Seattle City Council Select Budget Committee Session I 9/29/21

Welcome to the Select Budget Committee.

My name is Teresa Mosqueda.

Here.

Herbold.

Here.

Herbold.

Oh thank you.

Juarez.

Here.

Lewis.

Present.

Peterson.

Here.

Morales.

Here.

Sawant.

Present.

Strauss.

Present.

And Chair Mosqueda.

Present.

Nye present.

Thank you very much, colleagues.

I appreciate the full attendance today as we kick off our Select Budget Committee deliberations for crafting the 2022 budget.

Colleagues, today we have a full day of activities.

I expect the morning session may be a little bit lighter.

The afternoon may be a little bit heavier.

All day tomorrow, we have a packed agenda as well as Friday.

If there's any budget presentations that are not completed in the time allocated, we do have some additional time on Friday afternoon where we can make sure to wrap up any additional presentations that have not been completed.

Today's agenda begins with a presentation from our central staff director, We will move on to department presentations.

We will have a recess at 1 p.m., and we will return for our second session.

In the second session this afternoon, the Office of Economic Development, the Office of Sustainability and the Environment, and the Office of Education and Early Learning will be present with us to go through the proposed budgets for those departments.

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

Hearing no objection, the agenda for today, including session one and session two, is adopted.

Colleagues, I want to let you know I will have some opening comments after we do public comment, but we have committed to have public comment at the beginning of every committee meeting for the budget this year.

What is notable this year is that we have added an additional public hearing to be taking place in the evening.

We also have added a public hearing that begins in the morning as well.

So three public hearings this budget session.

That means this year for our regular budget select budget committee meetings, we will start with public comment as usual, but we will have a hard stop at 10 a.m.

on each day for public comment.

We'll endeavor to get through everyone who is present on our list today.

But if there is folks who are present and are not able to comment before 10 a.m., then they will need to call in for the next budget meeting.

It will be our practice to make sure that public comment is available at the beginning of every meeting.

And of course, if you are not able to call in and provide public comment, we will make sure to publish those three public hearing opportunities.

And you can always reach us at council at Seattle.gov.

Colleagues, today we are going to go ahead and move into our public comment.

We do have 13 people signed up for public comment, so we are going to give folks the full two minutes to speak.

We will end at 10 a.m.

The public comment for this meeting will begin with the first three speakers on the list.

I will call them in the order in which they've registered.

If you have not signed up to provide public comment but would like to, you can go to seattle.gov backslash council.

The public comment link is also listed on today's agenda.

Once I call your name, the staff will unmute you and you will hear on your line, you have been unmuted.

That's your cue to hit star six.

Star six unmutes your line and that is your opportunity to begin speaking by stating their name.

Please note the item that you're calling to comment on on today's agenda, and since this is the select budget committee, I think everything really fits into that category, so we welcome your public comment.

You're gonna hear a 10-second shot at the end of your allotted time.

That's your cue to wrap it up.

We don't wanna cut you off, but we will provide an opportunity for the next speaker to begin speaking if you don't wrap up your comment relatively quickly after your time has expired.

Thank you so much for calling in.

Once you're done speaking, please disconnect and follow the meeting on Seattle Channel or the listen in options on today's agenda.

Again, colleagues, thanks for being here today, and thank you, members of the public, for calling in.

When you hear you have been unmuted, that is your cue to hit star six on your own phone.

Let's begin public comment.

Jess Walsh, Vanessa Meraki, and Yolanda Matthews are the first three speakers present.

Good morning, Jess.

Good morning.

Thank you Council Member Mosqueda and good morning council.

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

I'm here today with several other solidarity budget supporters.

As there's briefings this week on the mayor's proposed budget we wanted to make sure that y'all also got briefed on the solidarity budget.

And I want to begin by recognizing and appreciating all the work that budget office and department staff have done leading up to today.

They've spent months putting together a budget proposal with a lot of attention to detail and hard work.

I can imagine this, because we've been doing the same.

For months, the Solidarity Budget Coalition has been engaging our communities to learn about what's important in the 2022 city budget.

We've done one-to-one interviews with community leaders, surveyed our neighborhoods, and continued to grow our cost movement coalition.

And we're building on years of community-led research done by folks like Puget Sound Sage, Scott Green, and the Black Brilliance Research Project.

The solidarity budget priorities that you'll hear about today and comment reflects a careful and caring community-based approach.

As today's council agenda includes budgets for OSE and OED we focused our solidarity budget briefing this morning on recommendations for environmental justice and Seattle's Green Deal.

Transitioning Seattle off fossil fuels and building an equitable clean energy economy will take many years.

It certainly can't be accomplished in one budget cycle.

That said.

The 2022 city budget is a huge opportunity to lay the groundwork for equitable energy transition while meeting urgent needs for utility assistance, building community climate resilience, indigenous sovereignty and cultural preservation, and pathways to good living wage jobs for all.

I'll turn it over to my colleagues to share more about the solidarity budget, and thanks for your time today.

Thank you for getting our public comment kicked off, Jess.

Appreciate you dialing in.

The next person is Vanessa.

Good morning, Vanessa.

Sorry, Vanessa, I saw you go back on mute.

There we are.

Hey, thank you.

Hi.

So I'm Vanessa Muraki.

Thank you, council members.

Hello, community.

And I am here also to speak on the solidarity budget.

So we know that the 2022 budget is being prepared in a time of climate crisis, economic downturn, and overwhelming and overdue demand for racial justice.

And the solidarity budget offers many concrete pathways to multi-solve these interrelated and complex problems.

And today I'm going to speak about one such pathway which is clean energy workforce development.

And I'm speaking as a parent a teacher and a community member.

My son graduated from Franklin in 2020 saying he had none of the skills he would need for the future and he didn't even know what those skills are.

He's not.

alone that's not an isolated incident.

Our young people are facing a dismal future as they as they read and understand the climate crisis that we are facing and they see how our lack of community cohesion has led to continued problems stemming in part from the COVID pandemic.

The solidarity budget offers hope to people in my son's generation and as well as older people who are in industries that are no longer sustainable as we as we collectively begin to address the climate crisis.

By expanding apprenticeship and job opportunities in the clean energy sector the City of Seattle can not only make ourselves a clean and electric city that is doing our part to avoid the most catastrophic climate collapse but also provide living wage jobs jobs with the future and jobs that have meaning to the young people who are leaving school today and graduating today.

The solidarity budget also calls for the city to invest in community scale energy projects which can increase demand for the clean energy jobs of the future.

The 2021 fossil fuel study shows that the clean energy sector is growing twice as fast as the fossil fuel sector and it's

Thank you so much, Vanessa.

And please do send in the rest of your comments.

Appreciate you dialing in today.

The next person to speak is Yolanda Matthews.

And Yolanda, you are listed as not present.

If you dial back in, we'll come back to you.

Next three speakers on the list are Leah Salerno, Alice Lockhart, and Derek Monofilia.

Good morning, Leah.

Hello.

My name is Leah Salerno.

I'm a resident of District 5 and I'm also a Seattleite living with multiple disabilities.

I'm joining others in calling to urge council to adjust the mayor's budget to align with the needs that community organizations have identified and laid out in the solidarity budget to transition Seattle's homes off fossil fuels and build an equitable clean energy economy.

The solidarity budget call for a much more substantial investment in transitioning homes and buildings to clean energy is crucial to tackle climate pollution and to improve the health of our communities, as the unhealthy impact of fossil fuels is felt most severely by the most marginalized and vulnerable residents.

Additionally, while we must fight further pollution, climate change is already here, and council must also heed solidarity budget calls for community climate resilience hubs that all Seattleites have access to clean air and cooling centers which are crucial to the health and safety of everyone in Seattle.

I again urge council to make sure this year's budget listens to the urgent needs of community by by aligning the budget with the solidarity budget.

Thank you.

Thanks for dialing in.

Good morning Alice.

Sorry about that council.

I'm Alice Lockhart for 350 Seattle and I'd like to talk about again an aspect of the solidarity budget unlike the Durkin budget whose climate section you'll hear about today and unlike I think any mayoral budget in Seattle ever the solidarity budget addresses an aspect of our city's climate emissions at the scale of the crisis.

It gives me shivers just thinking that.

The solidarity budget includes $85 million per year for the next three years to accelerate the transition of homes and buildings off fossil fuels.

This will pay for moving virtually all low income houses and households in Seattle to clean energy that is healthy for both homes and the planet.

Climate pollution from buildings increased 8.3 percent in Seattle between 2016 and 2018. And this effectively negated any progress made in reducing climate pollution from transportation and we're still on the same trajectory.

This needs to stop now.

Transitioning our homes and buildings to clean energy is a huge opportunity to tackle Seattle's climate pollution improve the health of our communities and create good living wage jobs.

Also retrofitting homes with heat pumps makes cooling through air conditioning possible.

which is increasingly important and life-saving as our region faces more and more frequent and intense heat waves.

And as we saw last year, heat domes, smoke, et cetera.

We really cannot wait any longer.

Solidarity budget now, please.

Thank you.

Thank you, Alice.

The next person is Derek.

Good morning, Derek.

Hi my name is Derek and I'm a renter in District 6. I'm calling in today asking the council to support the Solidarity Budget Coalition's community-driven budget proposal.

In particular I want to talk about the proposal to budget $100,000 for road mapping and building community climate resilience hubs in every neighborhood in Seattle.

These hubs are crucial to the future of the city because as we've all seen with increasing clarity each of the past summers Climate change is already here.

And as a city, we're not doing enough right now.

This June, during the heat wave, when my apartment was still 90 degrees at 6 a.m.

after a night of running fans in every window, there wasn't a single city-run indoor air-conditioned space available anywhere in my neighborhood.

And I don't think that my situation there was unique.

And I know a lot of places in the city were much hotter even.

People around the city were killed by this heat.

And this isn't just heat, and it's not just this year.

You know, last year, many in the city had no safe spaces to escape the toxic smoke from wildfires.

And as far back as 2016, community research by Puget Sound SAGE and GOT Green found wildfire smoke and heat waves to be among the top climate concerns of most impacted communities.

And I think given all this we really need to be making sure that each neighborhood has safe spaces to build community resilience in the face of increasing threats like heat and smoke in Seattle.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

And good morning Julia.

Julia Buck followed by Dakota Rash and Mario Flatley-Biamon.

Good morning Julia.

Good morning Council.

My name is Julia Buck and I'm a homeowner in 6th District of Seattle.

I'm calling in in support of the solidarity budget priorities and as a supporter of Puget Sound Sage.

One of the things that I'd like to highlight to council is allocating funding to close the gap between the low-income energy assistance programs that we have and their utilization by people who are qualified.

Puget Sound Sage has found that, fortunately, while we have these wonderful programs through Seattle City Light that will help low-income households with energy efficiency upgrades, uh...

that both reduce the house's carbon footprint and reduce their bills by decreasing the amount of energy needed to heat or cool their home uh...

unfortunately a whole lot of people who are qualified for that program aren't aware that it exists and so they don't know how to apply or how to get the uh...

the relief that they are that has been made accessible to them.

So I'm encouraging Council to please fund this important program so we can have better community outreach, so that people who qualify for low-income energy assistance programs know that they're there, and so that the administrative barriers are as low as possible, so that we can help as many people as possible.

Thank you so much, and have a great day.

Appreciate that.

Thanks.

Have a good day as well.

The next person is Dakota.

Good morning, Dakota.

Good morning.

Thank you all for your time and attention on this lovely, great morning.

My name is Dakota, and I want to quickly highlight another particular element of the Solidarity Budget's recommendations, the support for Indigenous cultural preservation.

This Solidarity Budget proposal aims to create a city where universal needs are met and essential infrastructure is supported.

Indigenous leadership and cultural preservation are key to achieving this goal.

That's why the solidarity budget calls for allocating $2,800,000 for indigenous-led clean energy, sustainability, and cultural preservation projects.

Any serious effort to address this existential threat that is the climate crisis must include these allocations.

I mean, we're seeing the impacts now in the heat stress to our iconic evergreens and failing salmon runs.

So we must include the presence, active participation and consultation and consensus of local indigenous communities.

Those communities have already done so much to restore our herding environment.

For an amazing example, I want to highlight the progress made towards restoring the Duwamish River spearheaded by the Duwamish tribe.

We must not repeat our history of indigenous ignorance and energy colonialism.

Working with those whose traditional knowledge of how to live with these lands, waters, and overall ecosystem will greatly enhance any real effort to address climate change.

Thank you all so much.

Thank you for calling in.

And Mario, good morning.

Good morning, Mario.

As we wait for Mario, the last three speakers will be Joanne Malini, BJ Last, and Karen Galen.

Is Mario on the line?

Hey, Mario, I see you on our screen here.

Just hit star six one more time.

There we are.

Good morning.

Hello.

Thank you, Council Member Gonzalez and members of the Council.

It's my honor to be here today to talk about the Solidarity Budget.

I recognize some familiar faces today here.

I have interviewed many of you in the past, and I am very impressed with so much of the work that you all do.

However, it is time to step it up when it comes to climate change.

My name is Mario Palabiamonti, and I'm a graduate of Nathan Health High School and a freshman at the University of Washington.

And as a young person, we are talking about our future.

and my future when we talk about climate change.

When we talk about climate change, instead of taking action on climate change, you are putting my future at risk.

Climate change is especially hard on lower income communities.

Lower income communities are oftentimes more adversely affected by climate change due to their locations, surroundings, and circumstances.

However, in a cruel irony, however, there's a cruel irony in the ways in which we work to solve climate change are oftentimes out of reach for those who are lower income.

Something like solar power or electric cars might be great, but they are largely out of reach for lower-income families.

Let's be frank.

This problem was not caused by poor people.

It was caused by the rich and powerful, so the burden should not fall on the backs of poor people, and they should not have to face the scrutiny over not being able to pay for our expensive solutions.

This is one reason I support the Solidarity Budget.

The Solidarity Budget addresses this issue directly and puts money towards making climate change equitable for all.

For this reason and so many more, I strongly urge you to support the solidarity budget, the only budget for the people, by the people.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

And Joanne, you are up next.

Good morning.

Hello.

My name is Michael Mullaney.

I apologize.

I think the autofill may have put in the wrong name for my form.

No problem.

Do you mind repeating your name one more time.

Yes.

Michael Mullaney.

Go ahead.

Oh got it.

Okay.

Welcome Michael.

I'm a renter in District 3 just calling to urge the council to adjust the mayor's budget to align with the needs that community organizations have identified and laid out in the solidarity budget to transition Seattle's homes off fossil fuels and build an equitable clean energy economy.

Thank you.

I yield my time.

Okay, excellent.

Thanks for calling in, Michael.

And good morning, BJ.

Good morning.

My name is BJ Last.

I'm a Ballard resident and small business owner.

I'm calling in support of the Solidarity Budget and its environmental justice and Green New Deal priorities.

The Solidarity Budget should be the starting point for budget negotiations this year.

The Solidarity Budget's funding to close the gap between low-income energy assistance needs and current use of programs is an extremely important item that affects multiple things.

I mean a study by Puget Sound SAGE found that existing energy assistance and energy efficiency programs aren't being accessed by low income households that qualify.

Households either aren't aware the programs exist or don't believe they qualify.

This is a problem on multiple fronts.

It hurts low income households by forcing them to pay more for their energy than they should and it blocks Seattle from reducing its carbon footprint.

Improving outreach and reducing administrative barriers for these programs will provide financial relief for the households that need it most and reduce the city's carbon footprint.

Thank you.

I yield my time.

Thank you very much.

And Karen, good morning.

Good morning, Council.

I'm Karen Gillen, and I'm a senior living downtown, and I also have a garden at the Inner Bay Pea Patch.

I've moved downtown in order to walk as much as possible for my health and to reduce my carbon footprint.

I've been recycling and doing everything possible through my life to help with the climate change problems.

I believe that this lifestyle is in jeopardy because Seattle and particularly downtown have become much less safe for people like me.

The decisions you've made over the past several years have made Seattle less safe.

I asked you respectfully to include in the budget adequate public safety dollars because we cannot continue to live downtown successfully if we are not safe on the streets.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Karen, appreciate you dialing in.

And the last person is David Hines.

David, just star six to unmute.

David, I can see you on the line here.

Just star six on you.

OK.

Colleagues, I want to let you know that that does reach the end of our list.

I will continue to look for David to come off mute here and oh, hello David.

Hi, thank you.

I'm concerned about the budget because there's still a homeless crisis that's been going on for years and the mayor seemed to use the American Rescue Plan money And I'm wondering, did she still apply the city budget's original allocation in addition to, or did she pull back on the city's allocation and just substitute the federal?

Because there's an enormous amount of suffering from homeless people subjected to a lot of predatory criminals in Pioneer Square between Yesler and Sherry Street on First Ave, where I live.

And every single night since I've lived here for over four months, there's been an uncivil war being conducted by these evil criminals.

And there's a lot of homeless people that are suffering.

And there's all these women that have been raped.

And they're walking around with no shoes because the dude keeps stealing all their clothes that they possibly can.

And all these horrible screams, and I've called the cops over 50 times, and they refuse to come down here.

And there's a 7-Eleven across the street that to all these messed up people who can barely stagger in.

And then they come out with more liquor.

We need a better, holistic investment in understanding who deserves to be invested in and who deserves to still go to jail.

Because there's all these homeless people who have nowhere.

There's no outreach down here.

I see Reach come down here.

They throw a five-minute guitar party with pizza, hand out a small, small bottle of water, read a passage from bible and then they disappear or they're remodeling some commercial real estate because they got a whole bunch of money to buy a new vehicle that's got reach on the side of it but they're claiming that they have friends in the encampments who are suffering because they know their name but there's no real whole like wholehearted effort to solve the homeless crisis because it seems like and no offense but City Council is using the homeless crisis to pay off the activists, organizers, and re-election apparatus, and they're not keeping them accountable.

We need an investigation of them.

Thank you very much, David.

I do see that Yolanda was still listed to speak, but Yolanda, we didn't see a dial back in, so I hope that you do send us your comments to council at Seattle.gov.

Colleagues, that does conclude our public comment for today.

I want to thank everybody for dialing in, and it is two minutes before 10 a.m.

As a reminder, we will do everything we can to hear from as many people as possible before 10 a.m.

each morning, and then we will go into our session one and session two.

That does provide public comment for the entire day in the morning.

And again, we will be publishing, as a reminder, those three public hearings that will be coming up.

And I'll make sure to note those times throughout our presentations to come.

With that, let's move on to items on our agenda today.

The first item on the agenda today is the chair's report.

I just wanted to I provide a few comments and welcome everybody.

This is an exciting opportunity for us.

This is the beginning of the legislative branch's opportunity to shape the 2022 budget in front of us and to provide an opportunity for the community and council members to really have a budget at the end of the next two months that reflects our community values, invest in community safety, community health, and create a more economic resilient Seattle.

This is the legislative branch's opportunity to receive the executive branch's proposal, and it's our job as a legislative branch to finalize and submit the budget to the city that aligns with our community values, that invests in the most vulnerable, and in this moment, that responds to the crisis not caused by COVID necessarily, but worsened by COVID and the pandemic.

We are building on the foundation, colleagues, that we have already laid over the last 18 months to construct a more equitable Seattle.

And in the next two months, while we might not agree on the substance of policies or budgetary decisions in the proposed budget that has been transmitted this week, we do know that so much work went into crafting the proposed budget that we are receiving.

I want to thank the mayor, her team, the city budget's office for all they've done over the last few months to provide this proposed budget in front of us.

As I reflect on the last two years of being your budget chair, I think about how much has changed, the unprecedented times that we're in, and how much work we have done to respond with urgency and with compassion.

I think about also how much has remained the same.

The crises, the public health crises that we were facing as a community remain here today, and our challenge is to address those with urgency and compassion as well.

The public health crisis that we focus on today is COVID.

But the public health crises that were present before COVID were the lack of housing, the concerns around community safety and policing, and racism that's still prevalent throughout our communities.

These are public health crises that we have tried to respond to with urgency over the last two years.

And I think we have the opportunity today to begin the conversation about how our 2022 budget addresses those previous issues and the compounding issues from COVID.

So we truly are a more equitable and resilient Seattle in the outcome.

Just a moment to reflect on all that we've been through over the last two years.

I want to thank our city employees.

I want to thank those who've been on the front lines and who've been in the offices who've responded to our residents who are the most vulnerable in these unprecedented times.

Our city, as public workers, They've pivoted.

They've jumped in.

They've shown flexibility.

They have shown resilience.

I want to thank you.

Everyone from firefighters to other city employees, staff who provided testing at sites, and our HSE employees who have been providing care for the most vulnerable, our parks employees and community center staff who responded to the tremendous needs of homelessness and mental health needs throughout Seattle, and to everyone who's worked at this city in the last 18 months.

You have stepped up.

You have shown what it means to be a strong Seattle and a connected community.

You have helped to provide greater health, strength, and well-being to our community, and we are forever thankful for your service, especially in the last two years.

We've implemented, as a council, emergency legislation to protect our most vulnerable workforce members.

We've invested in their health and safety through hazard pay and sick leave.

We've allocated emergency funding to workers on the front line and especially our childcare workers.

We've made sure that it was possible for people to work remotely and to be able to be kept whole for the additional costs incurred for utilities, including internet in this time.

You all have kept our city running and you have made folks be able to sustain and survive this crisis.

It was my goal as budget chair coming in two years ago to really lead with transparency and accountability in our process to ensure that the community understood what the budget proposals were, not only the proposal that we received from the mayor, but that they were engaged in our process over the legislative branch's efforts to try to create a proposed budget that reflects our community values.

We wanted to make sure that departments knew that they had the opportunity to have sustained funding for not only the calendar year in front of us, but for the out years as well.

In a standard biennial budget, we would have been able to pass a 2021 budget and have an, quote, endorsed budget for 2022. But due to COVID, we really focused on the 2021 efforts in front of us.

So today, we look at 2022 with the opportunity to include ARPA funds, our American Rescue Plan Act funds, I want to take this moment to thank the council president, thank you council president We have built a transparent and more accountable process in the future as we look to work to stand up the revenue forecast council that will be forthcoming in the future years.

I think that will be a huge asset to our city to have that process baked into the city budgeting prior to receiving proposed budgets and to have accountable process for the community as well.

I want to thank our communications team, Dana and Stephanie and Joseph.

We now have a unified communication strategy to make sure that each council member has the ability to let the public know how to engage.

I have seen every council member put the information out on their newsletters and social media sites, and we will continue to do so throughout the budget process in front of us so that members of the public know exactly how to engage and what is happening as we craft this budget.

What's remained constant throughout the pandemic time is our focus and commitment on solving the most pressing needs in our city.

Addressing homelessness, addressing public safety, addressing affordable housing, supporting our most vulnerable workers and smallest businesses.

And that's the task in front of us today as we begin our process.

of understanding what the proposed budget includes and crafting our council proposed budget for the community.

We're going to build on past investments.

We're going to build on our value-driven budgetary documents that we started last spring.

And we're going to make sure that we have the opportunity to build on that foundation that you began laying with the passage of Jump Start last spring.

Last spring, over 100 organizations, thousands of people in the community who have been calling for progressive revenue for years, came together around a proposal to invest in housing to make sure that homeless services were truly funded.

We included immigrant rights organizations, housing advocates, labor unions, big and small business, equity-based organizations, and environmental justice organizations to pass Jumpstart, and you all did that.

The policy that we passed is now generating, with the renewed estimates, over $230 million a year.

We need this funding, as we knew back in the spring last year, we need this funding now more than ever to make sure that we're investing in closing the gaps for investments in Green New Deal priorities, equitable development, economic resilience, and most notably, investments in affordable housing.

At least $135 million a year was expected to go into affordable housing, home ownership opportunities, permanent supportive housing strategies.

And we know that this is the most pressing issue facing our city and incredibly proud that we passed that and now we get the chance to build on that.

And we also know the jumpstart has been seen across cities, across this country.

We have been able to point to the reliance on that funding to avoid austerity budgeting.

We avoided depleting our revenues and we avoided employee cuts.

This is something that across the nation people have continued to look at Seattle as a way to avoid the worst type of budgeting during an economic crisis.

And I'm really proud of the work that you all did.

And I'm proud that we had the chance to pass that as a team.

in just the last few years.

And I also see that the mayor even has assumed spending of the Jumpstart money even after vetoing the bill.

Excited to see that they're celebrating now the investment of what Jumpstart is making possible through housing investments that our city so desperately needs with press releases as early as this week.

That funding is making changes possible now and we will build on that funding as we head into 2022. Last summer, we passed a budget that invested in public safety.

We responded in a moment of crisis and in a moment for a call for racial reckoning by beginning to scale up investments in community-led public safety programs, beginning to truly invest in public safety that our community has been calling for for years.

And we have a roadmap in front of us as we continue to right-size our investments, both in community safety and traditional policing.

Last fall, colleagues, we passed a budget that, again, restored proposed budgetary layoffs, invested in food security and homeless programs, affordable housing and supportive services, and made sure that we thought towards the future by including strategic acquisition of hotels, apartments, buildings to create not only shelter but long-term housing for our community most in need.

As you heard from public testimony today, we invested in energy efficiency, Green New Deal priorities, street sinks, food security, supporting our first responders like firefighters and their health and mental health.

All of your fingerprints are on that budget from last year, and I look forward to continuing to work with you as we build a budget this year that centers our conversation on those past investments, our commitment to transparency and accountability.

And here we are.

2021, beginning our 2020 process, in the same month that we have just passed the supplemental budget.

The supplemental budget this September and the American Rescue Plan Act dollars that we passed the month prior, our ability to build on the foundation that we started last year, we've layered in $120 million of deep investments in affordable housing, homelessness, community and small business supports, and community well-being with those Seattle Rescue Plan dollars.

and we're going to continue to make sure that we're investing in our economic resiliency of this city.

This November we're going to as well get an economic revenue forecast, so I want folks to recognize that with we begin this conversation of the proposed budget in front of us, we need to remember the tenuous nature of COVID and the unknowns that are still present at the national level as it relates to the impacts on our local economy.

I'm really proud of the way that we've stood up and our resiliency at the local level.

And as a country, though, we know that we in Seattle are facing many of the same challenges that large cities across this country are facing.

And if we don't act with urgency and compassion and lead with our values around protecting the most vulnerable, We will continue to see some of the worst effects of COVID manifest in our street with more folks falling into homelessness and more housing instability and more small businesses closed.

We can right size that, we can try to correct that shift and we have great partners at the federal level and state level who have been stepping up to help support us.

What Seattle is facing is not unique, but I think what is unique is the way that we've been looked at to come together.

We have come together in these trying times.

Seattle is unique in how we have built into our budget community values, and Seattle is unique in how we are centering our budgets in the past two years, especially on addressing the most vulnerable and making sure that those workers those smallest businesses and our most vulnerable are receiving direct assistance.

We've rejected trickle-down economics and we've truly invested in growing the seeds of greater prosperity.

Thank you so much for all the work you've done.

I look forward to building on that, starting right now.

I'm going to turn it over to Esther Handy.

Good morning, Esther.

As our director of central staff, thank you for the opportunity to be here with us today.

And I want to welcome Ali Panucci back to the table.

Our lead on budget items for central staff, her and the entire team have been just tremendous to work with.

You make the process navigable for the public and for community, excuse me, and for council members.

And it's really heroic work that your central staff team does.

So welcome to both of you.

At this time, Madam Clerk, can you please read item one into the record?

Agenda item one, introduction and budget process overview for briefing and discussion.

Thank you so much.

So I'm going to turn it over to our central staff team.

And remember, this is the beginning of the process.

We are going to have an overview this morning and then each department we begin with this afternoon all day tomorrow.

Tomorrow's going to be a long day.

And then Friday as well.

This sets the foundation for how we understand what has been transmitted to us.

and appreciate the leadership and dedication of our central staff team here.

I look forward to working with you and our colleagues and community and the city budget's office as we create the 2022 budget.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda and good morning, council members.

I am Esther Handy.

I'm the new central staff director and really pleased to be with you as the council begins its review of the mayor's 2022 proposed budget.

As the chair noted, we enter this discussion at a time where there continues to be some uncertainty about economic activity and the related tax revenue in our city.

We're 18 months into the COVID pandemic, headed into colder winter months and typical cold flu season, really watching to see how the pandemic will evolve.

We are lucky to say that unemployment has dropped back down to 5% in our region, but we know that unemployment in the service sector and hospitality industries continue to lag behind the city, and that many folks in our community have exited the labor market to take care of family during this time.

It's the context that will frame many of your decisions moving forward in this budget process.

I'm going to kick us off by reminding you about process.

So we'll go to the next slide.

Pursuant state law, it is the mayor's job to prepare and submit to the council a proposed annual budget in September.

That proposed budget must be in balance as a starting place for your discussion.

The mayor transmitted those materials to the council and shared them with the public on Monday.

And I'll remind you that they are just that, the executive's proposal.

Today begins your role, the council's role in this process.

It is the council's job to review and modify the mayor's proposal and ultimately to adopt a final balanced city budget, which must be done no later than 30 days prior to the next fiscal year.

Your central staff team, which I lead, is made up of 18 analysts who began review of this budget on Monday afternoon and will support the council through this process.

We'll be behind the scenes reading the documents and we'll be right here at the committee table with you throughout deliberation.

We are, as I like to say, all in for the next 40 business days.

A few things to note as you begin listening to the executive's presentation shortly.

The mayor has transmitted a $7 billion budget that covers all lines of city business.

In this committee, we will be having significant discussion about the city's general fund, which represents approximately 20% of that budget.

It's often called the heart of the city budget, where many of our public-facing services are funded, including human services, In addition to that, federal aid from the American Rescue Plan Act will continue to mitigate the ongoing effect of COVID-19 pandemic, has had on other local revenue sources, and continues to fund city spending that is critical in supporting our response to COVID.

Our team will be doing an in-depth analysis of how these projected revenue sources are utilized in the mayor's budget, including the balance of how they are meeting immediate community needs and what that means for sustainability in the long term.

To share a few more details on the process, I'm going to hand it to my colleague, Ali Panucci, who will serve as our central staff budget manager.

Ali has really done an incredible job of building a process for this year's deliberation that provides time for rigorous staff analysis as you deliberate and engage the public in a conversation about these budget decisions.

Our team looks forward to working with you.

as councilmembers both individually and as a collective body to understand the mayor's proposal, to develop amendments, and ultimately to adopt a 2022 city budget that reflects the priorities of our communities and this council.

Ali, I'll hand it to you.

Thank you, Director Handy.

Good morning, Chair Mosqueda, councilmembers.

I'm Ali Panucci of your central staff.

As the Chair and Director Handy described, I'll briefly describe today the Council's eight-week process.

If we could move to the next slide.

That really kicks off today.

I want to thank the entire central staff team and Chair Mosqueda and her team for helping put together an orderly and transparent process for the Council's budget deliberations.

The budget process this year, like last year, is comprised of six main steps.

and three public hearings as highlighted on the budget timeline presented on this slide.

This process is designed to provide time for the committee to hear from the public and engage in discussion and debate about the proposed budget and individual council member proposals, and then ultimately the balancing package prior to adopting a budget.

We can move on to the next slide.

So throughout the process, I will be kicking off each step in the budget process just to highlight what step we're on, what will be coming up in committee this week, and then we'll highlight what is coming up as the next step.

So we are all sort of tracking where we are and what is next until we get to the finish line on November 22nd.

So over the next three days, the committee will hear presentations from the city's budget office and executive staff and ask questions and start probing the mayor's proposed budget submitted for the council's consideration.

This will complete step one of the budget process.

I just want to note the schedule for those presentations is on the screen.

However, we have due to some scheduling conflicts, there's one change tomorrow morning schedule.

The citywide homelessness response will happen before the human services department discussion.

So same topics in the morning session.

It's just we are reversing the order for the last two items for the morning session.

After hearing from executive staff, we will have about two weeks for the committee and staff and the public to continue to digest research and analyze the mayor's proposed budget before moving on to the next step in the process.

The committee, thank you.

The committee will also hold the first of two public hearings on October 12th at 5.30 in the morning.

at 5.30 in the morning, excuse me, 5.30 in the evening.

I will be up, but the rest of you can wait till 5.30.

I most definitely will not be up.

We have a daughter who sleeps in and I love it.

These discussions are really an opportunity for central staff to present the potential budget issues and policy options that we have identified with the proposed budget.

And those issues are informed by the ongoing policy work the council has been engaging in over the last year and in previous years, questions of being asked of, of staff and other priorities we are aware of for, for the council.

And really as director Handy highlighted, focusing on some of the challenging questions ahead regarding sort of use of certain fund sources and how to balance, um, community, community needs, um, in this, as we, as we continue to, to work through the impacts of the pandemic.

And so that is the next two steps in the process.

And we all look forward to continuing to work with all of central staff continues to work, looks forward to working with all of you throughout this process.

And as I said, getting us to the finish line on November 22. And unless there are questions about process, that's all we had prepared for this morning's introduction.

Okay, excellent.

Thank you very much, Director Handy.

It's really wonderful to have you present with us and Budget Lead Panucci.

Am I getting your title right there, Allie?

Yes, thank you.

Okay.

I did want to take a quick second, if you can keep that slide up one more second, please.

I did want to take a second to see if any colleagues had any questions.

And for members of the viewing public, I wanted you to be able to see the opportunities to weigh in as well.

We also had identified on the slide when those public hearings are.

You will see a public hearing at 5.30 p.m.

October 12th, a second public hearing at 5.30 p.m.

on November 10th.

and the third public hearing on November 18th and that one is in the morning at 9 30 a.m.

Any questions?

I see none.

All right.

Thanks again.

And I know we are giving you a resounding applause for all of the work to come and all the work you've already begun doing on digging into the budget.

I did see Director Ben Noble pop into the screen and want to welcome you, Director Noble.

Thank you again for being here with us.

I do think that in almost every meeting we've had in the Finance and Housing Committee meeting this year, you have been present.

So thank you for being there as a present we're going to be doing a little bit of force with us as we've taken on the American Rescue Plan Act dollars, the supplemental budget, and leading into this year's 2022 budget with the revenue forecast presentations, plural, that you've given us.

We really appreciate it.

Let's just make sure we are following our protocol.

Agenda item two, city budget office proposed budget overview for briefing and discussion.

I want to welcome you officially and any members of your team that are with us.

Again, thanks for all the work that you and your team have done to build this budget proposal.

And we know it took a tremendous amount of work.

Thank you for your dedication to the city and for coming here today, again, to walk us through the proposal.

I know that this will be the bulk of our presentation this morning.

We're running a little ahead of time, so feel free to ask questions, colleagues, as we go.

and I will try to watch for that as well.

Feel free to jump in at any moment.

And Director Noble, thank you for being here.

Thank you.

I really appreciate the opportunity.

I appreciate the partnership that you've described over the course of this year and last year as well, and look forward to working with you and your central staff and your legislative assistant staff moving forward through the budget process.

My goal today is to give you a high-level overview of the budget and to focus really on some of the key highlights.

I think we've worked very well with central staff in terms of scheduling the briefings that will follow, because virtually every one of my slides is actually the topic of a future detailed briefing.

But the goal here is to give you an overview, so as you enter into more detailed discussions, you'll have a sense of how each individual element fits into the overall budget picture.

I'm going to, before I dive into the slides, just to give you a sense of the presentation, I'm going to start with a few comments about the resources, the revenues that are being used to support the expenditures that I will then, again, provide some more information on.

In previous years, this briefing actually had included a much more detailed revenue briefing.

However, consistent with the new approach, we provided the detailed revenue briefing in August.

And actually, just about 10 days ago, provided a quick update to the Finance Committee, essentially affirming the original, the August forecast, although we have noted that some of the risks to the forecast, largely driven by the Delta variant, have increased.

One thing I can report again before I dive in is that we just got another month worth of sales tax data and that actually was slightly pasted slightly ahead of our of our forecast.

So we still remain confident in that forecast.

And again, that's the forecast that underlies the budget.

So I'll dive in.

Again, quick highlights around specific investment areas.

And then the last couple of slides to provide some additional information about the funding sources that are supporting some of those proposed expenditures.

Thank you so much, Director Noble.

Just a quick reminder for us.

When you look at the revenue forecast, and I'm glad to hear that there's some positive news at the local level, can you remind us how much the national trends factor into our ability to forecast local trends, given sort of the unknown or potential risk that still remain at the national level due to COVID?

You know, the national economy is a key driver, obviously.

Our local economy, as I've probably been often heard to say, is not an island.

So in our modeling, we have a regional economic model, and we understand historically the correlations between local economic activity and the city revenues.

So that's really the piece, you know, so we run our local model, and from that we're able to forecast revenue.

One of the key inputs or some of the most essential inputs to that local economic model are national forecasts.

So at a national level, what do we see about what are the forecasters predicting in terms of employment and income and the like?

So, and again, so we're tracking closely what those forecast trends are and where they are moving.

And that's one of the areas we highlighted 10 days ago that there is not dramatic, but with some increasing concern around the potential impacts of Delta at the national level, as well as obviously here at the local level.

So with that, I think I'll dive in.

So we move to the first slide.

Again, so I wanted to talk first, consistent with some comments earlier, I'm going to focus largely on the the general fund and general government functions.

I'm happy to answer questions about the two utilities and SBCI, which are essentially fee and rate-supported activities, but they're not the focus of this presentation.

Again, at a high level, just thinking about the resources that we have for 2022, what we can see on the general fund side is that our revenues are recovering, and actually, at a nominal level, simple dollar terms, we're almost back to our revenue base from 2019. That said, we're not quite there.

And importantly, we've had several years of inflation in between.

So the effective purchasing power of our 22 revenues are notably less than the 2019. But I want to give you a sense that revenues have recovered well at this stage.

The payroll tax is obviously, if we compare it to pre-COVID times, was not a resource we had previously.

And it's a very significant new share for federal government spending.

In particular, the forecast for 2022 is approximately $235 million.

I would note, though, and it's mentioned here, that we've yet to actually collect a penny of the tax.

That is just given the structure that we've set up.

This first year, 2021, payments are not due until the end of the first quarter, excuse me, the end of the fourth quarter, which effectively means early next year.

So it's probably in the February, early March timeframe that we will actually know for the first time how much revenue is generated by the payroll tax.

Going forward, in 22 and beyond, it becomes a quarterly payment scheme, just as the business and occupation of B&O taxes.

So going forward, we won't have that same issue having to wait till past year end.

But there is, obviously, as a result, uncertainty here.

And we've tried to be conservative in the forecast, but we'll know a lot more next February.

The other obvious resource we have at play here is federal relief.

You'll hear the phrase CLFR a fair amount over the next few days.

That is shorthand for the Coronavirus Local Fiscal Relief, the LFR, hence CLFR.

So we have $116 million to be budgeted in 2022. That's the second half of what was essentially a $230-plus million allocation from the federal government.

You'll see also that some of the resources that have been allocated previously have not been fully spent.

That was really per plan in most cases, but that will provide additional resource to spend down in 2022 to direct towards the key recovery and relief activity And then FEMA is also a piece of the overall spending here and part of the budget.

Thinking about continuing works on vaccinations, expectation that FEMA will support that certainly to the end of the year, potentially into next year as we move into both boosters for some subset of the population, and then also initial vaccinations for initially five to 11, then ideally for children younger than five as well.

So that's an array of resources we have at hand.

I think another point that's worth mentioning is that there are given the revenue forecast update, there are additional resources from this year, from 2021, that we will carry forward into 2022 to help support some of the spending in the budget as well.

So that's a high level on the funding side, on the resource side.

In terms of funding priorities, the bullets here effectively provide an outline for what I'm going to be describing today.

So you'll see a discussion about restoring base budgets and our fiscal reserves, investments in community safety, response to homelessness, really exciting news in terms of significant new investments in affordable housing, responding to the Green New Deal and Council's funding targets around the Green New Deal.

And then wanted to spend a little bit of time to talk about the BIPOC investments, Black, Indigenous, and People of Color, just a shorthand there.

Specifically, the $100 million that was allocated as part of last year's budget, want to update on what's included in 2022. Also take some time to note that these are not the only investments focused on these communities.

I didn't actually put a bullet in here, but there's also a slide to give you a quick preview of the overall approach on the federal funding on tranche two of the CL, the Clifford dollars, as well as the other resources we have available still.

That will be, again, a target of a full briefing of its own for you.

And then lastly, I'll conclude with some comments around the jumpstart priorities and the use of payroll tax and other funds to meet the jumpstart targets as we embrace those policy priorities.

Next slide.

Just on this slide real quick, I want to make sure to pause to hear if there's any questions on resources and revenue.

I think it is notable, the second bullet here, that the Jump Start Progressive Payroll Tax is bringing in over $235 million anticipated.

We still have final numbers to come, but that is good news to see that that amount has shifted to $235 million.

I also think that it's a good sign of continued growth at the local level.

We have seen, via the headlines, more startups starting in Seattle than had previously been anticipated, and we're rivaling other cities with the number of startups that are beginning to put their roots down here in Seattle.

All of those are ostensibly in the category of payors as well, and excited to see that what we know from economics in the past, which is that a small assessment reinvested into community, especially into things like housing and economic resilience, is good for the local economy.

We can both welcome new businesses and also assess to make sure that people have a place to go and live and are well cared for and that we have investments in our infrastructure like Green New Deal priorities.

I do hope that that headline continues to be recognized that we saw from Geek Wire and others about the way in which our local economy is continuing under the time of COVID.

And I think our challenge and our commitment is to make sure that it is an equitable and more resilient economy so that we can see some of that prosperity shared.

And that's part of what Jumpstart Progressive Seattle was all about.

Vice Chair Herbold, please go ahead.

Thank you.

I appreciate you letting us know, perhaps for a second time, that you wanted questions as we went.

Really appreciate your making the time and space for that.

As relates to your point, Madam Chair, just want to highlight that that $235 million from payroll tax represents, I think, about 16% of the general fund contributions.

significant.

And a question I have about the mention about FEMA reimbursement likely to extend to 2022. Can you give us an estimate of how much FEMA reimbursement is assumed in the proposed budget, perhaps from reporting out what has been requested.

I don't know if that's a good basis upon which to make assumptions, but we'd just like a little bit more detail on the FEMA reimbursement assumptions.

It's a really good question, and a good enough question.

I think we have an entire slide on it when we do, as part of our federal funding presentations.

I'm going to do this a couple of times or more than a couple of times.

I think today is I think rather than getting a partial answer for me, this is recognized as a key issue.

And I want to just explain further that my reference here wasn't intended to be about the actual reimbursement, although we are working through that process.

but really about eligibility, that I expect that, although FEMA eligibility hasn't formally been extended into 22, given the federal government's commitment, the President's commitment around boosters and vaccination, it seems fair to assume.

But again, you'll see that we also have built in some reserves to deal with some of the uncertainty around FEMA and the reimbursement and further expense related to vaccination and other public health response.

Super helpful clarification.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

I'm not seeing additional hands right now, and I'm sure that this will prompt some questions later, so let's continue.

The next slide.

So as part of balancing both the 2020 and the 2021 budget, we invoked, if you will, collectively a number of strategies to avoid just a kind of austerity budgeting and the impact from what would have otherwise been austerity budgeting that Chair Mosqueda highlighted, and we were all specifically trying to avoid.

So in particular, one of the strategies we employed was to repurpose voter-approved resources, either from levies or from the park district, and redeploy those.

They had been approved by the voters to essentially be above and beyond spending, above and beyond the base that was supported by the general fund.

But given the shrinking resources for general fund, we shifted those voter-approved dollars into basic operations.

That's helped us sustain things like the community centers as we use them for child care and other purposes.

And it also, we're able to sustain city employees and again, avoid some of the otherwise potential impact of a more drastic, austere approach.

Now that revenues are coming back, we think it's important to, if you will, restore faith to the voters about what was intended originally with those levies in the Park District.

So funding is put back for the general fund, is restored to those departments, so that they're then able to apply the levy resources or the park district resources, respectively, for their original purposes.

On the park side, that was a lot of major maintenance activity that was intended.

For libraries, that was some capital investments, but also additional hours and increased services.

So those restorations are part of the budget.

Another strategy that we deployed to sustain city operations and to respond to the crisis was to draw upon our fiscal reserve.

So we started pre-COVID, started the crisis with reserves of about $125 million.

Over 2020 and 2021, we have spent those down to approximately $40 million.

And for the 22 budget, we're no longer going to draw on those reserves.

Again, with revenues coming back, we can rely on, if you will, cash flow rather than leaning on our reserves.

But more than that, we're going to begin the process of restoring those reserves, or we are proposing to do just that.

So we would contribute $25 million to the reserves, increasing them, again, from the current balance or year-end 2020-2021 balance of $40 million to a total of $65.

We've also sent you a resolution to establish more clearly the policies around refilling these for the longer run.

Previously, the policies imagined relatively small drawdowns, not a very considerable one we've had, again, appropriately responding to the crisis.

we have experienced in our experiencing.

So that resolution calls for us to restore funding up to the target levels over four additional years, so a total of five.

And you'll see as we, the details of that, over the five years from now that I will be hitting a target level that's above 125 because the contribution, the goals are indexed for inflation and for revenue growth so that they can really address the needs that we will potentially have in the future.

But we don't feel it's too soon to start rebuilding those reserves.

So that's the key component there.

And again, we thought these were things we needed to do before we started thinking about additional spending.

And I should say that in general, as you know, we started to build this budget really last March and last April, approaching the departments.

And when we did, our basic message is that our goal was to sustain, in large part, current city activities.

We didn't expect to have the resources beyond the one-time federal government resources and what we knew from the payroll tax to meaningfully increase city and increase and expand city services.

That's not to say that you're not going to see now a number of proposed additional investments, and that there are other smaller ones that exist in the proposed budget as well.

But overall, this is still fundamentally a resource-constrained proposal.

We are still coming out of this recession.

We are not fully out of it.

And obviously, the demands for services have changed and grown larger as a result of COVID and its impact as well.

And I see there's another question, so I won't move on to the next slide.

Thank you very much.

Vice Chair Hurdle.

And you may have said this, Director Noble.

I missed it, though.

How does the $25 million proposed for rebuilding the financial reserves compare to what's required by policy or law?

Yeah, the required contributions are less than half that.

And again, we can provide you some additional information about that.

But we again, the those requirements, I think we're really more tuned to what would have been a gradual or a smaller withdrawal.

So again, we obviously we need to hit those, but we thought it was appropriate to consider larger contributions as well.

So it's about double what would be legally required.

Correct.

Got it.

Thank you.

I can move on and start talking about the first investment.

There is another question.

Please go ahead, Councilmember Peterson.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

Just to provide additional context for the reserves so that I understand it better, if we had not dipped into those reserves at all, what would the amount be today?

I'd have to review, but the targets probably would have been closer to $135 million, or maybe even a little bit larger than that.

Because, again, the targets were indexed for inflation on one side and revenue growth on another.

So in the neighborhood of growing at 3% or 4% per year, then that's what we would have.

But $125 million is where we started in 2020. So we'd add 10% more, give or take.

Okay.

So, so another way of looking at it is that if we hadn't dipped into it, we would be at, um, you know, we're actually 60 or 70 million short in a way.

No, that's exactly why again, we can review the details of the central staffing provide more to you as well.

But, uh, we're imagining it $25 million a year for the next five years to get us back.

Right.

And that would add up to 125, which is, um, you know, given our existing base would push us towards 160-ish.

I mean, that's, again, because the targets will be growing, if you will, behind us as we make these contributions.

So we're anticipating the moving target.

And it moves for good reason, right?

I mean, that inflation index is a way to be sure that the purchasing power, that, you know, we're going to be able to do what we intended to do with these reserves.

And I would note, they have served us well.

We might have wished to have more, between those federal help and these other strategies, some of which highlighted here, we were able to sustain the city budget without significant reductions in services.

I'm not saying none, but they were very valuable.

And in my mind, there's all the more reason to start to rebuild them as soon as we can.

Thank you.

appreciate the questions.

Councilmember Peterson, there's two things I want to just double check on in this line of questioning.

Number one, let's remember that the rainy day reserves are for moments just like this of crisis and unprecedented times.

I'm proud that our city had built a healthy reserve in both of our emergency funds and that we were able to utilize those as the national data shows to invest in our public services and our most vulnerable so that we can get out of this crisis faster.

That's what the national data says.

that when we use those dollars and avoid cuts, that we can rebound faster.

But I did want to double check because my memory is that the council had actually proposed restoring those funds at a higher level than the executive had last year.

And Ali, I see you on the line there.

Can you remind me what the initial proposals were last year to both utilize the services and then how fast the council was suggesting to rebuild it?

I don't have the exact numbers in front of me, but I believe last year's proposed budget relied on use of the emergency reserves or fiscal reserves.

And I'll just, as a reminder, I think Director Noble sort of mentioned this, but there are two reserves.

There's the emergency fund as well as the revenue stabilization fund.

So drawing down both of those, drawing down both of those funds, I think the proposed budget would have reduced the balances to about $6 million.

And the overall, the council's balancing package and adopted budget added back about $28 million, so close to $30 million.

Yeah, I think that's I appreciate that.

And my recollection as well, the revenue update in November put significant new dollars on the table and I was heartened that council took a large share of that additional revenue and put it here again.

We did not know what was coming.

We have only seen that ever more.

I think that was a prudent move and definitely an investment in the

other council members on the screen, any additional comments, questions?

Okay.

Thank you very much.

Let's continue.

Okay, the next slide.

So, again, to begin to highlight some of the investments.

Community safety.

Obviously, this has been an area of significant interest, and the budget reflects a commitment to investing in alternative models, and in particular ones that are driven by community suggestion and are community-based.

So again, at a high level, and some of this I think you've heard about in various forums as well already.

For instance, triage one, there was some initial funding proposed in the supplementary budget you just approved.

But this would provide funding for three two-person teams.

It would be housed in the fire department, dispatched to be coordinated through the community safety and communication center department.

So, and again, the idea is another level of response.

So, we have the fundamental fire and SPD emergent response to health crises or dangerous situations.

We have the new service that's come on HealthONE, again, it's focused really on medical situations, not necessarily the most urgent, but ones where it's really a medical response that's most appropriate, although in situations there also where some assistance in terms of providing services also makes sense.

And then triage one would be another level of response, again, in truly non-emergent situations where assistance I would like to see more of that.

I would like to see more of that.

I would like to see more of that.

I would like to see more of that.

I would like to see more of that.

I would like to see more of that.

I would like to see more of that.

I would like to see more of that.

I would like to see more of that.

I would like to see more of that.

I would like to see more of that.

I would like to see more of that.

I would like to see more of that.

I would like to see more of that.

I would like to see more of that.

Perfect, thank you.

Expanding community service officers, so although the title officer is in the name, they're actually civilian, so this would be an expansion of the current force of CSOs from 18 to 24. As you know, but just to highlight for the audience as well, they assist in non-emergency response, engage with communities and neighborhoods, and they've been particularly involved in some of the programming that SPD is engaged in around at-risk youth.

So continuing to invest in that program and expanding it.

There are also a number of investments related to domestic violence.

So a new pilot program that was We have proposed from the municipal court developing coordination with other stakeholders.

not highlighted as a bullet here, but also there was existing, there was significant investments, existing investments in domestic violence in terms of victim assistance, where we're shifting the funding source, previously had relied on these, and shifting that really to be dependent on the general fund more explicitly.

And then it also submitted additional funding for, again, under this new program for treatment of batterers and a new program that appears to be successful or has shown signs of success on that front.

And then in dollar terms, the largest investment here under alternatives is funding to sustain the investments that were just awarded by RFP from HSD.

So for a series of community-based safety programs targeting youth and others as well.

recognize that the funding was provided with the intent that those would be ongoing, that we wanted to build ongoing funding into the base budget for those types of programs.

And then lastly, in terms of SPD itself, the budget is for 2021 is largely unchanged.

However, there is sufficient funding to support a modest expansion of uniformed officers.

So it would be a net addition of 130, excuse me, a net addition of 35 relative to where we expect to end this year.

The rough math there is a target of hiring 125 officers, with the expectation that 90 will separate, retire, or resign.

That figure is kind of an average level of separation.

Obviously, recent years, we have seen more than that.

So it's a bit of a guess.

But again, the goal here was to provide sufficient resource to start to rebuild the forest.

Consistent with that goal, there is a proposal for $1 million Roughly, in hiring incentives for both new recruits and lateral transfers, we think to achieve 125 is a relatively aggressive hiring goal.

And given how competitive the market is, if you will, for new officers, expect that something like that will be necessary to achieve that goal.

So again, there are additional elements in the budget in this community safety space, if you will.

And we have a briefing coming up that will highlight those as well.

So not that I'm not ready to answer questions, but know that there's more information coming.

OK, thank you so much, Vice Chair Hurdle.

Thank you.

I recognize that we do have a separate presentation that digs into this.

I just want to get some of my questions on the table now, even recognizing they may not be able to be answered.

In the July 27th presentation from the executive, the Public Safety and Human Services Committee, we learned that there was agreement from both the Nick Jr. report and SPD analysis that 12% of current calls for service could be diverted to an alternate response in the near term, and that's a quote from SPD.

And it's included 28 call types that SPD agreed may not need SPD response.

Triage 1 program that we've been talking about is designed for two call types, person down and welfare checks.

But that is a small portion of that 20 percent of calls.

That represents, I think, 23,000 service hours.

for the triage one program, but the 12% of calls represent almost 142,000 service officers.

So we are proposing in the very near term, a alternative response program that is going to address about a sixth of the service hours that the executive is agreeing should be directed to alternative response in the near term.

So I'm just, I'm concerned that, you know, I really was hoping to see in this budget a proposal how to address that 12 percent of calls, those call types that SPD agrees.

There's the whole other argument that the executive hired another consultant to critique its own report.

where there's not agreement, right, about call types that Nick Jr. recommends for alternative response, but there's no disagreement about this, these 28 call types.

So I'm going to flag that I'm just frustrated that the triage one program is being stood up in the very near term, but there's no proposal for what we all agree should be done in the near term.

And again, I'm putting air quotes around the word near term because that's, the terminology used in the executive presentation, so flagging that.

The other thing maybe you can help with, I've seen a lot of the press reporting on the mayor's I'm not aware of a proposed budget as it relates to staffing.

And it reads as if there's a proposal for an SPD budget ad for officers.

Recognize that there's an increase in the overall SPD budget.

But as I understand the council's 21 fully funded staffing plan, That was based on a projection that the department would fill 1,357 FTEs in 2021. But the 2022 budget provides funding based on a projection that the department will fill no more than 1,230 FTEs in 2022. So to me, in that area of funding for staffing, that seems like that's a reduction.

And it's a reduction based on, I think, a realistic projection.

But it's been reported as if it's an increase in funding for officer salaries.

And I'm not seeing that, but I'm also recognizing that I'm also seeing evidence that there's a lot less transparency in the proposed budget for SPD than we, I recall seeing last year, recognizing that we were last year doing an inquest on the SPD budget, but I'm just struggling with some of those questions there.

If I could respond, you're exactly right on the last point.

The initial budget for 2021 assumed, the phrase I'm going to use is an average level of officers.

It's important to note that it fluctuates over the course of the year.

But 1357 is the number I recall as well.

The proposed budget for 2022 targeting an average level of officers of 1,230, including the 35 hires.

Again, that is an average.

number targeted for the end of the year would be slightly higher, but it is fundamentally 100 plus fewer officers funded in the budget.

There's no question about that.

And again, that is reflective of the very significant number of of net separations that we've experienced both in 2020 and in 2021. The budget begins to try to reverse that, again, with sufficient funding and, again, it's hiring incentives to try to net 35. It will take us, if the goal is to restore, you know, back to where the 2021 base is, it will take us several years to do that.

That has been the history with the department that it can't, it's very hard to grow the force very quickly given the training requirements and the recruitment challenges.

In terms of the latter point about alternatives, I think I will defer to the presentation that's coming.

I do think that triage one took some time to develop.

It is not a simple thing to develop, you know, and frame what these alternatives will actually look like and what form of response is going to be effective as an alternative.

I think, again, this may come down to the definition of near-term again, and also recognizing And it's not intended as an excuse, but just a description of reality that COVID, the crises around it has made things like development of new policy initiatives challenging.

As of the staffing levels at SPD, they are taxed to just respond moment to moment.

Harder for them to take a longer strategic look, given where they are.

But there'll be more on that in the upcoming presentation.

I appreciate that and yes, thank you very much Councilmember Herbold as chair of public safety for teeing up those questions.

I know that there's going to be a lot more of those questions tomorrow afternoon as we get into the components of the Seattle Police Department and public safety investments as well.

Council President Gonzalez, I see you have your hand raised.

Thank you so much chair Mosqueda.

Just really quickly, just a quick question about assumptions in the proposed budget related to SPD's proposed hiring plan.

And budget director Noble, I've really appreciated the partnership with you over the last six years to really dig into SPD's hiring plan and how they estimate what staffing levels they need and have sort of appreciated the opportunity to work collaboratively between my office and the mayor's office on sort of making realistic estimates in this area and wanted to just, you know, get a better understanding of whether the assumption underlying the mayor's proposed budget for the SPD hiring plan includes any assumptions about anticipated departures related to uniformed officers refusing to comply with the mayor's vaccine mandate?

We developed the overall budget before the vaccine mandate policy was developed and implemented.

So at some level, no.

What I would modify that further to say that The, again, the net addition of 35 officers that's reflected in the budget and, again, anticipates 125 hires and 90 separation.

I would have otherwise been here telling you that I think that there was some potential that the 90 separations was an over forecast in the sense that we've achieved, we've experienced historic levels of separation for the last couple of years.

The 90 is more of an average year and just, At some point, open question whether there were as many as any officers who were left to leave, if you will.

So my thinking was that there was some reason, good reason to think that the forecast for separations might be low and we might have to consider overall staffing levels for a positive sense or higher than anticipation over the course of next year.

The COVID vaccine mandate does have the potential to lead to some additional separations this year, given the timing of the mandate.

So I think we will know over the next couple months whether or not that is a significant impact in terms of overall staffing level.

The mandate formally takes effect on October 18th.

The process for seeking exemptions and coming into compliance is playing out right now.

So we'll know more shortly.

And there is some opportunity beyond the 18th for employees to come into compliance, though we won't necessarily know the answer as soon as that.

But I think that is something that we will learn more about over the next couple months.

And in any event, however, we will have more concrete data about separations, potential separations related to the COVID-19 vaccine mandate issued by the mayor before the council takes final action on the 2022 proposed budget.

Is that an accurate characterization of what we anticipate to occur?

Yeah, I don't know that we'll have the final answer, but we'll certainly know more.

I would also add that we developed the budget based on and finalized it based on the staffing forecast that we knew in August.

So even factors other than COVID could be affecting that as well.

So we will all know more about the overall forecast, year-end staffing over the next couple of months.

Great.

And then, you know, we of course are being asked to consider the proposed budget for 2022, some of these potential vaccine mandate induced separations amongst uniformed staff at SPD could occur in 2021. Can you talk a little bit about how we thread the needle in terms of the impact of those potential separations in 2021 versus 2022?

Well, if the question is about financial impact, I wouldn't anticipate any significant additional savings as individuals separate from the city.

they cash out of leave and the like.

So there's actually some expense associated with that.

Obviously, we wouldn't necessarily be paying them through year end.

So my guess is that there's not a significant net positive financial impact.

As we were discussing, that will leave us at a different staffing level potentially as we enter 2022, which can both have financial implications, but also operational ones.

And I do want to highlight that this is a budget presentation, but significant staffing losses at either SPD or at SFD, the fire department, could create operational impacts.

And that's an issue that is being analyzed and planned for as we speak.

I know we are talking about SPD specifically but you highlighted this could be an issue within SFD as well and some of our other departments.

I do want to make sure that Council Central staff is working closely with you and your office.

relevant departments to make sure that we are getting that data in the most timely fashion so that we're able to have the benefit of that information as we're continuing to work through the 2022 proposed budget.

And then one last sort of general question, Dr. Noble, is whether there are any other variables that are known to the city budget office or the mayor's office that could impact the 2022 budget specifically as it relates to investments in the area of community safety and public safety.

Not that I can think of as I'm sitting here, but again, there's a more detailed briefing to come with folks who are more engaged in this area.

So with that caveat, I'm not thinking of anything explicitly.

Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair, for the opportunity to ask some questions.

Absolutely.

Thank you both very much, colleagues, that this is what this forum is for and to get a base level understanding and ask some I have one quick question and then I'm going to turn it back over to Vice Chair Herbold for a follow-up question.

you note the sustained community-based safety programs.

These are the HSD investments that we just sent out the door related to last year's 2021 budget.

While those contracts have just been finalized and $10 million went out the door, we did just add $3 million to these HSD public safety grants.

to bring the total of those grants from 18 months to a full two years.

Part of that was informed by first responders, including members of the fire department who said that there needs to be a landing zone for folks to go if there's going to be a triage one or a triage program.

We need to make sure that there's actual people who work in community safety, housing resources, mental health services that are that we're going to be receiving these individuals versus SPD or SFD being called at the end of a triage encounter.

And part of the rationale was to make sure that we were standing up and providing sustainability for these organizations for at least two years.

Is the $3 million, can you tell us, is the $3 million already being assumed?

So there's 13 million going out to the existing contracts for that full two years?

And does that also mean that the The $10 million here is actually $7 million additional for next year?

How does that compute?

When we were building the budget and taking final action, you had yet to vote on the supplemental, so we were left to anticipate or not what might happen.

So we did not count on the $3 million that you added.

So this $10 million, the $3 million is in fact additive to this.

Depending on your intent, it's in some ways made redundant by this $10 million, because this $10 million will be sufficient to extend the contracts in the way that you had anticipated and potentially beyond.

Our goal was to build the budget so that this funding would represent an ongoing portion of the city budget.

So we didn't find ourselves entering, say, 2023 or 2024 having to scramble to find the resource needed to sustain these programs.

So this is a strong commitment from the executive that these are intended to be ongoing.

They need to be part of the base budget for 22 and beyond that.

That $3 million that you've allocated is not needed to extend.

This $10 million will do that and then some.

What you choose to do with that $3 million is among the things that you will have to determine as part of this process, whether they stay in this space or are used to address other needs.

Great things.

I see Ali on the line here, too.

So let me let me rephrase what I think I just heard the 10 million that's already been allocated for this year.

The council, because of the underspend, has added 3 million to the existing 10 million.

We have 13 million dollars that is intended for the existing HST contracts.

to not just go for 18 months, but to actually go for two years.

If we assume then that there's an additional $10 million for this category of spending, we could actually see additional contracts be added for the 18 months or so for contracts that didn't get approved the first time around, because we know that there was at least $40 million worth of requests for funding for that fund source.

So in theory, one of the we have a lot of options in front of us is to continue as planned to have our existing HSD contracts for community safety be extended for two years and then we could be additive to that by coupling our existing 13 million with these 10 million and expanding the number of organizations that are providing public safety contracts.

Yeah.

Chair Mosqueda, I think that there will be a choice and we will certainly be putting this option before you about the $3 million if it was intended to just ensure that the existing contracts are extended.

I think what Director Noble is pointing out is that this ongoing funding would ensure that the existing contracts could continue.

And so there will be a choice for this council whether or not to take an action to add $3 million to expand the number of organizations that are contracted.

However, we would have to address the ongoing we will continue to work through those options with all of you, but there will be some choices and ongoing sustainability of those choices will also need to be considered.

The budget takes advantage of significant one-time resources again.

Sustainability is a real challenge and candidly.

There aren't, on a forecast basis for 23, there are not sufficient resources to sustain all that is in this proposal.

That is, we're taking advantage of the opportunities we have, recognizing the priorities that have been set.

But that will be a real challenge going forward.

And my concern would be about expanding that challenge.

It's already going to be difficult enough.

But I think you have framed some of the opportunities, and I think Ali has described it well.

And if I could just add one more thing, I think in that long-term sustainability question, that will be both a question for this $10 million in the proposed budget, as well as the $3 million, because we still need to sort out exactly how much of some of these investments that were included last year are included in the proposed budget as ongoing, and how much would be dependent on greater flexibility and use of the payroll tax revenues moving forward.

So that is all.

all conversations to come when we move into issue ID.

Thanks.

Vice Chair Hurdle?

Thanks.

On that, I have a couple questions, but first on that topic of the additional $3 million for community-based safety programs, I think the language in the council action was inclusive of the idea of being able to expand contracts that were conceived as being, I believe, year-and-a-half-long contracts.

It was inclusive of the idea of either expanding those contracts for more time and sort of creating a pot, or it was also inclusive of funding proposals that were received by HSD but not chosen, but it wasn't limited to that either.

And I just want for, if folks at HSD are listening, I am hoping that folks who are engaged in this work are considering bringing 2021 proposals to HSD for funding this $3 million.

We all were copied on some correspondence from a coalition of about 20 different organizations here that identified the fact that there needs to be immediate implementation of options and resources for creation of additional non-law enforcement interventions to send to behavioral health crisis events.

goes on to say there remains broad agreement that law enforcement shouldn't be the default response to behavioral health crises.

Alternatives exist to some degree in our local area, but not at full scale and not in a manner to fully replace the role of law enforcement for assistance.

The void may be bigger than you realize, and the immediate risks are high.

Establishing more alternatives is urgently needed.

And so I have, you know, really encouraged everybody who works in this space to consider the potential availability of $3 million in the 21 now.

And so we should think, considering what our options are as a council, we should be listening to see whether or not such a proposal is made to HSD.

If such a proposal is made to HSD for 2021 spending, we won't have it to allocate for 2022. And that's my personal preference, because I do see that there's a great urgency right now, and I don't want to wait until next year.

if there are proposals that are ready to go.

So that's on that.

Director Noble, when we met prior to the proposal of the budget, I had identified my concern that when you're talking about this $10 million in community safety programs contracted by HSD that I didn't know about, like, What's going on with the other $4 million that the council included in this year's budget for the, well, for the 2021 budget, for the community safety, the geographic hubs, the community safety hubs, that was another $4 million investment.

Want to know whether or not that's included.

And then I could just get my questions out so I don't forget them.

If that's okay.

We're already being lobbied about the community service officer program and whether or not that can be moved out of SPD and into the community safety.

communication center.

I remember when we talked about this last year, we had heard from the union that represents the CSOs that they weren't interested in moving.

I'm wondering whether or not there have been any conversations about that in the intervening year.

And then finally, as it relates specifically to the DVIP program and the pilot project, we in my committee last Friday received a presentation, and this is just more me signaling for central staff purposes on how we should I mean, I'm definitely supportive of this program, but I think there are some principles that we've heard from the CLS Task Force about diversion, and they have some principles that I want to make sure are embedded in this funding.

One, that funding is reallocated from existing funding from CLS infrastructures to diversion, should not be coercive and result in loss of constitutional trial rights for people.

It occurs in the prefiling stages.

And it's rooted in community and not in an expansion of the CLS.

So I just want to flag those principles for future discussion as it relates to investment.

If I might respond, I can try this maybe in reverse order.

I appreciate the comments about the domestic violence intervention program.

And again, you'll hear more about that shortly.

On the CSO's executive's perspective that it's actually important that they remain in SBD in order to really maximize their value as an alternative response form.

But you can feel more from Chief Diaz about that as well.

I think I'm going to get these all.

On the $4 million, my understanding is that's sustained funding.

We will confirm that.

And you had some other questions.

We are also working on responses, too, so I can say that.

On the $3 million and the question of whether we would expand the number of recipients versus extend the period of time, We're on hold on that because this issue feels like you as a collective council need to determine whether you have in mind that the money be for extensions or for expansions, and if for expansions, what the strategy is to sustain those.

So aware of that possibility, but given that is now a live, in my mind, a live budget issue, we aren't going to move forward until we get a little more clarity for, if you will, all of our state.

But in a related point to that, and connecting it back to your earlier comments about alternatives And Nick Jr.

And I'm going to forget what that stands for as well.

I was going to try to explain it, but it's at national level analysis.

What we know, I think we know about the 10 million that's been awarded out of HSDs.

Those contracts are not for things that really are immediate response, alternative response.

So again, being as a budget director and a guy who keeps an eye on resources, we might do well to hold back some of this.

We don't have funding in the budget to cover what those things might look like.

So if they were to be developed now, we don't have a funding mechanism for them.

And they're very much in this very on technical language in this space.

So I think there could be some benefit in some opportunity now to set aside some funding so that we could, if we develop, you know, a different, a different thing than triage one that is in that same space a different thing and CSOs that can do that there would actually be a source to fund them that Those specific response, short-term, you know, immediate response kind of proposals are not what the community has brought forward.

And that may well be because it's really more on the city to identify something of that kind of formal structure.

But that is a challenge.

And I think, you know, your point about needing those is well taken.

We will also need to fund them.

Council Member Herbold, I think the first question I'm not sure I heard Director Noble respond to, because there were several, the $4 million that was included last year, and I think it was actually authorized in the 2020 budget revision ordinance, but the contracts went through 2021. I just wanted to let you know that we did confirm with the department yesterday, and Amy Gore will make sure to see it in the budget that the funding for the community hub work is ongoing and included in the budget.

And when I get to describing how we were balancing all the resources, that's an example of things that were funded last year that we wanted to continue and needed to find resources to do so.

But thank you for that clarification, Elliot.

That was my recollection as well.

The budget's a multiple hundred pages long.

And that was me being happy.

I could tell it was much appreciated.

There are questions.

Yeah, also vaguely conscious of time is going to move on to the next slide.

But we could advance.

So homelessness.

First, I want to talk about policies, changes here and then also talk about funding as well.

So the most obvious, again, you're aware of this, but I want to highlight both for you and for the public that The biggest news in homelessness is that the King County Regional Homelessness Authority will be taking the lead on implementing our homelessness response strategies as of 2022, and a significant 90% plus of the city's funding for homelessness and related services will be essentially transferred to the King County Regional Homelessness Authority, KCRHA, I'm likely to say at some point here, And then we will work with them on implementation.

We and its governing bodies will work with them.

We're currently developing a master services agreement.

So essentially, if you will, the contract that will govern the allocation of city funds to the regional agency.

And I also want to note that we've worked with the agency in developing the proposed budget.

So some of the terms of specific funding strategies and approaches that was informed by our work with them.

That's not to say that they might not want additional resource.

I mean, ultimately, there are constraints.

We're balancing needs across not just homelessness, but across a variety of city services and need to keep that into consideration.

So that's obviously a very big move.

So I wanted to highlight that.

In terms of shelter and related services, the budget largely sustains, and I'll highlight some expansions, but sustains the shelter facilities that we are currently operating and operating in a modified way in response to COVID.

So just calling out some individual specifics, there is funding, again, in terms of expansion, the new KRO shelter that we hope to stand up shortly, operational funding for that going forward.

funding for the Salvation Army's SOTO facility.

So that's one of the larger facilities that has been stood up again and de-intensified the shelter system in response to COVID.

We get further expansions.

There is operations funding to support three additional tiny home villages, the capital funding for those coming from a state allocation and the recently approved budget.

Excuse me, and then there is funding to sustain or to support existing providers and the additional costs that they're facing operating in the world of COVID.

Much of this funding is, and you'll see this when we give you the more detailed federal funding detail, is funded from federal resource, but not necessarily exclusively.

And then I wanted to highlight, and again, you'll hear more about this in our overall briefing on city's approach to homelessness, that they're implementing a new strategy as well.

You take city resources that, in this case, payroll taxes in the context of services in support of affordable housing.

City resources that would fund services that would be paired with federally funded housing grants to help folks who are potentially in the current shelter system, but on the ready to take on housing, but perhaps ready to take it on if there's some additional support provided.

I think this is an effective way to leverage the federal resource and to increase, I don't want to sound too callous, but increase throughput to the shelter system.

So our best opportunity to provide shelter to folks who are living on the street or elsewhere is to have a slot in one of our existing shelters.

Those are ultimately available when we're able to place people into long-term housing.

And really, that's the goal of the entire system.

So this is a step towards expanding those opportunities.

And you'll hear more about the very significant investments in affordable housing that are also along those lines.

In addition, I just wanted to highlight, I think this is an important expansion last year, is ongoing funding for transitional housing that has multiple bedrooms in order to support larger families.

That's certainly not exclusively a characteristic of immigrant and refugee families, but something that we do see and we want to make sure we have appropriate facilities.

So that was added last year and sustained this.

And again, a much more detailed briefing coming on overall shelter.

And I'm happy to answer questions, but there are others who know a good deal more about this than I.

Then I also want to talk about the Clean City Program, which is addressing issues associated with the unsanctioned encampments and folks who have been forced to live on the street or in parks or elsewhere.

So the current, the 2020, the tranche one allocation of Clifford dollars includes approximately $6 million for clean cities, which has involved targeted garbage collection to known encampments, needle collection, purple bags, a variety of services to address needs there.

And the proposal would sustain that funding level.

This is sufficient resource to operate at the heightened level through August.

The idea here is that this was framed and has been conceived of as a response to the current crisis and the increase in the number of folks who we see living outside in part because of the need to be sensitive to the public health issues associated with COVID.

Whether or not the timeline that we have imagined here is realistic, again, You know, in July, as we were building the budget, we thought we were seeing that we had, if you will, crested the worst of COVID.

Whether that's the case or not any longer is really unclear.

So I wanted to give you a sense of what we were thinking as we developed that proposal.

Additionally, there's general fund resource to expand outreach and services to folks who are living in recreational vehicles, RVs.

That includes hygiene services, so pump outs, sanitation facilities, and then also garbage collection, expanding the purple bag program to serve those individuals as well.

And then also, additional resource provided to parks on a couple of fronts.

One is some one-time funding.

We're actually going to use real estate excise tax as eligible use for capital improvements in the parks.

And the idea here is not so much improvement but restoration.

The damage to park properties, plantings, to facilities and the like, they have seen that they haven't necessarily had the opportunity to make in the context of COVID to keep up with maintenance.

So an allocation of $2 million there.

But then also ongoing operational funding and staffing for parks to take a more direct role as described here in addressing impacts of encampments.

So that would include outreach and work to find alternative living arrangements for folks who are in the parks, potentially in right of ways as well.

consistent, again, with the MDAR protocols, but giving the Parks Department the resources that it needs to proactively and actively address the large number of folks who are living in the parks now unsheltered as we move forward through COVID, trying to find them permanent locations and to restore parks for more general use.

Again, a briefing coming up, I think, tomorrow on the overall homeless strategy where we can describe this further, but I'm certainly happy to take initial questions.

Thank you, Director Newell.

I am not seeing any questions at this point.

I know that there's going to be a handful of questions for the department tomorrow and appreciate Council Member Lewis letting me know that they have a handful of questions.

Again, colleagues, when we go through each department, I'll be turning to the council members.

who have the department within their committee's purview to have the first line of questions.

On this, Council President Gonzalez, I saw your hand first.

Thanks so much.

Just really quickly, you know, of course, Council Member Lewis and I both sit on the governing committee for the King County Regional Homelessness Authority, and we represent, we're one of, we're two of three representatives on the Regional Homelessness Authority.

And as we're looking at the budget that is being proposed by the mayor, I just wanted to get make really clear for the record here that.

That the, the, the.

Sort of what kinds of shelter and services that King County regional homelessness authority is undertaking.

We'll have a conversation about that and do a deep dive, I think, tomorrow.

But Director Noble, I just want to make sure that we have a clear understanding of what functions, for lack of a better term, will remain within the city's jurisdiction.

In other words, What are we essentially funding through this proposed 2022 budget based on the presumption that this is sort of what will be left to the city's responsibility to address in terms of homelessness services?

Again, I will defer in part to the briefing that's coming.

I think the most important components, maybe to define this by what will remain is, and we're about to, next slide will highlight that, the affordable housing investments will be ours, if you will.

So Office of Housing will still continue to take the lead on long-term permanent housing.

And again, that's ultimately a critical component of this, arguably the most critical component.

In terms of shelter services and the like, The vast majority of that is proposed to be transferred to the King County Authority.

Some of the clean city type activities are dealing with issues in the right-of-way and in parks in terms of their impact.

And as and when appropriate, cleanup, that falls and would remain to the city.

Most outreach, as I understand, shifted to the regional authority.

But again, I'm not the expert on this, and there are many more who are, and I think appropriately, we scheduled a briefing to really dig deep into this, and I defer to that.

No, I appreciate that and didn't mean to sort of keep a question to make you answer questions on behalf of the Regional Homelessness Authority.

Really what I wanted to get at is that the mayor's proposed budget includes funding for addressing impacts related to unsanctioned encampments and folks who are surviving outside.

but based on the agreement that that function is going to remain with the city of Seattle.

Correct.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And I think that is important to you for tomorrow's discussion as well.

So I really appreciate that being flagged for today.

Council President, anything else, Council President?

Okay, thank you very much.

Council Member Lewis, please go ahead.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

So I don't have many questions here, because as the exchange with Council President and Director Noble demonstrated, I think most of these questions are about implementation and executive policy.

So they're best for later in the week.

But I do just want to flag my appreciation for I'm glad to see that we have alignment on that.

interwoven throughout our broader budget process is going to be this conversation about the intersections of outreach and enforcement.

And I think it's more of a policy than a budget question.

I think that this council consistently, and I think it's the correct position, has wanted to seek a strategy that bifurcates outreach and enforcement instead of merging them together into one thing, which has been problematic and has, in some cases, made it difficult to do business with providers who do not want to be involved in a system that merges outreach with enforcement.

I think we have an opportunity here to really clearly place outreach under the authority that will be outreach without coercion, that will be outreach that is person-centered, and then have You know, things that that are enforcement focused stay within the city family and have a clear delineation between those things so that we're not commingling them and so that we're not continuing to have those trust issues with our neighbors surviving outside and with our provider community.

So I think that'll be an interesting policy discussion, particularly, I guess, starting in earnest on Thursday, but probably going throughout this budget discussion.

and a way to do some system realignment to work on some of the barriers that we've been experiencing through our state of emergency on homelessness that has resulted in a lot of hurdles and not realizing as much success as we would like to see.

So I think I'll leave it there, but I appreciate these initial investments that are baked into the budget up front.

and look forward to talking to the human services department and the authority on Thursday about how we're going to move forward on that in the end of this year and then going into 2022. So thank you.

Customer Lewis, thank you.

That I think was a very effective framing, certainly from the budget director's perspective.

This is really much more of a policy question, particularly around the proposals for parks increased involvement.

And they are, you know, not going to tell you that you know a million dollars isn't a lot of money in the overall context of the city budget it's not the biggest allocation i think but as you've identified there's a policy issue here and the proposals here are in response in part to the fact that current strategies don't seem to be entirely successful but i think there's every room for a healthy policy discussion about what approaches we should invest in and what those will look like.

So I think, again, you have framed that well.

And I'll bring you folks on Thursday who can be more informative about the thinking there, and then you will continue those discussions over the weeks to come.

Well, I will take that compliment and quit while I'm ahead.

Thank you.

And I'm hoping I can't do it on the next slide.

We'll see.

Thank you so much.

I think it is important to make sure we are responding as a city to the pressing needs as the new department gets set up.

We are all interested in making sure the city's response does not grind to a halt as we stand up the other strategies on the horizon here.

The calling out of the $2.4 million is an important item here.

It happens to be the same amount, 2.4, that we had included for this year's budget allocation, right?

So I don't want those 2.4 millions to be confused, but if I'm understanding correctly, Director Noble, we have allocated in this year's supplemental budget 2 million from the state capital budget that the state legislature has authorized for us.

We coupled that with about We have $2.4 million from the ARPA funds to begin to stand up these three additional tiny house villages in quarter four at least of this year.

So what I think this bullet represents is an additional $2.4 million specifically for the operation funding that you led the bullet with, so that we can continue into next year as we stand up those bigger, better, bolder strategies under the RHA.

Is that correct?

That is exactly correct.

Those are the ongoing operational funding.

There had been partial year funding for this year, but this is to sustain these further for all of 22 and build them into the base budget for beyond.

Although, again, the longer term strategies become part of the policy level discussion with the KC, with the regional authority.

I won't even try.

It's covered in BOD.

I think that's important.

I do want to thank also our legislative partners, Representative Chopp, Representative Macri, Senator Frock, who worked hard on the $2 million capital funds.

I appreciate that there is an effort as announced by Councilmember Lewis earlier this week, some movement forward on getting those sites set up, and also our partners at the Department of Commerce who have clarified that if I'm glad to hear that there's potential movement there.

I think the biggest question on all of these pieces, including the upcoming slides for me, is going to be the color of money and where the money is coming from to fund these things versus where it was initially envisioned.

As we get into the details tomorrow, I'll be asking some more questions about where these fund sources come from, but I'm glad to hear that there's implementation movement on those pieces.

Speaking of movement, let's keep moving.

Okay, next slide.

I recall it's about affordable housing.

So from my end, this is really the most significant policy moves, arguably, are happening in this space, if you will.

And as highlighted in this first bullet here, the proposed budget includes a historic level of funding for the Office of Housing and for affordable housing.

So total budget is almost $200 million, an increase of more than $100 million over 2021. And that additional funding, and I'll talk a little bit about its sources, but in terms of its uses, the largest one is to invest in housing capital.

That's standing up and building new facilities or just as recently acquiring facilities, housing, apartments that have already been built.

So in terms of the total, that includes more than $50 million of the local, the federal assistance.

Affordable housing is one of its eligible uses.

The idea of using that resource to make a kind of a long-term investment seems particularly wise.

I'll talk a little bit more about the overall strategy on federal funding shortly.

A significant share of payroll tax money to support that.

You recall that the policy directive on that transportation network company tax, was it a share of it go to affordable housing as well?

Obviously, with the pandemic, the revenues there have been less than expected, but nonetheless, there is an allocation of those resources.

And then the mandatory housing affordability or MHA program is with increasing development has proven to be a robust revenue source.

for affordable housing and investing in long-term capital as well.

That's a portion of that.

The next category is also really largely about housing capital, but I wanted to highlight that it's specifically targeting issues of displacement and ideally in communities, many of them BIPOC communities, facing the pressures of gentrification.

I'll talk a little about this more going forward, but the proposal here, again, being responsive to council's appropriate emphasis on affordable housing as a priority to take what the strategic investment fund and restructure it slightly, roughly half, a little bit more here, goes to this particular housing element.

Again, that helps us achieve an overall increased level of investment in the capital needed for affordable housing, but also responsive to concerns about displacement and the impacts that gentrification are having on the city's communities of color in particular.

Also in this space of affordable housing is funding for one of the recommendations from the equitable city, equitable communities task force.

So that task force had recommended $6 million to be invested in home ownership.

Again, particularly targeting communities where home ownership is lagging because of overt and long-standing historic racist policies around housing.

Redlining is one example.

I'll talk again later about the kind of overall funding sources, but highlighting that this is proposals to fund this with payroll tax revenues, because one of the specific priorities identified in the jumpstart resolution and ordinance was home ownership.

So this is the place where interests were aligned, and as we were sorted through the puzzle of available resources, saw a clear opportunity.

So again, Most dramatic policy shift or policy investment represented in the budget is around affordable housing.

And this is a good summary.

You had a briefing shortly about from Director Alvarado provide additional detail as well.

But I'm again happy to take questions.

Thanks so much.

I'm going to hold my questions on the fund source for this for your last slide as you circle back to it.

Can I ask one more question, though, about the previous slide related to The Clean Cities Initiative, and I know our Chair of Parks is on the line here too and closely tracking this issue.

For me, I think that our investments in health and hygiene is really paramount in addition to housing in this upcoming year's budget.

So I just want to ask a few questions here.

We do see from this Clean Cities Initiative through parks and utilities and SDOT that there's an investment for more investments going into the Clean Cities Initiative, but that looks like it's only going until August of 2022. So can you answer from the budget chair's perspective, excuse me, from the CBO's perspective, it feels like this is more of a budgetary question than a department question, but also happy to carry this over tomorrow if you prefer.

First, why are we using the one-time resources like the federal funds to support this work that is time-limited when we can be certain that we know we're going to need to do this going forward?

And even though it's one-time work, why are we assuming that it's going to end in August of next year versus at least carrying it through the full budget?

No, obviously good question.

So the initial investment of the federal resource, which occurred in Tranche 1, The expectation was in fact that this would be, I don't necessarily have a better word, a surge, but it was in part a response to the growing challenges of folks living unsheltered in the right-of-way and in parks and elsewhere.

But that wasn't necessarily the expectation that that would be an ongoing level of sustained activity.

I think that is among the questions that is going to be before you.

So at the end of the day, there's a question.

I think there are twofold reasons about why there wasn't additional funding or more funding provided.

One is just the constraints of how much total resource there is.

And the other is that it was originally framed as a short-term COVID response, short-term being now more than a year, practically two.

As we were debating this internally, I was certainly aware of the potential for this to become an issue again, you know, mid-year or next year about whether or not we had sufficient resource allocated and whether or not we were going to want to, at that point, try to redirect additional resource.

It's a bit of a read and react about the nature of the problem and how long we expect it to be, to need an increased level of emphasis.

Okay, thanks.

I think we will come back to this tomorrow, given the need to make sure that those services are funded for the full year and not the half.

Thanks for taking that up.

Councilmember Lewis, I see you have your hand raised.

I'm particularly interested in how we can expand hygiene infrastructure in the city.

And this has been a long, long going all the way back to the beginning of the pandemic policy focus of the council.

And, you know, particularly want to mention in the Center Councilmember Morales' leadership and putting resource behind the innovative and incredibly affordable Clean Hands Collective Sinks as part of that.

One thing I want to flag is I am aware of certain hygiene products out there for acquisition that would probably be cheaper than the ones that we are currently renting and leasing, that there is probably an ability to use those assets going into the future that we acquire, even beyond the emergency, be it in a sheltering capacity or something else.

Um, you know, the palette in particular makes a very attractive hygiene unit that has, uh, you know, showers, sinks, uh, readily deployable, very mobile, um, very sturdy that runs 30 to $60,000 to buy it, uh, rather than, you know, I, I think it's, it's in, uh, the several thousands a month to lease some of these hygiene things.

And I just want to flag that as we go into this, if we might look towards a policy of acquisition and citing some resources like this in a big and broad way, I think the most effective policy response to the complaints I receive frequently from businesses of people who particularly are living on shelter who are relieving themselves in public would be to provide restrooms in a more scaled up and readily available way than we have been.

And I think part of the limit has been it's been cost prohibitive the way we are leasing and procuring these hygiene products and that there are other hygiene products out there on the market that we could acquire that would allow more scalability for the resource we're putting in.

So I just want to flag that.

You know, gosh, it almost sounds like I'm creating the scoping for a potential audit.

So Auditor Jones, if you're listening, but I I do think that going into the next budget cycle, that would be something I'd be interested in looking into is if there's ways we can get more value out of that through acquisition and maybe being a little bit more nimble.

Director Haar from Seattle Public Utilities, part of the briefing tomorrow on overall homelessness strategy.

And I know that the initial, SPU has led the procurement and the implementation in this area.

And I know that some of the initial procurement done as the crisis was hitting led us to leasing equipment.

I think there has already been a shift towards potentially purchasing.

So anyway, another example where somebody else knows more than I, but I think the opportunity there.

The other thing I would comment is just to emphasize the point you made, cost is a real issue in this area as well.

I have enough history with the city to know that previous consideration and actual steps have been taken to develop publicly accessible restrooms, given the need to plumb and electrify and the like, those can be very expensive to stand up.

I'm not saying that they're not worth doing, but just recognizing that that has been an issue and that's been considered in the past, but under different circumstances need now are arguably notably increased.

Thank you very much.

And again, I think a good flag for our future conversations, not just tomorrow, but throughout the budget, health and hygiene are some of my top priorities along with housing for this budget.

I think that is how our council proposed budget really centers on health, safety and housing.

And I look forward to those future conversations.

Thanks for teeing that up.

And again, good, good recognition of council member Morales' past work as well on the street sinks program.

Allie, did you have anything?

I saw you come on screen.

Just wanted to make sure before we moved on.

Thank you, Chair Muscadine.

I was just nodding to show that central staff was taking notes on the direction.

As always, thank you so much.

Okay, Director Noble, I think we are on to the slide after housing now.

Yeah, if there aren't any questions on housing, we can move on to One more, Green New Deal and the Duwamish Valley.

So there's a little bit of a link here, which is why they're on the same slide.

Two, again, I was highlighting affordable housing is, you know, in dollar terms, the most significant policy move, if you will, in the budget, but both of these are significant as well, and I think really important.

personal note from a budget director standpoint, really gratifying to be able to include these.

So the budget does include 14 plus dollar, 14.3, I believe is the magic number, in new funding for the Green New Deal.

I will link back there.

That is consistent with the funding level called out in the jumpstart resolution and ordinance.

In terms of the specifics there, six and a half million, so not quite half, is unallocated in this budget.

So with the expectation that the Green New Deal Advisory Board would make recommendations about how to allocate those resources.

Recognizing that they'll take a little time to do that, we also thought it was appropriate and had important policy objectives for some share of the remaining funds.

So, but the idea is that the advisory board would recommend on the six and a half million for that remains unallocated for 2022 and that and then recommendations for 2023 and beyond as well that they're just getting stood up and I actually had a chance to give them a little bit of a briefing as some of my staff on the budget process.

We're looking to get recommendations on 2023 funding for them by mid-year next year, so 2022, so that we can incorporate those into our budget process.

And the staff at OSU who are supporting them are aware of that target.

They'll also then have to, but also have the opportunity, to allocate the $6.5 million for 2021 as well, and ideally to do that.

relatively quickly, but thoughtfully.

So that's the first chunk of the money here, technical term.

$4 million directed into the Duwamish Valley Program, part of an overall funding initiative there.

I'm going to highlight that here in the second part of this slide, so I'll come back to that.

Subsidizing conversions from oil-fueled furnaces, in particular, to heat pumps.

So this is a one-time $1.7 million appropriation for that purpose.

The basic idea here is that the original policy intent of both the mayor and the council had been to fund and to subsidize these conversions with the modest tax that is to be imposed on home heating oil.

However, given the economic and financial impacts of COVID, policy decision has been made to delay the implementation of that tax.

What we didn't want to do was delay the implementation of the conversion program.

So given that the revenues are going to become forthcoming, we saw a chance to use this again on a one-time basis to plug in and continue on the schedule we had anticipated as if the tax had been imposed on its original schedule.

So that's the idea there.

Again, OSC is coming forward shortly to give their departmental update and overview.

They'll be able to tell you more about their clean energy pre-apprenticeship program.

But again, this is consistent with the policy goals called out in the jumpstart legislation and with the notion that the Green New Deal holds real promise for employment opportunities in new fields and in new areas.

investing for the longer run by developing the job skills needed to take advantage of those opportunities.

There's an expansion of the Environmental Justice Fund.

This was a recommendation of the Equitable Cities Initiative Task Force as well.

So again, entirely consistent with environmental justice and the principles of the Green New Deal.

And then, Some additional investments around clean builder clean building accelerator program.

So we can bring our buildings up to standard.

There are also some investments in city light, not with with the source of funding, but just to mention on.

electrification, overall vehicles in particular, but not exclusively.

And SDOT also has some resource to do some work on an analytic tool so they can get a better handle on the potential impacts associated with from vehicles and transportation for climate change.

So an overall package there.

The vast majority of this funding is from the payroll tax, again, and it's consistent with the Green New Deal, are taking advantage of some of the flexibility in the federal money to support the portion of this that is job development.

So high level there.

And I think there's questions, so I think I might waiting to answer questions.

Take that question out on the Green New Deal and then move on to Duwamish, if that works for the chair.

That sounds good.

It sounds more or less.

Thank you.

Director Noble, can you remind me for the home heating oil tax, what the anticipated revenue from that would be?

I don't have that in front of me, so we'll get back to you.

I'm recalling the order of $4 or $5 million, but I don't have it in front of me.

Okay, so I'm interested in figuring out what the revenue would be and for how long.

My recollection is that there are about 16,000 homes in the city who would potentially participate in this conversion program.

So I'm interested in over time, how much revenue would we collect?

And when those 16,000 folks have converted, how we would continue to fund For low income families, or, you know, subsidize or pay for their conversion.

And I'm also interested to know if.

The low-income households, I think we identified about 1,000 folks who are low-income who have home heating, oil, and would need to convert.

If they also pay the tax or if they are exempt from the tax.

So if you have that information now, that would be helpful.

If not, I do have these questions for this afternoon as well.

I don't know whether folks have the information on hand by this afternoon.

I don't know if folks are listening.

They may scramble here for a little bit of research.

I think better to wait and bring you the folks who are kind of the program specialists in the area.

But the timeline over the conversions is one of the specific reasons that the mayor has proposed this one-time funding.

We had a path and a schedule, if you will, about the conversion.

And although we are delaying implementation of the tax for good reason, did not want to delay the actual conversions of the furnaces so that we can achieve the climate impact and be successful in the overall strategy.

Ali, were you able to chime in here at all?

Thank you.

Council Member Morales, I just had part of the information, not answers to all of your questions, but just relying on the previous central staff memo with the legislation, I believe you sponsored to delay implementation of the tax this year.

That resulted originally the estimate was about 7.8%.

$8 million that would be generated from the tax between 2021 to 2029 with the delay.

It's about an $890,000 reduction.

So the estimate is closer to $7 million for that tax period.

Generally, so this $1.7 million makes up for more than what the delay had caused and will allow those households to convert on a faster timeline.

Thank you so much.

I'm not seeing any additional questions.

Let's go to Duwamish Valley.

Yeah, talk a little about the Duwamish Valley program.

And again, OSCE presented to you and be able to provide additional information.

For me, again, this is a really exciting initiative and funding proposal.

So I think many of you, probably all of you know, the city has been engaged, both OPCD, not both, several OPCD, DON, and OSC, with both Georgetown, South Park, and broader Duwamish communities on community development, economic development, environmental restoration, identifying with the community those priorities.

There was something called the Duwamish Valley Action Plan that got developed.

And what we're doing here is, in my language, putting our money where our mouth is and actually moving towards implementation.

As I mentioned above, a share of this funding comes from the Green New Deal portion of the resources allocated under the payroll tax.

But that's because this is the Green New Deal in action, in my view, in no small part.

But again, not all of this funding comes from that source.

Other parts are more general community development kinds of investments.

But just to highlight a few of them, and again, more detail to come, expanding the Duwamish Valley Youth Corps, which provides opportunities to youth in the community, training, education, and the like.

Very specific proposal that's designed to target air pollution in the area, so incentives for heavy duty vehicles so they can be converted to electric power, again, to avoid the particulates and air pollution associated with diesel and heavy duty vehicles.

Workforce development investment.

a particular capital project that's to improve pedestrian access along 8th Avenue, an opportunity to actually get to the river itself.

This would be dollars allocated to SDOT, but again, it's really a community access, community development program.

Some resource targeted for Duwamish Valley businesses in particular.

They've been particularly impacted by COVID, but also by the indirectly or directly to work on the West Seattle Bridge and the redirection of traffic on various routes.

Another interesting idea, and this one, again, not actually a Green New Deal resource, but others, opportunities to use plantings to help define and shield residential areas from industrial property so that relative proximity is a reality, but try to make it work better for both the residents and the businesses.

Commitment to ongoing staff so that this work can be supported going forward and we'll have sufficient resource to do that.

And then some investments coming out of the parks department for the South Park Community Center and that the park that's there and the community center overall.

So some of this resource ongoing, some one time, but overall a package is designed to really advance our investments in the Duwamish Valley overall.

Thank you so much.

Council Member Hurdle, please go ahead.

I first want to just express my appreciation for the focus on the Duwamish Valley and the work of the Green New Deal advisory board and also in addition to the recommendations coming out of the executive but also their community focus on necessary investments in this area.

I have a couple of questions about a couple of these line items.

expansion of the Duwamish Valley Youth Corps item.

I'm finding this quite confusing because I was notified earlier this year that the Duwamish Valley Youth Corps funding that normally they get through HSD, that they didn't get that.

And that was, I think it was about, Gosh, about 100, $112,000 from HSD and they were directed to apply to for grants that we were told.

would provide maximum funding of $75,000.

So for one, I'm confused why they were directed to apply to a grant source that would not give them full funding at the $112,000 level that they had previously received at HSD.

If there's funding in this budget, just I'm also concerned that this suggests that the Duwamish Valley very interested in knowing how much funding the Youth Corps is receiving, and again, just this question of why did they have to go through the bureaucracy of applying for an OSC grant that would not make them, would not fund them wholly to what their 2021 levels were if there was a plan to fund them in the budget.

So a question about the, really appreciate the work to try to minimize the horrible impacts of having I know that there's a lot of heavy trucks going through residential neighborhoods and working to incentivize the use of electric vehicles in this corridor, and I know the port has also provided some funding for I'm wondering how the city will verify this program for the vehicle rebate program that the vehicle operators receiving the rebate are operating within the Duwamish Valley.

I just really want to make sure that for the intent of the rebate is to provide an incentive, again, to do the conversion of trucks to electric and as a way to minimize the use of carbon-emitting trucks or exhaust-emitting trucks in a residential area.

I want to just make sure that we have a way of verifying that those are the trucks that are getting the rebate.

And then finally, as it relates to the Amish Valley development projects, the $2.3 million here, the council has voted on a couple of different investments just in the last couple weeks.

I think we voted on some I just want to get a sense of additive on to the things that we've just recently voted on?

Or are these just calling out the dollars that have moved from the actions that the council already took but into moving them into the 2022 budget?

Thanks.

These are designed to be additive and complementary to those.

So, and again, more detail this afternoon, on more of the project specifics for those, but obviously a good question.

On the vehicle incentives, that's exactly the right question to be asking.

I've asked it myself, but the details of program formulation are still underway, if you will.

So these are budget decisions that were made in the last couple months, so it hasn't had an opportunity OAC and City Light haven't had an opportunity to fully flesh out how to structure those incentives, but that's exactly right.

We need to be thoughtful about, I mean, there are some, I think, port vehicles being a great example.

There are some vehicles who spend a good deal of their time in the neighborhood, but I think that's, if you will, the bang for buck there is on targeting those types of vehicles.

In terms of Duwamish Valley Youth Corps and the funding there, I have to go back and think about the timing of that, Part of that is that anyone that the initial guidance was provided to them or suggested, we were still in the budget development and did not know that this was going to be the case.

This is a thoughtful and constructive shift in approach here.

So we are really recognizing that this is an area that needs significant investment to address what have been longstanding issues.

So this is a shift and a different approach and that may that may be reflective of why different advice was provided earlier, rather.

Just a quick follow-up.

Because, you know, I think some of my South Park constituents who either volunteer for or work for the Youth Corps might be watching, I don't think it's accurate to suggest that the Youth Corps is getting a five-fold

And I will count on this afternoon's briefing to provide additional clarity there.

Again, this is the part where I'm candidly dangerous.

I am a few inches deep and many thousand miles wide, so the last thing I want to do is be providing bad information.

So if there's correction, it'll be done this afternoon.

So I appreciate you calling that out.

Thank you very much.

I'm not seeing additional questions.

We're getting near the end.

Colleagues, we do have about 50 minutes left here, so there should be plenty of time for questions at the end as well, but let's keep going unless, Director Noble, you had something else on this slide as well.

Nope, I'm good to go.

So I'm going to shift now and stop talking less about sort of individual proposals in terms of funding and give you a better sense of some of the funding sources and how they've been allocated.

Some of what I'll describe here will refer back to things that I've talked about.

Some of it is new, and I'll make that distinction as we go.

We do have a whole briefing for you coming up on the federal funding, not just on the second tranche of the coronavirus local relief recovery funds, but also on the first tranche, on the previous dollars, as well as the FEMA work and the work to secure FEMA reimbursement.

But again, at a high level, so you know what is in the proposed tranche, second tranche.

This is a total funding of just over $116 million.

As previously highlighted, 50 plus million is for affordable housing.

And it represents a piece of what I would describe as a shift here, and a purposeful one, where the First tranche of federal money was largely focused on immediate relief, including cash assistance and the like.

Second tranche here, we are continuing to make community investments, but thinking more about the longer run and the real opportunity that this much one-time funding provides.

And I emphasize one time because it does raise the challenge of using these resources for programs that might want to be ongoing and recognizing that there could be then a funding cliff, if you will, as those resources fall off.

So affordable housing as a one-time use seems like an ideal opportunity.

The city obviously has an affordable housing crisis.

It has a homelessness crisis.

And using these resources, these $50 million in housing, those are housing units that will last for 30 plus years.

But on top of that kind of transformational opportunity.

There's also a stimulus opportunity here, the actual building of housing will require that we hire people and pay them.

So there is there is that element as well.

So really, for all those reasons, makes a lot of sense.

That said, while we are looking at the long-term, immediate relief is still an issue.

So there's $25 million is for shelter and food assistance.

It's part of what supports many of the shelter investments I mentioned above and the continuation of the COVID-related facilities that we have stood up.

So that's a piece.

And we've been thoughtful here.

This money, the bulk of it gets spent in 2022. But a share of it consistent with the federal requirements, the anticipation that gets spent in 2023, and even a small portion in 2024, because it's, again, supporting a set of shelter activities and shelter slots that we're unsure of whether we will want in the long run or not.

What we know we don't want is a significant or dramatic funding cliff at the end of any given year.

So at the end of 2022, we would need additional city money to sustain some of what's funded here.

Because again, we're only preparing some amount of money into 23 and the same again at the end of 24. So a step down strategy and working with the regional agency determine what's the right approach as we reach those milestones.

Significant portion of funding for economic recovery, that includes an increasing emphasis on job training and workforce development.

Again, we're thinking about the longer term and investing for the longer term.

It's training and job opportunities are what's needed to really transform the economy.

Potentially some roles that will no longer be in place as the nature of the service economy shifts.

but investing in people for the long run as well.

Also, so that's $4.5 million of that total.

$7.5 million is for business assistance, but particularly more targeted, so more significant support for ultimately fewer businesses, because the math just works that way.

More funding, it'll be fewer beneficiaries.

But really trying to make more transformational changes, so support that would help businesses achieve ownership, potentially, of the facilities they operate from.

or make significant capital investments that would allow them to expand their operations.

OED will be able to tell you more about the details there.

But also in the short term, additional cash support for our child care providers.

We're not going to get people back to work, in particular not to get parents back to work or back to the office without an operating and effectively operating child care network.

That network has been significantly stressed by COVID.

Reduced enrollments, reduced staffing constraints associated with keeping, I know this well because of my own personal circumstance, the teachers not being able to work across classrooms, because again, trying to contain COVID exposure.

All of those things end up being cost drivers.

So it's additional financial support there.

We are facing additional city costs now ever more on an ongoing basis.

So there are resources allocated, particularly on the IT side.

Some of that is hardware.

Evermore, when computers reach the end of their useful lives, we are replacing them with laptops rather than desktops to facilitate hybrid work arrangements going forward.

There is an incremental cost to that, one that hasn't been built into the rates that we collect from departments.

This was not fully anticipated.

But it's not just hardware.

It's also people.

There are more calls to help desk.

There are more concerns about cybersecurity.

So those are very real and tangible costs.

You also see proposals for some additional staffing, both actually at the budget office, also in FAS, and in the Office of Emergency Management, to appropriately keep track of the amounts of probably in total more than $400 million of federal money is going to require additional staff.

That funding is actually enough to sustain that staff into 2023 and into 2024, because that will be the reporting period.

around the federal money.

And you'll hear, the city is, we're taking a leadership role at a national level in terms of being able to get dollars out the door.

I want to be able to match that with leadership and being able to account for that, those resources, and meet the requirements of the federal government, and also to be transparent to the public about how we're using that money.

Additional resources for Seattle Promise, that was part of the overall plan around Tranche One, but again, I expect some discussion around that.

The affordability portal, again, it was partially funded with the first tranche.

The idea here is to build effectively a website, but a portal whereby residents could apply for the city's income qualified programs in one place with ideally one forum.

That's long been a dream, but trying to make that a reality with these resources.

Again, using the resources to make one-time investments that will have long-term impact.

And also setting aside some resources to do some impact evaluation.

We're standing up a number of programs using this money that could become ongoing.

Want to know what works and what doesn't.

So I think that's an important opportunity.

And I mentioned previously funding for the Clean City Program.

So again, we'll give you a more detailed accounting of both this tranche and the overall federal picture, but wanted you to get a sense of how the aforementioned funding items and some that are just noted here all fit together as a package for this federal resource.

Thank you very much.

I want to go back to the question that Councilmember Herbold had asked earlier about FEMA and the use of the Clifford funds.

Councilmember Herbold, did your question get answered or is there any additional information Director Noble you wanted to add harking back on that initial question?

Yeah, I was just reminded that I believe you said that my questions about FEMA assumptions would be answered on this slide.

No, sorry, not this slide, the additional briefing that will go into deeper depth on this slide.

Got it.

My apologies, thank you.

A whole presentation on federal funding, because it's really a comprehensive picture.

But to answer a specific question, I don't have the dollar amount, but we have a calendar of when we're submitting for FEMA reimbursement, and based on what we know about past history and their expectations, a calendar for when the reimbursements would come.

For things that are, depending where they are in the stage of that process, we have assigned a different probability about their reimbursement.

So if we haven't submitted something, we're assuming whatever it might be, 60% reimbursement.

If we're all partway through the process and we're being successful, we increase that probability.

So there is a cashflow model about the FEMA reimbursement.

And again, we can show you all of that, but...

Sorry for misunderstanding.

No, no, no.

I just, I knew the level of detail here.

I mean, this is a whole lot of money, and I think it's really important to see how it all fits together.

I think it's really the best way to do that.

Okay, great.

Thank you for that clarification.

If there aren't other questions, I think the next slide is actually my last.

That's it.

I want to talk more about Jumpstart.

If you take the ordinance that was passed in July, it set out a formula for the allocation of Jumpstart payroll resources.

In particular, based on the revenue forecast of the general fund, it would have a certain amount of funding directed to the general fund and the remainder allocated across these four broad categories that were called out.

The budget on an overall basis, fully informed by that policy direction, reaches those funding targets.

So as I've highlighted, there is almost $100 million for affordable housing.

There's a little bit that is for homelessness.

So we expand that definition slightly.

But again, $96 million or $95 million plus of this total is affordable housing and related services.

economic recovery, $24 million, and you can read the others.

We did not, in reaching those targets, they are not exclusively funded from the payroll tax.

As we were balancing the the funding and policy priorities, including those identified in the Jump Start Ordinance, those council actions around expanding homelessness services, endorsement of the ECI Task Force recommendation, your interest in, you know, I'm just realizing there's a slide missing in all of this.

Can we go one more slide real quick to see whether I got these out of order?

Or is that the last slide?

I believe that's the last slide.

Can we go up one more?

Sorry.

Pre-Clifford.

One more slide.

This is a bit unusual, but if I might, I'm going to at least see if I can find in my own materials and grab the screen to put up another slide that highlights some of the BIPOC investments, which I had intended to have here.

Undoubtedly my error, but I think I may be able to provide some additional information that would be helpful.

Let me see whether I can find that file really quick.

Sorry for this delay.

We can also start with that slide if you'd like in this session too.

Yeah, just give me just one moment.

I'm happy to filibuster with a question for Ali in the meantime.

Please do, please do.

So I long ago worked in radio, and I know what dead air is like.

On the slide about the federal relief priorities, have we checked to see whether or not the priorities on this slide map to the priorities of the council in Resolution 31999?

Councilmember Herbold, I have not done that crosswalk with this proposal.

What I have done is checked.

The council provided additional direction in the Seattle Rescue Plan bill that appropriated the funds that was informed by that resolution, as you'll recall.

And there were a couple of specific things that were asked for.

It included at least $60 million in total for affordable housing between the two tranches.

So this is $50 million plus the about almost 30 that was included in tranche one.

So the combined proposal exceeds the direction, the minimum that was set by the council.

There was also direction on providing some funding for the keep moving streets work that was discussed.

And so I haven't talked yet with our central staff analysts, S.

to know if there's other funding for that use that's not ARPA, and then there was some direction about the Older Americans Act funding, and so we'll take that up in the discussion with HSD.

But in general, aside from the keep moving streets direction in the ordinance, it is consistent with that, and we will do a crosswalk with the resolution as well.

But in general, Many of these things are consistent with the first Seattle Rescue Plan, which was mostly consistent with the resolution with a couple of exceptions, Seattle Promise being one of them.

Let's go to that last slide.

And let me just say a few things verbally rather than try to pull up some materials.

So just real quick on the BIPOC investments.

And again, we have a whole nother presentation on this.

So I'm going to describe this verbally, but you'll hear more of this as well.

There was $100 million identified in the mayor's last proposed budget.

Council modified some of that.

So I want to just touch on those issues briefly.

On participatory budgeting, the proposed budget does include an additional $30 million of 2022 money for participatory budgeting.

So this will be in addition to the 2021 resource.

Among the reasons we thought it was important to do that was to establish that funding, again, as an ongoing part of the base budget.

The expectation is that the majority of the recommendations that will come forward from the participatory budgeting process will be for some form of ongoing programming.

That might not be the case, but we wanted to build in that possibility.

If that's going to be the case, that funding, that $30 million, needs to be an ongoing part of the base budget.

So it's shown as that in 2022 and funded.

That effectively means that the 2021 resource, which is about $27 million that remains unspent, becomes a one-time resource to the participatory budgeting process.

It could be used, and this will be for council to determine, If it can be used to pay for the actual process itself, so the outreach to the community, staffing associated with that, that expense would no longer be deducted from the amount that could be awarded through the decisions that are made.

It also provides the opportunity to use some share of the 2021 money for a one-time funding proposals that come through the participatory budgeting process.

So there could be funding for ongoing programs of as much as $30 million and also funding 20 million or more for one-time capital, so an ever more robust opportunity for participatory budgeting.

So I wanted to highlight that that is funded.

The Equitable City Task Force had recommendations that Council just endorsed, took budget actions accordingly, releasing a proviso.

for $30 million of ongoing activities.

Those are also supported on an ongoing basis in the budget.

So we've mentioned a couple of those already, actually.

For instance, the home ownership one.

So those are funded.

The $10 million for community safety investments we talked about earlier, that was a portion of those resources.

That, again, is continued on an ongoing basis.

And then the Strategic Investment Fund, which had been a $30 million allocation in 2021, restructured slightly, but also designed to continue.

And actually, that's what made me think of this and regretting not having a slide, is that the Equitable Development Initiative, the $14 million shown on this slide, is funded as a portion of the restructured strategic investment fund.

So the strategic investment fund was targeting many of the same communities and many of the same types of projects that the equitable development initiative has.

And we thought it made more sense.

And council identified ongoing funding for EDI as one of the jumpstart priorities.

So we saw an opportunity to bring those two into alignment rather than trying to run two separate programs.

And it made more sense to have the single equitable development initiative more robustly funded.

So this $14 million plus $5 million of ongoing funding from the short-term rental tax means that there's almost $20 million actually with the staffing support more than 20 million annually to be invested in the equitable development initiative.

The remaining portion of what had been a strategic investment fund is we saw earlier in the slide deck, goes to the office of housing to deal with displacement issue.

Again, that was a strategy that was informed by the jumpstart priorities, recognizing that there was an alignment between those priorities and to many of the underlying policy goals of the strategic investment fund.

So again, returning to this issue, there is these funding amounts in the budget for each of these priorities.

They are supported by a mix of the federal resources and the payroll tax.

And that the relative mix here depends in no small part on the eligibility of the federal resources.

So they work well for affordable housing.

They don't work as well.

They work well also for economic recovery, not so well for EDI and the Green New Deal.

And the overall issue here was that we were aligning the resources that were available and the relative constraints on those resources or constraints on the federal side, fewer outside constraints on the payroll tax to try to fund.

And ultimately, we hope to successfully fund the priorities that were called out in Jumpstart, the priorities that have been identified by BIPOC work, the increased emphasis on addressing the needs of those who are living unsheltered, And then a number of other areas of things like the Duwamish investments.

There were priorities that extended beyond just the jumpstart that we thought needed attention as well, and we're trying to be as creative as possible with the resources that existed to meet all of those needs.

I made this point earlier, and I want to highlight it now.

This works well for 2022. We're able to achieve these funding levels, able to achieve a commitment on the BIPOC strategies.

For 2023 and beyond, it doesn't work without some real thoughtful consideration of what are the sustainable funding priorities in all of this and where should resources be directed.

Our budget proposal, includes legislation to modify the jumpstart allocations for 2022 because we need that in order to be balanced.

Our proposal doesn't allocate the resources for 23 and beyond because we think it's too soon to do that.

We need to work with the council to determine what are the collective priorities How can the existing resources be allocated?

Are there potentially new resources to bring to the mix?

So just highlighting, been very creative about trying to meet all these priorities.

I believe we can be successful for 22, for 23 and beyond, but there's more work to be done.

So with that, obviously happy to take questions.

Thank you very much.

I know colleagues to you, it is It matters very much where the dollars come from and how they're being allocated specifically to accomplish the goals that are listed on the funding targets here.

Not only are these targets that were passed unanimously by the council, they were also codified in statute with the spend plan.

In terms of the jumpstart funding and the ARPA funds, I think the intent was to be additive to existing general funds.

Obviously, the ARPA funds, the American Rescue Plan Act funds came at a critical time for us to try to replenish investments into core government services.

And we are proud of the investments that we've been able to make.

I think there's a lot of alignment when you think about where the council and the executive had shared priorities for cash assistance and child care assistance.

That's all very much appreciated.

But we want to be very careful again not to pit one priority against another priority or to double count fund streams for investments that should have been additive.

I think when we look at things like the Mercer Mega sale and the strategic investment funds, those investments in especially BIPOC communities to address communities that have been at highest risk of displacement was the intent of the Mercer Mega sale.

that we have prioritized.

There may be a lot of alignment with the jumpstart equitable development investments that we have prioritized, but those should have been additive building blocks, if you will.

And while there may be alignment, I think the council has an opportunity to really dive in to make sure that we are accomplishing the goals of seeing growth in those areas and not funding sources used for we're going to have to fill the coffers for checks that couldn't be cashed before because these need to be additive investments for our communities, specifically at housing.

I appreciate that the dollar amount was put up here.

The total goal for our affordable housing investments was estimated to be about 95 direct investments to affordable housing, 3 million, as noted here on the slide, for administrative services.

And that is the goal.

But when we, I think, have the opportunity to hear from Office I'll be asking some questions, because my initial glance at the information provided today and the materials to come is that the proposed budget allocates just about $45 million instead of $98 million from the Jump Start proposed tax.

Almost $39 million comes of the payroll tax Office of Housing for Ownership and Rental, about $6 million to HSD to cover the cost of services and proposed care that is coupled with federal housing dollars.

But $45 million is about half of what we anticipated in this section.

So I think that there's a lot of further analysis to do to really see where we can be additive to accomplish the goals.

that were envisioned by this council and the community when we passed the jump start spend plan in addition to making sure that those ARPA funds are going into areas to rebuild and invest in a more equitable Seattle.

And I absolutely agree that in some places there is going to be shared alignment.

I think our emphasis over the next few days is to really identify where The fund sources coming from and the color of money behind each of those investments to truly be more robust in our investments versus counting boxes twice.

Council Member Morales.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

I was going to address all of that, but you just did.

So I will just say that I want to appreciate the acknowledgment from the mayor's office about the importance of maintaining the participatory budgeting practice as an ongoing part of our base budget planning.

You know, we had lots of conversation last year.

We're about to begin the process.

And so I do think that as we move forward, this is going to be an important way for us to share power and decision making with community.

And how we get to that 30 million is something that I will be keenly involved in and interested to move forward.

But I do think that it's an important acknowledgement that this should be a key part of the way we do budgeting from here on out.

I just want to signal my intent to keep that front and center as we're talking about how we make community investments and who gets to be part of those conversations.

I know you had another slide, maybe we can't incorporate it into an afternoon presentation if you find it, but I do want to thank you for walking us through this high-level overview today.

Obviously, much more detail behind each of these slides, and that's the intent of our afternoon session all day tomorrow and all day Friday.

Did you have anything else to close us out with or anything else that you wanted to say?

Just real quick, my verbal description of how the $100 million is continued in various forms was that other slide, so don't need to go back to it.

And again, you'll get a – there's a detailed briefing coming up about the community-led investments, but we'll show you that all in more detail.

The only thing I wanted to do, actually, was to echo some of your kind and some of your colleagues' kind comments.

What I presented today is surely not just my work.

It is the work of many in the budget office, many across the city.

It reflects work we've done in consultation.

Again, we take responsibility, but in consultation with central staff and some of your staff.

So I just want to express appreciation for all of that work and to acknowledge This marks the second year in a row that we and the budget office have built and balanced a budget in a completely remote environment.

I realize everybody is working that way, but it is a real challenge and a stress.

We've now helped not only balance those two budgets, but dealt with the funding crisis created by COVID.

So just want to acknowledge the work of the team here and appreciate your support and acknowledgement as well.

So, and again, welcoming the partnership going forward.

So thank you and more to come.

Well, that sounds wonderful.

And again, I know that there's a whole team behind your efforts here in the slides today.

So please do pass on our appreciation.

We know that this is going to be ongoing conversation with you all as we seek to understand the proposed budget in front of us and redraft over the next two months.

Colleagues, any final comments?

Allie, any final comments from you?

OK, well, I will just say, for all of those watching online who maybe get the sense this feels like the first day of school, we're going to go into recess.

So Ryan Packer, that was for you.

And crew who are excited about this first day of school, recess will end at 1 PM.

So please do come back.

We're going to go over the Office of Economic Development, Office of Sustainability and Environment.

Department of Education and Early Learning.

Councilmembers, any additional comments?

I'm seeing waves.

We'll see you at 1 p.m.

Hearing no objection, the Select Budget Committee is in recess.