Good afternoon, everyone.
I want to thank you for joining this broadcast to announce that the chair's budgeting package has been released.
It is now published online.
Today is Tuesday, November 9th, and the time is 2.04 p.m.
We wanted to take the opportunity to bring you this live stream so that you have the chance to dive into the budget details with council members, with members of the public at large as we enter into our conversations next Wednesday.
Beginning tomorrow, we will have an overview of the prepared budget for council's consideration.
And in the evening, we will spend hours listening with members of the public about priorities they'd like to see, items they are really excited about, and ways that we can continue to finalize this budget over the next two weeks.
Very thankful for all of you who have continued to call in to provide us with letters and recommendations for what you'd like to see in terms of amendments to the 2022 budget.
We received that 2022 budget from the mayor's office approximately seven weeks ago.
And over the last seven weeks, we have diligently been working to try to address many of the items that community members, that council members have been flagging to make sure that we address the needs that are compounding throughout our city and invest in a more just and equitable Seattle.
I want to thank you for the opportunity to be your budget chair in this year, 2021. In the heels of trying to get out of this economic recession induced by COVID and in our continuing effort to make sure that everyone is vaccinated, healthy and safe, it has been my privilege to be able to be your budget chair.
And in these trying times, it has never been more important.
There's never been more at stake.
In recent history, we have not seen times like this that have put so many on the edge of losing their homes, that have made so many family members for lack of access to food, Making sure that our most vulnerable, including our seniors, have access to care and compassion and hot meals is something that we have heard time and time again over the last two years must be prioritized.
And that we make sure that we invest in the shadow pandemic, as our vice chair always talks about with the growing need for behavioral and mental health services, is something we wanted to prioritize in this year's budget.
By releasing today's budget, we hope that what you see is significant investments in a vision for a more equitable, just, safe, healthy, and housed Seattle.
This past year has brought tremendous change to our city.
This on top of 10 years of growth in our population, a 21% growth in our population over the last 10 years without the added capacity for housing and shelter and services.
We are making up for many of the investments that I wish were made 20 or 30 years ago.
And there is no time like the present to work in partnership with our congressional members, with state legislative partners who are very, very committed to creating healthy communities healthy families, healthy workplaces to make sure that this pandemic and the lasting impacts do not continue to linger and that we come out of this as a more just Seattle.
The budget conversations that we've had over the past two years have led to incredibly important investments and there has not been a time in recent memory where a budget chair has had to take so many different budget actions in such a short period of time.
We've worked throughout the last two years to bring forward investments through the Seattle Rescue Plan that coupled together the coronavirus relief dollars and the American Rescue Act dollars.
to make sure that we invested directly into those who've been hardest hit by COVID.
Investments, yes, into small businesses, but also direct cash assistance to workers, totaling up $25 million in addition to direct assistance that we offer to immigrants and refugees.
left out of our federal assistance plan.
We made sure that direct cash assistance went to childcare providers who are on the cusp of receiving hundreds of dollars just before the holiday season.
This will mean that thousands of childcare providers who have been putting their life and health on the line to care for kiddos during this time of the pandemic have this appreciation allotment so that they know that their work is valued and their work makes our city's work possible.
Throughout the last two years, we've provided critical funding for rental assistance.
Two to three times we've now passed rental assistance and rapid housing dollars to keep people and families in their homes.
We've created opportunities for more investments in turnkey ready housing projects, to build new projects, to bring thousands of new permanently affordable housing units online so families and individuals can move into those units, stay housed, and get out of shelter so that more individuals who are living outside can move into our shelters.
We've done additional outreach to those who are living unsheltered in our community by making sure those who have lived experience of being homeless have the resources through community partners and in working in conjunction with our new regional homelessness authority, we are making investments in this upcoming budget to continue our commitment to do outreach, to get individuals into non-congregate shelter, to make sure that we create safe lots for healthier and safer places for individuals who are living in their cars, or RVs to be able to stay housed.
Half of our homeless population currently lives in vehicles.
This is a critical component to making sure that we're caring for people as we seek to get them housed.
In response to last year's national call to meaningfully invest in systems that center health and safety for our black, indigenous, and people of color communities in the wake of the call for a racial recognition in this moment, we have shifted $80 million towards community safety investment strategies, investments into community that help reduce the chance that an individual will ever interact with law enforcement or the criminal justice system to begin with by creating greater stability and healthier communities.
We have done all of this while creating greater housing and economic stability that was already demanded upon us before COVID hit.
We have done this by using the Jumpstart Progressive Revenue in this proposed package, and we have created an opportunity for us to not be in a similar situation that far too many other cities across this country are currently dealing with.
So many cities, similar to Seattle in population size and demographics, have had to reduce to cuts in services, layoffs, and austerity budgeting, but not us, not here in the city of Seattle, because we acted with urgency and we passed the Jumpstart Progressive Revenue.
We prepared, we worked through partnerships, we did the hard work to bring in diverse voices that might not always agree, and we passed Jumpstart Progressive Revenue.
This is why we are able to bring to you a budget this year that is not an austerity cuts budget, that does not resort to layoffs, that is able to invest in our most vulnerable communities while investing in infrastructure needed to house people and to get around the city with bridges and roads and transportation alternatives like safe biking paths and safer places for communities to walk and enjoy.
This year's budget was already one that demanded of us to create a more equitable and just economy.
While the average area median income in Seattle has grown in the last 10 years, income inequality has also grown.
This would be true if COVID had never come to Seattle.
So as your chair of budget, it has been my priority to make sure that we are investing in creating a more just and sound economy that centers investments in workers, in small businesses, and creates greater opportunity for all to get at that income in opportunity that we have in our city.
The investments that we are making into this year's budget are in large part only because of Jump Start's payroll tax.
Any investments that you see over the previous year's base budget are truly being made possible because of the jumpstart payroll tax being available for immediate investments into testing centers, rental relief, child care, small business cash assistance, direct payments to those who are often left behind in federal policies, and to communities and workers who are often put on the back burner.
Jumpstart simultaneously created flexibility, sustainability, and accountability by creating the fund that we pass as council to be sure that the money is coming in and that we know exactly where it's being allocated so we can have sustainability and predictability for years to come.
And today we have proof of that hard work playing out.
In these most pressing times, we had already knew that we needed to respond to the urgent crises facing our community, but last week we received some bad news.
Our revenue predictions were not aligning with the actual forecast that came out from the forecast office last Wednesday.
And the decrease in anticipated revenue in addition to the historic compounding needs in our community, meant we needed to act with urgency to create a balanced budget while still maintaining our commitments to creating a healthy, safe, and housed Seattle.
I'm excited about some of the investments.
Most notably, $192 million in this budget is going to create new permanently affordable housing, housing for community-focused acquisition, rental opportunities, and first-time home ownership opportunities.
This is made possible by $97 million in new Jumpstart affordable housing funding.
The total of $192 million for affordable housing allows us to invest in housing for people who are exiting chronic homelessness, make sure that we have more community driven investments and serving our communities hardest hit by displacement.
And that is our black, indigenous and people of color communities to make sure that we're actually creating site control to build affordable housing and that we're creating new home ownership opportunities to get at generational poverty.
This is a great opportunity for us to lift up how investments in housing can help us build wealth and create and end a pathway out of past discriminatory policies that have left far too many behind.
We'll get into some of the other areas of our investments in this proposed budget in a moment.
But I think it's important for us to have a grounding and understanding of how we have identified revenue sources to deal with the shortfall that was announced last Wednesday and how we as a council, through working with central staff in my office, as budget chair and working with other council members how we have worked to try to realign our jumpstart investments with the policy that was codified into law for the spend plan to make sure that we freed up funding to go into those critical investments already identified in the implementation plan.
I'm going to go ahead and turn it over to our central staff director.
I want to thank Director Esther Handy for all of the work that she and her team have done throughout the last seven weeks, and to give you a sense of all of the work that has been done in the last seven weeks to create a balanced budget in light of the revenue forecast news and how we've realigned our jumpstart priorities.
I'll turn it over to Esther, and then I'll come back so that we can talk about the investments.
Thank you so much, Esther.
Great.
Thank you so much, Councilmember and Budget Chair Mosqueda.
Again, I'm Esther Handy.
I am the Director of the City Council Central Staff, and I'm going to walk through some of our analysis on this budget and how we got to the balancing package that is published today.
As the chair mentioned, we received the budget on September 27th, and our team dug in to understand the baseline.
We quickly identified several key issues in the mayor's 2022 proposed budget.
The first, as a baseline, we knew that even prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the cost of ongoing general fund services has been growing and outpacing revenue growth.
Without action by the council in 2020 to pass the jumpstart funding bill and provide a new source of progressive revenue, this would certainly be an all-cuts budget, reducing services across the city.
The mayor balanced her proposed budget by using one-time federal resources and two, by applying $148 million of revenue from the jumpstart fund, which is $62 million higher than allowed by current policy.
and it would have reduced the capacity of the jump start fund to support the important programs we're talking about like affordable housing investments in a like amount in 2023 and beyond.
In addition, this proposed budget was balanced to an August revenue forecast by the city budget office that assumed nearly full return to work by major employers this fall.
An issue we discussed in committee, the council members discussed in committee in September as possibly overly optimistic given the ongoing pandemic.
So the members of the Select Budget Committee have spent several weeks discussing these issues and identifying key policy questions.
As we've done so, last week on Wednesday, November 3rd, the City Budget Office provided their final economic and revenue forecast of the year as they do each November partway through our budget process.
That forecast showed what council staff had feared back in August, that the revenue projections that the mayor's budget was built on were optimistic and that the 2022 proposed budget could not be fully funded as proposed.
Specifically, that revenue forecast showed a projected decrease in general fund revenues of $15 million.
This is largely driven by delays in return to work due to the increase in the Delta variant cases this fall that impacted the payroll expense tax, sales tax, and parking fines.
The total downward projections were partially offset by an uptick in business and occupation tax due to for a net decrease in general fund projected revenue of $15 million.
The general fund is what we talk the most about because it funds so many vital city services.
But outside the general fund, we saw the forecast projected several other significant decreases.
That included an 8.4 million decrease in the commercial parking tax due to fewer people visiting the downtown core for work and commercial activity, an important source of funding for our transportation system.
and smaller but significant decreases in other funds will impact the specific programs they fund, like a $4.5 million decrease to the sweetened beverage tax and a $5.1 million projected decrease to school zone cameras.
The bright spot in the revenue forecast was a $26 million uptick in real estate excise tax, a result of a continually hot residential and commercial real estate market.
And so before any other action, the council's first job was to address these projected losses in revenues.
$15 million in the general fund, $19 million met in other funds to balance a budget.
I'll walk through a couple steps that the council's taken to do so and then hand it back to the chair to talk about what was able to be funded.
So the first thing the council did is they got to work to address these shortfalls and the issues underlying the proposed budget.
The first action taken by the chair was to write an amendment that restored the Jump Start Fund policy priorities to current policies adopted in ordinance in July 2022. The balancing package published today matches current policy by allowing $85 million of Jump Start funds to be used to support the general fund broadly.
This preserves existing programs while tax revenues recover in the pandemic.
The second, it invests $149 million in defined Jump Start policy priorities, the majority going to affordable housing preservation and production.
This amendment also right size investments in the equitable communities initiative priorities and participatory budgeting to ensure that there is a total of 30 million dollars available each of these programs using a combination of unspent money in 2021 and new funding in 2022. These adjustments are paired with the statement of legislative intent.
that the council will work with the new executive to identify either a progressive revenue source or an equitable funding strategy to support these programs in an ongoing way in the future.
They are funded one time in this budget.
Next, council members identified other areas where proposed funding could be cut, largely capturing additional unspent resources in 2022 or funding that did not align with council priorities.
These additional reductions include redeploying about $6.5 million of federal funds for rapid rehousing into related but better leveraged programs in 2022, and a $10 million reduction to the Seattle Police Department, capturing salary savings, reducing funding for a few technology projects over time, hiring incentives, and new program expansions.
This balancing package includes a $23 million contribution to the fiscal reserve following the executive's proposed path to fully restore the city reserves on a five-year time horizon to pre-pandemic levels.
Two more pieces are transportation-related.
In the transportation fund, the balancing package addresses revenue shortfalls and the need to continue investment in transportation safety, mobility, and infrastructure.
by proposing a 2% increase in the commercial parking tax, which is projected to generate an additional $2.9 million next year and twice that in subsequent years.
And finally, the package authorizes the city to issue up to $100 million of bonds next year for bridge repair and maintenance.
It appropriates the first year of debt service and requests the executive to prepare a report for issuances by March 2022. with these adjustments complete, the council then was able to go to work to make modest new investments in several critical areas most important to city residents.
Chair Mosqueda, I'll hand it back to you, and then I think to my colleague, Allie Panucci.
Thank you very much, Director Handy.
I want to thank you again and your team, and we'll have a chance to thank Allie here in a moment, but the entire central staff team, including Tom Mikesell, for all of the work that you have done to identify every possible revenue source and to quickly identify when there was errors in the initial computing of the revenue projections, to try to identify any additional sources for the council members to be able to include their priorities has been truly impressive work, and I thank you for all that you have done, and I'm very, very glad that you are here.
I do want to also add to what Director Handy mentioned and to remind folks that we also in September this year, I along with several of my council colleagues during our finance and housing committee had the chance to ask questions about the proposed use of revenue in the existing budget and to be able to ask questions of the use of the baseline forecast.
We did raise a number of concerns about using that baseline forecast and I think that it is always good to try to be optimistic, but to plan for a worst-case scenario, we are doing our very best in the budget here to make sure that we're investing in ongoing COVID relief, investing in creating healthy and strong economies, and that we're helping to make sure that folks stay housed and safe so that we can have stronger revenue receipts in the future.
But the news that we received from last Wednesday was pretty challenging to try to address in this moment where we see incredible needs.
As Director Hammeh noted, the good news of the city's fiscal health is in good standing.
The prognosis remains strong.
The B&O taxes and real estate excise taxes are increasing.
Director Handy noted the use of the higher than anticipate REIT tax, and that is a really important measure of strength and stability in our local economy.
So I want to make sure to lift that up.
And I want to thank members of the city's budget office, especially Director Ben Noble for their ongoing work with our office and central staff as we've all been working day and night to try to make sure that we have the best predictions to invest in our 2022 budget.
So thank you very much, Director Noble.
The other good news is that our vaccination rates in Seattle and in this region remain high.
We continue to see stability in terms of hospitalization rates, and we also know that our office rent increases are going to be hitting the market here.
We've seen more people seeking to open more businesses, and that's a good sign of future economic activity to come.
But with return to work continually delayed, we do need to account for the delay in the commercial parking tax.
We need to make sure that our city's payroll tax and commercial parking tax have been adequately and appropriately scaled in this budget, which they have now been.
And we are working diligently to make sure that all of the investments and every opportunity that we can to invest in council priorities, which truly are a reflection of our community's priorities.
that we've identified every single dollar to do that.
And as I mentioned before, it couldn't be more pressing.
I think every council member has seen the same issues, similar issues across our city, no matter if you're district or citywide.
Council members submitted their amendments under the following themes, making sure that we're creating housing stability, addressing homelessness, addressing food insecurity, and concerns for our most vulnerable.
including care for our seniors and addressing interpersonal violence.
We want to make sure that our investments in this budget are aligned with both the need for infusion of dollars into the human infrastructure, as has been discussed at the national level quite a bit, as well as making sure that our capital infrastructure has investments to build the city of the future to make sure that we're more climate resilient and that our communities stay connected and are thriving.
As we continue to recover from COVID-19, we are building for a city of the future, a city that drives people to come to its downtown core and enjoy economic hubs across our city.
We are doing that through investments in what makes the city a great place to live in, to work in, to visit in, to be an activist in, to study in, to raise your family, and to retire in.
I'm excited about the opportunity that this proposed balancing package provides.
I believe that this is a reflection in many ways of how the council is committed to investing in an equitable recovery while maintaining good financial practices.
Over the past few weeks, central staff and I have been working diligently to pull together a budget that simultaneously maintains critical investments in city services, invests in key priorities like homelessness, trauma-informed services, equitable community safety, affordable housing, making sure that we're finally investing in ensuring that there's good governance and investments in our city's future.
Those three themes, critical services for our city, key priorities to address the shadow pandemic, and investments in good governments are what drives us to we're going to present to you the proposed package in front of us today.
Councilmembers, as you may have heard me say before, councilmembers were very busy working to make sure that the community's priorities were reflected in their budget amendments.
We had almost 200 amendments that were submitted by councilmembers.
This is a significant amount more than we received last year, about 120 or so amendments were received last year.
We do see similar themes, making sure that our homeless community has services not only to be healthy and safe outside, but that we move folks inside in a humane and safe way by offering them access to appropriate non-congregate shelter services and long-term housing stability.
We see continued investments and amendments that center around themes of community and economic recovery, affordable housing, equitable community safety, and investments in a resilient Seattle for our future.
So I want to thank our colleagues for your continued work and for reflecting what you have heard from community as you put together your amendments.
I wish I could have done more.
I wish that this budget was able to offer funding for every single amendment that was submitted and that we had the opportunity to invest them at the full amount.
But given the budget restraints that we currently have and the need to make sure that we were investing holistically.
We were not able to accommodate every single one, but I am proud of what we've been able to offer to council members here today.
And I hope our community has a chance to dig into this budget before tomorrow night and identify some of their priorities and see those reflected in this year's budget.
I will now turn it over to Ali Panucci, our lead on central staff for the budget discussions, and ask Ali to provide a high-level overview of some of the amendments included.
And then I'll close with a few additional amendments to highlight and a note about what to expect in our budget deliberations to come.
Thank you so much, Ali.
Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.
Thank you, Director Handy.
I'm Ali Panucci, the Policy and Budget Manager for Council Central's staff.
I'm going to walk through a summary of the balancing package that highlights the investments in key priority policy areas for the Council, and we'll also just reflect a little bit on how this balancing package, as Director Handy described, not only increases or redirects investments in these areas to support key issues in the community, but also builds on the funds that are secured through Chair Mosqueda's amendment to realign this budget with the Jumpstart Spending Plan.
So I will start with the investments in affordable housing and homeless services.
In addition to the about $97 million of investments in housing that is secured in the Jumpstart Fund on an ongoing basis, almost doubling the base for investments in housing on an annual basis.
The package includes about $18 million of investments in affordable housing and homeless services, with the bulk of that in the homeless services category.
The next sort of main category we have described as connected community and thriving economy.
This includes investments in economic revitalization, planning, and development, clean and connected cities, like investments in parks and the Clean City Program, sustainability and environment, and transportation.
So on top of the $14 million included in the Jumpstart Fund for the Equitable Development Initiative, $22 million for economic revitalization, and $14 million for Green New Deal investments, the balancing package includes another $1.2 million approximately for investments in economic revitalization and equitable growth.
Almost $8 million in livable, clean, and connected communities.
$1.3 million for work to support the planning, development, and permitting of work, including investments to support the comprehensive plan and the work to develop a long-term strategy for the growth of the city.
over $2 million in sustainability and environment investments, and over almost $12 million of investments in transportation, not including the authorization of investments to issue bonds to support bridge maintenance and repair.
So again, that was about $24 million in the connected community and thriving economy category.
The next category is healthy and safe communities.
This includes investments in the critical legal, excuse me, criminal legal system and alternatives to policing in the Seattle Fire Department and behavioral and mental health services, food security, responding to gender-based violence, and investments in youth education, arts, and culture.
So in the criminal legal system and alternatives, as Director Handy noted, there's about a $10 million reduction in sort of traditional public safety investments and a $7 million.
increase in spending in alternatives to policing and diversion and those types of programs.
So that nets out at about a $3.8 million reduction.
But overall, the balancing package is prioritizing investments in alternatives.
There's also about 5.1 million in the fire and behavioral and mental health category, almost $6 million investments in food security, about $1.7 million in response to gender-based violence and almost $6 million of investments in programs to support youth, education, arts, and culture.
So tomorrow we will go, we'll provide more details and have these numbers summarized and have a presentation available to the public.
But for today, that is a high level summary of the balancing package that we'll be discussing throughout this week.
Thank you very much, Ali, and again, thank you to you and every single central staff analyst who has helped to provide the details and the policy behind each one of these budget ads and.
I want to thank every member of central staff for their work around the clock in this last few weeks.
As Ali noted, there is materials that are currently being finalized right now.
So for members of the community who are watching this presentation, for tomorrow morning's Select Budget Committee meeting, we will have the opportunity to walk through those summary documents.
You'll have a chance to see in detail the information that Ali has just outlined in addition to the information that Director Handy started with in terms of where the revenue sources are coming from and how we've helped to manage and balance this budget.
I want to thank you all for tuning in tomorrow to get the detailed analysis of what the budget includes as our proposed proposal is being reviewed by council members right now.
We came live to you on Seattle Channel just as we were posting the proposed budget to our agenda so that everyone was receiving this briefing to give you more advanced notice about the details in that budget.
Many community members have been asking for this.
Initially, we had planned to have a public hearing on Wednesday as we were planning to roll out the proposed budget.
And folks have asked, can we have more time to review the proposed budget, both for our council members and for members of the community?
That seems imperative.
I want to thank central staff for the work that they've done to be able to launch our chair's proposed budgeting package today instead of tomorrow.
and for the council members time tomorrow morning to walk through these details.
I do want to leave you with a few really critical investments that we have made in this proposed budget.
We have made investments in the health and safety, as Ali noted, by making sure that there's equitable investments in transportation, a focus on safety and accessibility for underserved communities.
I want to thank council members Morales, Peterson, and Juarez.
They provided amendments along the similar lines of investing in sidewalks, bike lanes, safe streets, bridges, and crossing in the South End and the North End.
I want to make sure that we thank Council President Gonzalez, who has made sure that we infused a portion of this budget towards citywide transportation funding for future vision for pedestrian-oriented streets and plazas.
Those super blocks that we've been talking about for a long time, we want to make sure that we create an opportunity now to build upon the activation of our streetscapes that we've seen in this time of COVID and that we do so around access to transit-oriented development around our light rail stations and all of the possibilities that are afforded to us as we think about what the city of the future should look like.
This pandemic has brought to center, has highlighted the need for us to focus on digital equity.
And I want to thank Councilmember Peterson for his work to invest in this budget in digital navigators, technology matching funds.
making sure that the executive is going to deliver a report on internet for all.
I want to thank members who have been working with us to make sure that we're continuing to work to stand up alternatives to traditional policing, as Ali noted, to make sure that we're right-sizing our response to help so that they're truly our community alternatives and that there is the right person showing up when there is a moment of crisis, that if it doesn't require a gun and a badge, that we have someone showing up.
I want to thank Council Member Herbold for all of the work that she's done over the last few years and even before that.
But especially in this budget, we're making sure that we're bringing forward the priorities around the Community Safety and Communication Center to make sure that the dispatch workers have what they need for operating that new system, that we're investing in mobile advocacy services so that there's assistance for survivors of gender-based violence, that we're making sure that there's mental and behavioral health services that we are scaling up in addition to making sure that our firefighters have the recruits that they need in these trying times, 20 additional firefighter recruits.
And I'm excited to have that type of investment that Councilmember Herbold has led on with the investment that Councilmember Strauss is leading on.
Councilmember Strauss has put forward an amendment to scale up our investments in the mobile mental health crisis unit.
And we're trying to make sure that we're able to invest over $2 million into providing services along that similar vein.
And housing and homelessness, this budget provides investments in human service providers who provide the daily services to our city's most vulnerable, including the homeless community, including those who are experiencing gender-based violence, to our youth and to our families, who are in need of additional assistance.
Many of these frontline workers have been working with low pay and without a cost of living increase until we acted two years ago.
Very happy that we included the cost of living increase, but we need to continue to do more.
The actual cost of living increase needs to be reflected in this year's budget, and that's what we've done in addition to investing in a wage study for human service provider wages.
We've accelerated our investments in permanently affordable housing to address housing instability and homelessness by making sure that we've invested in historic levels of funding for construction, acquisition of buildings, acquiring the land and supportive services to care for our most vulnerable.
Most notably, the $97 million that Jumpstart had committed to is reflected in this budget, again, for a total of $192 million in affordable housing.
We made sure that we front-loaded funding for affordable housing by shifting this year's available dollars to invest in those community organizations who have submitted a NOFA, projects that are ready to go, shovel-ready now.
We wanna free up dollars using the expected jumpstart dollars from next year and front-load those into projects that are ready to go now because we do not have time to spare in terms of how we house folks and how quickly we need to move to get more people into housing.
I want to thank Councilmember Strauss, Juarez, and Lewis, who have all put forward amendments to expand outreach, shelter staffing, and services to bolster our ability to connect people with services and the shelter that they need.
We are working to now enhance expanded shelter spaces through tiny house villages, thanks to Councilmember Sawant and Councilmember Lewis.
And we're working with organizations to connect homeless youth with supportive services and job training, thanks to Councilmember Lewis, Councilmember Morales.
And I want to also note the important work that we've done in this budget for those who are living in their vehicles, finding safer places to park those vehicles as we work to open up additional shelter capacity and housing, housing, housing.
Council Member Sawant has offered an amendment to make sure that those living in their vehicles have safe places and I'm happy that we were able to accommodate it to the extent possible within our budget constraints.
And finally, in economic resilience and a thriving economy, as we talked about before, we want our city of Seattle to be a place that drives people to want to come live here, start their businesses here, raise their families here, retire here, come study here, to enjoy our environment here, especially as climate change and instability across the globe is driving more people to want to come to Seattle.
We want to welcome you and have a place for everyone to stay housed and safe here in Seattle to be able to grow your business.
And in doing so, we must make sure that we're investing in our commitment to equitable workforce.
I want to thank council members who have been working to identify priorities for workforce investments.
Council Member Juarez has an amendment that we've included on economic opportunities for immigrants and refugees.
We have put forward an opportunity to expand our work with the Domestic Worker Standards Board and the Pornhub Benefits Coalition so that every workplace has safety and support that is needed.
And we're investing in child care supportive services by creating more investments into infrastructure.
We've added to the money that we previously allocated for supporting new child care centers in this budget.
And we're making sure that through investments, thank you to Council Member Strauss, We've invested in the streetscape and pedestrian improvements to support multimodal transit and community building.
We're investing into street lights, benches, playgrounds and equipment, food truck to activate public spaces, thanks to Council Member Straus and Lewis.
And we are making sure that we're investing in food and nutrition programs.
Council Member Herbold, Council Member Strauss, Council Member Juarez, Council Member Sawant all had similar and related investments in food stability and food security.
And we have put forward millions in this proposed budget for access to food and nutrition programs, expanding access to hot meal programs and meal delivery programs.
To close, we know that this is not enough to fully address the toll that COVID-19 has taken on our community.
And normally, we would be in a position to have only had to deal with one budget a year.
So in addition to all of the work that council members have done to identify these priorities, I want to thank them for the work they've done over the last two years with us, as I've been your budget chair, to go through the development of Jump Start, the Summer 2020 budget actions to stand up to the call to reinvest in community safety, to work with the mayor to develop the Seattle Rescue Plan.
I want to thank Mayor Durkan for her work.
with our team and Council President Gonzalez's team on the Seattle Rescue Plan.
We know those dollars are so incredibly needed and look forward to hearing more about the deployment of those dollars.
And I want to thank our state legislative members and congressional partners who are continuing to fight to make sure that cities like Seattle are getting the dollars they need.
Especially I want to thank our congressional representatives, Representative Jayapal, Senator Murray, and Senator Cantwell for all of the work that they're doing very excited about the passage of the infrastructure bill and very much looking forward to the passage of the Build Back Better Act.
Both of these bills in Congress I think complement what we are attempting to do in our 2022 budget and that is to invest in human infrastructure and the infrastructure needed for brick and mortar to rebuild our economy in a more equitable, safe, and just way.
We do hope that you tune in tomorrow to join us for the conversation at 9 a.m., where we will go through the proposed budget in more detail.
We then will have an opportunity to hear from members of the public starting at 5.30 p.m.
We will have the entire evening dedicated to a public hearing.
As you prepare your public hearing comments, please do take into account the revenue situation that Director Handy outlined at the beginning, and the ways in which we've tried to both provide a balanced package for you here today that meets our core values of caring for our most vulnerable and investing in a more just Seattle, as well as trying to adjust for the downward turn in the economic revenue forecast.
I look forward to hearing from you tomorrow, and I do appreciate all that you have done.
Thank my council colleagues, central staff, and everyone on our team.
very much.
They're incredible work.
Thank you very much Sejal, Erin, Aretha, Farideh, and Lori for all that you do.
And to everyone on central staff, the communications team, and our I-team and comms teams that makes this all possible.
We'll see you tomorrow morning at 9 a.m.
in the Select Budget Committee meeting.
Thank you all.
And all of these materials are now posted on our agenda.
Take care.
you