, we wanted to make sure that they were redeployed elsewhere.

That is not a comment about the program itself, recognizing that there's still over a million dollars in the system to set up the triage one protocol.

But if there was dollars that could not be deployed in 2021 or 2022, we wanted to make sure that we use those for the incredible need that we see in community right now.

to make sure that it is very clear that every department was looked at.

Councilmember Morales, any questions you have?

Thank you for popping on the screen.

Councilmember Pedersen, please go ahead.

I have a couple of questions.

There is a line item that appears in each of the departments.

I wanted to see if we could daylight that so there is a better understanding of it.

It is called baseline adjustments for personnel costs.

I believe overall the have that articulated for the general public, what that means by baseline adjustments for personnel costs?

Ms. Gaeta, I can take that question.

Councilmember Peterson, thanks for the question.

So there are a number of sort of technical and first adjustments in the proposed budget as well as adjustments related to personnel costs and that can cover a wide range of adjustments in department space budget to Um, and, um, you know, sort of, um, you know, costs go up year over year.

The items you are referring to specifically in the proposed budget are related to some items in the proposed budget that would provide an annual wage increase to employees of the city who did not, who are not non-represented in certain job classifications.

I don't have them all in front of me right now, that did not receive the annual wage increase that other, that most city employees received in in 2020, 2021. And so it would give those positions annual wage increase in 2022. And it's equivalent to the annual wage increase that most employees receive, most city employees received in 2021.

Okay, thanks for asking that question.

Go ahead, please, Ali.

Alec Mucci as well, if you haven't introduced yourself for today.

I'm not sure you may have already.

Yeah, I was just going to say, sorry, apologies for the record.

I'm Alec Mucci, Policy and Budget Manager for Council Central Staff.

And then one thing I would just note in terms of the scouring of the department, Central Staff does not typically put, you know, of course, any item in the proposed budget, whether it's new spending proposed, those sorts of increases or anything in the base budget are available for council members to consider reductions or modifications to use for other purposes.

In our scouring of things, we generally do not offer options related to those sorts of items, but we do include information that they are in the budget and that type of thing.

But that is not typically an option that central staff would present to the committee.

Thank you for that reminder.

Okay, colleagues, that is a really important foundational setting.

Esther, is there anything else you would add on revenue or resources before we turn it over to a little bit more of a deep dive into public safety, specifically starting with resources made available in Seattle Police Department?

Thank you.

I think, you know, as I've mentioned, we've recapped the $60 million of resources outside of the Seattle Police Department in addition to the 26 and 3 in new revenue.

So with that, I'll turn it over to Greg Das to talk about the 10.8 million of resources from the Seattle Police Department.

Excellent.

Thank you very much for the clarification.

Greg Das, great to see you back with us.

And thank you for sharing this document with us.

The chart that you have in front of us has been a helpful explanatory document for I think council members and members of the public now will have the chance to really understand what this difference is between the 17 plus million proposed for increases versus what the council is suggesting here.

So I'll turn it over to you to walk us through it.

Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you, Director Handy and members of the committee, Greg Doss, Council Central staff.

So when we spoke last on Wednesday, we talked about the $10.9 million in reductions to SPD.

And we use the term reduction because we were talking about these changes relative to the 2022 proposed budget.

But I'd like to start my presentation today by taking a really big step back and to talk about the 2022 proposed budget and revisit some comments that I made way back when we were doing the issue paper presentation.

And at a very high level to recognize that what happened when the mayor created the 2022 proposed budget is that she sent a budget that was appropriating somewhere around $19 million of salary funding for officers that would not be needed because there are not officers there to take the salaries.

And so that $19 million in salary funding that is in the proposed budget for those officers is instead being redirected to other places.

The city normally operates under a budget process known as incremental budgeting, whereby a large amount of salary funding like that that is not needed for salary, no longer needed for the purpose that it is intended, might normally be reduced from the department's budget.

taken back to the general fund.

And then if there is something in the department that is needed that is new, those new things would be added as distinct items for the council to take a look at, to examine, to make policy choices about.

Things like the items that are on this list.

And that is not the way that the mayor wrote her 2022 proposed budget.

And that's not the way it was presented to the council.

Instead, she retained the 19 million in salary savings in the department, even though there were not officers to use it, and then redirected that salary savings towards these items.

And so when the council received the budget, the council made some decisions to reduce these items, and it appears as though the council is making a cut.

And that is not necessarily a fair way to portray it.

If indeed we were operating on incremental budgeting, and if indeed the city budget office had reduced the unneeded salary savings from SPD's budget, Uh, and propose these items as true stand alone, distinct new items for the council to consider.

Then it would be the case where the council was simply rejecting new items.

And that is that is, um, more.

true than the case that the council is cutting the SPD base budget.

So I want to start by offering that as an overview.

And with that as an overview, this table will make a little more sense.

This table is reflecting the changes that the council has made to the SPD budget and reflects the $10.9 million in council budget actions that were taken.

I'll start by highlighting that that first item in the table, the first row, is funding for sworn staff.

And you'll see that the first column is labeled funding for sworn staff.

And the first column there says proposed increase 2021 adopted to 2022 proposed budget.

I'm going to turn it over to you, Greg.

I have not circulated this.

Okay, I will hit send on my end colleagues so that you all have it and members of your teams have it as well.

Council Member Lewis, did you want to wait until Greg gets a chance to walk through this?

If I could just finish maybe with you on this first item and then I can go back to Council Member Lewis before I walk through each item.

Yeah, that's perfectly fine, Madam Chair.

I was going to just ask on how you want to queue up questions.

So defer to however you want to do it.

Let's do this.

Greg, we'll have you restart your presentation on this first item.

We can, I think, take questions line by line, Greg, if that makes sense to you.

OK.

So colleagues, let's allow for Greg to start the presentation on line one here and then we will pause before going to each of the lines and I will hit send on this document if you don't already have it.

And again, for members of the viewing public, this will be posted to the agenda as well.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

So I just, again, going to finish an orientation to this doc before I go in line by line and then start taking questions.

Item number one, funding for sworn staff.

In the first column, the proposed increase from the 2021 adopted to the 2022 proposed budget, you'll see there that there are 14 annual average FTE or a $2.0 million increase.

What you see here is that the mayor's office transmitted a proposed budget that added $2 million in sworn funding to a budget that was already in excess or approximately $17 million overfunded for sworn salaries.

So I'll repeat that.

The SPD budget was already $17 million overfunded for sworn salaries, and the mayor's office budget added $2 million more for sworn salaries.

and then took the entire $19 million and redistributed it according to the mayor's spending priorities.

So to be clear, the proposed or the chair's proposed changes are not actually cutting the base budget.

The chair's proposed changes are merely making changes to the salary savings that the mayor had already redistributed according to her own priorities.

And the actual budget itself, if you look at the total appropriation, only changes by about a little over 2 million.

It changes from $363 million to about $365 million.

And as you can see in this table, there is $2 million that was added for sworn salary savings.

And again, that was on top of $17 million of sworn salary savings that was already present in the budget.

And so with that as an overview, I'll go ahead and take questions before we start going into it.

Wonderful.

Council President Gonzalez, please go ahead.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Greg, I'm going to do a little, maybe you can help me do a little bit of ground setting so that we're speaking the same language as we continue to have this conversation.

So how many positions, how many vacant, so first of all, my understanding is the concept that you're describing around the excess funding of sworn staff at SPD is what we're really talking about here.

And so I wanna get a sense of how many vacant positions were proposed to be funded in the mayor's proposed 2022 budget.

How many vacant positions?

I would say from a budget perspective, we talk about full-time equivalent FTE.

There were 134 FTE, annual average FTE that were not necessary that were funded in the mayor's proposed budget.

That is a little bit different than the number of specific police officer pockets, recruit officer pockets, or student officer pockets.

But the FTE number is the number that we track for budget purposes.

And the number is 134 that was funded and not necessary.

And when you say that those 134

sworn staff full-time equivalent positions were funded in the proposed budget but not necessary.

What does that mean?

That means that the staffing plan as transmitted by the department that would have included 125 new hires and would have forecasted or projected 94 separations could have been completed and fully supported, and that the department could have paid for all of its officers, its student officers, and its recruits.

And after all of that, they still had funding to support 134 positions too much.

So in other words, the 134 vacant but funded positions are in excess of the Seattle Police Department's proposed hiring plan, which is funded by both the mayor's proposed budget and the chair's rebalanced budget.

That's correct.

134 FT.

Yes.

So so 134 positions is what the mayor proposed on top of and in excess of what the Seattle Police Department indicated to the council and to the mayor that they would be able to hire.

That's correct.

And can you just walk us through conceptually or definitionally the concept of abrogation?

So when we talk about abrogation of positions, what's the effect of that?

Well, that's a good question.

Abrogation of positions and abrogation of money are not necessarily the same thing in the city's budget process.

If the council decided that it would like to abrogate positions, unneeded positions from the police department, then I think it would send a strong message to the future executive that the next proposed budget should not include salary savings for Well, for vacant positions, because those positions would not be there.

And I think that that that would be a strong message.

And I don't know if I really answered your question though.

No, I think that's I think that's so just so I'm clear.

My understanding is when you abrogate positions that that basically means you are.

Eliminating.

appropriation for vacant positions that we reasonably believe will not ever be fulfilled or filled in the next fiscal year.

I think that you could say that, yes.

And around abrogation in particular, Are there any other, in central staff's evaluation, and this could be a question answered by either budget manager Panucci or director Handy, are there any other departments' budgets as presented in the mayor's proposed budget that fund vacant staff positions at the level we see in the Seattle Police Department's proposed budget?

Council President Gonzalez, I am not aware of that.

I would just say that this is, and if I might just for a minute, this is a very unusual proposed budget for a department.

Typically what I would expect to see with these sorts of changes of reallocating of funds is a proposed budget that included very clearly in the budget documents that there was a cut in funding for salaries for sworn officers and ads for each of these other items.

Instead, it was a bit opaque.

Greg Doss has done a lot of work to sort of untangle sort of how that funding, how these items are paid for using salary savings.

And one of the challenges ahead that I would just note, for example, is using that salary savings just assumed in this year for something like an expansion of the community service officers program would mean that if they were able to fill all those sworn officer positions in 2023, you would need an ongoing new fund source for that expansion of community safety officers.

And as we've been talking about throughout this budget process, The ongoing funding for increased general fund expenditures is a challenge that both the council and the executive will be grappling with in the coming year.

So put another way, sort of reallocating the salary savings without showing that clarity or cutting the funding and or the positions makes it difficult for the council to understand how the base budget is growing or shrinking.

So I appreciate that.

I think that's a sort of...

You know, fairly a.

Characterizes sort of a difference in how to assemble a budget and I think I'm trying to.

To move away from sort of the technical aspects of how a budget is.

Put together and really talk more about sort of what is in the budget and the effect of what is being.

Proposed to the council and that's kind of where I want to focus.

I understand that we have concerns about.

That, you know, how the budget is presented from a technical perspective, but but I want to stay focused on on on the effect.

Of the mayor's choice to do that, you know, what is the effect of the mayor's choice to send us.

a opaque budget, setting aside the question of whether we agree or disagree to the level of opaqueness.

If I could just keep us at that broader level for a moment, I would find that extraordinarily helpful.

Because I do think that the effect of this, and this is what I'd like for Greg or others on central staff to opine to, is that my understanding is that if the council chooses to allow the mayor and the future mayor to continue with the practice of funding at an extraordinarily level of 134 FTEs that are vacant, that the police department has told us they cannot hire, then we are allowing for a artificial expansion of the police department budget to the tune of, in this case, $17.7 million.

And I think that if we do not, my sense is that if those positions are not abrogated, if those vacant positions that cannot be filled according to the Seattle Police Department are not abrogated, which is the technical term we're using under our budget process, then we will continue to see an executive budget that is shaped and formed around a artificial number.

which results in reduced general fund for other city priorities and allows the Seattle Police Department to effectively have a savings account of about $20 million every year unless the council takes action on these vacant and unfunded and unhirable positions per the police department's command staff.

I think that's all true council member and I think the one thing that that you didn't say inherent in your comments, but is that is that it reduces transparency for the council.

you don't see necessarily the individual changes that are made.

They're not highlighted in the budget in the same way.

If something is being added, it's not called an ad.

It is not presented to the council as a proposed ad.

It is not presented to the public as a proposed ad.

It is not presented to the public as the council either rejecting or accepting a proposed ad.

It is the case that the council's budget winds up being a cut to the police department, which is very different.

And if I could just try to answer the broader question, I won't take us back into the weeds, but just to your question about whether or not this is common in other departments, this sort of practice, I would say, in general, departments frequently throughout the course of the year rely on vacancy savings for unexpected expenditures that come out during the course of the year.

What is unusual in this case is the size and the assumption going into a, you know, adopting a budget for for the next year.

And it is.

And so I think getting more transparency in SPD and in all departments about assumed vacancies.

and what they're assuming for how to use those vacancy savings is work I look forward to next year.

But yes, this is unusual, and I'm not aware of another department that is taking this approach in the proposed budget.

Yeah, and thank you, Ali.

I'm glad you brought that up.

SPD has always relied on salary savings for technical adjustments, like if it's sworn separations were higher, separation pay was funded out of salary savings.

If it's deferred comp was higher, that was funded out of, I mean, Various administrative costs were funded out of salary savings.

But that is different than a new policy proposal, such as a new technology investment or a bonus for police officers.

These are clearly things that are new proposals.

Yeah, and I would say I agree with that analysis, Greg.

I think that it is reasonable to say we need some salary savings.

We need to be able, like other departments, we need to be able to rely on a reasonable amount of salary savings to account for things like unexpected paid leave or other kind of salary saving adjacent but related things.

And and and I'm not, I'm not objecting to that.

I think that that's that's reasonable to have.

Some salary savings available for for those kinds of discretionary uses that aren't designed to sort of perpetuate.

Policy new policy areas as reflected by by spending.

And I think what my concern is, is that the scale.

of salary savings that the police department has been allowed to benefit from year after year after year after year is very much out of sync and out of step with other departments who are also providing critical public services and services to our constituents and the residents of the city.

I just feel like there's an opportunity for us to Um, you know, perhaps not zero out this line item, but have a more reasonable proposal around.

How much salary savings you'll be allotted as the Seattle police department to accommodate for.

Reasonably related expenditures that could not have been anticipated in November of.

The previous year and.

And, you know, I'll, I'll, I'll disclose that I am interested in working with council central staff and with the chair to explore that kind of an amendment and to queue it up for conversation so that we can have a public transparent conversation about that policy choice.

That is before us that is fundamentally about.

increasing transparency in this budget and making sure that we have accountability and that we are aligning the department's budgeting policies and practices more closely with other departments throughout the city who do not enjoy this kind of discretionary budget every single year.

Thank you very much, Council President.

I would very much welcome that and welcome that conversation.

Greg and Allie, thank you for helping to flush out some of the issues that Council President is really articulating here because if we do not see these types of changes in an executive or mayoral proposal, the council does not, the community does not see it either.

If the mayor and the executive are not being transparent in how they're using what should be only allocated to unexpected changes, and they tuck in using funds for expanded programs or completely new technology, the members of the community are equally left in the dark about how those dollars are being allocated.

We need to have a transparent process.

We need to be held accountable to understanding how each of these dollars from the public are being used.

And I would suggest that what you've just outlined here today has now made the proposal transparent, but it was not transparent when it was transmitted down.

So thank you for outlining that.

And now we've offered greater clarity to what this conversation has been around where to use underutilized and unuseable dollars, dollars that can't be used, unfunded and unreasonable to assume that they would be used.

Thank you for noting that, Council President and Greg and Allie.

Council Member Lewis, please go ahead.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I think my area of questioning is a little similar to Council President Gonzales, but I want to dive in a little bit more just to get some clarity on a few things on where there might be disagreement or at least like between the council and the executive, at least to clarify if that is the case.

I mean, there's a threshold matter.

I just want to say, you know, I do apologize the other day if my comments or my questions to Greg and to yourself were implying that the attrition estimate is inherently unreasonable.

I just wanted to determine if there was a different baseline, but it sounds like it's just a different prediction based on the same data the executive is using.

And as we've seen this year, It's clearly defensible to have different projections based on that same information.

And I just wanted to clarify that.

And I don't think it's we can necessarily say that either of those attritional estimates is an is inherently unreasonable projection based on.

I do want to clarify that I was just trying to see if there was a different formula or data we were using.

It sounds like we are using the same but coming to different conclusions.

To the extent, I want to know the extent to which there's agreement or disagreement between the balancing package and the department as far as agreeing to what position is going to be vacant based on our attritional projections, if that's part of the route of like, to what extent has the department admitted that there are vacant positions they are seeking to fund versus.

what we are projecting.

Is it that delta of 30 some positions between their estimate and our estimate?

Or is it more than that based on our conversation that we just had with Council President Gonzalez?

Where is the disagreement on the number of vacancies SPD is projecting?

Thank you.

So start out with the 134 positions or FTE.

I said it.

The 134 FTE that we have been discussing, that is an area that we all agree on, both the executive, the technical staff, SPD, myself.

everyone agrees that there are 134 FTE that are funded in the department's budget that are not needed to support officers, student officers and recruits that are actually in the department and receiving pay.

So that piece I would take aside and not think about anymore.

Now we'll go to the department's staffing plan.

The department's staffing plan had assumed 125 hires and 94 separations.

And within that staffing plan that had been fully funded in the department and the proposed budget, the chair has made an assumption that instead of 94 separations, there will be 125 separations.

And that additional 31 separations, that is the area that there is not agreement on the, the executive would say that those additional 31 separations are not going to happen.

The chair believes that those 31 separations are going to happen.

The way that those 31 separations are going to happen in the chair's package is that 12 of them are going to happen in January as related to the vaccine mandate.

And then the rest of them are going to happen throughout the year.

And that would happen in the same way that the staffing plan that the council had last year would happen.

And of course, as we all know, the staffing plan as adopted by the council last year, grossly underestimated the number of separations that wound up happening.

A follow-up, Madam Chair?

We might've lost our chair.

Oh, well then.

Go ahead, Council Member Lewis.

Okay, great.

So Greg, thanks for clarifying that, because I think it is just important to center like, you know, what are we really talking about?

It sounds like what we're really talking about is is the 31 additional anticipated separations.

I want to just get into it a little bit on that in terms of.

What happens in the event that the separations are closer to the executive's estimate than to the council's estimate?

and what are the implications?

Oh, sorry, Council Member Mosqueda is back and has her hand up.

Sorry.

Council Member Mosqueda, well, maybe she's not completely back yet.

I'll just- Yeah, why don't you continue and then it looks like she's got some technology issues.

Okay.

I'm here, I'm sorry.

I just wanted to make sure that you all knew I had dropped off for a second because of my technology issues.

So I didn't quite catch this.

In answer to your question, though, we reminded ourselves that we are currently expecting 150 separations.

So if the concern is this year in 2021, we expect there to be 150 separations.

We initially thought that there would be 114, which is why we have the 2021 numbers reflected in 2022 here.

But if we expect at the end of 2021 that there will be 150 separations, if your question is how can we have greater assurance or what is the consequence if the separations that we are expecting in 2022 end up not as close to the amount that we're expecting, please consider coming down from 150. Because if we assume that the same type of replication will happen next year, we are being very conservative in our estimate right now.

of how many officers will potentially leave, recognizing we're on track to have attrition at 150. So I just wanted to frame it up there.

It's not relative to 125, including the officers that we're assuming will leave due to no accommodation availability for COVID.

Greg, did I say that correctly?

You did, but there's more that I would need to provide to answer Council Member Lewis's question.

And Council Member Muscata, would it be helpful if I restated my question since you were coming back in from?

Yeah, that'd be helpful.

Great.

So, and thank you for that summary just now, because it is related.

Yeah, I mean, my question was just to ask Greg, you know, in the event that attrition comes in closer to the executive forecast, what Would be the implication of that was essentially the crux of the question, and I'm happy to turn it over to Greg to get an answer on that.

Thank you.

So, uh.

The reduction that is associated with the 31 is a 2.7Million dollar reduction.

If it is the case that the separations come in closer to what the executive is predicting, then the council would have options.

They would either have to accept that SPD's staffing plan would be underfunded.

And at that point in time, Potentially the department would have to make a choice to stop hiring new officers or to make cuts elsewhere in the department to make sure that it could continue to hire new officers or the council could provide additional funding to make up for the difference.

So that is that's the reality that I think that the city would be facing if the council cut 2.7 million dollars and the separations came in closer to what the executive was projecting rather than what the chair's budget assumes.

One potential option to avoid that eventuality if it was an eventuality, to avoid that potential, would be to not cut $2.7 million, but to take some amount of that and hold it in reserve until such time that the council was more sure that they were headed towards 31 separations as opposed to, I don't know, 15 or 20 of those separations.

I'm, of course, speaking incrementally within that pot of 31. That would be an option for the council if they were concerned about the projections in the chair's budget being too not conservative enough relative to the executive's projections.

So that's how I would answer your question.

And just as a reminder, Greg, All of the money that could be characterized as a salary saving would still be under proviso in the budget, correct?

So regardless of what we set the expectation for attrition at, as folks depart, that falls under the salary saving proviso like it did this year, as the budget is currently constituted.

Is that a correct understanding?

Yes, that is correct.

In fact, it's tighter than this year.

Last year, there was a $5 million salary savings proviso.

This year, the salary savings proviso would lock up any salary savings that the department had that it couldn't use to pay officers.

OK.

I don't think I have any additional questions right now, so I'll hand it back to the budget chair.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Vice Chair Herbold, please go ahead.

Thank you.

I'd like to go back to the line of questioning started by Council President Gonzalez.

So as it relates to the 134 officers' vacant positions and the funding for those vacant positions in the mayor's proposed budget, Can you restate the number of dollars that is represented by those funding, those 134 positions that SPD doesn't intend to hire for 2022, what the value of those positions is for 2022?

And can you let us know whether or not the chair's proposed budget proposes funding that same number of vacant positions that the department doesn't intend to hire or if it's a different number?

So the 134 FTE, not positions, the 134 FTE equates to $19 million of salary savings, some of which the chair's budget retains in the proposals that the department has made.

Some of it, it does not.

It changes or reduces and this table that we're about to go through is a pretty good representation of how that works.

There are a number of ads and takes in the budget.

Some are technical.

It eventually works out such that the mayor had proposed $2 million more over the 2021 budget, and that included adding to that salary savings.

And then the chair's budget reduces $10.9 million to a total of $354 million for appropriations.

It's difficult to give you an exact number of how much of the salary savings is retained and how much of the salary savings is cut because we're talking about the overall budget, some of which is technical changes.

But this table does give you a good overview of the places where salary savings was directed into new investments and where in those new investments, the chair has made changes, either retaining those new investments or changing them.

Thank you.

I have to admit, I'm having a hard time tracking our sort of our definitional use of the word salary savings.

It sounds to me now, Greg, that you're explaining or I'm not suggesting that you haven't been very, very clear all along, but that when we talk about salary savings, And we talk about the use of salary savings.

We are, in fact, talking about the 134 FTEs funded in the mayor's budget that they can't hire for.

So it's not like there's another, when you're looking at the chair's budget, there's not salary savings for another 134 FTEs.

Which is what I was trying to figure out.

And hearing folks in public comment on Wednesday talking to a request to council to cut funding for 134 funded FTEs that the department can't hire from.

But the chair's budget does some of that.

There's not another on top of the chair's budget, another.

Oh, no.

OK.

No, thank you.

It's not $134 plus $134, right?

No, no.

Thank you.

I much appreciate it.

I just, if you scroll down, if whoever's controlling this table scrolls down to the bottom and you see the $17.7 million, and you're asking me how that relates to the $19 million of salary savings, I'm telling you that there are some technical input and outputs that make that a little difficult to describe.

But if your question is, is there 134 and another 134 on top of it?

No, we're talking about the same.

This table is using the money from the 134 vacant FTE.

Okay.

Council Member Herbold, anything else?

All right, so Greg, I think that that is a good opportunity to get us into this chart here.

If I could break it down a little bit, and Council Member Juarez, I think.

probably wants to say something very similar.

I just want to say something quick.

Thank you, Patty, for running the screen.

Sorry, I didn't know that.

I won't belabor the point.

I'm going to save my comments for some particular amendments.

But Madam Chair, thank you so much for the information that you gave us in your correspondence.

I know that you wanted this morning, and we got it from you, this table that Greg and you put together to explain what the confusion was.

Because the word cut was used in the PowerPoint, so I think what people didn't recognize is that the mayor proposed something, you proposed something less, which means you just didn't adopt the increases that the mayor was requesting.

I'm going to presume, because I don't want to impugn any ill will into anyone, that the executive's budget for SPD had to do with need and not violating the consent decree.

And I also will presume on that the budget chair made some difficult decisions and so made the decision and did not cut the SPD budget, but rather just didn't honor the executive's request for increases.

So I'm asking Madam Chair, if you would also post the letter that we received from Chief Diaz on November 10th, that it should be posted as well, because I think if you read Chief Diaz's letter to us and your response along with Greg's chart, I think that clears up a lot of the confusion.

And I think, and I shared this with you jokingly, but I think because the word cut was used on page nine of the PowerPoint, then people just kind of ran with it.

And so I just wanted to make sure that if all of the correspondence is posted online, that perhaps some people who are kind of getting a little bit more in the weeds can see that Madam Chair did not cut the Seattle Police Department, rather that she just did not honor the expansion that the executive was requesting.

But I think it is important if we see Chief Diaz's letter, which outlines, and right or wrong, whether we agree or disagree, why they wanted an increase, why there's an increase in violence, why they wanna recruit and retain better police officers, why they wanna hire 125 officers, and keeping the separations below 100, and the needed staffing levels.

And they do address the consent decree, which you also address, which I really appreciate, maintain that we are and do not violate the consent decree.

And I think one thing that's real important is, and I've gotten many calls about this, is that within the consent decree and maintaining what we're supposed to do for Charter for Public Safety, that we really do want to respond to areas of disparate impact.

And again, I think we've heard this and I'll stop right here because I'll share the rest of my comments when we look at some amendments, is some communities and some people do not have the luxury of not meeting 911 if their life and their property and their children's lives depend on it.

So I hope that this isn't a proxy for a different argument that we've had before.

I hope that this is a, we move forward, that we try to fund the police department, that we do have, as Chief Diaz ended in his letter, that we have the best department in the country.

And I hope that that's our goal.

So thank you.

I'll end my comments there.

Thank you so much.

So I think that that would be a good opportunity for us to get into the proposed chart in front of you.

And Patty, thank you again for managing these slides here.

If you could just scroll up slightly, perfect, so that we could see those headers.

And the header of the entire document is the proposed increases to the SPD's budget.

I want to be aware that, I want to be cognizant that we do have two other sections of our agenda that we still need to get to.

I think it is important to go through these so that there is greater clarity out there.

The current proposed budget includes the 6.8 million of the new investments that the mayor had requested.

That is not to say that there is not a future conversation to be had about some or more portion of the 17.7 here, plus the 2 million that Greg has identified.

But these funds now clearly, thanks to the council president's line of questioning and central staff's answers, And Tia, we clearly know that these are coming from 134 FTEs that it's reasonable to assume could not even be funded.

And thus, why the mayor herself is proposing using a portion of these funds for increased investments.

We have made some decisions as Councilmember Juarez just noted tough decisions to identify where dollars were imperative for the consent decree.

Some of the technology it sounds like from the court monitor was deemed as needed so we included some of that.

There are some additional support for overtime, $4.6 million in additional dollars for overtime, still totaling over $26.4 million this year for overtime.

And we are maintaining our 18 FTEs in the community service officer program.

FTEs are important there, and we have just allowed for additional funding to go to that in our midyear supplemental exercise.

I want to make sure that we underscore that this is still very much for us to discuss in these final days and consider various amendments on how else we would like to see the use of not just the dollars that are sitting in the proposed budget from the mayor for these 134 positions, but if this is the right balance, I'm happy to have conversations more with folks.

But let's talk about what is currently in the proposed budget that totals the 6.8 at the bottom here.

Greg, could you walk us through what these pieces are?

And as you do that, I think it's important to start with, there are no current cuts to SPD staffing.

There are no cuts to SPD officers in the proposed budget.

And with over $26 million, it's reasonable to note that there would not be a reshuffling of officers in addition to what we've already seen.

Greg, please go ahead and feel free to fill in any details there.

Okay, thank you, Madam Chair.

Given what you said, I'm gonna go rather quickly until I see hands.

The first item that is on the first row we've not talked about is funding for travel and training.

The $175,000 increase that the mayor put into the budget is a restoration of a cut that was made in the 2021 adopted budget due to COVID.

And that restoration is not made.

And that would leave $925,000 available for the civilian travel and training budget.

I want to be clear, that's for civilians.

And that assumes that the department is going to find some efficiencies in their travel and training.

The funding for discretionary purchases, same thing.

This was a cut in the 2021 budget that the department has been needing.

and that is a cut that was not restored.

That will leave a remaining budget of $4.1 million.

The third one, the funding for overtime, the mayor's proposed budget had restored or added $7.8 million in overtime.

This is a combination of a couple things.

There was quite a large cut that was taken last year for events and other overtime that would be affected by COVID in 2021. Indeed, the department has seen, obviously, quite a reduction there.

Um, and, uh, the mayor wanted to restore the entire amount.

Um, and, uh, in addition to that, there is also funding there for paid family leave and, uh, some technical adjustments.

And that's why that has a little, uh, notation citation by it.

And that's down at the bottom saying that that 7.8 million is including the paid family leave funding.

And so in being mindful of that, the council restores some of that funding, but not all of it.

It does increase the overtime budget from this year's amount, which was 21.8.

It increases the amount to 26.4, which will be sufficient to fund the paid family leave and then also some additional overtime funding for events.

Funding for technology was proposed at $5 million for about seven different projects.

And out of that, the council is funding $3.8 million.

And that is for five of the seven projects, not funding two of them.

I should also note that with this particular item, of course, as with the whole table, the use here is salary savings.

The Council did use salary savings for a similar purpose this year.

There were $15 million in salary savings this year, and the Council used that funding to fund $2.5 million.

in new technology this year.

Some of the projects were the same.

The DAP, the system that the department used to track really every kind of data that they use, everything from training to use of force, everything that they use that is tracked in the DAP to their oath, their officer accountability and trust hub project, which is using models to identify officers that may need wellness support.

There was quite a bit of investment that council made last year and then another 3.8 million that the council is making this year, choosing not to make the 1.2 million that the mayor had proposed.

Funding for hiring incentives is 1.1 million.

that is not made and funding for community service officers, $1.3 million that is not made.

And the total there, again, being $17.7, the council choosing not to make $10.9, and the remaining being $10.8 that is made.

I just want to emphasize something you said.

Colleagues, as you'll recall, in mid-year supplemental just in September of this year, there was $15 million, as Rick noted, but that was $15 million available to date, thanks in large part to the provisos that council members had put forward last year.

Council President Gonzalez having the largest of those provisos.

We got word mid-year this year that it wasn't an insignificant amount of money, $15 million midway through that we as a council work to reallocate.

As a reminder, $10 million of that $15 million stayed within SPD.

And as Greg just noted, $2.5 million going to technology already.

That was just two months ago.

And so when a request comes to us for now seven additional technology requests, And as the proposed budget is already talking about, allowing for five of those to go forward, especially the ones noted by the court monitor that were important, we are adding to that money going into technology.

One of the technology pieces that we are not doing is something that, as I said on Wednesday, may be nice to have in the future as an important tool as we think about training and reducing stress and de-escalation.

But one of the technologies would monitor the heart rate and other senses to make sure that we are better analyzing how much stress individuals have and how we can mitigate for that.

That sounds like an interesting piece of technology.

I don't know if all of the analysis has been done to determine its necessity in the city of Seattle.

I do know that there are federal dollars for things like that.

So when I'm looking at a shortfall for this year and tremendous need out in the community, it is a good example of where I said that does not equal immediate assistance for folks in our community who need housing, health services, shelter, and additional support for small businesses.

One example of why that amount that we are allocating in the proposed budget is smaller than what the mayor had requested, it is still an increase into the technology in addition to the money that was just given to the department just two months ago.

Greg, did you get all the way through?

Well, I have one follow-up item, and then I'll stop.

Sorry about this.

On the funding for community service officers, I understand there's been some confusion about that particular item, also due to the mid-year supplemental changes.

The mayor's 2021 budget, the adopted budget, actually the mayor and council's 2021 adopted budget, had adopted a hiring freeze on civilian positions in SBD, and that was due to the COVID-related revenue crisis.

And as the year progressed and we discovered that there were salary savings quite a bit of salary savings in SPD, the council and department together with the mid year supplemental made the change, the decision to start using those salary savings to fund the existing vacant CSO positions.

And so the entire CSO budget for the existing positions in the department is $2.8 million.

And there had been quite a few vacancies among the 18 existing positions in the department and so the council made the decision and along with the department in the mid-year supplemental to redirect some some salary saving dollars to fully staff up and fully hire the 18 CSOs that are in the department's budget now and The department has reported that by the end of the year, they expect that they will have 18 CSOs, their existing 18 CSOs up and running.

And and that's part of the base.

These community service officers in in the final row here, the one point three million would have been over and above the 18 that are in the base.

That would have been six more that did not get added to the base.

And now I'm done.

Sorry, I forgot to add that earlier.

I'm glad that you added that clarification on the CSOs, again, repeating what I said on Wednesday.

We value the work of the CSOs, and I think importantly noted in the public testimony this morning, it was the council who advocated for the CSOs to come back, and the council who restored that budget to begin with.

We have now 18 positions funded at the end.

And we are going to continue the work of the CSOs.

So Council Member Lewis, please go ahead.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

And before we get off the topic of the CSOs, I believe the other day Council Member Herbold mentioned that Even if we were to fund the CSOs in this budget, the expansion, that they likely would not be able to be hired and underway until midway through the year.

So there might be a way, if we were thinking about amendments and we did want to, if some members did want to potentially expand, community service officers in some way, even further than the commitments we've already made as a council, that there might be a different number that would be more realistic for this.

I just wanna make sure I'm remembering that correctly and maybe put that to Greg and the Council Member Herbold just to remind us.

I think Council Member Herbold is probably best to answer that question.

I'd originally proposed a $200,000 cut to the budget for the provisos with the understanding that they would not be able to be hired until midyear, the expansion.

The amendment that ended up moving forward for our discussion, the first round was actually, instead of a reduction by $200,000, it was a proviso that we would be able to capture if our assumptions were correct that the first quarter of the year, there would not be a hiring of the CSOs.

but the CARES package did not move forward, either a cut reflecting the first quarter of the year, nor the proviso.

Instead, it made the reduction of the expansion with the understanding that we had just approved an expansion of the council's CSO program at the mid-year budget adjustment.

And could I ask a follow-up, Madam Chair?

Thank you.

So, and Council Member Herbold, was that sort of Q1 delay, was that based on representations from folks in the department that they estimated that's how long it would take?

What was the basis for that expectation?

Greg, you want to take that?

The folks in the department were very optimistic that they could hire the CSOs quickly.

They, at the same time, provided an answer to a council question that said that it typically takes four to five months to hire CSOs.

They said that they could cut some of that time down because they've got an advertisement out now for CSOs.

And so conceivably they could cut some of that time down.

It is also the case that even if they could interview the CSOs now, they would still have to background them.

So I think it's fair to say that it is unlikely that the department will be able to hire six CSOs by January 1. And it is unlikely that the department will start paying six CSOs by January 1. And it is far more likely.

that they will be hiring and paying those CSOs sometime closer to the end of the third quarter.

And central staff is willing to say that that is our estimate.

Thank you, Greg.

That's all really helpful.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, council members.

Any additional questions or comments on this?

I'll also note, while this does not include the money that the mayor included in her proposed budget for the hiring incentives, our understanding is that the mayor's team has assumed that they have enough funding within their own budgets to continue with the incentive that they announced via executive order.

So I wanna make sure that folks understand that there's still a policy conversation, I assume, to be had at the council about that.

But we are not advancing that item here in this budget.

However, we understand that the mayor's office has indicated that they believe they have funding for their existing emergency order.

I'm not sure if that's a question, but if it is, I would say that yes, they have funding in 2021 for the hiring of folks in 2021. In 2022, that would not be the case.

Any additional comments or questions?

So just to summarize, no cuts to the current SPD staffing, no cuts to SPD officers in the proposed budget.

Fully funds the hiring plan to add an additional 125 new officers.

Funds the current and recently funded community safety officer positions at 18 positions.

Funds $3.8 million in new technologies in addition to the items that were added to in the supplemental and includes the items that the federal court monitor has flagged as important.

Funds 14.6 in additional funding for overtime, bringing the total to 26.4 million for overtime in this budget.

4.1 million for discretionary purposes and above already existing and travel for non, did you say non-sworn?

Is that what you said, Greg?

Civilian positions, okay.

I appreciate the summary table that you've created, Greg.

Just want to be clear, this was created by Greg so that we had more of an understanding of what the increases that were proposed versus the increases that the proposed budget has.

Allie, go ahead, please.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

I just thought I'd close out the conversation on SPD and the resource conversation in general to just note that historically central staff has used add or cut as the sort of shorthand for actions in The council's budget deliberations in this conversation.

It is clear to me that we need to change the language a little bit anything.

The entire budget is a proposal.

So the council is just proposing to reduce or modify proposals by by the mayor and I look forward to working with the budget chair next year to think about how we are describing these in the future to avoid this type of confusion because the entire budget is a proposal until the council acts on it and then the mayor signs it.

It is not added or cut or, you know, modified in any way.

So just wanted to acknowledge that as we move forward in these conversations.

Thank you so much.

I do think that that's also a message for the executive because press releases that lead with cut when something is actually a proposal mislead and misinform members of the community.

So we will look forward to working across the board to make sure we're all using correct terminology on what are actually proposals, especially when it relates to proposed increases.

Okay, colleagues, I want to make sure that we get a chance to round out our discussion today in the next hour and a half if we need that full time.

We will always end earlier if we don't need to go to one, but we do have an opportunity to cover a few more sections to round out public safety.

I just want to compliment the discussion we just had about some of these investments.

with investments into community safety overall.

And Patty, you're welcome to stop sharing the screen as we transition to other items.

I'm not sure, Allie, if you wanted to bring up any of the other items in community safety or CBAs there that might be helpful to complement some of these pieces that I just want to flag from council members.

Thank you for your amendments and your suggestions for public safety and community resilience.

We have, for example, this is not all inclusive, but wanted to lift up 26 positions going to the new Community Safety and Communications Center to address the CSCC's 911 existing dispatch operational needs.

Four million going into community safety initiatives.

Thanks so much to Coach Dom and others who called in yesterday expressing their support for this $14 million ad that we rebuilt back into the budget.

for community safety, half a million dollars going into restorative justice programs, 3.5 million dollars going into the LEAD program so that we can create true alternatives so people don't get entangled into the criminal justice system and that we invest in diversion strategies.

$2.5 million to go to expand mental health and behavioral health crisis services.

Again, the nexus being that if we have additional folks who can act as first responders, especially for mental health needs, that we are building up the capacity there.

And I was asked by Q13 if these folks are actually on the ground.

Absolutely.

Those last three, these examples are people who are currently out in our community, some of whom you heard call in, especially with Coach Dom and their crew, who are working to help create alternatives, alternative responses right now.

$1.5 million going into mobile advocacy services for flexible assistance for survivors of gender-based violence.

$1 million for expanding mental health and behavioral health.

Half of that, as Councilmember Herbold had noted on Wednesday, going directly to schools for school-based alternatives and school-based services.

$1.5 million going to Seattle Fire Department for 20 additional firefighter recruits.

Over a million still going to the Triage One team.

Fully funds our three health one operational teams that are out there.

I do want to scale that up in the future and hearing from the department, we need to also do that in a way that helps make sure that they are implementable.

All of these items are coming from you, council members, you directly moving these forward on behalf of community partners.

So you deserve the credit for these investments and wanted to give just pause here for a second to see if there's anything else that you'd like to lift up, especially in the response to public safety.

investments in the call for us to do more.

We have done more here in addition to the direct investments that we just talked about through Greg's chart.

You have all made really significant, you have made significant requests for additional strategies to invest directly into public safety through community-led strategies and alternative first responders and many of those I just noted, but there may be more that you want to note.

Anything else on public safety?

OK, let's take the next section here to talk about what is in housing.

Is that right, Allie, or?

Great.

Sure, we can move to housing.

Patty, if you could put the housing summary table up on the screen, and I'll turn it over to my colleague, Tracy, to take it away.

Good morning, Councilmembers, Tracy Ratzliff, Council of Central Staff.

So just to begin with, just reminding folks that the Chair's proposed balancing package does include $97.7 million of Jump Start funds in the Rental Production and Preservation and Acquisition Program, about $75.7 million.

That pairs up with baseline funding for that program of about $82 million.

The community focused acquisition and preservation gets $15.7 million in the chair's proposed balancing package.

The home ownership that would create opportunities for equitable home ownership gets $5.8 million of the jumpstart funding.

That's paired with existing funding of about $4.75 million.

And then finally, the operation maintenance funding that is actually not funded with the jumpstart, now that I think about it, but there's existing funding about $6 million.

So that totals for you the $97 million in how it is distributed in the chair's proposed balancing package.

And a little bit about what the base funding is existing for those key programs.

So moving to a couple of the notable changes.

First is 01A1 that adds $200,000 to the Home and Hope program.

This is the program that helps with a lot of the pre-development work on publicly owned sites.

It is something that Enterprise Community Partners helps us with.

And that is a funding that will go in addition to the $200,000 that is in the base budget.

So about $400,000 for that effort in 2022 is proposed.

06802 includes $200,000 of general fund to the Office of Housing for the Home for Good program.

This is a pilot program that was started in 2020, I think, is when we first started funding it.

This would continue that program into 2022. 07B01 would add $250,000 of general fund to OH for the pre-development cost for an affordable housing project at North Seattle College.

And then the last couple are ads to Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections, $145,000 for a consultant to do a rental market study.

And then finally, $1.5 million in general fund for code compliance analyst in SDCI to implement the new economic displacement relocation assistance ordinance.

Those are kind of the, oh, and then the final one is just the $400,000 for tenant services contracts in SDCI.

Thanks, Tracy, could you remind us then with the combination of these actions these budget amendments the jumpstart funds and the base budget approximately how much in total is in would be in the proposed but in the in the budget with the chairs package.

So including the base, the Jumpstart, and these amendments.

You're looking at over $194 million.

And just to be clear, the Jumpstart didn't address some of the additional programs in OH that have existing funding, for example, the weatherization program, the home repair program, and then, of course, the administration costs for OH.

So if you total all of those things, you're well over $194 million in the budget.

So just to highlight some of that, that includes about $92 million that we would expect to see annually in the base budget.

You add to that $97 million restored in the Jumpstart Fund that will be an annual, at the minimum, annual increase in investments in housing, plus these actions.

And as Tracy noted, certain programs in the Office of Housing are not funded through Jumpstart, but have an ongoing fund source through the levy or other MHA or other sources.

Jumpstart does add ongoing funding to increase in a few key spaces such as the community driven projects that with priority for and working with BIPOC communities as well as ongoing annual increases in the equitable development initiative that includes both housing and non-housing components typically in those projects.

Thank you, Ali.

Thank you for walking through this.

Look, we have heard from community members every single day that we all have been on council these last few years, especially during the crisis of COVID, that housing is the most important thing.

The reason that we continue to see so many individuals falling into homelessness and living housing unstable is that we have not built and and created access to the affordable housing that we need at this scale.

But we have been doing so much over the last few years to increase the number of individuals who've been able to access the NOFA dollars.

We went from once a year to around the year NOFA opportunity for access to available funds.

We have increased the amount of money going into acquisitions so that we can acquire new sites and create more opportunities for folks to have not just property but potentially purchase any of these buildings that are going to go up on the market with our acquisition dollars.

First lifting the cap to 30 million and then lifting it completely with Jump Start Seattle.

We have made improvements in the administration and finance plan to make sure that those who have been most directly affected by displacement and the effects, the historic effects of redlining and discriminatory policies.

That when organizations, especially led by communities affected by displacement, have an opportunity to build housing, we're prioritizing funding for those communities so that folks can have greater self-determination and create opportunities to get out of generational poverty and create generational wealth.

All of these investments are things that we have done in addition to this year.

Now a historic investment.

Tracy, I've been using 192, but 194 is even better.

Over $190 million going into affordable housing is a historic investment.

Twice the amount.

about twice the amount that we have seen go in from previous years.

And colleagues, I think that this is an important element to lift up as we look for exits from chronic poverty, as we recognize that our shelters are capacity.

We must be making sure that we have created affordable housing for our community, our most vulnerable neighbors, those who are currently here and those who want to move here.

We are very excited about the ways in which this proposed budget builds on those past policies for specifically making sure that our BIPOC community individuals in our community who need access to affordable housing period, but also first time home ownership opportunities.

They have been prioritized in the language that we wrote as a council together on Jumpstart and is now funding with the proposed budget.

very thankful for the work you all have done to add to this list.

And I want to make sure that as we think about housing and housing policies generally, we recognize that these dollars are beyond just C dollars at this point.

We've doubled the amount of going into affordable housing.

There's a few components that are also included that I'll lift up as well.

We have made sure that the NOFA funds, the funds that we made available, that we make available for affordable housing production and preservation of affordable rental units, it's currently at $35 million.

However, we know that 14 projects have applied for this pot of money, and that totals over $112 million.

So we have a CBA in here, that's Office of Housing, 010. That is a amendment that I put forward that allows for us to right now free up those dollars that office of housing is anticipating because of jumpstart.

And this amendment allows for those future dollars to go into shovel ready projects right now that have applied so we can bring forward these dollars and use them to build this affordable housing right now, leveraging state and federal dollars that are also making themselves available.

And this is exactly what we need to be doing in these moments of crisis.

I want to thank as well Council Member Morales, your interest in ongoing work to expand what we've done on the notice of intent to sell.

Clearly, the notice of intent to sell legislation was written before we could do something more in the lines of the Tenant Opportunity Purchase Act, thanks to the Washington State Supreme Court for helping to pave the way for us to change some of the policies that we currently have.

We have a statement of legislative intent that's Office of Housing 004. to make sure that this amendment works with the Office of Housing and Council and SDCI to direct our city in the first part of next year to make policy considerations, policy recommendations to enhance enforcement, strengthen provisions, and ensure that a right of first refusal for tenants to truly purchase buildings is a policy that we change in addition to making sure that we have funding and technical assistance mechanisms to support that.

So a lot of work to come.

I want to thank not just Council Member Morales, but Council Member Hurdle as well for your ongoing policy conversations around that.

And I know that there's a few others that other folks may want to make note of that got included here.

Any additional comments and questions on housing right now would be absolutely welcomed as we explain to folks, not just what's in here, but have a better understanding for ourselves of the affordable housing components before amendments are suggested this afternoon.

Any questions, colleagues, or any items you'd like to lift up?

Okay.

Let's move on to homeless services, and let's integrate into that the conversation around behavioral health.

So I think it's actually two sections.

It's homeless services, as well as firearm behavioral health that we'll take a walk through.

And thank you, Jeff Sims, for joining us.

And then after that, we'll go to any other sections that folks would like to call attention to.

I do have a question, for example, on some of our Green New Deal investments.

I wanted to tee that up for central staff who may take that after we do homelessness.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

For the record, Jeff Stens, Council Central staff.

As a high-level summary of the actions that are in this package, I wanted to run through three main buckets.

So the first, as you already teed up, I would talk generally about homelessness investments.

and specifically the request from the King County Regional Homelessness Authority.

The council was asked to look at three different new investments, one related to high-acuity shelter, one providing the needed administrative costs for the agency to operate, and a third of funding to kind of seed funding to create a peer navigation program that would be funded with Medicaid going forward.

To the two of those items that requested ongoing funding, your package provides the council's package provides funding for.

So there is 5Million dollars towards a shelter that that would well, I should go into that a little bit more.

There's $5 million provided and it is envisioned as a response partly to that request to create a new high acuity shelter.

There's been lots of engagement with the council, both obviously around the need to fill in gaps in our behavioral health system.

And as all council members are aware, there's a substantial amount of overlap between those who utilize especially crisis behavioral health services and people that are experiencing homelessness, even though those are two separate and distinct programs.

Um, and so, in this case, with that 5Million dollars, the council actually is getting kind of a twofer on its investment and through a collaborative discussions with the county.

We understand that there's a variety of pathways by which the county is looking to both expand the behavioral health crisis response system through something like a voluntary crisis center.

And in similar fashion, there's separate work to provide services and operations to try to expand shelter capacity.

And there was but looking at that whole and actually some other pieces as well, but looking holistically at that package.

acknowledging that there is going to be overlap in terms of the actual people that are served.

The county identified an amount of funding that was still a shortfall for that larger package that is being developed and what is put forward by the balancing package would fill that hole to allow that pathway to go forward.

So the council is essentially getting both the behavioral and health investments that would allow the expansion of crisis services and also an expansion of shelter services that would be especially targeted towards a population that really has high needs, as was initially proposed by the Regional Homelessness Authority to the Council.

Let's pause there real quick, Jeff, because I do want to make sure that we answer the question that we've been getting from some of the community partners, which is what about where the items from the Regional Homelessness Authority ended up?

So fully funding the administration and adding to that amount in our proposed budget and this piece that you just outlined, in terms of a location for a high, high acuity needs folks to be able to have somewhere to go is critical.

And Council Member Lewis, I see your hand up.

You and Council Member Gonzales, and one other Council Member who I'm forgetting, were the sponsors of the RHA one.

So please go ahead and make any comments on this and let's help draw out for folks some of the components that RHA had asked for and where we see the overlap in the budget.

Well, my question relates to something else, Council Member Mosqueda, but I'm very happy to address that just really briefly and really underscore, again, my deep appreciation for your flexibility in giving a lot of time to myself and Council Member Gonzalez to meet with you as well as leaders from the Regional Homelessness Authority to get plenty of feedback and how we could incorporate their priorities into this budget.

Uh, you know, notably, um.

Uh, as we've discussed a lot there, there is the revenue forecast that came in that has limited a lot of what.

We can do as a council, but I do think it's important to really highlight the.

high-acuity shelter and behavioral health services and also the skill in Councilmember Muscata bringing in some regional commitments on that to have that go a little bit further or start the conversation around some regional commitments to have some shared costs on that high-acuity shelter and behavioral health service.

That is a really, really big service gap.

that we've seen in our current homelessness response system.

I'll just share very briefly that there was a Just Care operation recently at the Pergola, and there were between 30 and 40 people staying there, depending on the given day.

And like the five folks that were hardest to place were people experiencing needs that could be addressed by a facility like this, where there's currently a very big gap in the system.

And it really is, you know, that like 10, you know, I mean, I hazard to put a percentage on it, but like that one in 10. people experiencing homelessness that have a level of acuity that we currently can't serve.

And this budget goes a long way towards building capacity to respond to that.

I do just want to state that as far as I'm concerned, this is the beginning and a roadmap to really chart our relationship with the RHA and to build on these investments.

I don't think this is the end of our conversation at all.

And I know that's Council Member Mosqueda's intention as well.

And I look forward to taking this first step, but continuing throughout 2022 to see what we can do to build on this work, to fill those service gaps and respond to the huge need that we see out in the community.

Thank you very much.

Jeff, I think you can continue on.

Great, thank you.

So overall, Council Member Lewis, and you already touched on this then, we have three asks from the King County Regional Homeless Authority.

The two that required an ongoing commitment have both been fulfilled or responded to in some way.

Obviously, for one of them, it wasn't the full amount requested, but it is the $5 million that I just discussed is one of the larger investments in the balancing package or larger new investments.

And I just want to make sure that we're not comparing $5 million to a $19 million ask when, as you noted, we are accomplishing economies of scale by working with King County and King County in partnership with us to acquire a site and then working together to ensure services.

I think we'll not only make sure that we're citing something, but we were also able to site effectively and then hand off a successful cited program to RHA.

not just 5 million as everyone knows.

I'm really excited about the component but want to thank King County for the work that they're doing to make sure that we're drawing up that dollar amount and meeting the desired need to serve that population as Councilmember Lewis just noted.

So the only item that was not receiving funding in the balancing package is the seed money, essentially, to create a peer navigation program.

And as council members are aware from the presentations that have been already made, there is a statement from the council recognizing that, to some degree, peer navigation is a component of many things that are already funded and encouraging the further examination of how to increase the important the important aspect or missing niche that peer navigators fill in those various service components, such as our homelessness outreach contracts, but also in other ways too.

Some are informal and sometimes informal ways that people with experience are incorporated and encouraging continued work there.

But the initial year of seed funding while Medicaid reimbursement was set up and obtained is not provided, but still the authorities encouraged to proceed with setting up to get that ongoing funding stream and move forward.

Council Member Lewis, I see your hand is up.

Do you want me to try to pause here?

Yes, thank you very much, Jeff.

Did you get a chance to summarize that component fully, though, before we take questions on that, Jeff?

Yes, I was able to.

Okay, great.

Thank you.

Council Member Lewis, please go ahead.

It's a little different, Jeff, but you brought up Medicaid reimbursement, and I just want to get this out now, because I think it's relevant to a lot of things in this category.

I just saw that FEMA has promulgated guidance that they're going to fund 100% of recovery of expenses for things like Project Roomkey in California.

For those who are unaware, Project Roomkey was a hotel-based sheltering program in California In the middle of the pandemic got, you know, thousands of people experiencing homelessness off the street and into hotels with some kind of attendant services.

And it's been reported that the Biden administration is extending.

100% reimbursement through FEMA till April 1st of 2022. And I just wonder what the implications are for investments in this category and ways that the council in this budget process might structure encouragement to seek FEMA reimbursement, or maybe if there's ways or information that we've heard from the executive on their intent to seek FEMA reimbursement for some of these things here.

And just generally, Jeff, because I know you spent a lot of time over 2021 looking into this, maybe your analysis on what might or might not be eligible for that kind of seeking of reimbursement, given that deadline and guidance from the Biden administration.

Certainly, thanks for using the customer.

So I would highlight so project room in California, or even some of the activities that were undertaken to expand non congregate shelter in Seattle are all are all reimbursed by FEMA under the category of non congregate shelter.

They had a specific purpose for preventing further spread of covet and further transmission, especially among people who otherwise would have no place to to shelter at.

And so the extension of that, that's actually a policy that was implemented.

Initially, months ago, to say that all all expenditures in that category would be reimbursed and the council had a lot of discussions.

this last January, I believe, related to that.

The extension just would indicate that those activities that have been stood up for that type of a purpose would continue to receive full reimbursement.

Jeff just froze on my end.

Once going through the process of identifying what was spent in that way, things like that.

So I turned off video, but thank you, Madam Chair, for highlighting that.

As the wind blows here, my internet connection gets a little choppy, so please let me know if something breaks.

I'll switch to a different line.

FEMA reimbursement and bringing up a project room key was juxtaposed with discussion of the peer navigator program, which it's not clear to me that that would be necessarily in a category that would be eligible for FEMA reimbursement.

There's specific things that FEMA is, it would offer reimbursement for at that level.

And I don't know, it might fall into some other categories that I'm not familiar with, but certainly would not be non-congregate shelter, as it's not providing shelter in response to homelessness.

Does that address your question, Council Member Lewis?

Just to, well, I think I have two follow-ups, if it's okay, Madam Chair, just briefly on this.

And Jeff, I'm sorry, I was speaking more generally just because you brought up the term Medicare reimbursement.

I was not expecting we'd be able to reimburse peer navigation through FEMA, but I think I have two follow-up questions.

And one is just to clarify, because when we hear 100% FEMA reimbursement, That doesn't necessarily mean, to my understanding, 100% reimbursement for everything that happens at non-congregate shelter, but 100% of the eligible expenses.

So I'd maybe appreciate, because I think for part of where you cut out, you were gonna get into that and I didn't quite hear.

So maybe if you could break that down of like kind of what might be in and what might be out of some of our current emergency sheltering programs, and if there might be an implication to like, keep those going past the deadline that is currently set in January if we know there's going to be a prospect of further FEMA reimbursement.

And then the second thing would be when some of those assets have to be stood up to to vest the FEMA reimbursement.

Like at what point like if we set up something new Like, for example, these tiny house villages that are coming online right now, like in the fall, could we petition for FEMA reimbursement for those up through April 1st of 2022?

At what point does it have to be built for us to be able to seek the reimbursement?

So on the latter piece I actually we need to get back to you in terms of when something had to be been stood up.

There has been varying deadlines and changes and extensions and I'm just the exact details of that I'm not top of mind for me in terms of what is covered.

FEMA is approaching this as a sheltering type of a thing, a situation where we needed to provide safe spaces for people.

And so the service component that we layer on top of shelters is not something that would be reimbursed.

Our enhanced shelters strongly focus on providing case management and support for an individual or a household to move into housing.

That's not something that FEMA would be reimbursing for.

That's addressing a homelessness problem.

That's not addressing the public health and emergency of COVID.

However, FEMA would reimburse for the actual cost and I'll say operations that might be a little bit vague of a program to actually have a place for people to be.

So think of like, you'd have to have janitorial services, taking out the trash at a building that you have acquired or leased or something like that.

Those are types of things that FEMA would reimburse for in a non-congregate space.

There's a lot of other requirements that go into FEMA reimbursement, not the least of which is that you have to competitively procure the services and the locations.

And many of the programs that the city launched don't meet that threshold.

Some do, not all though.

And so there's a little bit of nuance there.

And in terms of like some of the, if there's specific projects you have in mind, we could probably spend some time engaging and doing some follow-up to to get a specific sense of if a certain project like Rosie's Village, which just recently opened, or one of the other two tiny home villages, if there's a pathway by which any of those costs could be reimbursed by FEMA.

Thank you, Jeff.

I don't have any additional questions, and I might follow up offline with a few things.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Lewis.

Okay, Councilmember, excuse me, Jeff, please go ahead if you have other items that you'd like to lift up.

I just, I did want to kind of give an overview as you asked Madam Chair.

Maybe I should just say one more item, Jeff, I'm sorry, just about the Peer Navigator piece and to really underscore what Council Member Lewis has noted as well.

Really want to emphasize what you said during the briefing with members from the Regional Homelessness Society.

Excuse me, the regional?

homeless authority, that we are excited to work with them as this concept has generated a lot of conversations, conversations directly with the county and with community organizations as well.

I understand that they're beginning to bring together their outreach and peer navigator focus cohort to talk through what this could look like, what the theory of change is, where these navigators could work, and how it all comes together.

That's fantastic work.

So I want to thank them and to also underscore that this is a really great opportunity for us to note the importance of these conversations coming, making sure that we're working in an intersectional way with the community organizations out there and look forward to the future conversations to happen around this piece to show our ongoing interest in this element.

Anything else?

Okay, let's get going.

On behavioral health then, so in addition, as I mentioned, the $5 million investment that is HOM 12 is kind of, we can call it both homelessness and we can call it, sorry, Patty, you can go, there you go, that's a fine screen right there.

So it's HOM 12B1.

That counts both as, the council kind of gets two for one there, both homelessness and behavioral health investments.

Separately, there's another $3.4 million in behavioral health services across a range of four different other budget actions that would expand, most notably, crisis response services, such as a mobile crisis team, but also mental and behavioral health and substance use disorder services in other places as well and for other populations.

And then lastly, just as a way of overview, there's still six other actions related to homelessness, not including what we've already discussed.

Those add up to just a little bit less than $3 million.

And those often overlap with areas that the Regional Homelessness Authority has identified as priority areas to work on.

So like responding to people who are residing in RVs or their cars.

Most of that nearly $3 million actually supports new services in that space for the regional authority to undertake new work.

And that's all my summary comments, Madam Chair.

Okay, wonderful.

Are there any questions, comments, or additions that folks would like to flag on homelessness or behavioral health services before we take any other areas?

Okay, hearing none, I appreciate the walkthrough of that and We can turn it to other sections that people would like to address.

Any questions that you have that might relate to possible amendments that you're considering for this afternoon?

Okay, I'm not seeing any.

Okay, wonderful.

Well, council colleagues.

I think we have then reached the end of our agenda for the four areas we wanted to highlight this morning.

I know that there's so much more that we have in this proposed budget.

Council Member Juarez, yay, she says, yay.

And many of those items relate to planning, community development, permitting, sustainability in the environment, transportation equity.

We spent a little bit of time on Wednesday talking about bridges, bridges, bridges.

and transportation systems that create opportunities for folks to get out of their cars.

Really excited about some of those investments here.

Livability, clean cities, the work that we're doing for making sure that everybody has the opportunity to have a clean up outside and activate streets, create public spaces, improve lighting, and make sure that there's playground investments.

Very excited about these elements in our proposed package.

I do hope folks have the chance to read through the entire proposed budget as you consider the various amendments that you're taking into account.

Please note the conversation that we had throughout this morning about the reality of the proposed uses of funds.

And I hope that we have offered some clarification today to members of the community who are interested in following along and concerned about any We have a lot of questions about the proposed budget.

I hope today's clarification offers the ability to truly understand what is in the proposed budget and well, give us a better sense of how they could possibly be changed.

I'm really excited about how creating greater stability, hopefully, as we recover from this COVID crisis.

And I look forward to continuing to work with all of you over the next week here as we finalize the amendments for our discussion on Thursday and Friday next week.

Ali, did you have anything else you'd like to add?

Okay, any other council members would like to add anything else for context or questions before they consider amendments?

Okay, we have reached the end of our agenda.

Our next committee meeting will be November 18th at 9.30 a.m.

We will have the amendments that are submitted and worked on this afternoon with central staff available for council members to review the day before the committee meeting.

Those will also be available for members of the public.

So please do get all of your amendments into Ali, excuse me, to central staff and the central staff person who is directly in charge of those topic items by 2 p.m.

today.

We will then work with you all to make sure that your amendments are in the form that you'd like them to be from a technical perspective for publishing on the agenda the day before the meeting.

We will have an all-day session with a one-hour recess from 1 to 2 again on Thursday, November 18th.

And if we need to, we will continue the conversation on November 19th.

Are there any additional further questions?

Hearing none, today's meeting is adjourned.

Thank you, council colleagues, for all the work you've done and the helpful clarification and questions that you've asked for today.

Thank you CentralSep, we'll see you very soon.