Seattle City Council Select Budget Committee October 13, 2022 Session II

Good afternoon, everyone.

Thank you so much for joining us back here at the Seattle City Council Select Budget Committee meeting.

The committee will reconvene from recess.

The time is 2.01 p.m.

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

Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll?

Council Member Nelson?

Present.

Council Member Peterson?

Present.

Council Member Sawant?

Present.

Council Member Strauss?

Present.

Councilmember Herbold?

Here.

Councilmember Juarez?

Here.

Councilmember Lewis?

Present.

Councilmember Morales?

Here.

And Chair Mosqueda?

Present.

Nine present.

Thank you very much.

Again, colleagues this afternoon we're going to cover between now and 3pm the Seattle Police Department's budget and then from 3 to 4pm the to be here until 5.00PM.

For this afternoon's presentation, I am excited that we have worked out a system, it seems, where the departments provide an overview of the budget as proposed by the mayor's office for the biennial calendar year 2023 and 2024 as community, excuse me, Council members are welcome to ask questions as we go along and if there is any item that central staff would like to chime in for additional clarification or to note that this will be an issue for issue identification, they've done so as well.

We make sure to get through all those questions for the department and then we go into the central staff led issue identification panel and colleagues we will again pause at the end of each of the issues being identified for any questions from council members to make some comments or ask questions that they'd like.

And of course, if there's clarifying items that are needed from the department, Director Dingley from the city budgets office has been gracious enough to continue to stay with us.

And if central staff is not able to fully get the information, we know where to follow up and get that through our central staff process.

I appreciate that this has been a robust few days with a lot of discussion and I think that that's been very healthy.

I appreciate that as we all try to seek to better understand the proposed budget as transmitted to council for our deliberations over the next five weeks.

Madam Clerk, could you please read item number 3 into the record?

Agenda item 3, Seattle Police Department for briefing and discussion.

Wonderful.

Well, thank you again for being here with us to many of the members from the previous panel.

We are now going to focus specifically on the Seattle Police Department's overall budget.

Again, with us today is Senior Deputy Mayor Monisha Harrell.

Thank you for being with us.

Interim Chief Adrian Diaz from the Seattle Police Department, as well as Brian Maxey and Angela Sochi from Seattle Police Department.

We have with us as well for the central staff presentation, Director Esther Handy and Greg Doss.

I'm just looking to make sure I didn't miss any additional central staff folks with us here today.

If needed, anybody else will also jump in.

Thanks to the entire panels for being here.

I do want to turn it back over to Council Member Herbold, again, Chair of Public Safety.

She did make some opening comments about public safety specific to the parking enforcement officers, but Council Member Herbold, you've been working on public safety, public health related issues for a number of years.

Again, if there's anything else you'd like to add to welcome this topic, please go ahead and take the mic.

Thank you so much.

I actually integrated some of my general comments about the SPD budget in the earlier session, but I did want to mention a couple of other things.

I want to echo your thanks, Madam Chair, to Senior Deputy Mayor Harrell.

I just want to say thank you to the interim director, interim chief Diaz and Brian Maxey and Angela Sochi of SPD being here with us to share their knowledge, their wisdom, their expertise about the SPD's budget.

I mentioned in the earlier session my appreciation for the greater transparency in this budget, so I won't go there again And we talked a little bit about the necessity of centering our decisions around the department's budget with an understanding of the number of officers who have left the department since 2020 and our need to invest in community safety interventions that really center the challenges that we are facing in our city around community safety currently.

The additional information I would want to share and I think it's apparent to many of us here, but just want to just state aloud that there's a tendency to want to compare SPD's budgets across the years.

And I understand that inclination to do so.

And we do so with other departments, and that's how the information is presented to us.

It's presented with a percentage increase or reduction in all of the department presentations.

But what's unique, I think, about SPD is that we have moved functions out of the department and there was a total of $45 million included in other departments in the 2022 budget for functions that were previously housed within SPD.

So you can't do a clear apples to oranges comparison, you have to consider the functions that have been been moved out of the department and the cost of those functions when making this kind of comparison.

And again, I don't want to overly rely on sort of a simplistic comparison, but really want to center our community safety challenges in this discussion.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Well, I think I'll turn it over to, I see Chief Diaz taking yourself off mute, and I again want to thank Senior Deputy Mayor for being here.

I'll turn it over to you all to walk us through the presentation.

Perfect.

Well, good afternoon, Council Members, and thank you for the opportunity to present today.

I know this is the second time, just after the earlier on the parking enforcement.

But the mayor's proposed budget reflects our shared values.

We are a service organization, first and foremost, and we're here to help people.

Our personnel provide critical emergency response services, and currently the demand for our services exceeds our capacity.

We continue to see violent crime impacting our communities.

We continue to see property crime affecting our community and residents.

Recognizing this, the mayor's proposed budget makes considerable investments in recruiting and retention, which we are so excited earlier this year to get through the city council, our earlier recruiting and retention package for this year, which have been funded through our vacancy savings.

This investment is made possible because of our historic staffing crisis.

And we're desperately need to hire more police officers and retain our valued employees.

Meanwhile, we continue to supplement with overtime to try and meet the service demands for emergency response, special events, and targeted gun violence emphasis shifts.

The mayor's proposed budget also centers on community and includes continued funding for the Before the Batch program, which I was so excited that the city council has supported since I introduced that, which also grounds new officers in social-emotional learning and facilitates community dialogue.

You may recall this was one of the first programs I implemented after I assumed my current role.

and you made it possible with your initial investment in 2022, so thank you.

The mayor's proposed budget also acknowledges that healthy officers make the most effective public servants.

It includes funding for new, for contract mental health services for our employees and full-time mental health practitioner to advise on employee mental health and wellness programming in 2023 and beyond.

It also includes funding to ensure our officers have access to standard issue equipment to safely perform their jobs.

Lastly, the proposed budget recognizes that police reform and accountability don't end with our consent decree, but they're an ongoing commitment.

And it's essential we maintain the systems and tools that allow us to critically assess our performance.

Our accountability system relies on checks and balances as well as governed data and information that can be used to answer the most difficult questions, guide policy decisions, and promote just outcomes.

The past two years have deeply affected our organization.

And we're a different department today than we were last year and the year before.

The challenges we have faced and we are facing have created an opportunity for reinvestment as a city and as we reimagine the police service.

All the items you will hear about today are funded through 120 officer vacancies.

And these vacancies are felt deeply by our department and we know their absence is felt in our community.

So thank you.

I will turn it over to our Chief Operating Officer, Brian Maxey, as well as our Executive Director of Budget, Angela Sochi.

Thank you, Chief.

My name is Angela Soce.

I'm the Executive Director of Budget and Finance for SPD.

The 2023 and 2024 proposed budget, as you can see here, will increase SPD's general fund budget by 5.7% in 2023. And I want to thank Council Member Herbold for calling out that year-over-year comparisons aren't As applicable to our budget, but in the case of the 2023 proposed, I do want to highlight that that 5.7% increase is entirely attributable to the transfer of the parking enforcement division from S dot to SPD, which we did cover in an earlier session.

As you can see here, the number of FTEs will increase by 7%.

Again, this change is largely attributed to the 123 positions that are transferring from SDOT.

The remaining 2.5 FTE adds represents a net change.

This proposed budget actually adds six FTE to the department and aggregates 3.5 FTE, which are sunset positions, 2.5 of which are sunsetting, and one is being aggregated as it's no longer needed, and as an offset for one of the other ads.

Of the ads for SPD specifically, I'm going to exclude any OPA ads for this presentation here.

We do have an ad for a mental health professional, that the chief referenced in his opening remarks, a program manager for the relational policing before the badge program, a public disclosure position, and then two incoming positions which are transferring from another department.

The other appropriation you see here is for the School Safety Traffic and Pedestrian Improvement Fund, which pays for a portion of our automated traffic enforcement program.

Next slide.

All right, first step, these two change requests are foundational to our proposed budget.

They reduce our general fund budget by $28.4 million from our baseline level.

The first item satisfies our 3% cut target to address the city's projected revenue shortfall.

The second item here reduces our budget for sworn personnel, specifically vacant sworn positions to offset the cost of the number of ads that we're going to discuss.

further in the presentation.

Next slide, please.

It looks like there's a question.

Yeah, thank you.

Let's go ahead and have council member just super quick.

The baseline for me that last last point on that previous slide about the vacant positions.

Is that are those the positions that are colloquially referred to as ghost positions?

Ghosts as in positions that are unfilled?

That are unfilled, unfunded, but are used as a baseline for the next year's proposed budget, as I understand the conversation was last year.

Yes, so we have a number of authorized positions.

Our baseline is built on the number of authorized positions and from there, we make incremental changes to account for the positions that are filled.

Some departments use a vacancy rate to account for the differences between their funded budgeted positions and authorized positions.

But in this particular case, going into the budget process, our baseline budget funded approximately 1,317 sworn positions.

And in 2022, we were funded for 1,200.

Through our initial budget process, we looked at how many positions were funded in the baseline budget and then built the proposed budget around that.

Thanks, Director Handy, something to add to that?

I will add when Greg is up, he will do a more thorough breakdown of the staffing plan, but I want to note that item number one here, this $11 million reduction for 80 FTE is an ongoing reduction and has not happened in the past.

This is something Council has pointed to in the last two cycles of the budget.

We are disappointed that there was not an ongoing cut taken for any portion of the unfilled positions.

And so item number one there is an ongoing cut that we, the positions stay at SPD, but we would not expect that funding to show up again in 24-25.

Item number two here is a one-time use of salary savings to reinvest in the department.

I saw Councilmember Herbold's lips say I see.

And so this is the slide that folks should look at if they're hearing that there were 80 positions that were actually reduced from the overall budget positions, not filled, nobody's getting cut, but these are positions that are traditionally not filled.

These are actually the positions that we had been hoping to abrogate in we're not going to be able to do that.

We're going to have to look at previous discussions that it would be a more accurate picture of the number of staff that currently are within the department and that's the amount of money needed year over year.

But number item number 2 here still shows that there's a 120 positions that are also not being filled but that there's an assumption that those FT's will stay at the department the funding

Yes, that's almost precisely correct.

The only piece that I will update is that technically all 200 pockets stay vacant at the department.

It is the funding for 80 of them that is cut in an ongoing way.

and the savings from the other of 120 is a one-time hold and reinvestment this year.

Okay, so not technically abrogation, but actual transparency on reducing the funding, having that be seen as a budget item being moved into the general fund for the purposes of something else, at least as it relates to the 80. Okay.

And Greg, I know that this was information that we were really trying to lift up over the last two years to get greater transparency on where those dollars were going and whether positions were being filled and whether they were remaining at the department just chronically unfilled.

So thank you for your work to help continue to surface these issues for the city council.

Do you have something to add?

Yeah all I did was was bug the department to to be a little bit more transparent with it and and Director Sochi and Julie Director Dingley have have really really been very transparent in this and and it's really easy to follow and understand and that is so fantastic.

I would point out that on item number two the 16.9 million A number of these items, as Director Sciosci goes through her presentation, a number of them are ongoing.

So when we talk about this being one time, it is a one-time use of salary savings, but SPD will need in the future to fund these, and likely will be using salary savings, is using salary savings in 24, and will have to probably use salary savings ongoing.

As it hires officers in the future, if it were to actually get up to hire 120 officers, it would need to start adding money to its budget, but that is probably a long way off.

Sorry, don't wait for me.

Please go ahead.

All right.

Thank you.

So this I might be reiterating some points that that we've made here but just so it's very clear for everyone the to determine available vacancy savings for the budget changes we just discussed.

We use our sworn staffing model to estimate our future staffing levels.

In any given year SPS budget is made up of 75 to 80% personnel costs.

So it's hugely impactful, as we're developing our budget, unlike other departments, we don't apply a standard vacancy rate.

Instead, we try to anticipate hires and separations and build the budget around that target.

2023 and 2024 were no different.

This information is shared with central staff to validate and confirm our assumptions in the budget.

The proposed budget for 23 is over 75 percent salary and benefit costs.

In 2023, as currently written, the proposed budget supports 1,115 sworn FTE, which is down from 1,200 in 2022. If you look at the blue and green chart lines in the table here, you will see how the funded and filled FTE align in both 2023 and 2024. We've included the fully trained officer counts and the officers in service count as well, just for comparison.

Next slide.

All right.

This table shows our hiring assumptions for 2023 and 2024 alongside historic actuals.

In both years, we set a sworn hiring target of 120 new hires and 105 separations.

Again, this is incredibly important for the budget because we build our proposed budget around these assumptions using our staffing model.

We historically we used to base that separation number on average separations.

We no longer do that for two reasons.

First, our annual separations have fluctuated dramatically in recent years, and the average rate of separations is no longer a reliable metric.

Second, as noted on the previous slide, we do not use a standard vacancy rate like other departments when building our personnel budget.

And if we overestimate our sworn separations, we're at risk of underfunding our personnel budget if our if our predictions are off at all.

And again, you can see in this chart that separations specifically have fluctuated widely in the last five to 10 years.

We are, from 2020 and 2021, obviously seeing, we saw an incredible departure of our sworn personnel.

If we achieve our hiring and separation targets in 23 and 24, we're looking to have around 1,090 fully trained officers by the end of 24, up from the, up from 1,050 in August of this year.

This is just an indication that it will take time for us to return to pre-pandemic staffing levels.

A question, Sochi.

We know that a number of these officers who've also left the force in 2020, 2021, possibly even this year, is due to not wanting to comply with the public health guidance for getting a vaccine.

Can you remind us how many of these officers have left because of their inability to get a vaccine or inability to have a different position to accommodate them?

Council Member, I can answer that question.

We've only had four administrative separations for vaccine mandate.

So as much as others have said, there's a whole lot more, there's actually only four that have been administratively separated.

So when we hear numbers of like 80 to 90 people who refuse to get their vaccines in one year alone, and they've just been put on hold or leave, and that's affecting the number of officers that are available on actual patrol, that's not what this number is representing?

So there are a number of people that have requested religious and medical exemptions and their people also have left are not left the department but they're on long term leave for a variety of different reasons you have people that are on maternity leave you have people that are on military leave.

That have not provided any information on exemptions because there could be deployed to out to another country so we can't give you the exact numbers because there's a variety of different reasons why somebody might not have already provided some level of an exemption.

What we do know is that we have a small number of people that are in medical exemptions, probably under 10. And we have a small number of people that are under religious exemptions, probably in around, I believe, 25 that are requested.

There is now access to a new type of shot that is different from, it doesn't use stem cells, I believe stem cells, and that's some people have returned since that access to that new shot.

But those are the kind of basic numbers that we're looking at right now.

Okay, let's continue.

All right.

Next slide, please.

All right, now to get to our ads.

These items here represent investments for recruitment, retention, officer wellness, and relational policing.

also known as our Before the Badge program.

Again, these items are funded with sworn vacancy savings.

As Greg noted, some of these are one-time investments and others are ongoing investments.

He is correct that we will, for the ongoing items, need to continue to use vacancy savings to the department of human resources.

There are two FTE being added to SPD for these items as noted earlier.

Four positions are also being added to the department of These items represent operational investments for SPD.

The proposed budget includes 1 million for planning efforts related to the region's first gunfire detection system with evidence collection capabilities, such as cameras or automated license plate readers to address increased gun violence.

Second, we're requesting 1.3 million a mix of ongoing and one-time funding for police equipment to address policy changes and cost increases for some of our standard issue equipment.

This also includes a $500,000 one-time investment upgrade for needed upgrades at our range facility.

Lastly, there's ongoing support for maintenance of our data analytics platform, totaling $3 million here.

Next slide.

Angela, but I just lift up for the committee on the ongoing support of the data analytics.

That component is a, um, a system that the monitor and, uh.

the DOJ have found in the past to be consent decree related because it's essentially a warehouse that's gathering all the data that is needed for consent decree reporting.

And for that matter, for the agency to do police accountability reporting for our own agencies.

So that I think is important to lift up.

Thanks.

Thank you very much, Greg.

Greg is correct that those investments in our data analytics platform specifically that system, the information contained in that system is used not only by SPD.

but also by our accountability partners.

It's the basis for our plans for not only compliance and ongoing sustainment, but also for the continuation of our police reform efforts once the consent decree is closed out.

Many of you also benefit from the information that's housed in that system.

It is the source of data for our public dashboards, Our use of force data, everything ideally would be housed in there to allow for quick access to information.

A portion of this item, you'll see that there's 3 million planned for 2023 and 1.5 million planned for 2024. Some of this is necessary ongoing maintenance and sustainment of this platform.

This council approved support for migration of information into the data analytics platform in last year's budget.

We need a one-time contribution to complete the migration of all of the remaining information that is not housed in there to allow for more advanced analytics.

Looks like there's a few people with their hands up.

Okay.

Brian, do you want to add to that and then we'll go to Councilmember Morales?

Sure, and I'll be very brief, Councilmember.

Thank you.

The data analytics platform has really become a core of how we use evidence-based information to drive the department forward, and while Greg does is absolutely correct that this is a product of the consent decree, and it is related to our obligations under the consent decree.

I didn't want to leave the impression I think Angela may have.

covered this, that this is somehow limited to that effort.

This really is becoming a department-wide effort.

And even as we have separate presentations on a lot of the other projects we have going, drawing from this data, I think you will begin to see how robust this truly is and why this is a critical system for the department for that critical self-analysis that's so important to a learning organization.

The other point on that is that the new state requirements on use of force reporting will be coming out shortly if they have not been released already.

I don't have the date on that, but the indications are that the state reporting requirements are going to be incredibly robust, and we will need this system to be at full capacity in order to meet those obligations moving forward.

So thank you.

Thanks so much.

Council Member Morales.

Thank you.

Thank you, Angela, for reminding us.

I thought my initial question was, didn't we do this last year?

And we did in part.

So can you just remind us how much we allocated last year for this technology?

And maybe if you could talk a little bit about what piece of that migration happened for whatever amount we gave you last year and what is left to do with this request.

Yes, so last year there was 3.76 million funded for technology broadly.

Much of that was related to the data analytics migration.

It included funding in there for the risk managed demand updates that allowed us to evaluate information housed in the data analytics platform, but also information that was Housed in the fire departments computer aided dispatch data set.

There was.

see.

I don't have the information in front of me.

It may be best for me to follow up with the actual breakout of the budget that was allocated for that portion.

There was a portion for migration, a portion for moving the data analytics platform, the data warehouse to the cloud.

The bulk of the funding was a one-time investment into that transition, which again allows for a more robust data analytics and intelligent processes for different data warehouses to speak to one another or data sets to speak to one another.

I will gladly let Brian speak up if I'm misstating anything here.

And as far as the migration goes, the remaining information that needs to be migrated includes complaint information, lawsuits.

There is a long list that we've provided to Greg Doss.

I'm sure he would be happy to share with you all of the items that are contained in there.

Yeah, I will.

I'll end with that before I say something that's inaccurate.

Okay, so I did see Brian with his hand up.

I see Greg as well.

And then I think Council Member Herbold has a question.

Brian, did you have something to add?

No, Council Member.

I was actually taking my hand down, but happy to answer any follow-up questions.

Okay, great.

Greg, would you like to add to that?

Sure, really quick.

I was able to pull up while Angela was talking.

Of the 3.7 million that she referenced, 1 million was for the re-architecting of the data analytics platform.

Any follow-up, Councilmember Morales?

Okay, thanks.

Councilmember Herbold?

Thank you.

I appreciate both the the use of this platform by the department.

I appreciate that it's a tool also for the monitor under the consent decree.

That is not in any way in dispute from me.

I have come to finally refer to the DAP as the damn DAP because it seems like every time we talk about it, it is related to something that We hoped it would do, but it doesn't do.

Most recently, there was the issue that was resolved, but that was flagged because of a problem with the data integration with the DAP of a very large number of unknowns recorded as it relates to race and use of force.

The chief has a number of years ago when I asked how we were moving forward on recommendations associated with an advisory group to focus on the problems related with the complete lack of oversight of off-duty work as opposed to overtime work, off-duty work.

I was told that the DAP was not designed to allow the department to have the oversight of the number of hours that officers were working overtime.

And then the third example I can think of is a number of years, you know, we're reporting on race as it relates to a large number of police contacts.

But I think it was in 2018, Now Mayor Harrell, then Councilmember Harrell, championed a piece of legislation focused on non-biased policing and one of the requirements is that there be reporting on traffic stops, on the racial demographics of people who are recipients of tickets and stops from SPD.

We were told for several years that the DAP did not allow that information to be reported.

So I would love to, those are just three things I can think of off the top of my head.

I understand there's a long list that you've provided, Greg, for the capabilities that this system does have and would just like to have some confirmation that as it relates to those three items that those are capabilities for moving forward.

Brian, do you have something to add?

Yes.

Thank you, Council Member.

Council Member Herbold, the three things that you identified primarily are issues associated with source systems, not with the data analytics platform itself.

The traffic tickets were handled in a variety of ways, both using the sector system and with some of the Muni Court records.

Those just hadn't yet been brought into the DAP.

The issue with the unknowns and the use of force, that was an identified problem.

And as you know, we rapidly fixed that because what's important to the data analytics platform is it's not just a computer, not just a tool, it's actually a system that includes data governance.

So when we find errors, when we find things that are lacking, when we find any potential problem with this, we have an automated way of putting forth what's called a DGAL, which puts it into the queue for remediation.

So the system itself kicks out errors.

We have teams that look at that and we are continually improving the system to ensure that it's as accurate as possible.

What it's doing is incredibly complex, drawing in from a variety of source systems.

That particular issue with the use of force was caused by the implementation of a new HR system, EV5, that didn't have the granularity in that reporting that we needed.

So we fixed it.

But you were right, that is a problem.

You know, in full transparency, as we continue to work with ADAPT, we are going to find other problems.

And then we are going to remediate them.

And that's part of the evolution of the system, getting it better and better and more refined.

And honestly, there's no data system out there that is accurate and functions independently of this continual audit that happens with this system.

So I think, Council Member, what you're highlighting is exactly what we're asking for here, which is the need to continually invest in this system to make sure that we can answer your questions and provide the level of transparency to our community.

Thank you.

Thanks.

So it's not a system that becomes obsolete, doesn't have that sort of, like many technologies, there is sort of a, the cynical would say a planned obsolescence that then requires a new investment in a whole new system.

This is a system that can grow and change as our needs grow and change.

And that, And that includes, could the city move in this direction as has been recommended by both an internal and an external stakeholder group in the past?

Should the city move in the direction of doing more monitoring of the number of hours that people work off duty?

The system will be able to track that as well.

Absolutely, Council Member.

As you know, we've had some complications with standing up a data source for all of that information in a way that the data analytics platform could digest it.

But once that is fully realized, there's no reason why the platform couldn't ingest that information related to the other data and provide a lot of awareness and transparency.

Perfect.

Thank you so much.

Let's keep going.

We are running a little behind here.

All right.

Thank you very much.

For these items here, I would put the item 9 and 10, both relate to either fully or in part to overtime.

As everyone knows, we are experiencing a historic staffing crisis and overtime has been one of many ways that we are attempting to We have a number of items that we're looking at.

I believe about 40 to 50% capacity.

This will allow them to continue marine patrols during the summer boating season.

It also supports maintenance costs for the operation.

They have a number of vessels that were purchased with grant funds and we've had to maintain these in a case-by-case ad hoc basis.

And so this would create a permanent budget for vessel maintenance specifically.

Greg, did you want to.

I, I have a question when when you're done.

And then for item 10, this is a $2.6 million investment.

It's a partial restoration of our overtime budget, our pre-pandemic overtime budget.

This will be used to meet minimum staffing in emergency response and also support special event overtime needs and violent crime emphasis patrols.

Greg, do you want to ask the question?

Yeah, I'll just I'll just start out there.

There's a couple council members have expressed questions about the Harbor Patrol deployment and specifically if it would be deployed any differently than.

Harbor Patrol is normally deployed such that it would respond to community events and.

In other words.

Community events, community needs, normal use situations on the water in a proportional way, the same way it normally would, or is there going to be any kind of a special distribution of these hours in a different way?

you know, just expect Andrews Bay to get the same kind of proportional service that it would without these dollars, just in addition.

So I'm wondering if you were the chief could talk a little bit about that.

I can fill in that gap.

And this allows us right now, our staffing would really just allow for one boat.

And if you could imagine, We could only go up to a certain level of knots on the waterway because of the housing that fits on the waterway.

Too much rippling of the water can actually create damage for all the residents on the water.

So having us to be able to have two boats operational during the summer months, it allows us not only do we have salt water, so we have to go through the lots for the one part, and then we also have Lake Union and Lake Washington.

So having two boats allows us to spread out and have a better distribution throughout all of the waterways that we patrol.

And it allows us to get quicker to locations.

So that way we're not going through the UW cut for every single time that we've got to deploy out to St. Andrews.

So this just allows us more flexibility and allows us to actually be in more places in once.

Council Member Morales.

Thank you.

Thanks, Greg, for kind of teeing this up.

So this is something that I've been talking about for about two and a half, almost three years now, trying to get an understanding of how many boats there are, how many Harbor Patrol officers there are, where they're deployed.

My understanding through these conversations has been that there is nobody sort of, I'm not a boater, I don't know the language, anchored in Lake Washington.

And so as you said, Chief, if there is a disturbance in Andrews Bay, it requires somebody coming from Lake Union.

And by the time you get to Andrews Bay, the event might be over.

So I'm so first of all, I want to make sure that if that is sort of status quo, that I'm understanding that correctly.

And then if what you're saying is that this is adding one more boat, where will that boat be housed?

Senior Deputy Mayor, did you want to take that?

Yeah, I'll take this a little bit.

So the importance of this is, to be honest, if we had more funding, I would have applied it to this particular area.

One of the beauties of Seattle is all the water that we have around us.

And we have so many more people who are using that water through through paddle boards or other individual more individualized crafts.

We don't have the ability to be able to monitor you know Lake Washington and Lake Union and all of those things and all of those areas.

Earlier this year we were very fortunate to be able save a family that had gotten caught on the other side of I-90 in Lake Washington.

It was really, we've really been relying very heavily on kind of civilian boaters to meet our water safety needs.

This is one of those areas that allows us to be in more places during the times of Seattle where everybody's really out on the water.

This doesn't this literally only funds very peak time periods for us.

So Thursday through Sunday it's not a full it's not a full component of what would be ideal but it just helps to meet the needs for those kind of recreational or weekend warriors who are out on the water.

and taking advantage of some of Seattle's attributes.

So it they are you know they would be out during peak times watching those people during those water safety events just during the summer periods and during what we consider the peak hours of the summer.

Thank you, Senior Deputy Mayor.

I guess my question is, so thank you for clarifying.

It's only the summer and only the weekends in the summer.

What about, does this mean that for those three days or however many hours of the weekend, there will be a boat in Lake Washington or will this boat be in Lake Union and still have to be deployed?

So, yeah, I'll roll that to the chief but it would be on Thursday through Sunday.

So it would give us basically that four day window of a little bit of an extended weekend so Thursday through Sunday, between Memorial Day and Labor Day.

So just during that very kind of high, high season peak.

So I'll give you, I know it's not an easy, clear-cut answer, but this would allow us to be able to deploy one in Lake Union and one in Lake Washington.

The reason why I won't give a definitive answer is because depending on events, depending on things that are going on, we will deploy accordingly.

So if there's stuff that's, you know, like 4th of July, we've got more stuff in Lake Union, we'll have probably almost all of our boats, you know, focused in that Lake Union area.

If there is, you know, during the first day of boating, there's a lot of stuff that's going on in Lake Washington, we'll probably push more of our boats into Lake Washington and really try to make sure that there's good adequate coverage in those areas where there's more boaters.

So I don't want to give you a hundred percent answer to say, yes, it's going to be, you know, one and one.

And it really is going to be based on what we've got going that Thursday through Sunday, what kind of events that are running.

You know, we know that during like right in May when we first launched off boat season, that Lake Washington cut or the right in that cut, we want to make sure that we deploy people in that area, and we try to put people on both ends so we could get to Lake Union and Lake Washington very, very quickly.

I appreciate that and you know this is, it will be good to have the extra coverage in the summertime.

We also did get funding for some additional buoys in the parks district, and that we advocated for that after lots of conversation with the recreational boating Association.

who indicated to us that the existing buoys are too small, especially for some of the really large boats that are starting to come into the bay.

You can't see them, they can't see the signage that indicates the knot speed, and there are also lots of new boaters who don't necessarily know the rules who sort of blow through there, and so the request made to our office was to at least try to get better signage and bigger buoys out there so people can see what they're supposed to be seeing.

So if we add to that your enforcement capabilities, maybe we can see fewer incidents.

No, I couldn't agree more.

I mean, those signage is having a little bit more robust because you are seeing a lot bigger boats that are coming, especially during, you know, good weather.

I mean, there's just a lot of boats out there and those are pretty small in existence.

So we want to make sure we keep people's speed down and it's safer for everybody.

So the last thing I'll say, Chair, if I might, is I went out with somebody from the Boating Association on a very large boat.

I don't remember how big it was.

And her comment to me was, my boat is too big to go the knot speed that is required.

And so I have to go a little bit faster.

And my thought was, if your boat is too big to go the required speed, then maybe we shouldn't be allowing such big boats in the bay.

I don't know what we do about that, but something else to talk about later.

Okay, thank you so much.

Council Member Herbold.

Thank you.

So the thing I'm struggling with here, because this has come up in the past, during the period of time, Chief, when you redeployed officers that were assigned to specialty units to General Patrol, and I understand why you did that, and you have to prioritize the use of resources, but I always understood that this issue of staffing Harbor Patrol was a function of not having sufficient numbers of officers to allow you to prioritize deployment of officers to that function.

And that it's not a money problem.

It's not an issue of, oh, you provide more money, we'll be able to assign more officers.

to this function.

And further, we can't, the council can't make deployment decisions for you in our budget for how you are going to assign your officers.

So I am not understanding how this additional funding addresses that problem.

So one of the things that we've been because we do not have extra officers to be able to put it on a permanent basis.

We're using kind of a hybrid model.

So we're training officers that might be on, say, normal patrol, but during their days off that they have the ability to work an overtime shift and actually be able to be deployed into the harbor unit.

And so that's what we've been doing for special events such as 4th of July seafair etc.

So, when they have time we're not cross training people and then also being able to utilize them and on the boat so this allows us just to be able to use our resources a little bit better, but when specifically to the point.

Our staffing has been greatly reduced in the harbor unit and probably closer to about I don't want to say the exact percentage, but it's around 40 percent or so in reduction as far as because we haven't been able to fill it because I'm robbing somebody else to actually fill that spot.

So really what we've had to do is just cross train our personnel and allow them to to be able to work overtime on an overtime basis to fill those extra shifts.

helpful.

So this $250,000 investment does not guarantee $250,000 worth of hours for Harbor Patrol.

That is still a decision that you will have to make while balancing other priorities as you feel necessary under your charter authority to make those types of decisions.

This does not mean that there is a hard assignment of officers to that function, but it allows you to be more flexible with overtime hours for officers.

Correct.

So it isn't I'm not going to say I can't say, oh, I'm going to put five more officers from patrol into harbor unit permanently.

That that would not be the case.

It's really about being flexible and having to utilize them in an overtime basis.

And, you know, people do want because they want to eventually go to that unit.

They would, you know, on their days off, they would be working.

And so that does allow me to have that flexibility of assignment when they're when they're on their days off.

That's my Nelson.

How many workable boats do we have?

You know, I will get that exact number, I believe we have eight boats total and I right now I think we've gotten a couple that were broken and we've got a fixed.

I think we're I believe so.

Let me just get you the exact numbers rather than give you a number that just I believe from recollection.

So and before Like the pandemic was the kind of the average deployment about five or three.

What was it?

I think I can you remind me that I don't I couldn't tell you the exact typically we I know that we've had when we had full staffing and allowed us to be able to deploy multiple boats at any given time.

And it allows us to also have a switch of training.

So when we do a training session to dive, you have to give so much time and separation for an officer to recover from that dive.

And so it allows us to be able to do a lot more responsive training to the issues that we are going to face out in the field.

So, for example, as Senior Deputy Mayor mentioned, the I-90 recovery, if you have somebody dive for that, You have to almost take them out of service after that dive because they need that recuperation time.

And so having an extra boat be able to be still deployed, it allows us that flexibility to make sure that all the waterways are still covered.

Thanks.

Angela, did you have something you wanted to add to that?

I was just going to clarify, we have 10 boats in the fleet.

They all serve different purposes.

And as the chief pointed out, they're not always available.

I know we have at least one that just had an engine failure.

Many of these boats just haven't been maintained.

Some are used much more frequently than others.

Some are not functional as patrol boats.

We have a fire boat with a pump that is also broken and needs fixing.

So there is $100,000 in this item that will allow us to address some of the deferred maintenance items to fully restore capabilities on our vessels.

OK.

Let's keep going here.

Actually, I'm sorry, I will say something on this.

Similar to some of the other conversations we've had about the budget and questioning the where or the fund source, I think that there's no doubt that the value of having safety patrol on the water is important.

The conversation I thought we were trying to have two years ago was, is there a better nexus with fire on this?

Can you please remind us about if and whether the conversations actually took place about transitioning Harbor Patrol to be underneath our fire department personnel.

Well, we handle the criminal element on the waterways, anything from DUIs to even some of the recoveries of a potential body, because there might have criminal elements to to even what some people might perceive as a drowning.

And so there are those things cannot be sent over to the fire department.

They have us do some of those recoveries and they have us handle or process potential scenes because there's a criminal element to it.

And so there is work for kind of a separation.

Fire has one component and we have another component of service.

So we've had those discussions with the fire department.

I think that there's been discussions about co-location, a variety of different other things.

And those are some of the labor things that we've also been in discussion about as well.

Greg, I see you off mute.

Yeah, I was just going to echo what the chief says about labor things.

There are a number of shared bodies of work between.

Well, not a number, but one of the overlapping is like moving debris in the waterway, things like that, that both fire and police could do.

But it does boil down to a labor issue.

And so that is something that the city would have to negotiate with both unions.

And so that is something that continues to be a problem in that area.

Okay, well, I know that we will try to continue that conversation, but when I hear that this is really dedicated to trying to improve safety for weekend warriors, that to me does not mean going out and trying to find criminal elements out there.

So if there's not a paired investment with additional safety on the water, then I'm wondering how do we advance the conversation about co-response, or does that all have to be put on hold until future negotiations occur?

And I saw Council Member Herbold and then I see Senior Deputy Mayor.

Did you have something to add to this, Council Member?

I think I was just going to try to put up a finer point on your question, but I think you did it.

But just there is an old MOU between fire and police.

There are, as Greg said, overlapping issues that aren't criminal, that some of those things could move over to SPD or SFD.

I think the question is, since we discussed this last year about the things that are overlapping that are not criminal in their tent, Has there been an effort to have that labor conversation to move some of those overlapping issues that are not related to criminal activities over to fire?

Why don't I touch on that and then, so yes, we will continue to have those conversations.

I think that When you look in the budget book and you see where we are with our fire budget and fire resources, you'll see that they also have been pretty tapped in terms of their resources well, particularly around overtime and staffing.

So we're doing our best with the management of both departments.

We'll continue to work on those.

The other complaint that I did not I think it's important to mention earlier, but, you know, Councilmember Muscadine bringing it up, it is one of the things we've heard from our houseboat community, is that they have had robberies occur on the houseboats where people have been, they have gotten away via water, and we do utilize our harbor patrol in those particular cases.

I know other cities would wonder how people steal from others and then get away by water, but it is something that actually happens.

And so our Harbor Patrol is the best way to be able to manage those cases where people pull up to a houseboat in a water vehicle and then are able to also get away via water.

But we will continue to explore the fire issues But I think as you look through their budget book, you'll see that they've also been pretty extended in terms of their overtime hours and ability to deploy their water resources.

Thank you very much.

Council Member Lewis.

Thank you.

I don't want to belabor the slide, because I know we have a lot more to get to.

But just to respond to that, I don't think, Deputy Mayor Harrell, that anybody is saying there doesn't need to be a law enforcement component to the Harbor Patrol.

I just think what's being underlined by some of my colleagues, and I agree with them, is that there is a significant scope of work that is more search and rescue or water safety things that wouldn't necessarily require a gun and badge.

I don't know how common the houseboat getaway by boat burglaries are, but I would imagine we could have a scope of work where we do have sworn Harbor Patrol personnel to respond to those kinds of situations, but then also have you know, more search and rescue and water safety oriented harbor component that is complimentary but doesn't completely replace Harbor Patrol.

I think with lots of these discussions and it's this, I'm just sort of forecasting my broader interest and alternative response.

I think we get bogged down in a conversation no one, I don't think any of us actually wanna have on the council where our interest in exploring different ways to do certain work is construed as, entirely replacing sworn service.

And I don't think that's what it is.

It's just a situation where we have a public safety obligation.

It is not tenable to respond to everything with sworn personnel right now for the reasons that we've discussed, which calls into question how we diversify certain services.

And I think we ignore that part of the discussion way too much and I would hope it would be a significant part of this budget discussion.

And I would think that Harbor Patrol would be a potential area to look at doing that some of that work.

It doesn't mean we want to get rid of the entire sworn component, but it means we can supplement it in a way where you know we can see.

save people from drowning while we're also chasing down the sea burglars.

I guess that's pirates at that point, I don't know.

But the point that I would just make is that I think that you can have both of those services and finding a way to reconcile those things is what would be my focus instead of like it's got to be all one thing or all the other thing.

And I think that false dichotomy is distracting to us and it hinders our ability to move forward.

Thanks.

We're going to round out this discussion with a few hands here, but I want to just know we have one more slide to cover for the department's presentation, so we want to get through that and get to issue identification.

Senior Deputy Mayor Harrell, I'll let you respond first, and then if there's additional technical input from Angela or Julie, happy to take that too.

Yeah, and Councilmember Lewis, thank you for that.

I just want to mention that, you know, I think that if you look at this budget ad, the $250,000, it's certainly not a replacement.

It's not a police covering everything.

It is a pretty modest coverage of hours at a very limited scope.

So I think that we're still doing a lot of the work in terms of looking at alternatives.

This is a really a pretty, moderate response to what we see as a need that we're not quite meeting.

Okay.

Director Dingley.

Thank you.

I just wanted to point out that There was a sly request in a recent budget.

It's SPD 16.1 that SPD responded to in July of twenty twenty one per.

I believe it was the sponsor was Councilmember Herbold asking.

This very question right around the about all the different parameters around how many calls are they getting and what types of calls and should this response live in FHIR or CSCC instead.

And it's a really, I think, a very helpful response.

So I will make sure that my team can send that around to the council members so that we can just have that at the top of your inboxes to help inform the conversation and deliberation as well.

Thanks, I won't speak for the sponsor of that.

But I think that the two or three page response, if I remember correctly, was pretty short.

So I think that under the new administration, we are hopeful that there actually will be movement towards this joint response concept.

But feel free to circulate that just as a reminder of what the previous administration had shared with Council.

Angela, anything else?

Yeah, I just wanted to add in my conversations with the harbor lieutenant.

He emphasized through our discussions around this item that emergency response is always going to be the number 1 priority.

We currently operate under a co response model with the fire department to the benefit of the community, the harbor police harbor facility.

the location on Lake Union places us in a position to respond more rapidly than the fire department.

In the case of fire or rescue, urgent rescue, SPD is often the first responder to arrive.

Fire will follow and obviously take over the medical response aspect.

But I think it is important to note that The location on Lake Union is critical to emergency response, whether fire or police.

We do have fire boats and often support and are the first to be able to get water on active fires.

So sounds like further discussion will take place on this topic.

But just wanted to highlight a few of those issues that we have contemplated.

OK, thanks for that info.

Council Member Strauss.

Thank you, Chair.

I know one of the issues with the slide that we received was the aspect of receiving data because past practice has been if an individual would like a response from Harbor Patrol, the practice is to call the direct line to their office rather than calling 911. Has this practice been changed or is this the consistent practice being used today?

This practice has changed, so all the officers are logging to 911 service for Harbor Patrol.

Great.

Do you think that's going to be able to change the information that you're able to provide us?

it'll at least be able to document a high level of data that is needed to identify all the calls that they actually respond to.

And that was one of the challenges, because when we asked for the data of how many calls do you respond to, they said, oh, well, people call us, and then we respond.

And now by them logging it, this should actually be able to shore up all the stuff that you're requesting.

Thank you.

Do you know if they are still taking calls by phone or is 100% of their response coming through the 911 call center?

I believe that some of their calls are still taking my phone, but what they do is they log to the actual call.

They create a call and then they log to that call.

So there's still people that are going to be homeowners that this is the way they've done it.

They've had, you know, it needed to use 911 service for, you know, 10 years, and then they're going to just call.

And so the officers are now instructed to actually generate that call and then log to that call.

Okay, happy to follow up with you more about this offline.

Thank you.

Perfect.

Perfect.

Thanks.

It also raises the question that I know we've been asking for the last two and a half years, which is, um, And this might go back to a bargaining issue.

But when there's a person down when there's a clear health related concern, it sounds like SPD is still responding, not just SFD.

So is that the situation on the water and on land if it's a health related call?

When it's a health related call, whoever is closest for service and is going to end up responding.

So sometimes fire is out there and they're going to be clear ones to be able to address it.

Since we're actually patrolling those areas and we might find ourselves being able to respond and handle it quicker.

And so most almost I think believe everyone is EMT trained as well.

So that has that basic life support service.

Thanks for that update.

I said we were going to move on and I kept asking questions.

Council Member Strauss, thanks for those good questions you asked.

Let's move on to the last slide here.

All right.

This last slide, I just wanted to make sure for the sake of thoroughness, include some of the baseline and technical changes here.

The, the baseline adjustments account for central costs, along with annual wage increases holiday paying a number of other items that is all managed centrally through the city budget office and directed to the departments.

And the technical adjustments continue our supplemental ads from 2022 and also address the SPMA annual wage increase separate from the baseline adjustments.

Happy to answer any questions.

Okay, let me pause here, see if there's any questions.

Okay, well, that was a thorough discussion.

We did more like an hour and a half, but that was very helpful.

I'm sure that we will hear some more comments on these topics in the central staff presentation, but we may have gotten some of the questions answered in our discussion here today.

Just before we move on, thank you, Chief, for the update on the number of folks who are not complying with the vaccine requirements.

I was looking at the November 4th, 2021 Seattle Times summary and it said at that point, there was 100 officers on leave for COVID-related leave requests.

Do we have an updated number on how many officers are on leave?

We can get you an updated I believe it's under 10 for medical and I believe it's around 25 for religious religious but some of them have already returned, and then some of also just in general, we don't know specifically if they left for the vaccine but some have left the department of that initial hundred people.

Some people have retired early, or not early, but have retired.

So that's the reason why we don't have definitive numbers.

If somebody says, oh, I'm going to retire, I've done 25 years, it's hard to determine whether it was a vaccine thing or if it was actual retirement.

But we'll get you clear numbers.

Okay, thank you so much.

Okay, well, I'm not seeing any other general questions for SPD as a department.

So we are going to thank you very much for your robust presentation.

And I'm sure there will be many more discussions back and forth with central staff and with your teams.

the budget details a little bit more, so thank you.

You were with us this morning, you are with us now, and you are welcome as well to bow out as we go into the central staff presentation.

And of course, I know we'll have a CBO on the line here for some technical issues, but you're welcome to listen in, too.

Thank you so much.

Okay, great.

Thanks, Chutias.

Great to see you all, and we will go ahead and start with the central staff summary of Council Central staff identified issues.

Thank you, Greg.

All right.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Greg Doss, Central staff here to talk with you about issues that we have identified for the SPD budget.

The first issue is on sworn staffing and sort of at a high level.

So far this year, SPD has seen an actual average separation rate of about 15 trained officers per month.

They are currently projecting that at the end of the year, they will have seen 153 trained officers separate.

So how do they create those projections?

Each month, they update their sworn staffing plan with actuals, overriding the previous numbers that they had in their staffing plan for the prior months.

But what they do not do is to update the future months of projections.

And so consequently, if you look at the 2022 staffing plan, that's this year, what you'll see is that they've updated all the last several months between now and or between January of 2022 and August to reflect that higher number of separations.

But if you look for the next, I guess, few months, The plan we received shows September, October, November, and December.

It's still a very low rate.

It's only about six per month.

And so what that's obviously showing us is that it's about half of what we would, it's a little less than half of what we would expect to leave given our experience so far this year.

And it's actually less than what they're projecting to leave next year.

Because if you look at the number of folks that they think are going to leave on a monthly average basis next year, it's about eight separations per month.

And so this is just a an artifact of the way that they do their staffing updates, that they have built their budget, their 2023 budget, on the assumption that very few officers are going to leave this fall, an average of six per month, which is a pretty low assumption, given what we have seen.

And so one option that the council could consider is assuming that there would be a higher rate of separation.

This fall, something, maybe more consistent with what the department is assuming next year.

Let's say eight separations per month.

And if the council did that, then that would mean that there would be sworn salary savings in the 2023 budget because there would be fewer officers, about eight or so, fewer officers that would need salaries next year.

And so the option there, Patty, would you go ahead and flip the slide?

Thank you, Patty.

So the option there would be to reduce the 2023 budget by 1.1 million to reflect the fact that the council is assuming that this fall there will be a higher separation rate than the department is assuming.

And that next year we will need fewer salary dollars for SPD staff.

And option B would be no change.

All right, so lots of hands.

Okay.

I see Council Member Lewis, Council Member Hurdle, Council Member Peterson.

Just for the sake of additional clarification, if there's something that was missing or you need to add, Director Dingley?

Yes, thank you for the opportunity, Budget Chair.

I just wanted to flag that there is a concern from the executive on this proposal.

Often we have to, as we have experienced this year and you all have had to deal with, we do need to use the salary savings to pay for additional overtime because the fewer officers we have, the more we have to ask those on their days off to come in to cover those shifts.

And so while not to impugn any math here or this option, it would in real terms reduce the ability of the police department to deploy officers because we wouldn't have that overtime available to meet those needs.

And so that's just an added impact of this option.

Okay.

I want to be clear that this is not a proposal.

We are asking central staff to do an independent analysis for us.

Sorry.

Yeah.

And this is an opportunity for us to see that independent analysis.

We've had the chance to see the proposal as outlined in the proposed budget.

Obviously, there will be concerns about items that might not align 100%.

We get that, but I want to make sure that we reserve the chance to hear any technical feedback or additional input in these times.

So thank you for sharing that perspective.

And we'll go over to Council Member Lewis.

Thank you.

And Greg, I don't know if this is a question for you or for the department.

But just to kind of, you know, we have this discussion every budget about expected attrition rates and what we should budget to, and there's always more ambitious targets that are suggested by the executive.

This time around, are these numbers informed by projections based on the hiring and retention incentives?

that the executive is going to be offering or some other considerations that might make this cycle materially different in terms of the anticipated separations than the past couple of years.

Well, I think that in terms of the new hires that the executive would would say that they certainly hope that the bonuses, the streamline recruiting additional marketing, all of those things would impact the new hire side and that they could.

That's why I have this table up here for you, they could move from, if you look at 2022 projected year end hires from 68. This year to 120 next year, so certainly they hope that the recruitment and retention bill will impact that number.

In terms of reducing the separations from the 153 number down to 105. There's not a lot in the recruitment and retention bill that would affect separations or retention there is an $800,000 item for a leadership academy.

that falls under the retention initiative category.

And I'm quite sure that SPD is doing its own things for retention and of course there's also bargaining going on with the union and retention is likely a subject there too, but.

In terms of success in keeping folks there, that is very difficult to predict, and that is why I think SPD, when they revise their staffing plan, revises past months on separation, but is reluctant to change their forward projections as they're moving along.

Of course, they have to do it when they're putting together an annual budget.

They have to assume some number, and in this case, they assumed 105.

follow-up on that?

No, no follow-up.

Thank you.

Senior Deputy Mayor, I don't want to skip over you.

I saw you had a hand.

Anything to add as well?

I was just, I think that Greg covered well some of the things that are different from what we are covering.

If you look at separations as a percentage of the overall number of officers, there does reach a point of kind of hopefully diminishing returns on separations that we have fewer people to separate from a smaller number.

And so we are very much working a recruitment and retention plan that will hopefully not see our numbers drop too far below from what they are now.

So if you look at you know where we net out on the assumptions overall we are really hoping to have ended the the attrition to be able to recruit up through next through next year beginning through next year.

of seeing positive gains going forward.

And so, if you look at the number of separations and the number of ads, we're really hoping to not have attrition in those numbers.

Okay, just want to make sure, Council Member Lewis, any other questions?

No, that's sufficient for now.

Okay, thanks.

Council Member Herbold.

Thank you.

I'm just wondering, is a third option to sort of apply your same logic here to 2023 as you do for 2022?

Or is that identified as a completely separate issue?

It is not identified as a separate issue and it could be a third option, an option C.

Sort of the option that is before you now is to take that 153 number, which is, you know, in the separations on 2022. And you would be moving that up effectively to 161. And then that that would be, that's the option before you and that what that does is it also gives the flexibility if you don't actually see 161 in 2022. then you still may accrue the savings in 2023 if there are not 120 hires made or if there are more than 105 separations.

So it kind of still gets you there either way, even if you were to assume it in 2022 or if you were to assume it in 2023, sort of the option C that you're talking about.

The benefit of doing 2022 is that it gets you a full year of that savings and it gets you a higher dollar amount.

It gets you the 1.1 million.

I want to clarify, my idea of an option three, I'm asking as an additive option, not as a substitution.

I'm just wondering, is there a need or would there be a benefit of right-sizing the separation estimate for the out years as well as for this year?

Yeah, and so that is something that the council has by choice done in the last two years, they have taken the executives sworn staffing plan and taken the number of hires and assume the same number of separations.

And last year that was effectively 125 hires and 125 separations.

And as you can see, in 2022, nowhere near 125 hires and well over 125 separations.

In 2021, you had the same kind of order of magnitude.

So there is a precedent for doing both options, as you're suggesting.

Sort of the balance there is what the deputy mayor is bringing up.

At what point in time do the retirements and separations start to fall off if they do?

And if you assume a greater number and they do start falling off, you'll be in a position halfway through the year of potentially having to add money to the voice.

Yeah.

Understood.

OK, thank you.

As long as I have the floor here for a second, I'd like to also address Director Dingley's comment.

It is true that by cutting the money for the vacancies in 2022, this option A that I have presented, you would not leave that money available in overtime next year.

And by not having that money available in overtime, the department would not have that money available for extra emphasis patrols, more patrol augmentation, and they would be eight fewer staff.

So that is certainly something to consider.

In the bigger picture, they have had sworn staffing separations at the much higher rate in the last couple years, and a number of those savings have gone into both overtime as well as internal needs for the department, things like the SBMA contract settlement that we'll talk about here in a minute.

Can I just ask a follow-up question?

I'm sorry, colleagues, I see your hands.

But does that mean that there's an assumption being made within the proposed budget that's come down that there is already an underestimate on the number of overtime hours that will be needed next year?

I can't speak for the executive on whether or not they think there is an underestimate of the number of overtime hours.

I think that.

what they were saying is that if there are eight fewer staff and the council takes their salary savings, that that exact dollar amount, 1.1 million, will not be available in overtime for patrol augmentation or for other overtime uses that might be able to balance out not having those eight officers.

And that would be different than the state of the 2023 proposed budget as it was sent to the council.

And what I'm suggesting is that in the big picture of SPD's salary savings over the last couple years, there's sort of been enough to go around for overtime and for other things that the department wanted to spend on.

That may or may not be the case next year.

It is always a risk.

Okay.

And I saw Director Dingley nodding as an affirmation.

I did.

Yes.

Greg covered that really well.

Appreciate it.

Okay.

Excellent.

All right.

I think that Council Member Herbold and Council Member Lewis have gone.

I believe we are next to Council Member Peterson.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

In terms of the issue identification for the Seattle Police Department, I'm approaching this from the concern of us having a major staffing shortage, 911 response times being too high, too long.

I've had several violent crimes in my district.

And so for me, the option C would be how do we do more for recruitment and retention?

I think it's a little bit premature to be assuming that SPD won't hit their goals here, especially because the recruitment retention strategies have not been fully realized yet.

I'm concerned about, as the CBO director mentioned, not having enough for overtime that we'll need.

Part of the separations based on exit interviews is that The officers don't feel supported.

I'm concerned we have a shortage of detectives.

So I just, I really hope that we view this as what can we do to keep the officers here?

What more can we be doing for recruitment rather than trying to nickel and dime the department, scoop away, question them too early at this point?

Maybe this would be a discussion we could have at the end of the year or mid-year or next year when we have, when we see if it's the plan has started to work from our new mayor and from our now soon to be permanent police chief.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Peterson, for flagging those interests.

Council Member Nelson.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

So, you know, public safety is our core responsibility and we could do better.

I mean, just look at the last shot spotter.

I'm not shot spotter, but shots fired.

report that came out for the viewing public year to date, homicides are up twenty nine percent with forty six confirmed victims this year, thirty four of whom were fatal shootings and two thirds of those were people of color.

So the so I could go on and on about the statistics, but the point that I'm trying to make is that, you know, SPD is already taking the largest cut of any department in the budget this year.

This budget assumes that we're permanently removing 80 officers that will provide $11 million to be used for general fund going forward because those positions are gone.

This, this talk about cutting again makes me concerned because also, as we just talked about overtime last year Council cut $3 million for overtime that was in the mayor's proposed budget, and we never know what's going to happen.

But the point I want to show, if you look at the historical staffing, you'll notice that the recent year that had the most hires was 2019 at 108 officers.

And that was a year in which there was a staffing incentive program in place.

And so why not be optimistic and assume that the that the retention plan and recruitment plan that we passed does have the intended effects.

So that's where I'm coming from on this.

Thank you, Council Member Nelson, for sharing that perspective.

Council Member Morales, please go ahead.

Thank you, Chair.

I think it's important to acknowledge that there is a lot of reference being made right now to our city charter priorities, and there's an implication that our number one priority via the charter is public safety.

What the preamble of the charter actually says is that it's for the purpose of protecting and enhancing the health of our community, safety, environment, and general welfare of the people.

So the responsibility of the city goes far beyond public safety.

It includes transparency, accountability, fiscal responsibility.

These are also required of the mayor and of the council via the charter.

We are obligated to protect the health and general welfare and to provide equitable participation of our neighbors in service of our neighbors and our city to create a healthy city.

So that's why we're having these discussions.

That's why we have been sort of mulling all of this, especially in the last few years, because it's important to discuss how we allocate our very scarce and now even scarcer public resources.

That's why we have so much concern about how we're investing in the programs and services and the frontline workers who serve our most vulnerable, who can have really long lasting impacts on the health of our neighbors and of our neighborhoods.

And that's why we're looking for transparent, sustainable solutions to the very real structural problems that we are realizing we have in our financial practices in the city.

So, you know, certainly public safety is one part of what we are obligated to protect in this city, but it is not the only part, and it is not even the first thing mentioned in the city charter.

Health is the first thing mentioned.

So I think it's important for us to kind of recalibrate our expectations about how we need to serve our community and acknowledge that especially right now, when we have so many extraordinarily vulnerable people on our streets, there are things we should be doing to serve them.

And these are things that the police department cannot do.

So I think it's important to be clear about that and to remember that we have lots of obligations as a city council and the mayor, and public safety is just one of them, and it is something we need to keep in mind.

Thank you, Council Member Morales, for sharing that perspective.

Council Member Lewis?

Thank you, Councilmember Mosqueda.

Just to jump in here, similar to the points that Councilmember Morales was raising, what I would really like to see as part of our budget process, and this is immaterial of exactly how we fund the Sworn Hiring Plan.

I agree with the sentiments mentioned by some colleagues that we want to optimistically realize the four corners of this hiring plan.

But I want to also see how we can set up working backwards from what the situation is on the street in a comprehensive way to realize real, sustained, and improved community safety.

It's not all going to come from the Seattle Police Department.

To sort of emphasize some of the broader points of agreement I have with what Councilmember Morales just stated, It's going to also come from place making it's going to come from making physical improvements to the built environment from activating storefronts.

It's going to come from, you know, better, better planning and getting people to go back to work to activate spaces and have more informal guardians in our public places.

And I just want to make sure we don't lose sight of that.

It's also going to come from things like adequately compensating and paying our social service providers who are taking people off the streets and keeping them off the streets in places where they're getting care and assistance and help, instead of being in a position where they can be potential victims of violence, which we've seen happen time and time again.

But just to digress a little bit more, because I know we're pressed, but to flag my interest in some future discussions, I would really like us to figure out how we can bake into our budget more coordination between a lot of the different groups we have out in the public who are doing public safety work, but it's not necessarily as coordinated as it could be.

And SPD needs to be a really important part of that discussion, and that's why I'm flagging that right now.

But we have a lot of people downtown with KCRHA who are doing outreach.

We have LEAD and REACH workers doing outreach.

We have the MID ambassadors.

There's a whole bunch of people who are out there doing public safety work.

But what I sense is lacking is a broader view where we can work backwards from exactly what the problem is that we're trying to fix.

to determine what the best mix of personnel and strategy is going to be to make a difference on those things.

And I mean, I think there's no bigger point than look, we had 1400 police staff members in January of 2020, there was a mass shooting on Third Avenue that killed a community member living in a bellwether community housing building on Third Avenue.

It was a public safety crisis that shocked the conscience and that was with high police staffing.

Police are necessary and we need to build back the staffing through a plan like this.

But I want to see it hooked up to a broader comprehensive public safety plan that is working backwards from the situation we're seeing on the street and what kind of response we need to respond and mitigate those problems.

That'll come more into focus as we talk about the HSD and KCRHA ads as well.

But I wanted to flag it here because it's important in the context of making sure that our police are supplemented with adequate personnel for comprehensive community safety.

Thank you, Council Member Lewis, for sharing that perspective.

Council Member Nelson, I see your hand still up.

Is that an old hand or a new hand?

Oh, I'm sorry, public safety is all of what council member Lewis just said.

It's not just police.

I said public safety is a core responsibility.

Let's not forget fire and all of the services that we've got that are also working on the combination of health and people's safety.

So just wanted to note that in case I wasn't clear.

I do have a few questions.

Councilmember Lewis, I think that's an old hand, just correct?

All right.

Yeah, old hand.

Thanks so much.

So I have a question for central staff.

I just want to check some facts here.

It was stated that Seattle Police Department is seeking the largest cut of any department.

Can I get clarification on that from central staff?

I believe that they have the largest general fund cut at $12 million is my Esther is nodding.

So yes, I believe that's the case.

And overall for budget and investments across departments, if we look at all the funding streams.

I'm sorry, go ahead.

I was just going to say I don't know that we have presented that analysis yet when we look at all funds.

I think the the what was being referred to what was what was presented on Tuesday, which was a look at the general fund net ads or cuts.

OK, and then one more clarification and then I'm happy to take additional content from Director Dingley.

It was also, I think, clarified in the earlier discussion that we had about the 80 positions.

These are not.

I understand the distinction between permanently being cut from the Seattle Police Department, they're just permanently being, quote, underfunded.

I understand the distinction between cutting a position versus not funding it.

Is that a distinction that I'm understanding accurately?

Thank you.

I just wanted to clarify that we were really intentional with how we built the budget around SPD in response to a lot of the conversation that happened before my time in this chair, but with between the previous administration and the council around transparency and how they budget.

And so the full reduction to SPD, just so that we're all on the same page, is 26 million in general fund.

And so And much of that has been reinvested back into the department, but we did we did cut before we added.

And so I want to just make sure that that is really clear to everybody.

And that is the largest general fund cut.

OK, thanks.

Are we ready to move on?

You know, I do have a question, Greg, I don't know if this is the best spot to add it, but just generally related to personnel.

When I look at Appendix 4 in your materials, Table 1, can you tell me a little bit more about how the shifts in allocation of patrol personnel and non-personnel, what is the distinction there that we should take away from that appendix given the total number of personnel that we have remaining at the department or growing at the department?

So in Appendix 4, what you're seeing is sort of a look at 2020's allocation of personnel.

And in 2020, that was pre-separation time.

And so that was an allocation of the department personnel when they were better staffed.

that was when they had over 1,300 staff.

And this is how the chief in 2020 chose to distribute her personnel.

In February of 2022, Chief Diaz underwent a reorg and shifted some resources around.

And in doing so, there was a bit of a redistribution of resources.

and you'll see that middle column.

And then in the far right column, you'll see that in August, 2022, he has aligned the budget structure.

And so the takeaway from, I think the takeaway from this is the shifting between the various categories of police work relative to the resources that they had in 2020 and the resources that they have now.

And sort of at a high level, you know, I think what most folks know is that the Seattle Police Department has attempted to.

make sure that they maintain response times and make sure that they keep staffed as much as possible patrol response.

And so sort of above the line in patrol personnel that has stayed relatively constant or has grown.

And then below the line of non-patrol personnel, you can see that those categories of sworn personnel have decreased since the staffing shortage has begun.

those would be the big takeaways.

So I understand that the council is not in a position to direct how personnel are allocated within the department.

Council Member Herbold underscored that point earlier.

But the takeaway that I'm seeing is that this looks like it's describing a future organizational chart that moves more patrol personnel that are really focused on public safety oriented work to non patrol personnel positions like canine unit SWAT team bomb response.

Is that accurate?

I think it's the other way around.

Over the long haul, what you're seeing is the investigations, if you look at the 2020 and you see investigative and specialty units, and specialty units are the ones where you're going to have canine and bomb and the various types of, and harbor and various other types of specialty units.

They were 16.2 and 9% respectively, and patrol was 9-1-1 response was 35%.

And now that shifted and you have as a percentage of the department's resource, fewer people in investigations and specialty and more people in patrol.

So that's a reflection of how the department is allocating its resources now.

It's not moving more people into canine unit bomb response and SWAT patrol.

Well, in the big categories between the lower line of non patrol and patrol, things are moving up between moving within the investigative units and the specialty units.

Obviously you can see that there used to be 16% in the investigative units and 9% in specialty.

And now you have investigative down to 12 and specialty is only down to eight.

So specialty has taken as a percentage of the total, less of a cut.

if that's the point you're making.

Okay.

I think that we all remain concerned about officers being shifted away from things like investigations and appreciate that.

I believe in conjunction with Mayor Harrell and the team that that was right.

that was righted.

And I just wanted to make sure that we were not seeing a chart that looked like we were moving folks from a more public safety oriented lens to something that looked like a more specialty and not daily required use like training dogs and among the SWAT team.

Not that it's not important work, but in terms of public safety issues that have been raised by my colleagues.

I would assume that there's a big interest in wanting to know if the public safety oriented personnel is as being maintained.

So thank you for walking me through that.

Patty, thanks for getting us back onto the right slide and getting us back on track here.

So let's keep going.

Alright, so the next issue Patty thanks is the gunfire detection system.

Um, so the 2023 24 proposed budget would fund 1Million dollars for project costs to support the planning.

R.

F. P. and evaluation for a gunfire detection system, a G.

D. S.

to put in Seattle neighborhoods with high incidence of gun violence.

The executive indicates that this technology would provide SPD with evidence collection capabilities for use in homicide investigations and other incidents involving firearms, particularly when it is paired with either cameras or automated license plate reader capabilities.

And so tell you a little bit about the $1 million.

It is made up of four components.

The first of which is $175,000 for a temporary strategic advisor that would coordinate community outreach and write a surveillance impact report, coordinate an RFP process, and eventually work to coordinate the deployment of the system.

There would be 300,000 for community engagement and outreach.

There would be 200,000 for RFP development.

And then finally, there would be 325,000 to engage with an evaluation research partner that would make sure that the evaluation program is developed in concert with the program overall.

And so, Complete GDS costs, gunfire detection system costs, may vary pretty widely depending on the functionality of the system, and that also can be widely varying.

Again, whether it has cameras, whether it has automated license plate system, Capabilities or whether it employs a human center to review the potential shot fires, all of those kinds of things can impact costs police chief magazine noted that.

These systems on average can cost up to about $90,000 per square mile that they're put in.

The 2024 proposed budget only puts in about $1 million more for system acquisition.

I'm going to talk a little bit about effectiveness of the system, which I discuss in length in my memo.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has recognized the speed of law enforcement response as critical to saving the life of citizens in active shooter events.

And the citizen, the city of Denver has said that they have seen a 66% increase in response times or decrease I should say in response times betterment of response times, compared with typical 911 response, when they are.

using a gunfire detection system and that it has helped them capture evidence in gun crimes.

However, independent research has shown that the use of a gun to fire detection system rarely leads to evidence of a gun-related crime or impacts gun violence.

The Seattle City Auditor produced a report in 2016 that highlights a number of studies that claimed that there were no improvement in gun-related case resolution such as in making arrests or in prosecuting suspects, and that systems did not help officers to make more arrests as shooters tended to leave the scene quickly.

That was in 2016. These findings have also been affirmed by our newer studies, all of which are in my central staff memo.

There are downsides to deploying a gunfire detection system.

Examinations of these systems have uncovered problems with admissibility in court or misuse of the system data in court.

They have eliminated race and social justice issues.

They have highlighted other potentially harmful consequences.

Just a number of those would include Specifically, racially inequitable deployment and disproportionality issues.

One I would focus on is a Chicago study that was done by the Office of the Inspector General.

that found that there were 1,366 incidents where an officer indicated in their report that the fact of being in a gunfire detection system area was an element of the reasonable suspicion that they used to justify an investigatory stop.

Additionally, that some sworn officers reported conducting protective pat-downs following a stop because they knew themselves to be in areas where gunfire detection systems were frequent.

Some other problems, SPD might see a under-reporting of gunshots in neighborhoods that have received the gunshot detection technology.

This was the case in a study that was done in St. Louis that found that 911 calls had declined by 37 percent without a corresponding decrease in gun incidents.

There could be a challenge in detection of potential gunshots near schools and sensitive areas that would require SPD to coordinate policies and protocols with schools or child care centers or preschools.

It would be important to know for schools when they should go on lockdown.

That is obviously something that can be triggering for their students.

And not to mention that a police response to a gunshot detection system would likely be a priority one call.

And so it would tax the city's 911 system and it would tax the SPD response system, particularly and create emotional stress for officers, particularly in light of the recent staffing shortages that we have been talking about.

And the last thing I'm going to talk about is the city surveillance ordinance.

The city surveillance ordinance requires that before acquisition of a technology that could be considered surveillance and something with cameras and license plate readers would likely be considered surveillance, the department would need to complete a surveillance impact report or a SIR.

Each one of those needs to describe protocols for how the technology is deployed, the rules of use, and in this case that would be when and how live or recorded camera feed could be accessed by police department officers.

It would need to identify storage policies, retention policies, access to surveillance data, consideration of proportional disproportionate impacts and a mitigation strategy.

It would need to identify community engagement that SPD had done to determine impacts with affected communities and mitigation strategies.

And so there's There's a lot of work that would need to be done to comply with the surveillance ordinance and that surveillance ordinance by code must be reviewed by the community surveillance working group.

And then it must be reviewed by the council and an ordinance must be passed by the council that accepts a serve before the technology can be acquired.

central staff who work on surveillance issues think it's extremely unlikely that all of that can be done in the 12 months that it would take to, that the executive proposes that it would spend the $1 million that's being requested in the budget.

During that time period, the executive has said that they plan to conduct the community outreach for the, sir, that they are going to do the RFP so that they can.

Cost out the, sir, and that that is that is something that the council would need to know.

Um, and then finally that they would do, um.

Uh, final acquisition of and deployment of the server or final acquisition of the, uh, of the system late in 23 after the council had approved it.

And, uh, that assumes council approval.

Um.

And then, as I said, they would have money budgeted for an evaluation.

And so, Patty, would you flip the slide please?

So I went through a lot of stuff, but the options before you are to remove the system itself to remove 325,000 for the evaluation research partner, not likely needed until 2024. I had said that.

it is highly unlikely that the executive could get that SIR produced and through the council process in time to make an informed decision about whether or not they would need an evaluation.

And so one option for the council would be to remove that $325,000 to wait and see if the council approves the executive's policies, privacy protection policies for such a system and allows acquisition of that system.

And then option C would be no change.

And that's all I have on this particular item.

Thank you so much.

Council President Morris.

Thank you.

Greg, I just have two quick questions.

So what year was the Chicago study?

I believe the Chicago study was last year or the year before.

Okay.

And the second question I have, so you're saying that in the study, either in 2021 or 20, that police officers were using the gunfire detection system as probable cause?

Reasonable suspicion, yes.

Reasonable suspicion, probable cause, reasonable suspicion, okay.

Thank you.

Councilmember Herbold.

Thank you.

Yeah, just confirming it was the Chicago report was in 2021. Our own city auditor also did a review of three independent studies.

That was a few years prior to that.

And I really appreciate the fact that Mayor Harrell has rightly identified gun no dispute there.

In my conversations about the proposal, there is an understanding that this kind of technology is not a gun violence prevention tool, but rather a belief that it is a tool that helps the prosecution of people engaged in gun violence.

Again, our understanding is that not only does a 2021 peer review study of shot spotter in 68 different US counties show no reduction in firearm homicides, it also does not show a reduction in arrests or weapons arrests.

So I really am hoping that we, and focus our efforts on trying to identify things that we know are effective in both gun violence prevention and addressing the need to reduce recurring cycles of gun violence.

And I just wanna flag that in July in my committee, we invited King County Public Health, to come and present on the regional effort to address gun violence, of which Seattle is a participant, and we have skin in the game with investments through the regional Peacekeepers Collaborative.

And one of the interventions is the Harborview Medical Center Hospital-based intervention.

And we learned back in July that there is a need to expand this particular intervention that has been showing great outcomes for folks under 25 to expand the age ranges to serve folks who are ages 25 to 40, where we're seeing, that's the area where we're seeing such an increase, an uptick in gun violence.

And again, the idea is, is by having somebody at the hospital who intervenes with both victims of gun violence and the family members of victims of gun violence, you can stop the cycle of the element of retribution with gun violence.

I was in a panel discussion yesterday with folks from King County, and it was said very effectively, hurt people, hurt people.

And that intervention is really focused on making sure that people who are hurt do not continue to hurt other people.

And there's, again, good outcomes that are supported by an analysis of the younger cohort that we can work on trying to replicate in this area where there is a clear gap that is not going addressed that really is of great urgency.

Thank you, Councilmember Herbold.

I echo those concerns.

I appreciate you airing that data.

And Greg, thank you for sharing both of the studies that you're looking at across the spectrum.

That's very helpful from the nonpartisan perspective.

Really appreciate central staff's analysis on this.

Councilmember Nelson.

So I appreciate what we're doing right now with the peacekeepers.

I think I read that we're adding one point five to an already existing 17 million budget.

I don't know the apportionment of between Seattle and King County.

And we also have the community safety initiative.

But the point is that gun violence is going in the wrong direction.

It's going up.

And so To me, this is another tool that we could have.

But I wanted to if if I may, if you'll indulge me a bit, respond to some of the the points that are made in in the memo about shot spotter.

And I want to acknowledge that this is this proposal is for a GDS system, not shot spotter per se.

There are many other systems out there, but The memo says that the Chicago study found instances where investigatory stops were associated with shot spotter, but not matched to any of the 50,000 identified alerts.

But the Chicago study didn't say alerts didn't indicate actual gunfire.

In fact, the inspector general said, quote, our study is not about technological accuracy.

And she acknowledged, quote, it's entirely possible that every one of the 50 1,000 alerts correctly identified the sound of gunfire.

And while we're dueling studies out there, another independent study by Edgeworth Analytics, which is a data science firm in DC, they found that the technology can be accurate about 97% of the time.

So it really depends on what study you're reading.

Regarding the class action lawsuit against Chicago, we just have to remember that that was not about the technology.

That was about the misuse, the allegation that police misuse data.

So we're not talking about police behavior here.

This is about a technology we're trying to debate.

Another point is the AP article.

The memo states that there's an AP article alleging that shot spotter employees made improper claims in court, but the AP had to issue a correction to that article, noting that it contained a number of misstatements and falsehoods.

The correction notes that the judge in the case cited reverse course in admitted shot spotter evidence, and shot spotter says it's evidence and expert witness testimony have been admitted in over 200 court cases in 20 states.

The memo cites a study from the Journal of Urban Health to claim that shot spotter leads to underreporting of gunshots, but that study was clearly flawed because it measured large areas outside of shot spotters coverage.

So you see where I'm going there.

In addition, the moment says we shouldn't deploy shot spotter because it might detect gunfighter gunfire that causes school lockdown.

Last week, or maybe it was a couple of days ago, I received an email from the parent of a child at John Stanford who is having some trauma about the the gunfire that occurred last weekend or weekend before or so.

So You know, yes, there's trauma all around.

It's caused by gun violence.

And then finally, the when we talk about that, it would tax our first responder system and create emotional stress for SPD officers.

I recognize that's that is also a possibility.

However, this seems to be something that SPD is wanting.

The mayor's proposing and it's been on the table before and has had the support of people in the communities that are most impacted by gun violence.

And so bottom line is, you know, even if ShotSpotter saved the life by allowing an officer to respond more quickly, I think that if any of us were the loved one of that person, you know, we'd be happy that we're spending a million dollars on this because life is precious and priceless.

And I just wanna keep in mind that we're talking about just another tool in our toolbox to address an issue that's not getting any better, it's only getting worse.

Okay, thank you, Council Member Nelson.

We do need to wrap this up.

I was messaging with central staff, we're gonna try to get this wrapped up in the next five minutes.

I know we only have two more slides, but for the purposes of wrapping up this discussion, I will just note that the, Comments that were just made about the additional analysis cited was from the Edgeworth Analytics Study commissioned in 2021, which was actually a study commissioned by ShotSpotter.

My team has super informative call with folks over at Campaign Zero, which is a gun violence prevention organization.

I wanted to flag a piece of information that this organization gave us.

What ShotSpotter reports as their accuracy, and false positive rates is unreliable.

They assume every single alert they publish is a gunshot unless an officer goes out of their way to report shots to ShotSpotter that it was wrong.

And officers are not trained to do that.

Officers are only told to report gunshots that don't have an alert or the location was wrong, but not false positives.

I just wanted to flag that.

I thought this was alarming.

I look forward to continuing this discussion.

It's turning more into a debate.

I've been trying to keep us in the discussion category here, but we will have more discussion and debate about this and look forward to working with all of you to address how we move forward.

And this is starting to bleed over into some of our conversation about That was the wrong term to use right now.

This is starting to merge over into a discussion about alternative systems.

So this is good.

We will finish the rest of this presentation and we will go on to talking about the Community Safety and Communication Center to round out our discussion about alternatives that are or are not included in this budget.

Greg, it is your turn to take us through.

And if you have anything else to add to that discussion, you're welcome to, but I know you have two more slides.

No, the only thing I was going to point out on the last discussion is that the point that I was making in the presentation is not one of how many of the shots are accurate.

The point that is being made is that if the goal is to if the goal of the system is to aid in detection of gun crime and gather evidence and to help with prosecution, the Chicago study, regardless of the 50,000, whether it was accurate or not, found very few times, well, 4,000 to be specific, 4,500 and some, where there was evidence of a gun crime that was found.

So that's the specific, salient piece of information to evaluate when you're looking at whether or not the system will produce the results that you're looking for.

So that was that was my point with that particular piece of information.

But regarding the the I'll stop.

Looks like we're going to continue on.

We're going to continue on.

We will have more conversation about shots better for sure.

appreciate the perspectives that have been shared and the nonpartisan analysis from central staff.

Let's wrap this section up so we can get on to the communications.

The salary savings proviso.

So the 2022, the 2022 adopted budget has a salary savings proviso that restricts SPD's ability to expend its salary savings without a future lift by the council and it is the case that as you know there have been 100 well it's predicted that there's going to be 153 separations this year and that SPD is assuming that that will amount to about 10 million dollars in salary savings.

On at the August public safety and human services meeting August 16, 2022, the committee received a briefing from central staff and from SPD on how it plans to use its salary savings.

That was in conjunction with a briefing on the recruitment and retention ordinance.

And that briefing, the Public Safety and Human Services Committee heard that roughly there is going to be spending such that there would be 3.2 million spent on SPMA, about another 3 million spent on unanticipated benefits, 3 or so million spent on overtime, and then of course 1.8 on recruitment and retention activities.

So with that as an update, central staff and SPD at the time said that the only way that SPD would make its budget at the end of the year is if that salary savings proviso was lifted so that SPD would have access to all of its salary savings to be able to cover those items that I just mentioned.

And there was attached to the central staff memo, a rather detailed report by SPD showing how they had spent the three some million in overtime funding, as well as some of the other items that I covered.

And so now we are at that point, the council is at that point in the year where they would need to release the salary savings proviso in the year end supplemental.

And so that is the decision before you is to release Patty, if you could flip one more.

Option A would be to release that proviso and allow the department to spend its salary savings on those items that I mentioned.

Option B would be no change.

The only thing I would let the committee know is that without a lift of that proviso, the department would incur an exception, would not make their budget this year.

And so that's all I had on this item.

All right, great.

You got through it.

Thank you so much.

Are there questions from folks about these options, this last issue that's being identified?

All right.

I'm not seeing any, Greg.

I would just say, if you can go back one more slide, Patty, thank you.

I continue to be frustrated by the use of what departments consider to be appropriate for budget exceptions ordinance, we've done a lot in the last few years to try to tamper down or clamp down on the use of budget exceptions as a way to just backfill funding that's already been spent.

we've had a lot of conversations about spending within the limits that they've been given.

Is there any additional information that could round out what is being considered extraordinary budgeting needs?

And I would not assume that overtime is being considered an extraordinary budgeting need given that is something that can be predicted.

And we also are still unfortunately in a position of trying to, I'm sure the executive will agree with me, trying to figure out how we can move more officers away from special events that are requiring a lot of overtime hours right now.

So that effort has been very frustrating, but I just want us to continue to move in a position that doesn't assume that budget exceptions ordinances will be passed.

And I think that this, if I'm I'm going to guess what the executive would say, that this is being proposed so that you don't have to ask for an exceptions ordinance.

But again, I want to make sure that when budgets are allocated, the departments are staying within those budgets unless it's truly extraordinary.

Before I turn it over to folks to answer that question, I just wondered if Council Member Herbold had anything to add to that issue.

I just have a question about our prior Adjustment to the budget proviso and which.

My recollection is, though admittedly it's fuzzy, we did earlier this year, I think I had to take two tries at it to do so successfully, but it was designed to allow SPD to use its salary savings for items that the council agreed were priorities.

And you could remind us, Greg, the amount.

and the items that that was for.

I just want to make sure there's not duplication in what we're hearing now.

No, thank you, Council Member.

It was $1.8 million and it was for the items that were in Ordinance 126654, the Recruitment Ordinance, and it was for the hiring bonuses that would be given to recruits coming in through the rest of the year, as well as hiring additional staff at the Human Resource Department to aid in the hiring of new officers, backgrounding, marketing.

And then also there was some room in there for potential spending on relocation costs.

That entire package rolled up to 1.8 million.

And so that bill gave them the authority to spend their salary savings on that piece of it alone.

And so my, I was thinking about another proviso lift, and I think maybe that was in 2021, that was another proviso lift designed to fund things that the council agreed on.

So I am conflating, but as it relates specifically to this proposed one, Can you help us understand specifically as it relates to the recruitment and retention element?

And the last proviso lift did fund what was proposed.

Why is it being replicated here?

I'm sorry, I'm not following your question.

Could you say it again?

So this, there is a request for a full priso lift for 2022 salary savings.

A totaling, it sounds like it's a total of an additional $10 million.

Why is it, why is one of the uses of that, the recruitment and retention element?

Yeah.

When you pay for that.

Yeah, Patty, could you flip back to the to the last slide, please?

Thank you so.

The top bullet there ordinance 126654 that I should have put in parents there.

The the 1.8 million all all I'm trying to say is that by lifting the entire proviso not what you had done in the in the legislation was authorized up to 1.8 million.

By lifting the entire proviso, crossing it out of the budget, getting rid of it, it will allow them to spend their salary savings on all four of these bullets.

And by doing that, they can stay in balance.

And what they have here with these four bullets, if you were to add in the 1.8 that I left out there on the top, would be $10 million worth of need.

And then that's about what they have in salary savings.

I'm sorry I'm just not I'm tracking I thought we funded the need associated.

You did, you gave them, you released 1.8 million.

And so that immediately gave them 1.8 million of salary savings authority to spend.

And now they need the rest.

And so instead of, you know, giving them specific line item authority for everything else they need, the suggestion here is just that you would eliminate the proviso and let them spend the entirety of their salary savings to balance their budget, which is about, I mean, it's for these things.

Let's have clarification from Director Dingley and Director Handy and then we're going to close this out.

Great.

Thank you.

I'll try to make it quick.

Greg has done incredible analysis as per usual.

Thank you, Greg.

And we want to be really clear that this will doing this will allow us to avoid budget except.

And this is not.

This is not for lack of effort or for lack of transparency so we you know we transmitted the budget in.

September and we let you all know in sort of mid September that this was likely to be coming and we've been working a lot throughout the year.

But what happens is there's a direct relationship to the staffing level and the overtime usage.

And so I just want to make sure I drive that home for everybody, because the fewer officers we have, the more we have to rely on overtime.

I don't mean to be overly pedantic about that.

It's just that this isn't going to be an issue that goes away for us.

So what we have in the 2023 proposed budget is a plan.

And if we were to get that plan wrong by one officer or 12 officers, we're going to need to adjust the amount between salaries and the overtime.

And so those two things are related.

And I just want to make sure that that part is clear.

And I'm sorry if we have been unclear up until now on that, but those two pieces are, they are two sides of the same coin.

And so because of the proviso, we've had to come to you to get that lifted to be able to spend it on the other side of that coin.

And so that I think is what's newer about this conversation is because of how tightly that's written.

And that's why you're seeing it here.

Typically, they would have said, we're down on staffing, and so we're going to have to spend it on overtime.

And it wouldn't have necessarily been the subject of conversation.

So I hope that that helps clarify.

Go ahead, Council Member.

Overtime is the one element of this scenario here that I don't have questions on.

Well, I just ruined everything.

Sorry about that.

No, I... I want to understand, are we anticipating that we will spend all of the recruitment and retention funds that we already permitted SPD to use in ordinance 126654 and that that's not enough because we are hiring so many people?

That's the piece I don't understand.

I thought we sufficiently funded the hiring bonuses through the end of the year.

And also on the SPMA contract, I thought I remembered that there were planning reserves sufficient for that one.

So on those two items, those are not changing.

Those are the same as they were in the conversation that you had when you passed the previous proviso lift.

Nothing has changed on those.

So there's no more money needed for the recruitment and retention plan.

And it's still the case that we're using salary savings instead of a planning reserve to handle the SPEMA contract issue.

So none of that part has changed.

I think what Greg's endeavoring to do here is show you the full picture of how all of those salary savings have gone to use.

in this year, and so it just rounds out that this $3 million at the bottom is really rounding out the use.

Okay, we need to keep going.

Director Handy, do you have anything else?

That's a no.

Okay.

I think that there will be more conversations to come on this.

I want to make sure that all the council members questions get fully answered and that we all have an understanding of where the current funding from this year's release of the proviso have already gone before moving forward with something else.

I'm going to turn it over to Julie.

Thanks for hanging out with us.

We're going to last one.

Colleagues we we do want to try to end by 5. But this is a big presentation as well.

I'm just looking at you all to see if there is a hard stop at 5.15 5.30 can people hang on the line for that.

I mean, it's a lot.

Thanks so much.

And we will try and go through this with expediency, but also making sure that people get their questions answered.

So I want to thank you all.

Madam Clerk, could you please go on to item number four, agenda item for Community Safety and Communication Center for briefing and discussion.

Thank you very much, Madam Clerk.

Colleagues, we have with us, let me just double check because it's been a long afternoon.

We have with us, I believe, yes, Senior Deputy Mayor.

Hello.

Thanks again for hanging out with us.

Senior Deputy Mayor Monisha Harrell on the line here with us, as well as the team from the community safety communication center, including interim director Chris Lombart and also Thomas Rowland.

I want to thank you for being with us and the central staff presenters.

We have not had a chance yet to see and hear from Anne Gorman.

Anne is going to be with us along with Esther Handy today.

So thanks for the two panelists or two sets of panelists for being here with us today.

Again, Council Member Herbold, happy to have you make some introductory comments if you'd like.

I'll make it super quick.

I want to thank Interim Director Lombard for his continued work in standing up CSCC and his marked progress in hiring to fill vacant dispatcher positions.

There are 161 FTEs this year.

We've hired 40 new dispatchers each year with 28 separations.

This is a net change positive of 12 new dispatchers.

We have a longstanding issue I want to make sure that I'm clear on this.

We have a lot of work to do.

With our 9, and we have been unable to meet our fall And I want to be clear, this has nothing to do with our dispatchers who need to work extremely hard and manage a significant amount of mandatory overtime.

This is a longstanding issue about the city's prioritization of funding a sufficient number of dispatchers.

That 2016 staffing analysis of the 911 call center identified that staffing levels were insufficient I'm sorry.

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After much anticipation, I feel like we needed a drum roll.

Any better there?

So much better.

Wonderful.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Well committee chair mosquito and fellow or other council members thank you so much for the opportunity to speak to you I know the last session there went a little long.

I'm hoping that we have so completely vetted this with council staff that there won't be any questions and we'll get you all out of here in time.

So, we'll see.

All right, to go through the slides pretty quickly here, following the template that you guys established for us, I wanted to hit just some of the highlights here on our first slide here.

You can see with the forecasts that were coming out for the city budget deficits and the revenue deficits, this quickly kind of shows the change for this year that we adopted.

and then the proposed cuts for the next two years.

The subsequent slides will go through and talk about where those cuts are coming from.

It's a smaller budget, the department's budget, as you can see, $22 million is what was adopted for this year.

Most of those cuts came through as Council Member Herbold talked about, the 26, I believe, additional FTEs that were proposed and authorized last year by this committee.

The discussion, of course, at that time was that we were to try to find a way to fill as many of our current vacancies Before council would authorize.

I don't think I don't think it was a provisional but before that you would authorize the additional positions.

We have put all of our efforts into the hiring and there will be there's a graph coming up on a slide later, that shows that.

We are projected to probably close within 90 plus percent of our authorized staffing levels by the end of the year.

So I can't call out my team big enough for the recruiting efforts that they've done to both slow down the attrition and to bring new people on board.

So it's again, huge effort by the team.

Next slide, please.

So on here, this is where we get into the cuts, citywide adjustments for standard cost changes and the annual wage increases.

You're quite familiar with these.

You've probably seen these on some of the other department slides, pretty standard stuff.

Number three is the cares protocol system.

This is the, the system, the public safety and that you guys then subsequently authorized last year this is the protocol system to to help us, and this was kind of one of the building blocks for any kind of alternative response that we needed to have this or wanted to have this in place.

to help 911 call takers with their triaging so they're asking consistent bias-free questioning that feeds back into quality assurance and whatnot that should we identify alternative response resources either in the community or that we design them that this protocol system would allow our dispatchers to consistently ask the same and right questions to confirm that those resources are the best thing to solve a potential problem.

So let's see here.

Any questions on this slide?

Okay, just as a quick note on that last one, sorry about that.

Part of this was the Council Member Lewis's amendment for the two TLT employees.

I'm happy to admit that we actually just onboarded those this week.

So they are already starting to hit the ground running, listening in to 911, looking at regional resources.

We've scheduled them for some ride alongs and stuff.

So it took a little bit longer than we want, but they are on board and starting to go.

Next slide, please.

Okay, one of the things that we had asked for when you guys directed us to start this new department in 2020, and then of course it's launched in June of last year.

One of the things that we had asked for last year was to, and regarding the study that council member Herbold talked about, the 2016 federal engineering slash Kimball report.

A lot of the assumptions in that report for staffing, staffing needs were based on the 9-1-1 still being a division within Seattle Police Department.

We wanted to do a little refresh on a portion of that study.

to ascertain, since CSCC was now its own independent department, what would have changed in those conclusions from that initial 2016 and then the updated 2018 report.

So this $150 would have, or I'm sorry, the $150,000 here would have helped us refresh what other back end staff do we need, payroll, purchasing, finance, support, supervisory levels, and whatnot.

Again, with the budget crunch facing the city, what our hope is at this point is that now that we've started to fill in some of those pockets and now that we have some of those people on board, we think that we can do some of this work ourselves as far as trying to identify based on our experiences in the year and a half since we've been up and running some of our additional needs.

Number five is the point that Council Member Herbold was just talking about.

These are the additional 26 positions.

This is where the majority, as you can see from the numbers, of CSCC's proposed budget cuts are coming from.

Number six is an assumed vacancy rate.

What that amounted to is four FTEs.

We were reserving two supervisor positions and two of what we call our dispatcher three positions.

Dispatcher threes are kind of a training call taker radio type element that we have.

bulk of the work that we need in the department is, of course, in the 911 answering and then working the radio, the dispatcher positions.

So we felt that those positions would have the least negative impact for the department.

Next slide.

Director Lombard, let me just pause for a second.

Anne Berman, welcome from central staff.

You may have had a clarifying point on the previous slide or early in this slide, so please go ahead.

Thank you Madam Chair and Gorman Council Central staff.

A point of clarification on the description here for item 4. The need for a staffing study was not cited in the 2022 adopted budget.

The description of the body of work in the 2022 adopted budget for which funding was provided was a technical and operational study.

to help the CSCC identify gaps as a newly independent department and plan for the integration of non-uniformed and or alternative methods of dispatch.

So, um, I, I think that, uh, Chief Lombard and I, uh, feel similarly that a staffing study, um, should be performed, but this, this additional body of work was identified and funding is now being removed for it.

That's all.

Okay, that's very helpful.

And Director Lombard, do we call you Director or Chief?

You call me Chris.

I'll answer to any of that.

I'll have to.

this all straight.

Did you have anything else to add to that?

No, Anne is correct.

Some of those missing staffing positions was part of it.

It's kind of like, again, it was a refresh for the initial study, which covered all kinds of operational considerations, staffing considerations, hardware, software type stuff.

So Anne's point is spot on.

Excellent.

Let me just take a quick question from Council Member Herbold.

How does the number 279,000 relate to a reduction in 26 FTEs?

That doesn't seem to correspond.

It seems like 26 FTEs would be a couple million dollars.

I'm not quite sure how we're getting to 879,000.

Okay, yeah, you said the $279,000, you meant the $879,000.

For that, I'm going to probably punt to my finance director.

Tommy, are you able to help with that one?

Yeah, absolutely.

And Anne, you can correct me if I'm wrong on this.

Tommy Rowland and I handle all of the principal accounting functions and the fiscal functions here.

When the council did the amendment to add the 26 physicians, they expected that we would not be able to hire for all of those in this year.

And so they planned on funding only 879,000 which at the time was supposed to be for 13 positions, looking at the math I think that's more about like eight positions which was another number that was tossed around later in the 2022 budget for us.

Yeah, I think we, we budgeted for 2022 with the understanding it wouldn't be a full, full years FTE.

if that was a ongoing commitment, it would be greater in 2023 and 2024, because we were assuming that those positions would be hired in 2022.

Let me see if Anne has something to add to this.

Anne, would you like to add something?

Yes, thank you very much.

The 879,000 in 2022 Reflected an assumption that, um, there would be 13 positions filled at mid year.

Understanding this, this is an average.

Some of them would take less time to fill.

Some of them would take longer, but, um, with 13 positions filled at the end of 2022, we, we should see a reduction in 2023 of the full year cost, which is closer to 1.9 million.

Thank you.

Yeah, thank you and for that.

It's reminding me of that sequencing that we did, but is the full amount that.

That you just referenced noted in the budget and.

And I don't believe it's referenced in the budget because the 2022 adopted budget would not have referenced 2023.

Okay, all right, let's keep going.

OK, and again, I remember the discussion with you guys last year was that you definitely wanted to see us fill the existing pockets before we started tapping into those.

So next page, please.

So these items, so the number seven there is simply just a transfer from us over to SPD.

It's an emergency sign language interpretation program.

It was within the 911 when they were still a division within Seattle Police Department handling all of the communications.

But what it was is it had to do more with sign language interpreters for patrol units out in the field.

So when the department was created, this was actually kind of one of those line items that accidentally got transferred over with us, and we're simply just transferring it back.

They still use the service, but again, it has nothing to do with CSCC.

One second.

Let's double check.

Are we on slide number four?

Should be, yeah.

Okay, perfect.

Thank you so much.

Just double checking.

Number eight and number nine were actually both kind of connected.

One of the things that we identified earlier was that there were some disconnects between the computer-aided dispatching software that CSCC uses to take, categorize, and record all the calls, and Seattle Police Department's records management system, and Fire Department's records management system.

So I'll talk to the first one, CSCC to SPD software interface improvements.

Right now, there's a lot of broken connectivity between, again, the CAD and the records management system.

So police officers are having to, when they're looking up information, they're having to look it up actually in their patrol cars in multiple locations, the RMS and the CAD system.

And what this funding sought to do is fix those links so that the information is all getting passed appropriately over to SPD and their records management system.

The second one is a similar connection over to fire department's records management system.

The reason that they need to talk to fires management or records management system is that fire department has a much more accurate and updated database that includes what we call a lot of the commonplace names around Seattle.

And that's done by firefighters doing their annual safety inspections and then correcting and updating that data.

That process is going on all the time, every day, year round throughout the city.

So that when a police dispatcher or a CSCC dispatcher, sorry, is somebody calls 911 and says, you know, I'm in front of McDonald's.

I don't know its address.

That would enable the dispatcher to look up McDonald's and find, you know, the 10, 20 McDonald's that are in the city and then start to try to narrow it down there.

CSCC and previously SPD didn't really have a good mechanism to keep updating that database based on, again, using the McDonald's example that, oh, it used to be at this address.

For whatever reason, this one closed down, but a new one opened somewhere else.

So this funding here was going to be able to connect to that system within the fire department side so that 911 dispatchers would be able to get, again, real-time commonplace names, parks, restaurants, all of that kind of stuff.

Any questions on this line?

I don't see any hands.

Okay, next slide, please.

So this graph just kind of shows what we what I was just talking about as far as is how hard the team was working on recruiting and getting new people on board.

You can see that we kind of hit bottom early, you know, late winter, early spring this year.

And we had talked about that last year, many of you may recall that that the exodus was underway, we were trying to hire but but they were definitely leaving faster than they were coming.

So this kind of shows that throughout the year that, again, we have been taking advantage of everything we can to keep and hire new people.

And we are on track.

We've got another class scheduled in the November, December time frame.

And that will put us, based on what we've been able to do with our attrition rates, getting people to graduate from the classes and get out onto the dispatch floor, that will put us just a little bit above 95% of our authorized headcount for CSCC.

and I believe that's it.

The next slide is just the questions.

Well, that was efficient.

Thank you so much and we even got some questions in.

We are going to take a few more questions here and then we're going to go to Ann for the issue identification and I see Council Member Herbold, please go ahead.

I just wanted to get the number in my head again.

What is the authorized FTE count

So that was with the minus, the four vacancies that we're maintaining on, I believe it was slide three.

That will give us, I'm calling it up here.

Tommy, do you actually have the numbers from this week?

Yeah, so with the 26, With the 26 positions removed, we are allowed to have 148, and with the four positions held vacant, it is 144. And with the next class, we're projected to be at 140 out of the 144.

All right, and maybe Anne's gonna cover this.

I just don't, again, I'm not understanding how that number is relating to the number that I have in my notes for 2023 of only 113 FTE call takers and dispatchers.

113 is the number I have in my notes there.

113 council member is the number of call taker and dispatcher positions that the CSCC would have in 2023 under this proposal.

But there are other positions at the CSCC, you know, Tommy's position, Chief Lombard's position that are not included in in that grouping.

We talk about call takers and dispatchers because these these are.

These are the front line.

These these are the people who are answering the calls and and getting response resources out on the streets.

And so what are the?

What are the 2022 authorized FTS for call takers and dispatchers?

2022 I don't believe I have that immediately handy.

I I will.

I will get that.

I will get that to you.

I think that there were 10 call takers and dispatchers in the group of 13 positions that were funded in 2022. That would mean that there are currently 123, but I will confirm this and get back to you.

And similarly, on this last slide that we're looking at then is the is the 2022 sorry, slide number five is the 2022 CSCC hiring and headcount status.

Is that specific only to the call takers and dispatchers?

Or is this inclusive of the entire department?

The chart is for the entire department.

Okay, it might be helpful as well to Council Member Herbold's line of questioning to see just the call takers and dispatchers as well.

Okay.

And how is it going with getting access to the databases that you need to share with Seattle Police Department?

So the challenge there hasn't really been access.

I mean, the permissions are there.

The challenge has been on the IT support side, not Seattle IT necessarily.

It's just, again, it's a time and materials thing to be able to have somebody do that work.

It involves the vendors mark 43 for their records management system and our versatile CAD system.

So the funding is just for them to get to do the work.

Thank you, Councilmember Herbold.

Is that a new hand?

No.

Okay, no problem.

Well, we want to thank you very much.

I am sure there will be more questions.

You happen to be at the end of a very long day, so I'm guessing Councilmembers may have additional questions that they're just not asking today.

We will definitely get those to you via Anne Gorman here, and of course, you are welcome to hang on the line here, listen in.

but we will happily understand if you have to be excused.

We will turn it over to central staff.

I believe I just want to take this chance to thank Director Dingley as well.

I know you have to leave at five o'clock and we hopefully won't go too much over that, but in case we don't get a chance to say thank you for your participation today, we look forward to seeing you tomorrow, Director Dingley, if you do end up logging off before we're all done here.

Okay, excellent.

And it's wonderful to see you.

Thanks for chiming in on some of the technical aspects earlier and look forward to walking through this presentation with you.

Thank you very much.

Patty, could we have the next slide please?

So this is this is just our overview of the summary information that Chief Lombard has already presented.

Here you see a proposed reduction of 13 funded positions and 26 positions in all, translating into a budget reduction for the CSCC of 8.3% in 2023 and 2024. That's pretty much the bottom line.

Next slide, please.

So, as council members are aware, Central staff have been working this year with our counterparts in Mayor Harrell's office to talk about how to advance alternative 911 response while simultaneously enhancing SPD officers' ability to focus where a law enforcement response is needed.

So this work is very much in the CSCC's area of concern.

The executive's proposed budget includes funding of $1.9 million for a near-term project or projects in 2023, while team members continue to engage about what changes might be possible more systemically and in the longer term.

That ongoing work also relies on SPD's risk-managed demand analysis.

So central staff and the mayor's office work group have corralled four options that we believe could be implemented in 2023. as a near-term project that advances these goals.

This pending legal analysis and discussions with city labor relations, and they are listed here.

And I will describe each of them as briefly as I can, but I want to add that it will not be possible to implement all of these options in 2023. In the hypothetical course of advancing all of them, some of the implementation would shift into 2024. So these four options are the direct dispatch of SFD Health 1 units.

This is not currently possible and maybe we'll talk some more about that during the SFD presentation tomorrow.

Something called intelligent non-emergency reporting.

And what this refers to is for incident reporting that does not require an SPD officer to come to the scene.

These would be improvements in the city's tools that support online reporting or reporting by phone.

One major improvement would be better support for different languages.

Expansion of community service officer duties.

CSOs currently serve as liaisons between SPD and community and they do not have law enforcement authority.

It may be possible to expand their role in a way that lessens the current workload of SPD officers.

And finally, dual dispatch to augment the city's current response to calls that involve a mental or behavioral health concern.

Just so that everyone understands the terminology dual dispatch refers to two separate units being sent to the scene.

And in this case, the two units would be SPD and a city staffed team with relevant clinical and procedural training.

I will, I will pause for questions.

There may be some

Council Member Herbold, please go ahead.

Questions only or excitement, statements about this progress?

Is that acceptable or are you only seeking clarifying questions at this point?

Any statement you have is great too.

I want to just really sincerely thank the executive senior deputy mayor Harrell for their joint work with council central staff.

I want to recognize work also of the risk managed manned analysis that we heard in committee a couple weeks ago.

I think some of the council's questioning, and I've found myself among the participants in that questioning, was kind of negative around the risk management demand, and I think we kind of And then tier 2. Obfuscated the good news with the risk.

Management demand analysis which shows both tier 4 is an opportunity for the city to.

Improve customer I think tier 3 most closely aligns with this demographic for a co-response.

That's almost 14% of responses.

And the department acknowledged in this analysis that in a full response, what they actually I think referred to as a tiered response model.

The response ecosystem is aware that an alternative response is in progress, may stage nearby, may be able to, may need to rapidly intervene or not, but would not be in attendance.

And so I think this is both for the comprehensive work that we've been doing that's more of a long-term project, as well as our collaboration with the executive to do something more in the near term, specifically and most excitedly focused on full dispatch to augment current mental and behavioral health response is a really fantastic step forward.

I do absolutely support responding or moving forward as we can on the other elements that were identified as in the term sheet as areas for collaboration, including the non-intelligent non-emergency reporting and the expansion of And I'm also basically interested in continuing to develop efficiencies for how HealthONE responds so that they can be directly dispatched.

I'm really excited and want to signal my strong interest in moving forward on the dispatch on mental and behavioral health response.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

And any response to Council Member Bergold's statement of excitement?

Statement of legislative excitement?

We appreciate the strong interest from council members.

Your focus has been helpful to us as we've engaged with our counterparts in the mayor's office.

We have grown a good working relationship so far, and I'm looking forward to moving the ball down the field next year.

Excellent.

I saw nods from Director Lombard as well.

Excellent.

Okay, Council Member Lewis, please go ahead.

I'll be very brief.

I want to echo all of Councilmember Herbold's statements.

This is essential and critical work.

It's no longer, I think, a matter of wanting to do this work.

We have to do this work if we are to effectively honor our response time obligations going forward.

And just want to state my appreciation for what central staff has been doing in collaboration with the executive through the term sheet process we created earlier this year.

and really look forward to continuing this through the budget and implementing this in 2023. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Lewis.

Any additional comments on that?

Okay, thanks.

I don't see any additional comments on that.

This might be a good place for me to make this ask, and this might be an ask of central staff in your analysis, or if it already exists at the department, please let us know.

But I would like a list of all of what the proposed budget considers alternative responses.

Obviously, this is one area, but as we look to see how the alternative responses that we've invested in the past are continuing here.

It'd be helpful to have a comprehensive list of what those investments are.

And so that doesn't totally fit within CSCC, but if that's possible to compile, that would be very helpful.

I'm sure we can compile that.

Oh, thank you, Patty, for coming back.

Just let me read through the options for this first issue.

With respect to the allocated funding and the project that the workgroup has identified, Council could allocate that funding and pass a resolution outlining next steps.

Council could allocate the proposed funding.

Council could add funding sufficient to implement all options.

We would develop a timeline along with that or make no change.

Next slide, please.

Thank you.

So second issue is the need for a technical operational and staffing study.

As I mentioned earlier, the 2022 funding was for a technical and operational study and it was not expended.

In addition, there was a staffing study performed in 2016 when the current CSCC was then the SPD call center.

We have conclusions from that study that are at odds with the decisions in this budget proposal, but it may need to be updated because it predates some current technologies and it did not consider the dispatch of alternative response.

We don't have any information about what additional burden that deviation from historical practice would create on Uh, for call takers and dispatchers, so the options we have identified council could add funding for a technical operational and staffing study and impose and impose a proviso to make sure that the work actually gets done or make no change.

Thank you and I'm not seeing any hands on this 1 right now.

So we'll continue to think about.

Third issue, as we've discussed, the proposed budget would abrogate 13 funded positions and 26 positions in all.

In creating those positions and adding funding last year, council looked back to the methodology and conclusions of the staffing study that was conducted in 2016. Council made changes based on that study.

And that study concluded that the CSCC should have 161 call takers and dispatchers.

The proposed budget would include 113 call takers and dispatchers, which is 30% below the 2016 conclusion.

And as Chief Lombard related, two of those would be held vacant.

So there would be 111 working call takers and dispatchers versus a slightly stale recommendation of 161. And we see two open questions about staffing at the CSCC.

One is why has it been hard to fill current positions?

What are the constraints and are there any resources that could be added that could alleviate those constraints?

Although it does seem like they're making a lot of progress in terms of hiring.

And the second question is what is the appropriate staffing level to meet call standards and maximally to support employees so that they don't want to resign.

These two things are related.

And the position abrogation in the budget does not answer either of them and may foreclose future discussion of them in setting a level of, you know, 148 authorized employees.

So some options for council members would be to restore some or all of the 26 positions and associated funding.

to restore some or all of the positions and funding and add hiring support resources.

We could work with the CSCC to find out what might help get positions filled faster or see make no change.

Thank you.

Thanks for thank you for the reminder on.

the total amount that the study indicated, 161 call takers necessary.

So that'll be helpful to see the specific hiring and attrition rates related to the call takers total.

And Council Member Herbold, I see you come on screen.

Anything to add?

Yeah, I think I want to just flag the fact that when 911 is I'm not aware of anything that has happened in the last couple of weeks.

of the non-emergency line just not being answered at all.

And I also, again, as I alluded to earlier today, there are consequences of not meeting our call time levels and consequences beyond that.

the possibility of not being able to respond to somebody in crisis, there are consequences that could include losing funding, fines, or other punitive measures associated with not meeting call-answering standards.

So just want to flag my continued interest in this area.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Anne, please go ahead.

I just want to substantiate what Council Member Herbold just said about the non-emergency line.

The CSCC's mandate, their priority is always going to be communicating with officers in the field and answering the emergency line.

So when they're stretched thin in terms of staffing, they are not going to answer the non-emergency line.

And the non-emergency line is actually an important link between the CSCC and SPD for the kinds of calls that aren't emergencies and don't require SPD response.

And that's just what we're trying to focus on in terms of alternative response.

So the more we make it possible for CSCC call takers and dispatchers to sit to tend to the non-emergency line, the closer we get to meeting one of the goals of our alternative response work group with the mayor's office.

Are there any additional comments?

Yes, please go ahead, Director Handy.

Yeah, maybe I'll just add one more comment to this discussion, which is just because in the SPD discussion, we had a couple clarifying back and forth about positions being abrogated or not.

And I just want to note that for the CSCC, these positions are proposed to be abrogated.

So if to be identified later in the year or future year, the positions would have to be fully added back.

That's a different practice than is being proposed over in the police department budget.

And so just noting that sort of across our public safety agencies.

So we'll be talking with council members about that as you kind of think about your options in this area.

Great, thank you.

And Anne, anything else on that?

No, nothing to add.

Thank you.

Okay.

All right.

I'm looking for hands.

I don't see any hands.

Director Lombard, anything else that you would like to add on this?

No, thank you very much.

As Councilmember Herbold was talking about, the numbers that we send her regularly were pretty bleak, but they've gotten a lot better.

An acknowledgement of what has been said by both Ann and Council Member Herbold, we are going to start reaching a plateau where we're not perfect.

We're not answering the non-emergency line 100% of the time.

So it's a better picture, but we're getting to the point where we're doing about all that we can.

We, you know, part of this was the employees were all on board with it as well.

So they had been working huge numbers of overtime to kind of try to close that gap and to try to keep things going while we brought new employees on.

And there is definitely getting to be some burnout.

And so it's, you know, again, it's balancing plates as far as attrition rates, keeping new people, getting new people, try not to working them, you know, in the 52, 56 hour week rate.

So again, I can't give enough kudos to the team.

The people in this new department are phenomenal, and it's been such a pleasure to work with them.

So well said, thank you.

And Senior Deputy Mayor, please go ahead.

I just wanted to take an opportunity to thank Interim Director Lombard for his work, setting up a new department, particularly One that involves such high stakes issues is a very difficult thing to do.

He has served the city very well in this capacity and in this function.

And so I know this may be the last time we officially see him in this capacity.

And so I just wanted to thank him so much publicly for his work in helping this department get set up.

As per his wishes, we will be posting the permanent position for the director of CSCC very shortly and that should go live this week.

And so we are you know we cannot thank Chris enough for his work in really helping this department get set up and we know that we will be leaning on him as we get the process underway for selecting a new director and utilizing Chris's new skills and knowledge to make sure that they get on boarded well.

So thank you all, and especially Chris, thank you so much for your service.

Thank you so much and appreciation from all of us as well.

Really appreciate the conversation today.

Thank you for walking us through the department presentation from the team from the executive's office.

Thank you to Anne Gorman for walking us through the central staff presentation and really for robust discussion all day.

I did keep you about 15 minutes late, so apologies for that, but I want to thank you all for your participation.

Senior Deputy Mayor, great to have you with us for the majority of the day.

And you've got sunshine over there.

I do not.

But I hope you all get out there and get some sunshine in the last hour or two here of the day.

We will have our next meeting tomorrow morning at 930 a.m.

and This will be the final day for us to go through the presentations that are remaining, including the Human Services Department and including a category focused on homeless spending.

The second thing is the encampments and cleanup proposal under the title of Unified Care Team in the Mayor's proposed budget and Clean Seattle.

We also have parks and the remaining miscellaneous items which include law, OEM, Office of Emergency Management, Office of Inspector General, Office of Sustainability and the Environment, Seattle Department of Construction and Inspection, and Seattle Fire Department.

And that will round out our conversation for the full day.

We have asked for central staff as well to help us compile a list to compare department increases, decreases so we can see a side-by-side comparison of net investments in departments.

I think that will be helpful so that we can see that as you go into considering amendments for October 17th at 2 PM.

If there is no objection, our long meeting for today will be adjourned.

Hearing no objection, today's meeting is adjourned.

Thank you all very much for making today possible.

Take care.

Have a good evening.