Budget Committee Meeting Session II 10-15-26

Good afternoon.

We are coming back to order.

The October 15th Select Budget Committee will come back to order at 1.50 p.m.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Those not present are excused until they arrive.

Council Member Salka.

Here.

Councilmember Foster, Council President Hollingsworth, Councilmember Juarez, Councilmember Kettle.

Here.

Councilmember Lin.

Here.

Councilmember Reese.

Here.

Councilmember Rivera.

Present.

And Chair Strauss.

Present.

Six present.

Thank you.

We're going to jump right into the next three presentations.

The third has two sections.

Seattle Fire Department, Community Assisted Response and Engagement Care Department, Human Services Department, and a split out for a unified care team.

Yesterday, October 14th, Our dear friend Ben had a birthday.

So just take this moment of personal privilege, say happy birthday, Ben, or belated today.

With that, we're going to move right on into this presentation.

We've got Ann Gorman from Seattle City Council Central Staff.

I'm going to turn it over to you, run the whole presentation, and we'll turn it over to Council Member Kettle.

Thank you very much, Ann Gorman, Council Central Staff.

I am here today.

You're going to need to get that mic just a little closer.

Okay.

Yep.

Is this going to be better?

I am here today to present an overview of the 2027-2028 proposed budget for the Seattle Fire Department and to share with council members a policy consideration that we have developed related to that budget.

Here is the big picture of the Seattle Fire Department's budget, the 2027 proposed and 2028 proposed levels compared to the 2026 adopted level, and overall we see a 1.3% decrease in the budget from 2026 adopted to 2027 proposed.

There's an important piece of context here that I want to share, and that is that both the Local 27 contract representing firefighters and the Local 2898 contract representing battalion chiefs and deputy chiefs expire at the end of this year.

So that means that there is no salary increase presumed in the 2027 proposed budget because it hasn't been negotiated yet.

If there were a salary increase built into the assumptions for the 2027 proposed budget, we would not be seeing this negative number.

We're going to talk about a proposed reduction of $7.1 million a little bit later, but if there were a salary increase in the 2027 proposed budget, a reduction of that size would not be enough to drive these figures negative.

Operations, this houses the six response battalions that SFD holds.

Fire prevention, this is also known as the Fire Marshal's Office.

They enforce the fire code, they inspect all high-rise buildings in Seattle, and this office is mostly revenue-backed.

Leadership and administration, this houses the Office of the Chief, all administrative functions, mobile integrated health, and about two-thirds of the indirect costs for the fire department.

Here we see that there is an increase in FTE from the 2026 adopted budget to the 2027 proposed budget of about two FTE.

This is a little bit unusual this year because there are 10 technical positions added.

They are firefighter positions and they are intended to support the fire department's mobile integrated health program.

Normally when we see positions added, we think this is a body of work and a human being, a discreet human being is going to do it.

And that's not the case with these positions.

These are technical ads.

and they're essentially being added to get around the limitations of the staffing system that the fire department uses.

That staffing system is not necessarily built to accommodate innovative programs like our MIH program.

So these 10 new positions do not result in 10 new firefighters.

The other changes here are the addition of a revenue-backed fire captain, which will sunset at the end of 2028. And there is also a technical adjustment to a revenue-backed administrative position in the Fire Prevention Division.

Okay, the 2027-2028 proposed budget includes a proposal to reduce the fire department's overtime budget by $7.1 million.

And as a note, this is the only reduction proposal that SFD submitted during the budget process, the executive budget process, excuse me.

The memo attached to today's agenda goes into a lot of detail about how SFD and fire departments generally rely on fire department over time, but I'll just give a quick overview here for the record.

Currently, SFD has a target daily staffing level of 222 across all fire stations and apparatus.

That's across all of the stations that make up the Seattle Fire Department.

and daily for firefighters means a 24-hour shift.

Due to a fluctuating number of staff and their use of various types of leave, generally the only way SFD can get to that 222 level is by offering firefighters the opportunity to pick up overtime shifts, and frequently not enough firefighters volunteer for overtime to get all the way to 222. And when this happens, SFD makes strategic decisions about where to reflect a staffing reduction on a given day.

As an example, a ladder truck might be taken out of service because other ladder trucks in the vicinity are going to be able to respond and meet response standards.

And this is called a unit outage, the unit being the ladder truck.

There's a table in the memo today showing that SFD has successfully managed unit outages for the past several years, and it is not unlike other fire departments in that regard.

In 2025, there were almost 1,100 unit outages across all stations, and that led SFD to save about $4.8 million in overtime from letting those unit outages happen.

and there were no discernible impacts to response time while these unit outages were taking place in 2025. In terms of the $4.8 million that was saved, SFD was able to use that for other department priorities, but the specific use of those funds can't be discreetly tracked by CBO, or communicated by me to you.

All we can say is that they were used other than for allocated purposes.

So from that perspective, this reduction proposal, which also acknowledges constrained general fund resources, seeks to do three things.

One is to increase the frequency of unit outages, but to a level that the executive thinks will not impact SFD's ability to meet response time standards.

The second is to systematize unit outages based on what SFD has learned from managing them over the last several years.

and third, to align SFD's operational plan with its budget in a way that has not been done in the past.

There are also other ways that SFD could theoretically reduce overtime, For instance, sometimes management allocates overtime for training exercises or tabletop simulations, but that increment of overtime currently used is small compared to overtime to fill shifts, and it is the case that most of this reduction would be reflected in unit outages.

So some options that we have developed related to this proposal are A, reduce the proposed reduction, B, add one-time funding for one or more additional recruit classes, C, both A and B, D, in combination with any of the options I've just named, adopt a statement of legislative intent requesting that SFD report on unit outages and their impact on response time, or no change.

That is to say, accept the reduction.

Next slide is questions.

Thank you.

After my flub with Ketel, I always wait for the questions slide.

I'm going to pass it over to Council Member Kettle.

I will say that I've heard on the dais in public forum, almost uniform consensus that the overtime needs to be addressed.

And so I will be bringing forward an amendment to address the overtime issue.

And we can work out how we all get to share in that all sharing that together, because I've heard out here on the dais a lot of support for it, so I just want to bring us all together in this way.

Council Member Kettle, floor is yours.

Thank you, Ms. Gorman, for the briefing, and of course, Mr. Whitson for joining us, Director Whitson for joining us once again.

I'm sure this will be quicker than the police one, but it still, fire still has some major issues, and you ended with the lead one, as Chair noted.

To be frank, I'm on guard when the term is the executive says, because contrary to that, I hear not just from Local 27, I hear from the Fire Foundation, within the Fire Foundation, that, you know, this cut is no small matter and will have significant adverse impacts to the people of Seattle.

You know, talking about, you know, it's the equivalent of losing 13 firefighters, you know, means that eight cars, paramedic units, and fire engines currently serving Seattle residents will have no firefighters to staff them.

You know, and the point too is that overtime staffing is not just extra.

I don't think people understand that years ago, you know, instead of hiring say 10 firefighters, they hired a number less in order to save the overhead from getting those additional firefighters.

And the way to square that from a capacity service point of view was to use overtime.

So the use of overtime is not something that's been, you know, standard here.

And, you know, so that's an issue.

And so what it means is overtime is the service.

This is not extra.

And so the cut means a cut in service, as noted by somebody who reached out to me from the Fire Foundation.

But, you know, even somebody within one of the fire stations said, you know, is the impact on fire and aid units being removed from service.

And it means longer response times for citizens of Seattle in need.

Minutes count not only for people's houses that are on fire, but more so if somebody's in cardiac arrest, having a stroke, or overdosing on opiates.

The run that sticks in my mind comes from a delayed response in the fire in Fremont years ago.

The nearest unit was already on a run that created a delay, and a family of five, one adult and four children, perish.

when they were trapped in a townhouse fire.

Cutting on duty staffing means certain neighborhoods will be guaranteed to have large delays in emergency responses.

And I think about those areas of the city that are a little bit more isolated, you know, in larger geographic areas, as we can see from the map that was given by the department earlier.

So this is real, and this idea that this can be covered, I think, is false, to be frank.

And it's a great concern, so I'm happy to hear that pretty much I believe all my colleagues are of the same mind, and this is definitely something that should be addressed, Chair, as we move forward.

I know there's not really a question there, but it's interesting how things are portrayed in this, and I think this is serious because bottom line, this is the most serious for me, colleagues.

All the stuff related, SPD staffing and everything else, the most acute issue for me as it relates to public safety in this budget is this overtime piece because it directly relates to life safety concerns.

That cardiac arrest, that fire, whatever it may be, opiate, it could be a car accident, it could be a young version of Chair Strauss who had that accident and went second.

Not only do minutes count, but seconds count.

And so for me, this is the most acute issue related to the public safety element of the budget.

Even more so, of all the talk about SPD, this is key because it's such a direct connection to life safety for us in our city.

I would like to ask a question though, I'm kind of working through some of these issues.

On slide two, only three, thank you.

When you're talking about the technical addition of the 10 FTE firefighters, one of the things is, as part of the recruit training, going to the joint training facility, are these 10 positions then slated for the joint training facility?

These are not those kinds of positions.

These are positions that exist only within SFD's staffing software.

These denote individual MIH shifts as bodies of work.

That can be filled by firefighters working overtime.

The issue here is that MIH shifts are not 24 hours long.

So SFD doesn't have the ability to create a firefighter position and fill it with a firefighter to do the MIH work.

Okay.

Because there's concerns on this front, too.

And I see, like going back to the overtime slide, you know, in terms of recruit classes and how to increase the number of firefighters.

And this is an area that I would like to follow up on.

because it's of interest.

And there's some nuance, as you're basically noting, so I appreciate that point.

Because at the end of the day is, again, how do we get more trained firefighters into the department, into the force, into the, you know, the various units, whatever they may be.

As you noted, this one relates to the MIH, Health One, and so forth.

So, thank you for that.

May I respond related to recruits?

There were a large number of recruits funded in the 2026 adopted budget.

20 of those were added by the council, and those recruits have been going through the fire academy A recruit class began in August and will graduate into service in November.

And those who graduate from a recruit class of 60, which is an extra large class, will join SFD in February of 2027. So the department is taking steps to add recruits as much as was supported by budget.

Good, that's important.

And get them all through the training too, because there's been some changes over the years in terms of those that start and then those that finish.

We have to ensure that we have a strong finish in these schools and the classes within the schoolhouse.

The last question I had was, and it's not in your thing, but in your briefing.

And by the way, thank you for your central staff memo.

I have both of them up in front of me.

Right now I'm looking at the map.

But, you know, with budget, biennial budget, we kind of have this kind of near-term kind of focus.

But we have to, at the same time, have a strategic outlook in terms of what we're doing in public safety and in this case with the fire department.

So I've said this I think during the previous briefing that we put in an amendment into the comp plan for the public safety element to see how as we grow as a city and the planning of that, that we also plan for the public safety architecture too.

And that's really important because even back to the SPD briefing, you know, we're almost equal to San Francisco now in terms of population.

So if we want to go back to that briefing, talk about the per capita numbers, I mean, we're increasing, you know, population nearly equal to San Francisco.

So just highlight that.

And so that this increase in this population, what we're doing in the city in terms of densifying and so forth is that we're not doing the work needed to ensure that our public safety infrastructure is also growing to meet that need in the future and to address those unique pieces that we have for our city, as noted, the hills.

I see the briefing's gone.

But the...

We are experiencing some small technical difficulties.

Since we're all here in person, we should be fine.

And here we are right back up, right back to you, Mr. Kettle.

Okay.

That's Mr. Kettle.

And sorry for interrupting, speaking over you.

I broke my own rule just a couple minutes ago.

I won't hold you in contempt there, Chair Strauss, but Zoom's working too, because initially I thought it was just the slides going down, but so we have Zoom back up?

Yep.

Okay, good.

So, with that setup, which I think is really important, particularly for fire.

And because of the hills, if you talk about the impacts on our equipment, but also the areas like North Seattle or isolated areas like West Seattle, these are important considerations.

And so one area that I'm of interest, and you may not have any background on this, is that having a fire station on Lake Union, because of the massive, I mean, over the last 15 years, we've created essentially a brand new city in South Lake Union.

which is incredible to think about.

And we also have way more activity on Lake Union itself.

I saw this one gentleman, I didn't actually talk to him, but apparently he can get like thousands of people to show up to Lake Union for a little rave on a couple thousand.

And so we have this changing environment and so Lake Union is an area of great concern and South Lake Union more broadly.

and so there's a need to have a Lake Union fire station.

And so, does this show up anywhere in the fire budget in terms of like forward thinking, strategic thinking, in terms of what our footprint's gonna be in the future and what can we do today to set that up in terms of planning and so forth?

The Department of Finance and Administrative Services manages the budget for all public safety capital projects.

I am not aware of planning for a South Lake Union fire, a new South Lake Union fire facility as part of the FAS CIP, but I will follow up on that.

This is an idea that I have heard before in my many years at the city.

and I know that there has been some initial, I don't wanna say planning work, but study work done about this, but I don't know how recently it has been revisited and I don't know the extent to which SFD personnel have been involved in that as opposed to capital planners, but I can follow up on that.

Okay, and I do call it the Lake Union Fire Station.

Obviously, I mentioned South Lake Union because of the growth up, but I want to be mindful of my colleague from D3 because we share East Lake.

She's got the majority of East Lake, but it's also very important for that area of the, basically for the whole of Lake Union.

And so, all right, thank you for that because I think that is something that we should be looking at, again, with, you know, a strategic forethought.

I know that can be hard in a biennium budget kind of mindset, but I think that's an area that we need to look at.

So who knows?

There may be, if you had a slide, maybe there will be some type of council budget action for a feasibility study or something like that.

All right.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Council Member Kettle.

Any additional feedback from the committee table at this time?

Wonderful.

Colleagues, Director Whitson.

Just leafing through the FAS Capital Improvement Program, I don't see anything related to a Lake Union fire station.

Oops.

Thank you.

Colleagues, now is the time to raise your hand.

It did, but it went away.

All right.

Council Member Juarez and then Council Member Rivera.

I think when we lost power, my little hand went down.

Yeah.

But I was in line.

I know.

I saw you.

So I want to go back.

And you'll need to use the mic.

Oh, sorry, you're right.

You should think after all these years I would know that.

I want to go back, and I apologize if some of this is repetitive, but I'm trying to get, I'm trying to put it into context some of the presentations that we've had.

So I went back and was looking at, on September 25th, when we had SPD, the Mayor's Office, and Chief Scoggins here, and their presentation and the numbers that they gave us.

and then I did my own, of course, we did with the information you gave us on SPD.

So I have two questions.

Well, actually I have a, well, let me just clarify because I think Council Member Kettle brought this up and I want to go back to what Chief Scogin says.

And I should add that we have heard from, I have heard from anyway, via email and phone calls from leadership, CL Fire Department leadership, rank and file leadership, emails and phone calls regarding the 7 million overtime reduction.

So one of the things that piqued my interest that I want to follow up with is Chief Scogin said that the overtime was a misnomer.

were you watching that when he said that, when he said it's not really over time?

The misnomer is that, and my understanding from speaking is that, and I can't remember when we put money in, they were operating at par and do you see what I'm getting at?

So, and since they were operating at that and then they realized that they could, so the seven million takes them below that because now they can't provide, those are the services that they felt would be impacted by this and then I have a follow up from that.

Let me try to address your question.

And I apologize for not- If I'm not getting there, just stop me and we'll try this again.

It is a convoluted question, because I'm being anecdotal as well, so thank you.

So in terms of the cost to SFD to staff a shift on overtime and to staff a shift on regular time, there is not as much difference as one would think, as I would think, between those two things.

I have some information that SFD provided.

The example of a firefighter with 15 years on SFD, the annual position costs for this firefighter are $215,000, including healthcare and other benefits, but the cost to backfill this position on an overtime basis is only $220,000.

It's a $5,000 difference because the costs of the benefits and the leave adds so much to the salary costs.

So that might be the equivalency that you're thinking about.

It is definitely overtime in that they get paid time and a half for working that shift.

Okay, so was it a fair characterization, a misnomer?

I watched Chief Scoggins' presentation.

I don't remember the context in which he characterized it as a misnomer.

Legally, it is overtime.

It is time and a half.

But if someone is assuming that overtime comes at a much greater cost to the institution where it is happening.

That is not the case at SFD.

Okay.

Mr. Chair, I have a follow-up.

Is that okay?

Please, floor is yours until you're done.

Okay, thank you.

So the Mobile Integrated Health Program, as Councilmember Kettle referred to, my understanding is that, and if I remember correctly, began in 2016. And it was a partnership between Seattle Fire Department and HSD as a pilot program.

utilizing overtime.

So can you help us better understand if the MIH program, how that would be affected?

You answered some of that with Council Member Kettle, but I'm trying to zero in just a little bit more.

The MIH program would not be affected by the proposed overtime reduction.

The overtime costs for the MIH program are added when new MIH shifts are added to SFD's operational plan.

And one of the things that this technical position ad does at SFD, in my eyes, is that it recognizes that MIH is no longer a pilot program.

It is permanent, it is ongoing, and SFD needed to find a way to incorporate that program into its system.

Right, and again, I'm not trying to be snarky here, but I want to keep going back to some things start out as a one-time funding or a one-time pilot, and then we find ourselves either codifying or institutionalizing such program or getting rid of it, like the navigation program.

I'll let that one go.

We can come back to that one later.

So let me ask you this one.

This is my last one, and if you can't, and this just goes back to some of the questions that we brought up with the chief and some of the people from Local 27. Station 31. what can you it was slated to be completed by the end of 2025 it's not and so I was going to ask you what if any implications are there that we foresee coming up with the delay in station 31

Fire Station 31 was most recently affected by an acute plumbing situation.

You mean flooding?

From what I understand, this plumbing issue that arose was something that's very unusual in new construction.

FAS is involved.

Insurance companies are involved.

It's not a concern that there's going to be an ongoing issue.

This is just something bad that happened very close to the end of construction.

There is currently no timeline, no revised timeline for the opening of Fire Station 31, but FAS is monitoring it very closely.

They understand that there's a lot of interest in opening it as soon as possible.

and as soon as this issue can be addressed and the insurance questions can be resolved, they can move pretty quickly to final construction.

And then this is a question, well, this is more of a statement, but I'm glad that our budget chair is going to attempt to help us remedy this on the overtime piece because I think it's a little bit more nuanced than I'm probably giving it, I'm probably not as articulate as I should be.

on the overtime piece and the nuance and how it will impact and what that means.

I hope we're not just, it's not just a matter of semantics.

And if the Chair is gonna try to address that, Chair, I can't address my question to you, but I'm guessing you can tell me offline what you wanna do with that.

With the overtime?

Yeah, I mean just speaking pretty plainly we will receive our revenue forecast tomorrow and that is going to give us the full breadth and depth of what we have available to fund all council priorities.

Ensuring that we're taking care of the employees that are being laid off or retaining them if possible and addressing this overtime issue at Seattle Fire Department are my top two priorities followed by public safety homelessness and a whole lot of other priorities.

So that's where it ranks in the list.

It'll either be 7.1 million or the low ball there is 5 million but I think we're going to be able to find the funds that we need to cover this overtime reduction in this year's budget.

Right, and I think the Chair made a, and you did as well, that the firefighters do more than just put out fires.

And I think when Chief Scoggins and their staff and their rank and file tell us all the other things that they do with Mobile Health One, all the other stuff that they do.

And I remember, I think it was three years ago where we changed the code to enhance penalties for those folks that assault firefighters, like when they assault police officers.

and we got input from CL Fire Department, rank and file, and those folks, which was important.

So, and also our concern, and I mean this for the whole city, not just District 5, but I think Chief Scoggins brought this up, obviously better than me, but we are concerned about the east-west, I think there's three or four, maybe three bridges that link, because I-5 cuts D-5 in half, and the response times are longer.

and with a reduction, that's mainly what I'm concerned about.

I'm really concerned about the response times and some fire stations can get where they have to go quicker because they don't have to go over or be limited to three bridges and a major freeway.

So that's just more of a statement.

So I just want you to know where my concern is coming from.

I'm not trying to politicize this in any way.

I'm just trying to be realistic about what's on the ground and what our folks need for the whole city, not just D5.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Council Member Warris.

Committee table, anything to share at this time?

I will add that SFD has a rubric for how unit outages would be implemented if they are going to be implemented.

And it takes into account the location of different stations, the location of apparatus, the proximity to other stations with the same apparatus.

I would be happy to share that with Council Members.

What do you mean, apparatus?

Anything else?

Councilmember Weiss?

Like a ladder truck, an engine.

That's the SFD terminology.

Oh, okay.

Thank you.

Sorry.

Thank you, Chair.

Fantastic.

Councilmember Rivera.

Thank you, Chair.

And I will say that actually last night I talked to a couple of our colleagues in Secure, their co-sponsorship, Councilmember Kettle and Saka, Chair and Vice Chair of Public Safety, to put this add in.

because I feel so strongly about the fact that we need to put this over time, the 7.1 million in.

Again, a chartered responsibility.

We need to ensure that our response times remain what they are.

We cannot, this is not something, excuse me, sorry.

This isn't something that we, this is not an area where we should be making reductions.

Again, our chartered responsibilities which include fire and 911, our 911 center and also SPD are our chartered responsibilities.

And as such, we need to be prioritizing these things.

When there is a fire, we need someone to come.

We need fire to come immediately.

I don't even know how else to say that.

There is no other need, I think, to say it.

And I think Chief Scoggins said it best when he was here.

And now it's standing what I'm reading here in terms of what level of service would be able to be provided without the 7.1 million.

I very clearly heard Chief Scoggins say that it will have a huge impact on the fire department and it will result in unit outages that will impact response times.

So I just wanted to state it very plainly for the record.

I could not be more supportive of including this 7.1 million overtime ad so that police, sorry, excuse me, so that fire can keep doing what they're doing.

And so I'm happy to hear that the chair agrees.

And it seems like we have broad support on the council for ensuring that our fire department is not only fully staffed, but that has the overtime that staffing so that folks can continue to have the response times that we have had and that there are no reductions to those.

That is it for me, Chair.

Thank you.

Fantastic.

Thank you, Council Member Rivera, Vice Chair Rivera.

Committee table, anything to share?

We have requested from SFD response time data and its adherence to national standards as part of this budget process.

They collect this data, they tabulate it regularly.

I'll provide to council members what we get from SFD, but also always open to ad hoc requests for this kind of data.

Fantastic.

Councilmember.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you.

And it's really important.

Again, when folks call, our constituents call 911 when there's a need for fire response, we want that fire response to happen right away.

And then we know that we need to make sure that we're supporting our fire department for many reasons.

And one that I super appreciate Chief Scoggins has taken a lot of focus and given a lot of focus and attention to since he's been here, and I've worked with Chief Scoggins almost 10 years now, is that he cares about the mental health and wellbeing of his team as well, because the work that they do is really, as we all know, a lot of folks have jobs that are very emotionally, have an emotional impact, a mental health impact, and this is one of them.

So I know that that's another reason why we wanna make sure we are able to have, you know, funding in place to ensure that we can do response times and not at the expense of the officers where we're working them even harder.

And then that goes to their wellbeing as well.

Thank you, Chair.

Fantastic.

Thank you very much.

Council Member Foster, followed by Saka.

Thank you so much, Chair.

And as always, thank you to central staff.

I appreciate your work, Anne.

I know you're having a long day at the table with us, so I appreciate that.

I'll make a quick statement around my questions before I get into them, because I think, like so many people at this table, I see the value, the service, the really hard work that our firefighters do here in the city, and I really deeply appreciate it.

I don't have stories that are quite as personal as those that the chair has shared, but I think all of us have been touched by SFD in one way or another.

I can think of times where I've called for somebody who's overdosing and the fire department has showed up.

And again, I think that speaks to the multifaceted role that fire plays.

It's not just putting out fires, it's so much about our what's wrong with our healthcare system and so many other things that we're working on fixing and addiction and homelessness and so on.

So just first want to make that statement.

Then I have some questions today that are really more about trying to figure out the sort of short and the long-term path forward for us when it comes to our investments in FHIR.

And something that's just been on my mind and I think Councilman Berlin has spoken to this in different ways is like the role that overtime is playing in order to meet critical service needs and the impact that that has on people just as workers and sort of how, whether or not this is sort of a short-term or a long-term situation for us as a city.

So I wanna sort of state my intent before I get into my questions there.

So having said that, and I'm looking now at some of the Q&A and conversations that have been going back and forth around the overall budgeted overtime.

And so I'm looking at this and I'm seeing in 2024, and I want you to make sure I'm looking at the right thing here, we had a total of I think 50 million for budgeted overtime and then 2025, 35 and then 2026 back up to 41. Can you just talk to me about this as a trend?

It seems like we were sort of going down and now we're going back up.

What is that?

Help me understand this picture.

At a high level, the need for an overtime budget is related to the forecast number of firefighters who are part of SFD and able to work, and so overtime is not needed.

SFD forecasts the number of firefighters that it will have, and when that number is very high, the overtime budget can be lower because that's not where the dollars are needed.

It is very hard to forecast how many recruits will successfully complete the academy and join SFD offset by how many people will separate from service at SFD, typically through retirement.

SFD tries really hard to do that, but there are a lot of human inputs that just can't be modeled for.

That's really helpful.

And then that turns right into my next question, which is, and you said this earlier in the presentation, how many, is it 60-ish new recruits that were expected to come on, online feels very inhuman, but come on board the apartment next year?

There is a recruit class of 60, and people who successfully complete that class will join SFD in February of 2027. Historically, the proportion of recruits completing the academy has ranged between about 60 and 80 percent, and there's no pattern that I have been able to discern in how that percentage changes over time.

Okay, got it.

So there's 60 recruits in the academy.

Historically, 60 to 80% of those will join, so we'll see that.

I'm not gonna do math, social work, background, but we'll see them join the department in February, and I invite you to tell me that number.

And then can you just tell me what's budgeted for in terms of new recruits in the department next year?

I don't have that figure.

I'd like to follow up and get back to you.

Okay, I would love that, and I think that would be helpful.

And then what I would also love to understand is what are we projecting in terms of departures from the department next year, like retirements, people leaving?

This is a tough one because firefighters, they're not obliged to let SFD know when they are going to retire.

And often, SFD only learns that a firefighter is going to retire two weeks before that happens.

There are a number of firefighters at SFD right now, I believe it is in the hundreds, I can follow up about that, who are eligible to retire, but are continuing to work at SFD.

There are also firefighters who separate from service with only, I don't know, five or ten years' tenure.

So this is something that is hard to predict, and because it's not possible to plug in one new recruit for every one person separating from service, SFD is often engaged in catch-up.

You know, we had more separations from service this year than has historically been the case.

Let's get another recruit class going, but it's going to be quite a while before that recruit class can, you know, take the place numerically of the firefighters who separated from service.

That makes sense.

And I would imagine it also takes time for a new recruit to get fully onboarded and to have the same level of skill as somebody who's retiring after 10, 15, 20, 30 years of service.

And so there's probably some differential there.

But I would love to know what we're modeling for retirements next year.

And what I'm trying to get at here is how do we understand the relationship between new recruits coming into the department existing firefighters retiring and the relationship of those two things on the predicted overtime budget for next year.

And so if there's anything you can sort of speak to there, I think we're all trying to figure out like how to maintain this core service, how to make this investment.

And what I'm trying to ask is, is it seven?

Is it five?

Is it four?

How do we understand the balance here?

I know there is not a formal model in use, but there are people at SFD who have been looking at these spreadsheets for many, many years, and I think are kind of good at picking up the vibes from them.

Thank you for asking that question so clearly.

I will follow up on it.

Okay.

Thank you.

I look forward to that.

And I think, again, I heard Councilmember Strauss say, and as we all have talked about, We are in a challenging budget year.

And we know that we care deeply about our critical city services.

I will also say, not only am I interested in this question around FIRE, but as I've said before and other committees, wanting to make sure that we continue and balance our investments in affordable housing, giving the big, big, big pivot that the Office of Housing is making and their accounting practices.

So I think obviously every penny, every dollar matters.

trying to get that right alongside obviously this very clear need for this critical service.

So thank you for letting me go through that.

And colleagues, I hope you understand my intent here is just helping us get this right as we are looking to sort of answer this question around SFD's budget.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Foster.

Any feedback from the committee table before we move on?

I think Councilmember Foster's middle name might be Fax.

Fax.

There we go.

Councilmember Saka, you're up next.

And then Councilmember Lynn.

Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Ms. Gorman, for the terrific job here, presentation.

Very, very insightful and illuminating teeing up the various policy considerations for us here during these times.

So there's definitely both a short term and long term set of challenges as it relates to staffing within the department.

And I think we're all kind of in laser focus on the short term.

and I'm also curious to learn more about the long term as well.

But first off, I want to also thank my colleague, Councilmember Rivera, for your leadership and jumping on the phone with me last night and trying to figure out a path to get this done and your commitment to do exactly that.

and I want to thank Budget Chair Strauss for your leadership right now and making this commitment.

What we're seeing here on the fly is like there's a lot going on here.

We're in these all-day public meetings, flurry of activity, reviewing documentation and slides and all that.

In the meantime, meeting with constituents and we don't always have time to coordinate directly on a one-on-one basis with everyone.

Anyways, So I want to thank both of you for your leadership.

It's very clear that this is a shared priority on this body, and addressing the short-term solution is a huge priority for everyone.

Yes, and including me, because firefighters save lives, and they're a critical component of our broader public safety strategy, and couldn't be more grateful for them.

So that's the short term.

the longer term and kind of continuing on the line of questioning from Council Member Foster a moment ago.

Broadly, what I'm hearing and what I've seen in the various analysis, having spoken with firefighter leadership, firefighter union, the longer term solution is need more firefighters.

rather than relying on overtime to have a certain level of response capability, we need more firefighters to basically obviate the need for that.

How do we get there?

And I appreciate Chief Scoggins and his team for their work I meet with him regularly and that's firefighter staffing is always a perennial regular agenda item.

I always ask about the current efforts and so I know they're doing everything possible right now to boost that.

That said, there's more work to do to boost those staffing levels and what I see here Again, this is to address the longer-term solve, to make sure, you know, in two, three, four-plus years, we're not in the same situation.

But I see strong parallels between the current challenge with respect to firefighter hiring and recruitment and staffing, as we've seen with SPD officer staffing.

Same bottleneck issues, same timeline issues, same recruitment pool issues.

SPD, we're recruiting for other officer talent of all local jurisdictions, whether it's Kirkland, Bellevue, Tacoma, Kent.

And so what we pay them is an important factor for candidates.

So is the timeline that it takes for one to, after the testing process and to ultimately get hired and then academy date or whatever it is, the same challenges.

And if a candidate has options and a shorter, more streamlined recruitment window and process and more regular touch points, they're probably gonna choose somewhere else.

That's one reason why we struggle to hire.

And there might also be some intentional policy decisions as well as part of that that I want to dig more into.

But that is, I see direct parallels between that work and I think, at least in the near term, addressing the solved at least up front.

This is probably a multi-year effort, but I think data transparency is really important.

Understanding our process, the specific metrics and performance indicators here as it relates to our hiring and recruitment process and how that compares to all these other, well, some of the key local fire departments that we're competing for talent for.

because, again, that's one thing that is clear.

We need to streamline and simplify the recruitment process and do it in a manner that does not lower our standards.

But that is part of the broader...

I view that as part of the broader long-term solve here.

So we don't have to end up in this fiasco.

We need more firefighters.

Period.

That's it.

In any event, just want to offer that as something that I'm interested in, you know, exploring, because yes, addressing the immediate, dare I say fire, or crisis or emergency is critically important.

We must do that.

but let us not have to worry about this going forward by addressing the root causes, the underlying issues.

So thank you, Chair.

Appreciate your leadership again and you as well, Council Member Rivera.

We're all on this together.

Committee table, anything to share at this time?

Please.

Sure.

I just want to note that SFD, in its base budget every year, has funding for two classes of 30 recruits.

That is going to happen year after year.

In 2026, the executive included funding for an additional 20 recruits in the budget, and council added another 20. So, 100 new recruits were funded in 2026. That is really unusual, and it is SFD's expectation that once they all go through the academy in staggered classes and join SFD, that will make a real difference in terms of not needing to rely on overtime so much.

Another thing I want to say is that part of the reason that it takes a long time for someone to move from applying to the Seattle Fire Department to becoming a Seattle Fire Department firefighter is that You know, it's a long process with a lot of screen-outs because it's really only a small proportion of people who are interested in becoming firefighters who can pass all those tests and go through all those interviews and make it to the end.

The SFD's process from, hey, I'm interested, Hey, I'm putting on my firefighting gear.

It's comparable to other cities about the same size as Seattle.

And there are some cities, for instance, Boston, where that process takes longer.

Thank you.

Councilmember Sokka, anything else there?

Sounds good.

Councilmember Lynn.

Thank you, Chair.

Yeah, it's super helpful.

Some are just questions about sort of the long-term staffing plan, so helpful to know that the base budget already includes 60, but just like some of the colleagues have, and it was helpful to hear that there potentially could be a large amount of retirements.

We just have no way to predict it.

do fire departments um sort of recruit laterally at all is that part of any staffing plan the seattle fire department does not do that okay the the seattle fire but do do we know of other fire departments i i i have heard of the practice i'm not well versed enough to give you a response we'll follow up okay um thank you uh and just um just, yeah, concerned about sort of the long-term staffing plan and just what the contingencies we might have in case there is sort of a large amount and how we can, you know, I do think it seems like there might be another need for some additional recruiting classes, whether this year or in the coming years and just would like to get ahead of that.

Sorry, one final question.

You mentioned salaries are not baked in, potential raises are not baked into this.

Any idea of like a ball?

park range of what we're talking about or when that might hit, and...

That is a question for labor negotiators.

Uh-huh.

Yeah.

Okay.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Lynn.

Anything else from the committee table at this time?

I appreciate several Council members' interest in the potential impacts of the new recruits coming in that were funded in 2026. I will work with SFD to try to get some sort of quantitative understanding of how those new recruits joining sort of in waves have affected SFD's staffing over time.

I don't know if we'll be able to develop anything around response time, but if any council members are interested in dimensions that they would like to see reported on, please come work with me.

I'll make that happen.

Thank you.

Council Member Lynn, you're still good?

All good.

Still good?

Great.

Council Member Foster, is that a new hand?

All right, I'm gonna go and then I'll, so anyone who's not yet gotten to speak, I'm gonna actually pull out, I really appreciated your line of questioning, Council Member Foster.

In particular, for most city employees, we have to give six months notice to retire.

In the police department, due to their policies, we can get a bit of a sense of how many people are about to retire because of how they use their leave.

With the Seattle Fire Department, they can provide same day notice of retirement and we've seen it that occur in the past.

And that's just a slightly different way.

Each department has slightly different policies.

The Police Pension Board and the Fire Pension Board have their own policies.

And so I just note that because it's a bit different than many other departments.

And I really appreciated the questions about the long-term hiring plans.

Council member Saka also brought this up because we cannot continue to rely on overtime.

We do need to have a long-term hiring plan that we get a better sense of how many people are retiring and how much positive impact will new recruit classes be.

I know that we've added recruit classes in the last year during the council, or last two years during council budget process.

I want to bring us back a little higher level and do you know when the last time our recruitment and hiring structure was reviewed top to bottom or changed or rather and I say that in a holistic way rather than council adding recruit classes one time the mayor adding recruit classes one time when was last time we had a holistic review

I cannot, I don't know when the last time we had a holistic review was, if indeed it ever has taken place.

I do know that starting, I believe in 2026, the SFD application process occurs every year rather than every two years as it was previously.

And what I have heard from fire department staff is that applicants really appreciate that.

One thing that it does is it captures momentum.

If there's somebody who applied to SFD one year and narrowly missed the cutoff, then that person only has to wait for a year before lifting heavier and trying it again, where previously it was two years and SFD's understanding was that they'd say, oh, I can't wait, I'm gonna go do that other thing I'm interested in.

Yeah, or join a different department.

Yes.

That's very helpful.

I think we may want to follow up on that as well.

And I've said this before, as I review the budget of all departments and all programs, what I have found is that programs and departments that have dedicated funding sources are the ones that we see the least amount of reductions in moments like this of challenging budget times.

With the police department, the fire department, the care department, and all of the wonderful programs that we love being funded by the general fund, it creates this tension.

And that's why we've been talking about this fire district proposal only in the sense of if we are able to protect the fire department's budget because they have dedicated funding, it's something that could be very helpful to the fire department and all Seattleites really because they're just here serving Seattleites.

It's not their own needs.

It's really the needs of the community.

and what we found is that in most cities in Washington state that have engaged in the fire district process, it's taken about three to five years.

And so I think that's just something that we should be aware of, which is why this year, I think we do need to take steps to start that conversation.

I know that there was a conversation earlier this year, but it was directly out of legislative session.

I don't know that there was the breathing room available to have a robust conversation.

And the two things that I really see that need to start soon, and this is something where colleagues, if you wanna bring these amendments, we're all gonna share in glory around supporting the fire department.

I don't need to bring all these amendments, but I'm noting that we likely need an external consultant to help share, you know, give us information about what other fire districts, what their processes have been, how they structure them, and all the rest, just so that we can learn from best practices, because we're not the first, and we should learn from what's gone well and what's not gone well in other jurisdictions.

And in particular, something that takes time in this is developing a fire benefit charge.

This is a the ability to provide a different rate of service to industrial, commercial or residential.

I know that there's a fair amount of staff analysis that has to be done ahead of that and I think it would be important that we start getting an understanding of either how much time that would take what that workload is or if it's something that we can have a couple different options in the next year, I think that would help those conversations.

But colleagues, I just shared with you that a fire district proposal would both create stable funding source for the fire department so we don't have to come back to this conversation, but also it's not a quick solution.

It will probably take three to five years and we should start some of that analysis now.

Last question here is regarding our fireboats.

I believe, is it the Chief Self that has mechanical issues right now?

It is the Leschi.

The Leschi.

It has mechanical issues right now, but it is also undergoing its sort of mid-life span service overhaul.

But it is definitely out of service while that's going on.

and we do have a plan in this budget, the $2 million this year, and I believe a million dollars in the year-end supplemental, is that correct?

There's $2 million in the year-end supplemental to fund the partial costs of what it takes to return this boat to service.

For the other $3 million, SFD is working on strategies to fund that.

No information available at this time, but I can follow up.

Okay, colleagues, I raise this because even if you have a landlocked district, do we have any landlocked districts?

I don't think so.

So actually, this does apply to everyone.

But you don't need to be on the water to benefit from a fireboat.

I'll use the analogy of what happened in Los Angeles with their wildfires where they ran out of water pressure.

In our city, when you have a multi-warm fire, these water pressures occur as well.

We don't run out of water here in Seattle like they do in LA because we're in the rainy Northwest.

But all that to say is the fireboats do provide auxiliary water pressure in times that are needed for on land firefighting.

So even if they are not directly spraying water on fires, they are oftentimes providing that additional assistance to help Seattleites and The last comment that I'll make is about the overtime and I know that you shared there have been staffing reductions in the past and the overtime budgets have fluctuated.

just from my own life experience, every second matters and that's why it's so important to me.

And if we didn't make this choice today and somebody's life was forever altered because we were a minute, two minutes, three minutes late, I mean, four minutes without oxygen creates permanent brain damage.

These minutes and seconds really count and that's why it's just so important to me.

I'll give you the floor if you've got any reactions to my long statement right there.

No, no reactions.

Thank you all for the, for the questions.

I know they're being logged and I look forward to following up on them.

Yeah.

And so Council Member Foster, did we lose your hand?

Okay.

Well, I'll ask Council Member Foster's hand.

Council Member Rivera, new hand, old hand.

Yeah, but I think Council Member Horace has a hand.

I think that, I kind of think Council Member Horace is an old hand.

Yep.

So we're gonna go Councilmember Rivera for a quick last thing, and then we're gonna go Councilmember Kettle and close us out.

Thank you, Chair.

And, you know, all of these positions include, I just wanna say, I'm not sure it was raised and I had to step out for a second, so apologies on that, but just the importance also firefighters don't just put out literal fires and there's Medic Health One Health 99 that deals with when folks are overdosing so or have overdosed rather excuse me so they're providing that medic and those health functions as well and I just wanted to call that out because that is an important piece of this an important piece of that, making sure we have the staffing to cover those needs as well.

So thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Council Member Rivera.

Any reactions from the committee table?

Council Member Rivera is exactly right.

The majority of calls that SFD responds to are medical in nature.

I believe it's around 70%.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Fantastic.

Thank you.

Council Member Kettle closes out.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, everyone.

Ms. Gorman, thank you for the briefing and those points to include.

Actually, that's a very important point because a lot of them are medical.

A lot of them relate to people who are in crisis on our streets.

And, you know, it's interesting when you look at the briefing from before from the department in terms of total calls and total SFD responses, I think it's important to remember which each of those represents.

And it's actually very difficult in terms of the stress and the impact on the firefighters.

I've seen it and I've talked to many of them in terms of dealing with these challenges day in and day out.

And I raise that because the work environment, the difficulty of it is it can play into these questions of staffing and retirements and everything else, but also to the need that we have in terms of bringing new firefighters on board and also having the equipment.

These fire engines are built in Florida where it's flat.

They're constantly amazed about what kind of terrain that our fire engines, ladder trucks and the like have to traverse.

and you throw that in all these combinations, it can be a very difficult situation.

And colleagues, by the way, I mentioned in terms of leadership with the police department, you know, I think it's really good to join a fire station for dinner one night.

Don't forget to bring some ice cream.

But you really see, you know, some of these, the challenges in each of these fire stations.

And I would add too, because I think I visited the fire garage and I might have been the first ever, and that is super important too in terms of ensuring that we have a fire department that can run and make that call.

And so I just want to give a thank you to those and encourage everyone to engage not just the fire station but also MIH which is in the headquarters not far from where we are right now because at the end of the day and again, this is the reason why the overtime's the most important.

It's the life safety impacts of what fire does.

And I recognize SPD has that as well, but in terms of the acute, from this budget perspective, the overtime is the most important thing.

So Chair, thank you on that point for your work and whatever steps we can take moving forward, so thank you.

Thank you, council member Kettle.

Any last reactions from the committee table?

Appreciate that.

And for the public service announcement, the highest location in the state of Florida is 345 feet above sea level.

Meanwhile, Capitol Hill here in Seattle is 444 feet above sea level, just to make the point.

With that, seeing there's no further discussion about the Seattle Fire Department's budget, we will move on to the next item.

And I realized, Phil, we didn't read this item into the record, did we?

No, we didn't.

If we could read item number two and three into the record, I'd appreciate that.

Okay.

That was agenda item two, Seattle Fire Department for briefing and discussion.

Next is agenda item three, community assisted response and engagement for briefing and discussion.

Wonderful.

We've got Tommaso Johnson with us.

And Tommaso, as soon as your slide deck is up, we will start us off.

Good afternoon, Chair Strauss and members of the committee.

This is the budget briefing on the Community Assisted Response and Engagement or Care Department proposed 2027-2028 budget.

There we go.

As you can see, the 2027-2028 proposal reflects net increases to the care department in terms of both, well, you'll see staffing on the next slide, but in terms of both, staffing and funding levels.

Inside those net increases are decreases to community assisted response and engagement and a net increase to the 9-1-1 call response.

The primary mechanism through which those changes are achieved budgetarily are removal of vacant positions within the 911 call response and the community assisted response and engagement divisions.

We'll be talking about that in more depth when we get to the policy consideration there.

Other reductions include the removal of one-time funds that was used for the purchase of vehicles and equipment, and some technical changes as well.

The increases that you see represented for the 911 call response line are primarily due to the transfer of a gun violence body of work that currently is in HSD that's proposed to be transferred to the care department, which includes a number of CVI, community violence intervention contracts, as well as another bucket of dollars, which we'll be discussing in more detail during the policy considerations.

The other non-technical change is technical in a way, but substantive in that it's a $1.6 million increase for co-lead contract and that was discussed in the September 25th presentation that that is necessary to maintain current service levels due to the loss of some other funds.

As you can see on this slide, there is a small net increase to staffing total FTE in 27-28, going from 240 to 242. This lower half of this chart also reflects the reality that the bulk of the funds for this department are general funds with a relatively smaller amount of JumpStart dollars added.

Moving on to the policy considerations.

The first policy consideration has to do with- This is one of the departments that was alluded to earlier that has staffing changes, staffing reductions.

In this case, there are two proposed reductions to the two divisions of the department that are both vacancy removals.

These are cost-saving measures and the removals would include eight currently vacant positions within the 911 call center for call takers and 14 vacant CCR positions.

To contextualize that, within the 911 call center, of the type of positions slated to be removed as vacancies, there are currently 125 call taker dispatch type positions, and 22 of those are currently vacant, so that vacancy removal of eight would be removing eight of 22 current vacancies within a total positions of 125. Within the community crisis response or CCR side of the house, the total position count is 57. and 20 are currently vacant, so 14 removals would come from that 20 vacancy.

The policy options that we have before you today are to restore funding for some or all of the vacant 911 call center positions, restore funding for some or all of the vacant CCR positions proposed to be removed, some combination of those A and B options, or no change.

Happy to answer any questions on this.

Is your next slide questions?

Sorry, we can go.

We're going to go through the whole presentation, then we'll come right back.

Thank you.

Roger.

You almost got me like Ketel did.

My apologies.

The second policy consideration relates to the proposed addition of gun violence body of work to CARE.

As I said before, this is a transfer of both contracts currently held by HSD.

Those contracts represent $5.1 million.

They were already procured and are already contracted providers.

That would just be the body of work regarding coordination and supervision of those contracts.

for community violence intervention would be moved from HSD to care department.

This is part of the mayor's gun violence plan that has been- some detail has been provided already through some of the mayors and other department heads' public comment, and there are more details about what that plan will look like that are represented in these budget documents.

So 5.1 would be the contracts.

1.2 is a million dollars is proposed to be transferred from HSD to care for other work.

Within that 1.2, the intent is two new staff within care to coordinate and supervise that gun violence body of work.

And by coordinate, I mean coordination between the providers doing the community violence interruption work, as well as the other departments who are involved in that work, including the police department and HSD, who will still be holding gun violence and community violence work that is related primarily to prevention.

And options that we've outlined here before you are to impose a proviso on some or all of that $1.2 million transfer from HSD, restricting its use for specific purposes related to gun violence prevention and or response.

B, pass a statement of legislative intent requesting reporting and or other deliverables to spell out in more detail the gun violence plan and coordination across city providers and departments, and option C, some combination of the former two, A and B, or D, no change.

Now I am happy to answer any questions.

Thank you, Tommaso.

Very well said.

Councilmember Kettles, chair of the committee overseeing the department, you are recognized.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Johnson.

Still with us, Mr. Woodson, Director Woodson.

I appreciate the longevity of your stay here at the table all day, not easy.

It's interesting this, there's some trends that we see, unfilled positions, and these are the things that are usually contrary to the intent of the pieces of legislation that the council has passed in the past, previous years.

and, you know, one could say, okay, vacant, but at the same time, I would count this as part of the unfunding because at the end of the day, like, if you engage, you know, there's these tradeoffs, but 911 call takers are very important.

You know, to my colleague's point, which I agree, you know, having that comprehensive approach to public safety, those CCCRs are important.

And I recognize, and I said this two years ago, Something new like the care department is going to be an evolving effort and there's going to be changes.

But at the same time, you have to have capacity to improve the concept.

In order to do that, you need the CCRs, for example, along with, in addition to the more traditional, the 911 call takers.

And so this is of, you know, concern for me.

I think it goes to, like, how are we going to bring in the various elements of public safety?

So again, this is an area I think probably agreement across the entire dais is that we have to have this comprehensive, all the players coming in, and then smart engagement across the various elements.

And of course, there's differences in terms of exactly how to do that.

I appreciate that.

But at the end of the day, it's about creating a safe Seattle.

So that is of concern to me. and because at the end of the day, again, we have to build a strong care department because I do believe in alternative response and we have to have alternative response and cooperation with other elements of public safety, primarily police and fire, but also to be a connection to the county.

Should note, since last year's budget, we did have a care bill earlier this year, alternative response bill, where we look to help define care better to open up other opportunities to get away from this care SPOG dynamic that we had, unfortunately.

I think this has been ameliorated with a better relationship with police department overall and also change in leadership at SPOG.

But also by adding different pieces in terms of being the lead on some of these public health pieces with the county, for example, with their responsibility in public health.

but also in other areas too, like initiative with the King County Jail, the KCJ.

I think these are important areas that we need to move forward on.

But one area, that I wanted to highlight in that bill, we did not touch the point about gun violence in the CARE bill.

The CARE department has always had the gun violence piece in it.

So I appreciate the mayor's gun violence plan.

A lot of those pieces are already there to include that.

What I find of interest with the gun violence plan, the one thing that really caught my eye is creating that relationship between CARE and the gun violence interruption, intervention, whatever, that initially you want to use for that, you know, to move forward and to develop a relationship much like what we've been doing with diversion.

By, you know, last year we brought PDA, Public Purpose Dignity and Action, out of HSD and into care, and now we're doing the same thing with gun violence.

And I think that's a very strong step forward, because I don't think we're getting from A to B otherwise.

And I think we have, this opens up the opportunity, and that's the one piece of this plan, that I think we really need to move forward on in collaboration and cooperation with the executive is this piece about that role within the care department.

and so I think we should look to build on what we've had here.

We can talk amongst ourselves and with central staff but also the executive related to some of the ideas that we have here.

But we have to move forward on gun violence and I think care can be a a piece of this, but not the only piece, by the way.

There's very many different elements.

And by the way, on this front, we should create our own Seattle plan with the uniqueness.

We just talked about fire uniqueness with fire engine and hills and all the different pieces that from geography point of view.

you know, we're doing things differently on alternative response and I think that we can create this for our city and then this gun violence piece can be like an example where we take the best of what we see in other locations, other jurisdictions and then create really a step forward and so that's why I think that initiatives like Councilmember Rivera's or things that we did last year in committee related to gun violence with, for example, Ms. DeVita Briscoe, formerly of the Herald team.

But we can take those and then create our own.

And that's gonna be, by the way, colleagues, the intent of like the first quarter of next year is in public safety community is to work that kind of overall plan and with the executive to ensure that we're moving forward, because the gun violence piece just continues and continues, and it's impacting all across the city, including my district, even Cary Park.

I talked to an officer, 44 gunshots in terms of finding the casings.

People shot, taken to Harborview.

Cary Park, which is, as I said, the look angle into our city for the nation.

Any time you see a Seahawks game and they show downtown, that's taken from Cary Park.

And so we need to do better.

so there's no real questions there except for highlighting some of the points that we're doing and to take the options in terms of the policy considerations and see what is possible.

But we have to move forward and we also have to do it with the executive, I will say that, which leads back to my first point.

There's a trend, colleagues, where we pass budgets, we pass bills, law, yet we have all these unfilled positions.

That goes to co-equal branches of government and so forth, and I think that's an area of concern.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you.

Committee table, anything to share at this time?

Just to say, public safety care, Chair Kettle, I appreciate you mentioning that ordinance that's Something that I mentioned in the memo in the context of this policy consideration, as you said, that ordinance that was passed earlier this year, which codified the role of the community crisis responders in the part of municipal code that describes the care department, It did, you know, it had we had had that language relating to gun violence, community violence work in the CARE ordinance since its passage arguably hadn't been fully implemented and that your ordinance that Council passed didn't retain that language.

So I think that there's there's that's an important thing to point out, as you did.

I also pointed out in the memo that there was the resolution adopted more recently, earlier in the year, sponsored by Councilmember Rivera, that set out an intention to contract with a national provider to flesh out a plan for Seattle around gun violence or gun violence response strategy.

So I put those both in the memo because they both, you know, arguably point to Council intent around a certain direction for this department.

I think it's important to note both of those, so thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Anything else?

Chair, I forgot to mention that, but I do appreciate the staff memo and the briefing overall because that's a very good point.

Colleagues, I definitely encourage to see what we did with that bill as it relates to care.

Thank you, Mr. Johnson, for that summary.

Fantastic.

I'm assuming Councilmember War, is that still an old hand?

All right, Councilmember Rivera, you're up next.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Tommaso, for the overview.

I just, I have a question about the 911 call takers.

For the last couple of years, I've put in a CBA related to ensuring we have 911 non-emergency response.

and so how many of those do we have those specifically designated?

I mean basically they're all the 911 call takers but some of them are designated to the non-emergency line and making sure that that is happening so that line gets answered because we had been hearing that the wait times are very long for the non-emergency responses so I want to make sure that with these proposed cuts, not filling of vacancies, that we're not losing that non-emergency capacity.

Yeah, thank you for that question, Councilmember Rivera.

It's my understanding that the way that department staffs both the 911 and the non-emergency line is that they do not have separate position titles or positions for emergency versus non-emergency, that they use the same pool of employees to flex as the need arises.

So in that sense, In that sense, I don't think we can say that it will, you know, impact one emergency versus non-emergency function more than the other.

What they have said about the proposed vacancy reductions is that they don't expect it to impact their call response or their line response negatively.

across the board.

That's what we've heard from the executive, that they expect these proposed vacancy removals to allow them to maintain their current standard in 2027.

Thank you, Tommaso.

I'd like to get more information about the non-emergency line in particular and what the current wait times are, because I understand, as I said earlier, it's the same pool of people, but they dedicate certain staff to the non-emergency line, so it's actually getting answered.

And back in 2024, those were not getting answered.

The wait times are quite large, long, excuse me.

And so, the subsequent year when I put in that CBA to make sure that that line was getting answered, it did go answered, did it again last year.

And I want to make sure that this continues moving forward because folks call the 911 non-emergency line frequently.

And of course we don't want folks calling the 911 emergency line for non-emergencies because it just ties up the 911 line, right?

And the other troubling part about that is sometimes then because if the 911 non-emergency line goes unanswered, everybody is told to call 911. And that's not advantageous because the 911 dispatchers have to do They designate priority one calls, priority two calls, priority three calls.

And so if you don't need to be in that priority docket, if you can just call the non-emergency line and get someone.

But oftentimes, and we know a large percentage of the non-emergency calls actually turn out to be 911 emergency calls.

but at least at that point, you know, for the ones that aren't, you're not tying up the 911 calls.

So both are important is what I'm trying to say.

And the wait times on the non-emergency line, we need to make sure those aren't increasing because of this particular action.

Yeah, we can follow up and get more details certainly.

Terrific, thank you.

Because again, as I am a broken record, I'll say it again, this is a chartered responsibility of the city and so one that we really need to make sure we're not cutting, you know, corners on, so to speak, notwithstanding all our budget deficit issues.

And then also I just wanted to say about the, it sounds to me like there's a lot of details that still need to be flushed out with the mayor's gun violence strategy.

I believe, I know we put questions in the tracker and there wasn't, it was not a lot of specifics back, I think.

It sounds to me like perhaps they're still working on this.

but to me it sounds like they're just transferring over contracts from HSD.

These are all existing contracts.

We do this work already.

It sounds like they're trying maybe to reconfigure how the work is being done and transferring a certain portion of that work to CARE and then leaving the other contracts with HSD.

And then the higher of positions are to basically manage the contracts at each.

location.

So I would love more information about part of the auditor's recommendation about not siloing.

It just, I am concerned now with separating the two.

We're going to continue to be in this siloed approach.

So, you know, you probably don't have this information, but would like information about how this is going to improve that not, you know, a coordination and having an overall approach versus a siloed approach, which is what we have today.

And then in terms of the National Network for Safe Communities effort, colleagues, that is just something that can happen even with all of this reconfiguration that the mayor is proposing.

One doesn't take away from the other.

We can still partner with the National Network for Safe Communities to implement their strategy here, their gun violence intervention strategy here.

It is not a study.

It is actually a strategy that has seen significant reductions in other cities, as I've mentioned, Philadelphia and Boston, et cetera.

So I will be continuing to move forward.

I'm going to figure out how we're going to to find funding for this.

So funding's not the issue.

It's a very, it's a one-time small amount of money for the work that has to happen and folks are dying.

So to me, this is, I have, as you all have heard me say, a lot of urgency around this, but I don't want to be the lack of funding to enter into that contract to be the reason why we don't move forward with the strategy that I'll say actually, if folks don't know, Malcolm Gladwell just wrote a book about gun violence and he talks about this strategy in his book.

If you don't know about it, haven't read it, I recommend it.

Anyway, all to say that that is an important strategy.

I believe it doesn't take away from what the mayor is trying to do.

I want more information about how separating the contracts and sort of it almost sounds like it's bifurcating the system, how the executive believes that's going to help with this gun violence situation that we have in the city.

So looking forward to getting more details on that.

And I assume, Tommaso, you don't have the answers so you can get us that information or try to get us that information.

Thank you.

Committee table?

I am also interested, as you are, in more information on that front.

What I can say from what we've heard from the executive is the proposed transfer of the 1.2, as well as the contracts, some of the justification that has been offered for that relates to the point that you made about the auditors, explicitly relates to the auditor's recommendation.

and my understanding is that the intent to move contracts over to CARE is intended to be in service of better fulfilling the recommendations of the auditor's report and creating more direct linkages with dispatch and and care as part of the public safety entity, city department entities.

So that's what we've heard.

I think more information there, as you said, would be helpful, but that's part of what we heard so far.

I'll just say also on your point about the National Network for Safe Communities, part of the proposed use that has been identified by the executive for a sub-part of that $1.2 million is for technical assistance around solving the same kinds of problems that you described.

I think the primary difference that I'm seeing from the information that we have and the statements that have been made is that the mayor's office is not identifying a specific contractor the way that the council's resolution did.

The description of the intended use for that 1.2 does include the same procuring, the same kinds, generally speaking, same kinds of services.

So, you know, there are different ways in which there is alignment there in terms of intent, if not explicitly naming a contractor.

And we'll work with you to make sure that that resolution does become a council budget action to help to implement it.

Thank you.

Thank you, Lish, and thank you, Tomaso.

I will say that the focus deterrent strategy is one, as I've said, was created by the founder of the NNSC to help cities implement that particular strategy here.

There is no other organization that's doing this strategy like NNSC.

The focus deterrent strategy was created by the founder of NNSC.

And the big difference between that and other efforts related to gun violence is that NNSC has everybody at the table, including SPD, not as a consultant, but as a partner at the table, along with all the other law enforcement partners, along with community, along with the moral voices in community, like our elders, along with the individuals that have been identified as creating the most harm in the city.

So it is very much a, it is actually a progressive strategy that has everyone at the table and that particular strategy, I'm sorry, that particular organization, the NSC is the only one doing this particular focus deterrence strategy.

that's why I recommended partnering with them in particular and so like I said look forward to working with you all on and working with you all colleagues are ensuring that this particular effort makes it into the budget separately.

There's a lot of work here but I'm not sure that it's exactly how the auditor details it in the auditor's report, because part of the auditor's report is that we shouldn't be operating at silos, that all of the work should be living under an umbrella, that everyone's working together, and I'm not sure that this is exactly going to lead to that.

While I appreciate the efforts, I don't believe that this is exactly what the auditor intended, and I will say that the auditor did talk about a strategy similar to the NNSC strategy.

They didn't specifically call out NNSC, but they called out a similar strategy.

So what's happening here doesn't sound like what the auditor had in the audit.

That's why I'm looking forward to getting more information, because I'm not seeing it as it was described.

and recommended by the auditor in this way.

But we don't know what we don't know and we need more information.

It sounds like it perhaps isn't fully baked yet and we need to get more information.

So thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Vice Chair.

Just checking reactions from the committee table at this time.

None.

Council Member Rivera, I'm going to double check with you that you don't have anything else because we've got three more colleagues and a whole other presentation with only 90 minutes left to go.

So I'm going to start keeping us a little bit more on track.

We've got Council Member Foster, Lynn, and then Council President.

All righty.

Thank you so much, Chair, and thank you, Tomaso.

Really appreciate you and all the work with the Care Department.

I will start off on something that Councilmember Rivera already touched on, and I know we talked about this previously when Chief Barden was here, which is the wait times on the calls, and that's something I just share an interest in.

And I recall during that conversation, and I wasn't able to pull up the slides today, but I recall during that conversation hearing from the Chief I think that the average hold times are down, and I believe Councilman Rivera smartly brought up at the time sort of what we're hearing from constituents is like, maybe doesn't always sound like that.

And something we asked for was getting updates about the outlier times, not just the average, so we can see if that is shifting.

I'm not sure if we've gotten that response, but I just wanted to bring that back up and make sure as we're going through this second round that we get that.

So I'm really curious to see if the average is going down and then we just have consistent high outliers or something else.

So I just want to make sure we get that level of detail.

I also think we had asked about getting the median response time as well.

So just a couple more pieces there.

But thank you, Councilmember Rivera, for continuing to raise questions about that.

I appreciate that.

And then with that, I wanted to just clarify, with some of the positions in the call center, were these positions previously filled and then went vacant and then were then removing them, or were they never filled?

That's a great question.

Right in front of me have the data for the duration of those vacancies.

I know that you've heard from Chief Barden several times before about the efforts that they've been making to increase you know, long-term retention, given the challenges of that workforce, the challenging job they have, and the efforts that they've made through their internal work on that.

So that's a long way of saying, I don't know, but we can try to confirm what the duration of those vacancies has been.

My sense is that in this division, there's sort of a rolling historic issue with retention and vacancies, and so that might have something to do with it, but I don't want to speak dispositively on that, so we can get you more information about the length that those vacancies have existed for.

Yeah, I think that...

Thank you so much for that, Tommaso.

That would be helpful, and then I think getting an understanding of...

The other thing, when I toured the center, I think we sort of heard about exactly what you're saying, which is the sort of challenges in recruitment for these positions because they are really important and really hard jobs to do.

And just kind of, I want to just get an understanding of what we might expect for any future hiring in the event that we're ever able to to reinstate these positions, just sort of like the timeline, how long it would take us.

So I can work with you to follow up on that.

But thank you for that, Tomaso.

The other question I wanted to ask is about the integration between 911 and 988. And this is also a little bit detailed, but it's my understanding that in order to kind of fully integrate these systems that would require investments in new technology because we use CAD and they use a different response at 988. Do you know if this budget includes any investments in that new integrated technology that the department would need to access in order to connect 911 and 988?

I'll need to follow up with the department on the exact current status of the 988-911 integration.

I do know, so I mentioned earlier, some of the decrease was one time resources that were added last year for a variety of things.

Vehicles was the sort of largest single outlay there.

But there was also IT investment that was, I think, along the lines of $200,000 as a one-time expense that was successfully completed.

And so I can follow up with the department and confirm whether or not that is being used or whether there are additional resources that might be beneficial with regard to the 988 integration.

Thank you for that.

I think that would be really useful, and I just will comment on this.

This is something I talked to the department about when I've been out with some of the care team providers or just been in the call center, particularly given the work that we're continuing to do to ensure that the crisis responders can be fully deployed.

I think it's really important that they've got access to different kinds of calls that are happening within the city.

I'm also hopeful that we'll get to something that's an increasingly clear system for our constituents so they know the best number to call, but I think that's just going to be ongoing work over the next several years.

and sort of relates back to this question of 988, 911, our non-emergency response line and making sure we have just clarity because I think that gets to an ease of access for constituents so they know who to call when they're in crisis.

So more of a comment than a question, but I think from my vantage point, that's an important area of ongoing work.

Thank you so much, Chair.

Thank you, Councilmember Foster.

Any response from the committee table at this time?

Seeing none.

Councilmember Lin followed by Council President Hollingsworth.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, colleagues.

Thank you to your presenters.

I wanted to talk a little bit about the gun violence, the change of the contracts to CARE, which I'm supportive of, just sort of where we are at, and just reflect again.

When I started this year, we started with the tragedy in Rainier Beach.

And we've had a lot of progress through incredible work of, I keep giving flowers to Captain Tuttle down in the South Precinct, but we have seen enormous reductions in shots fired down in Rainier Beach area in particular.

Depending upon how you draw the map, between 50% and 70% reduction in shots fired.

So good work is happening, and at the same time, South Precinct Rainier Beach still experiences much more higher shots fired than other parts of the city, and we see the impacts of gun violence, and it just, it can, impacts from one area of this city we've seen can impact other parts of the city as well.

One thing I just wanna, budget-wise, we invest a lot in community, what I would call community violence intervention work, CVI work, and that is great and important.

And we have this resolution to invest in the group violence reduction strategy, which I'm excited about.

and we can figure out the budgeting for the consultant, but I guess my question will be, and I'm just kind of looking at a Baltimore kind of news release from like 2022, and it talks about basically shows two big buckets of funding, one for CVI and a larger bucket for group violence reduction strategy.

And we've heard about how Baltimore tried multiple times They weren't successful at first, but they ultimately were more successful.

And this talks about Baltimore tried elements of a focus to turn strategy in the past, but never fully invested in the necessary support services or intensive case management to truly provide a way out for people engaged in violence.

Additionally, past attempts lacked full buy-in and scaled too quickly.

And it talks about them being more intentional in implementing the strategy that can be scalable over time.

My question is, if we fund the consultant, that is just that is just one very small piece of what will be a larger down payment in a comprehensive gun violence or group violence reduction strategy.

And I'm just, you know, on the one hand, it will take time to hire the consultant, to do the landscape analysis, to build out the program, but I also just don't want to be flat-footed next year if, you know, there are elements that the consultant says, hey, this is what you need, this is what you need in terms of coordination, this is what you need in terms support intensive case management.

And so I'm just struggling because this is urgent work, and I'm just not sure how to plan ahead for, because we don't have this consultant on board yet, and so we don't know the full price tag of this new body of work.

And so I don't know, do we squirrel away some funds to kind of prepare for that?

Or, you know, I think partially it will be redeploying our existing sort of resources.

You know, we have existing, for example, youth employment program.

Do we dedicate some of those slots for this work?

You know, do we...

to change some of our CVI contracts to be more group violence reduction strategy work.

But I just want to, one, put that out there, because I think that there will be more budget work to come, assuming we go down this path and we are all in alignment to implement it.

But I also just want to open it up to see if you have any thoughts on how we plan for an unknown budget impact from this new body of work.

It's a good question.

I think the truest thing to say would be that we don't know.

I don't know.

As you alluded to, it may well be as much, if not more, a question of better coordinating or reorienting the resources we're putting towards this issue, all facets of this issue, from the front to the back end.

It may also be the case that there are additional, you know, investments that the council or the mayor's office thinks are warranted based on the information that we learn and the path we go forward.

But I'm not sure that we would be able to predict future budget impacts at this point.

Thank you, Chair.

Just something that we're gonna continue to look into, just to try to plan ahead and figure out, because again, I'm supportive, but I just wanna make sure that we have the other pieces of the puzzle besides just the consultant to be able to support what we think will be coming in terms of a new strategy.

Thank you, colleagues.

Thank you, Council Member Lynn.

Anything else from the table at this time?

Thank you.

Moving on to Council President Hollingsworth and Council Member Rivera, I see your hand, but we have to keep moving today.

Thank you.

Council President.

Thank you, Chair, and I'll be quick because I know we have the unified care team next.

Tommaso, and I thank you, Council Member Lynn, for those comments regarding sense of urgency because I know after the stuff we experienced at the beginning of the year.

Some of us were told we were gonna have a plan earlier and sat down and wanted to figure out what this looked like.

So I'm excited that we have a plan and we have a commitment that's here.

But one of the things I wanted to address was the B option.

Has the executive talked about any deliverables along with the plan timeline and implementation of the gun violence plan?

I'm not aware of specific deliverables.

I think part of what you're alluding to and has been alluded to in other council members' comments is that we have had the announcement of a plan, and we have in the budget documents the Mayor's Gun Violence Plan MGVP referenced, but a plan in totality is not something that I've seen so far, but as I said, we see the ways in which that might look telegraphed to some extent in the budget, but no, I haven't seen specific deliverables that would be new.

You know, of course, I should say within the existing contracts that we have in HSD primarily and other places that relate to the various points on the prevention response intervention sort of spectrum.

Of course, all of those contracts already have reporting and deliverables that are internal, but I'm not aware of new set of deliverables.

And that's something that our office is going to be looking into, is a timeline of implementation of this plan, in addition to deliverables, support for families after gun violence happens, focused violence intervention, timeline of implementation.

and also just want to make sure that we highlight as well, I strongly believe and I know that Councilmember Rivera put in last year for gun violence a conference and a part of the sense of urgency was due to there wasn't a plan in place and so now we had a conference and a symposium.

And so we got a lot of great information from that symposium because we did not know the landscape of what gun violence even looked like in our city.

So I was happy to engage with that.

And it revealed some things that we kind of already knew, we had been hearing, but it had data associated with it.

And I think it created a great baseline for information.

But also, too, two years ago, council voted on a slide for inventory for youth programs.

So we have literally all the youth programs within the entire city, so we can kind of gauge which department is doing what and what investments are going to be in.

And I just want to state the reason why I think it's really important that we figure out what the deliverables are and so forth, and we talk about how amazing Baltimore is, and I'm just going to say it, Baltimore is way different, and the reason why is because it's their implementation and a lot of the people in Baltimore are black and how they implement their gun violence prevention plan is very different than how we see it because of the people implementing it and half of the people that are being victims in our city are black males.

And so there are things that I'm gonna be looking at for legislative reporting and deliverables with the gun violence prevention plan that is gonna identify how are we targeting that certain audience that's the most impacted 4% of the population, but they're 50% of the victims for gun violence in our city.

So that's what we'll be doing, heads up colleagues, that's what we're trying to craft but I think it's also important that we have a timeline of implementation because I don't want to pass this and then we're just sitting here looking around and how much more money do we need and we don't have a timeline, we don't have deliverables, we cannot look how we're making progress in our city regarding the gun violence that's going on in our city because I can't see another kid die, I can't read another email from a mom telling me how much they miss their kid We can't, no more proclamations for dead kids.

We gotta have a timeline.

We gotta take this real serious.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council President.

Committee table, anything else to share?

Council Member Lynn, Council Member Rivera has indicated that she's got answers to your questions.

We do need to keep moving at this time.

Council Member Kettle closes out on care.

My only thing that I'm gonna say here is that by reducing positions, whether they've been filled or not filled or anything like that, reduces the momentum.

We need to keep the momentum up on getting care into every part of our city, into every neighborhood and supporting them to better serve every Seattleite.

I'm very concerned about the momentum lag that I see in this budget.

Other than that, Councilmember Kettle, please close us out.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you for that point.

Colleagues, to your questions, I've been listening.

I do believe that we have a majority of the building blocks of what we need to put in the plan into place are there.

Obviously, it'd be augmented a little bit in certain areas, but I think, you know, you bring these pieces together, we can, you know, do this.

And then also, kind of to Council President's point, and create a Seattle-specific, because it's not one-size-fits-all, but I do believe that we have that.

Based on my conversations in terms of hearing about a plan over the course of the summer, I suspect that when we delve into this by committee colleagues in the first quarter, January, will be able to work with the executive at the beginning.

I tend to doubt that there's gonna be a full-fledged plan.

Although, colleagues, I'm doing my bit My policy director now works for the director of public safety and the executive, so I just want to let you know that I'm doing my piece.

And on the other parts, Chair, very good points, and this goes to what we're doing in terms of the comprehensive approach and then folding in alternative response, and we'll continue to work those areas too.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Cattle.

Anything else from the committee table at this time?

We're gonna move right on in, and if the clerk can read our final item, item number four into the record, please.

Agenda item four, Human Services Department and Unified Care Team for briefing and discussion.

Wonderful.

As they are coming up, great work, Tommaso Johnson, even though my high school is better than yours.

Thank you.

Back to the committee table, we have one last presentation, Human Services Department and Unified Care Team.

I'm gonna ask that we stop at the end of Human Services Department before we move into Unified Care Team.

Colleagues, we have 63 minutes until 5 p.m., and so I am hoping that if you've got value statements or questions that we make them brief and productive, because if each of us spoke for 10 minutes, we would be here until 5.15.

over to the committee table if you are ready.

Good afternoon, Chair.

Anne Gorman, Council Central Staff.

Liz Schwitson, Council Central Staff.

Jennifer LeBrecq, City Council Central Staff.

And Tommaso Johnson, Council Central Staff.

You can say your high school is better.

I would never.

are here today to share with council members an overview of the budget for the Human Services Department that is the 2027 to 2028 proposed budget, and to present two policy considerations for council members' analysis.

I have a little technical difficulty here.

Okay.

Overall, we see the budget for the Human Services Department increasing by 5.8% from the 2026 adopted to the 2027 proposed level.

Some of the BSL changes that you see here are due to a change that is both technical and large.

The Aging and Disability Services Division at HSD, which corresponds to the Promoting Healthy Aging BSL is the State Designated Area Agency on Aging for King County.

And the proposed budget includes a technical adjustment for grants supporting older adults that aligns budgeted amounts with current award amounts.

The current award amounts were quite a bit higher than what was in the budget.

So, based on HSD's cost allocation methodology, we see changes in the 2027 proposed budget that affect not just promoting healthy aging, but leadership and administration and supporting affordability and livability.

That's due to HSD's cost allocation methodology.

Other than that, you see an increase in the addressing homelessness BSL due to that division's expanding portfolio, and the transition of KCRHA contracts back to HSD is also reflected in an increase to the leadership and administration BSL.

The reduction to the Promoting Public Health BSL is due to shifting some contract dollars from there into addressing homelessness.

That's for behavioral health services that will be provided at shelters.

And you just heard about the reduction to the Supporting Safe Communities BSL.

The headline on this slide is the very large increase in jumpstart revenues as a proportion of HSD's budget from six-tenths of a percent to 15 percent.

The proportion of general fund decreases from 70 percent to 49 percent, and I want to call your attention to an error on this slide, the percentage change in general fund from 2026 adopted to 2027 proposed.

Of course, that should be a negative.

Apologies for the error.

In terms of other sources, HSD receives over $100 million per year in state and federal grant revenue, and some other other sources that would be included in that category are the Sweetened Beverage Tax Fund, the Opioid Settlement Proceed Fund, and the FEP levy.

The increase in FTEs shown here reflects 23 positions related to the transfer of KCRHA contracts back to HSD and six positions that support Mayor Wilson's shelter expansion.

Those were all added as one-time emergency positions in 2026. and there are two positions proposed added to support youth gun violence prevention.

The memo goes into pretty granular detail about the positions.

Again, this is just an overview.

And this is where I'm gonna take us back to the slide previous because all of your policy considerations are regarding the unified care team, is that correct?

Regarding the UCT, no, we have two policy considerations to share.

One of them pertains to the unified care team and the other, here, let me preview it.

So I'm sorry, we're having a little bit of real time.

I thought this presentation, and this is because we didn't coordinate as closely, if we're gonna do both HSD and unified care team all together, After watching, after experiencing yesterday's committee, I think that we're gonna have a different level of focus on the entire department versus the unified care team specifically.

This is where I'm doing a gut check, folks.

Can we, do you wanna just do the whole presentation and then we're gonna have the correct amount of time?

Roll the whole presentation and we'll come back to it at the end.

Thank you.

OK.

Apologies.

We will roll with it.

The reason that we're talking about the unified care team as part of the HSD presentation is that the UCT is a multi-departmental effort to address unsanctioned encampments and clean and maintain public spaces that have been affected by them.

But the UCT core team, which provides strategy, coordination, and budget and policy oversight, is housed at HSD.

There are a number of departments that participate on the UCT, in particular Seattle Parks and Recreation, FPR, and the Seattle Department of Transportation.

SDOT share responsibility for in-field operations of the UCT, which includes removing encampments, offering shelter to people who are in them, and attending to public spaces affected by them.

Other departments with dedicated UCT budget are the Department of Finance and Administrative Services, Seattle IT, the Seattle Police Department, and Seattle Public Utilities.

And we'll have a couple slides coming up that hope to illustrate the diffuse nature of the UCT with the HSD core team steering that ship.

Across all of the departments participating on the UCT, what is included in the 2027 proposed budget are a reduction from the current $30 million budget level and 113.5 FTEs to a proposed $28 million budget and 105 FTE.

and we have pulled out some of those reductions for your particular attention because they involve the infield operations of the UCT.

So HSD has proposed to reduce two FTE vacant positions and reduce its operating budget.

SDOT has proposed to reduce two FTE vacant positions and hold vacant two FTE positions, and SPR has proposed to reduce 2.5 FTE vacant positions, transfer an additional two-point FTE vacant positions to another division of parks, which does not do UCT work, and to reduce the operating budget.

With respect to these aggregate proposed reductions, the options that we have identified are A, increase the UCT's staffing level and or budget and revise positions commensurate with express council goals for this program.

B, impose a proviso on one or more departments' 2027 UCT budgets until HSD provides an operational plan responsive to express council goals for this program.

C, adopt a statement of legislative intent that revises current reporting standards and sets clear expectations and goals so that the Council is better informed about this group's work and its progress.

D, some combination of the above options, or E, no change.

Going through the whole thing, yep.

These slides are illustrative.

We put them together anticipating that they might be helpful in council member discussions of this proposal.

Here is the HSD core team currently comprised of seven FTE employees.

There in the green, we have illustrated which departments have dedicated employees and budget assigned to the UCT.

They are HSD, SPR, SDOT, and FAS.

All proposed reductions are here in red.

SPU, SPD, and ITD have budgets associated with the UCT, but they do not have any employees associated with it.

And this is just another view of the unified care team at HSD.

Again, the blue denotes the core team, and the green shows the field operations coordination that takes place out of HSD.

And here is a list of all of the positions that are proposed to be reduced or transferred or held vacant in the 2027 proposed budget across these three departments.

As was discussed yesterday during the SPR presentation, some of these positions have been vacant for quite a while.

That is all we have related to the UCT.

Okay.

And there's one more issue.

Do you want me to run through that one?

You know, I'm gonna...

Sorry, we got a little out of sync here.

What I'm gonna say, I'm gonna share my thoughts on the Unified Care team.

Let's, we'll do the Unified Care team.

Sorry, and I just chatted with Council Member Rink and Council Member Wynn.

I'm sorry for the miscommunication that I've provided both of you in this.

And my apologies to central staff for not having a more deep review with you before we came out here into committee.

and everything's good.

So I'm gonna share my thoughts about the Unified Care Team.

I'm gonna hand it over to Council Member Rink and then to Council Member Lynn to talk about the Unified Care Team.

And then there is still an additional slide about the Vehicle Resident Assistance Program, but it's a totally different tangent.

And so...

and this is a bit of my reaction from yesterday's conversation.

And the reason that council member Lynn is up first is because he had a lot of questions and I asked him to hold them, but it's really just at a high level.

If these positions are funded or not funded, if they're filled or historically unfilled, we've seen unsheltered homelessness go in the wrong direction in the last 12 months.

and is it because KCRHA's chaos or is it because a mayoral administration changed?

Is it because positions aren't filled or that unified care team has been moved out of the mayor's office?

It really doesn't matter.

What matters is what is being done about this growth in unsheltered homelessness.

Is the mayor exuding leadership in this area or deprioritizing addressing homelessness?

We know the people on our streets today compared to 2019 are more complex, have more complex issues.

This is because we've created the solutions for people without complex issues and they have been addressed.

We shared earlier just this month about folks getting kicked out of tiny homes.

A decade ago, we couldn't have gotten them into tiny homes.

Unified Care Team has played a critical role.

I've watched them help people with low complex issues that have been historically homeless for more than a decade in my community who have resisted services because we didn't have outreach workers that met their needs, took the time to get to know them, and found them the appropriate shelter.

I'm glad that the mayor's office has funded complex shelter in this budget, but we cannot stand still in the middle of crossing a river.

We've lost momentum this year.

And this is what I was hearing about yesterday, about is it because positions are filled or unfilled?

Is it because they've been historically vacant or not?

None of this matters because what matters is what are we doing to get the job done?

The budget doesn't get this work done.

Leadership does.

And that's just like I wanted to bring us all back out of it because we were starting to get into arguments of is this position filled?

Is it not?

Is this position doing things?

Is it not?

What we know is that at times the unified care team has worked really, really well.

They've broken the mold and model about how do we do this work better?

There have been times that they've needed more improvement.

And my best guess is that the unified care team operators themselves have ideas about how to improve it.

but is anyone leading?

That's the bigger question.

I know that before we have this discussion, we have the first unified care team statement of legislative intent report that's coming to us that is broken out in a district way that's never been done before.

And so we're just gaining all this more information.

Yes, changes need to be made.

and I just wanted to bring us back out of this.

Is the position filled?

Is it not?

Is it funded?

Is it not?

Because I think we can all agree we've been going in the wrong direction and we need to go in the right direction.

That doesn't necessarily happen in the budget, but it does depend on the budget.

Thank you, Council Member Rink for letting me take a side path there.

It's over to you.

Thank you, Chair Strauss.

Just given some of the hiccups with how we're handling presentations today, it would be my preference if just given since you started us on the discussion on UCT, we just go into that discussion.

I have separate remarks more broadly on the Human Services Department that I'd like to take up separately.

So happy to defer next to whoever has questions about UCT.

Thank you.

You and I were on the same page.

Sorry about that.

Councilmember Lin.

Thank you, Chair.

Don't have a ton of questions.

I mean, I think the presentation is helpful.

Just kind of comments to your point on, you know, I am concerned about where we are at with our homelessness response.

And, you know, I'm not sure it's hard to diagnose the problem.

As you mentioned, budget is certainly one piece that we're weighing here.

Clearly, there has been a slight reduction for UCT, and perhaps their workload is only going up.

I am excited that just more generally that we are funding more high-intensity, high-services shelter, because I do think that is a critical piece of the puzzle.

Obviously, what is happening with KCRHA is not helping, including the news from today.

And I think a lot of our homelessness response relies on outside providers, sort of outside of our direct line of authority.

So we rely upon so many outside providers.

And I'll just sort of pivot to my one comment about the HSD budget in general.

which is we do rely upon so much on outside providers who continue to not see the same sort of salaries and increases in budgets.

And to kind of Councilmember Kettle's point earlier, we have a lot of strong unions for our city staff, which is great, and who fight for living wages and reasonable wages for their employees.

And then we have to include those in our budgets when those agreements are ratified.

You know, a lot of our outside, HSD is one of those departments which really we outsource a lot of work.

And even if those folks are represented by unions, they do not directly negotiate with us.

And I think that creates some disparities in how these folks are paid.

And so I'd love to figure out how long term we can have more parity between external represented folks who are doing critical work for us versus our own city employees.

Thank you, Chair.

Very well said.

Our contracted outreach do some of the hardest work and we need to be paying them well.

Colleagues, any additional questions?

Looks like I took the air out of the room with the Unified Care Team.

If we could go back up to the Human Services Department, we're gonna start all over again and we're gonna pass it over to Council Member Rink.

Do you have your hand up, Council Member Foster?

You wanna jump in?

Come on in.

Chair, I just wanted to check for clarification.

Is your intent that we do UCT questions now?

Yes, please.

Any other HSD questions later?

We're going to go back to HSD as soon as we're done with the Unified Care Team.

Yep.

Everyone's got one opportunity to speak on each of the three issues.

So Unified Care Team, Human Services Department, and then there's a vehicle slide at the very end.

Everyone gets one chance.

If we all speak, we'll be here until 530.

So one per issue.

Fantastic.

Then I've got a question, Chair.

Fantastic.

Hit it.

All right.

Thank you so much, Chair.

Appreciate that.

Glad we worked that out.

I have some of the same questions that I had yesterday, and I know, Chair, that you had some really great opening remarks, and I appreciate those.

And I still have some of the same questions, and not because I want to get into sort of disagreements on the dais.

It's not my favorite thing.

because I want to understand when we're reducing vacant positions whether or not we are reducing our capacity and our existing service delivery or whether we are sort of saying we're not growing.

And to me, I think that's a really important distinction when we're talking about service delivery and the experience that residents have.

So I just want to, again, express my intent while I really appreciate all the comments that were made.

So having said that, for the UCT reductions, are any of the reductions across the board in positions that are currently filled or have previously been filled.

I believe that there are some positions that have previously been filled.

For instance, the strategic advisor, one in HSD, that has only been vacant since last month.

There's another management systems analyst position at HSD that has been vacant since earlier this year.

A lot of the positions shown here have not been filled since 2023, 2024.

Thank you, I appreciate that.

And I know that since we had this conversation, it feels like it was, I'm like, was this yesterday?

It feels like four days ago.

So I know it hasn't been a lot of time for central staff to get into the research, so I appreciate that update.

And I'll just look for a follow-up in terms of whether or not there are any other positions that were recently or previously filled.

But what I'm hearing is, as of right now, there's the two that you've identified.

And I see Director Whitson over here, so I'll pause there.

On the screen is a list showing the most recent hire date, or how long they've been making.

Okay, thank you.

Central staff works fast.

I really appreciate that.

I will dig into that later.

And then the other question that we had yesterday was just trying to get an understanding of the overall investment in UCT across departments.

Were we able to get that updated number?

That is in process with HSD and CBO.

Your questions yesterday were very helpful in teeing up our specific dimensions that we need to engage with them about.

I have a meeting with them on Monday, and I anticipate after that meeting I'll be able to provide you a very complete crosswalk related to your questions yesterday.

Thank you.

And then I'm going to make a comment that's going to bridge I think hopefully UCT and some of the other components around HSD.

And so, you know, I serve on the governing board of KCRHA and have been there since January of this year.

I'm not going to discuss the news out of KCRHA from earlier today right now, but I will just state more of an interest in trying to distinguish between different services.

So one is a question of what we're investing in that is about homelessness services, providing housing, providing shelter, providing care, whether that's treatment, whether that is something else, those investments, and distinguishing between that and I'm gonna say public space management.

So whether that is picking up any trash that is outside, whether that is being responsive as many members on this dais have talked about, to calls that come in from neighbors.

And I just want to look for that kind of clarity in our conversations that we're having around UCT and our contracts when it comes to homelessness services so that we can understand whether we are making a reduction in a housing unit, a shelter unit, or a trash pickup, or a collection, or a outreach worker.

That's not a comment about valuation, but it is a comment about distinction between those so that we can actually then understand, are we making a shift from making a reduction in public space management so that we can then invest in shelter and permanent housing or temporary housing that gets us closer to solving our homelessness problem in the long term, from my perspective, or are we doing something else?

I just state that to give some context to what I'm really trying to figure out as we look at these reductions and as we look at also bringing the KCRHA contracts back, which will be now another significant body of work.

And I hope that now that we will have both of these under one roof, we will have the ability to distinguish those well and make decisions about our investments appropriately.

Thank you so much, Chair.

Thank you.

Any feedback from the committee table?

Respond at a high level and then I'll let Jen do the same.

The UCT has a role both in the cleaning and maintaining of public spaces and in service provision.

UCT offers a shelter bed to people whose encampments are displaced by the work of the UCT.

but that offer is not as tailored, it's not meant to be as permanent or rehabilitative as shelter that is offered under the expanded shelter plan.

I would just add that the transmitted budget does have a level of detail, too, that allows us to distinguish between funding for services versus funding for the unified care team at the Human Services Department.

So happy to discuss more about that detail with you offline.

Fantastic.

Great work, team.

Up next is Council President Emeritus Juarez.

followed by Councilmember Rivera.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to make apologies.

I hand it out to Council President, Councilmember Rivera, Councilmember Strauss, Councilmember Saka, Councilmember Link, and also Councilmember Foster, and I want to apologize.

I didn't get a chance to get it to Councilmember Lennon-Rink in cattle which I will, but it's not policy, so we're not breaking any laws here.

What I put together, our team put together, because we wanted to talk about what we, to continue our conversation from yesterday, by the unified care team, and so I kind of put together the timeline, the historical context of how we got to where the word unified came from.

We started out in 2017 with the navigation team.

In 2020, we went to the Clean City Initiative.

And then in 2020, we went to the HOPE program, which again, we're still building on all of this.

And then we went on to the unified care team, which became codified and institutionalized in 2022. and formalized in the 2023 budget, which included seven city departments.

And I think I read some of these yesterday just from memory.

And that was originally HSD, FAS, SDOT, SPD, Parks, IT, and SPU.

I'm just trying to share some knowledge here.

In addition to the seven departments reflected in the previous city departments I just rattled off, the other departments that were working with the unified care team in different positions were Seattle Public Library where we put social workers into libraries and trained people with Narcan, Seattle City Light, Seattle Department or SDCI, Seattle Fire Department and the City Attorney's Office.

So I guess what I'm trying to, it's a shorthand way of saying I wanted to explain and put into context how we grew from this idea of the Navigation Team to the 2026 Unified Care Team.

and let me tell you why this is important while we're making budget decisions and when we make decisions about whether or not...

I think this works.

Whatever you want to call it, I believe it works.

I guess my concern is that I would hate to see...

Well, let me just say this first.

A lot of people don't know this and this is just, again, me being here way too long.

As you were sharing, the care team or the navigation unified care team does more than just cleaning, obviously.

And a lot of city policies that informed us and grew out of this whole transition starting with the navigation to the care team was the harm reduction policy, the housing first policy.

the meet people where they're at policy.

Now good, bad or ugly, whether they were successful or failed or whatever, all of these built on themselves for us to have a greater response to our relatives who are living outside in parks and greenways and public spaces.

And so I don't wanna politicize this in the sense of, I don't care what we call it, I don't care who is mayor, it really doesn't matter to me.

What matters to me is putting in historical context that this works.

and I hope it lands somewhere and keeps working.

This would probably be a good textbook example if anyone takes a class in planning and I don't know what that degree is that you get in, but about how you start off and you can't let perfection stop progress.

We just keep building on that.

And so I guess my concern here for budgetary conversations is I would hate for something that we've been working on and watched grow since 2017 I would hope for this program to continue in some format and get better whatever department it lands in.

I'm a bit disappointed if we're going to be moving things around or taking out positions and not recognizing how valuable this is.

And, you know, I was looking at the additions to the HSD and unified care team and some of my concerns and I'm sure that the budget chair and I will have another long conversation about what this means.

So I wanted to give that perspective so everyone, particularly the public, when we first started the navigation, which was not popular in the beginning, and then we continually evolved, and then that's where the word unified came from, is we realized we had all these siloed positions in 10 city, 10, 12 city departments to come together.

and then, pardon the pun, park everything at parks and then have parks be the city department to coordinate between all the agencies, particularly with HSD.

And Department of Neighborhoods was in there as well.

And then also working with the county.

I mean, when we were doing the night count or the day count, and also as you saw what happened with the indigenous that as we learned from Derek, our friend at Chief Seattle Club, they were getting the numbers wrong of how many of our indigenous relatives are indeed homeless and they were getting the count wrong on that.

So I guess my point is I would hope with my colleagues and I promise to get my other colleagues a copy of the timeline that we did if indeed you would like to look at it and I just want to end with this because I think this is important.

When we started out doing the cleaning piece, and then we started out doing not just the cleaning in greenways and encampments, we were also handling and training city employees across 12 departments in handling hazardous matters, needles, foil, waste, etc. and I had my team pull up because we used to have to have parks, as you guys remember, report this.

Since 2021 to 2026, we've had almost 6,000 tons of waste that has been picked up and not just picking up waste, though.

It's also meeting those people that are out there and delivering the bags and the handwashing station, all of that stuff.

And, you know, huge shout out, I hope, I don't think she's watching, but Councilmember Bagshaw, when she chaired homelessness, these were all important programs that we built on and we had some semblance of congeniality that we all wanted the same thing and it didn't matter who was in the mayor's office but it mattered what city departments that they were talking to each other and we were indeed meeting people where they were at and providing those services and also working closely with DON and Office of Housing for the housing piece of that and indeed a lot of housing came online because all of this stuff informed us as legislators where we needed to put our money and how we discussed that and voted on that during budget.

So with that I just wanted to share that and some of you I handed that out to you and I will get the other information.

And so I guess my question is I'm hoping what do you see as Do we see this program growing any more in the services that we're providing?

I think one thing that we hear related to the move of the UCT from the mayor's office to HSD is that this was undertaken in order to protect the UCT across mayoral administrations so that it continues.

And given that we did not yet have Mayor Wilson at the time of that transfer, What I understand is that HSD means for the UCT to continue in some form.

The reductions that are proposed in the 2027 proposed budget do not fundamentally change the makeup of the team.

One theme of the reductions is that positions that perform administrative or analytical functions are reduced, and to me that implies that locating the core team at HSD has meant that it's able to draw on HSD's experience doing work like this, running programs like this.

So to someone who is interested in the continuation of the UCT, that's good news.

That would seem to reflect the achievement of efficiencies.

Okay.

You know, and I just, again, want to point out that, and again, because I remember some of this stuff and what went on.

When we did the navigation team, and CL City Council voted, and it was a big fight about defunding it and adding more money into it, and Mayor Durkin vetoed it, and then the City Council, me included, came back and overrode the Mayor's veto.

And again, it's not trying to make it personal.

It was more like, I'm hoping that this collective body can understand how important this is.

And like you say, if this insulates it from those type of politics, and if the mayor's office believes, I have an opinion about that, whether or not it is inoculated in HD, I guess we'll soon find out.

And I don't know if we're off to a good start if we're eliminating positions.

I guess that's the bottom line for me.

So thank you for that.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Council Member Juarez.

Council Member Rivera.

Thank you chair.

Um, and thank you council member Juarez for that important, um, historical context.

And I was here in 2020 and I, you know, I know what was happening then with the UCT team and ongoing.

Um, and I will say, and I, I really appreciate, um, uh, uh, you know, it is true.

I mean, having worked in the mayor's office and at a city department, I will say you know if we want the work to live on beyond a mayoral administration we often will embed the work in a city department.

Sometimes that works and sometimes it doesn't and a lot has to do with the staff at the city department and how they feel about the work and this is no way to disrespect the any staffers at HSD I do not know their feelings around this but I do know that it is true that if the staff agrees with the work it'll get done and if they don't it won't and that's just a fact that's not a you know again I don't know the folks there and I don't know how they feel about this so the only concern is if you move it and then to Council Member Juarez's point, what will that look like?

And I guess I will say the historical context is so important because this particular program did not just build on itself and with all due respect to you, Council Member Juarez, it also morphed depending on what we were seeing as we were going along.

And I will say that I remember when I was in the mayor's office helping with this work, it was then Deputy Mayor Tiffany Washington who was overseeing HSD and part of this work.

You know, we know that KCRHA held shelter beds for the UCT team because they were offering shelter.

And then when the UCT team was engaging with folks, they realized, oh, some of these folks actually, not all, not many, but some do have homes, you know?

And so then they could like connect them back to the homes they did have.

because they had units somewhere at apartments.

And then there were the units that were made available to make sure that they were offering a true offer of shelter.

You know, like if you're gonna offer it, you should have it to give it to them, right?

And then oftentimes, you know, those would get rejected but at least those were preserved for this reason because we saw as we went along that there was a need.

So I guess to me I was going to ask the rationale for why it moved from the mayor's office to HSD because we know sometimes when something's in the mayor's office it gets a level of prioritization that it may not get if it's embedded in a department There's pluses and minuses on both sides.

So thank you for answering the question on the rationale.

I will say the reductions are worrisome.

I mean, this GIS position and the mapping, you know, UCT relies very heavily on the mapping.

I don't know what impact it'll have.

I just know that they, you know, they map for all the locations or all the encampments because they can't get all to them at the same time so that, you know, they rely on that.

I don't know what impacts this will have.

You know, I don't know what impact some of these other positions will have, but I worry about that because this is a model, you know, this is an all hands on deck model, really, if you think about it, because it really is all the city departments working together.

when they're resolving the encampments and offering the shelter.

And that's what we want, all the city departments working together to offer services to folks and to address these serious issues in our neighborhoods for everyone involved, those who need the assistance literally living on the streets and then, you know, to neighborhoods and keeping parks clear so that kids can go to the playground and not worry about someone smoking fentanyl or needles.

You know, these are real.

I'm not making a judgment.

And it's sad.

We need more treatment.

And when we get to the HSD conversation, I want to ask about treatment because that's really important.

So I do have a question about the UCT page.

There was a web page you could go on and it's disappeared.

so I didn't know if you had information about what happened to that webpage for UCT in particular.

We would go there to get good information and also we would direct our constituents to there as well.

We have asked HSD for information about why that page was taken down and when it will be restored.

We don't have that information yet.

Also, with respect to the service reduction for mapping services, what we understand from Seattle IT is that the budget that was initially allocated for their staff to provide those services, it was higher than it needed to be.

And they will be able to continue to do all the work they are currently doing while maintaining that $120,000 budget cut.

And that's consistent with what we have heard from the executive for all of these reductions, that these reductions will allow the UCT across departments to continue to provide the current level of service.

Thank you, Ian.

And then I just wanted to make a point too about we had some good information from the UCT team about their response rates are in the high 90s all across the city.

They have information about who they're touch points, who they're interacting with on the ground.

I really appreciate their gathering of all this information.

And then, of course, Council Member Juarez, I just got a sheet about the debris, the pounds of debris collected as part of this.

In 2021, it was, you know, 2.7 million pounds of debris.

This year, we've had 464,000 pounds of debris.

But, you know, that's trash that's being collected out of our parks and out of our right-of-ways and, you know, again, that's good for our neighborhoods.

It's important and even for the, you know, I guess I can't underscore the value that UCT adds and my concern about the cut of the positions too is I've often thought there isn't enough of the folks doing the work on the ground because they can't get to as many encampments as there are.

So if these were sometimes positions are repurposed and placed where they're better needed and I guess rather than cutting these positions if they felt like these particular classifications were not needed then could these have been directed?

Because I know there's more need on the ground for more UCT attention.

And so that would be my other question.

Yeah.

That's one of the options that we have identified for council members to consider responsive to the aggregate reductions that the executive proposed.

We'd be happy to work with you to try to hone in on what positions might be especially useful in performing the kind of work that you would like to see done more.

Thank you, Ann.

And then lastly, so if it's in HSD, is it Director Kim that oversees now the whole HSD team?

I'm sorry, I didn't hear your question.

Sorry.

So since it's in HSD, are they HSD employees or Director Kim is overseeing the UCT team, all those folks?

because before we would call the mayor's office and they've had different leadership over time, so I'm just trying to track.

All of the positions on this chart are in HSD.

And the blue ones are the core team.

The core teams are involved in coordinating the activities of the core team citywide.

And these positions do report up through Director Kim.

They do.

Yes.

But the SPR, SDOT, and FAS positions, they would not report directly up through her.

I meant the, yes, thank you, the core team, because there is a director for UCT.

Yes.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Rivera, Councilmember Kettle, and then Rink.

Thank you, Chair.

I want to thank my colleagues for the discussion.

First, Ms. Gorman, thank you for your briefing slides and the rundown.

It's interesting to hear.

Thank you for the various inputs, Chair.

I really appreciate how you set it up, because it gets to the fact of the matter.

and I should add, Council Member Juarez, thank you for the historical piece.

If somebody was involved but on the outside from a community perspective, what was happening with the NAV teams interesting but sad.

And that, as I understand it, the NAV teams expose fault lines.

And I think these fault lines are here today.

One of them is the role of SBD in this kind of world and other pieces like that.

One of them is, I think a fault line too is this basic challenge that we have that on one hand we have individuals or organizations who want to aid our neighbors in crisis.

And I support them 100%.

But we don't have an equivalent of addressing our neighborhoods in crisis.

And that's where everything starts falling apart.

And it's unfortunate.

And it's something that we have to work through.

And I will admit, my district colleagues and I are probably more sensitive to this because we hear it every day.

We see it every day.

And this is the challenge that we face.

And we notice, as I said yesterday, the backsliding.

and at the end of the day, this is all about leadership.

You can see the little pieces.

You can see it.

UCT should report to Director Ellerbrook, full stop, but it doesn't.

You know, and then as Ms. Guarman was saying, oh, the executive says this, that, whatever, oh, we're gonna be able to do this.

I know these different reductions, but we're still gonna be able to do this.

I call that The mayor's public safety strategy, as represented in his budget, is best described either as a wish strategy or a hope strategy.

They wish it hopes, they hope it works.

But that's what it is, it's a wish and hope strategy.

And that's unfortunate, and that's where we are with this.

And the unified care team is an example of this.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Council Member Kittle.

Any reactions?

Not at this time.

Council Member Rink, you are recognized.

Thank you, Chair Strauss.

Colleagues, I know we are all committed to doing our part to end homelessness in our city.

I've seen that work over my tenure on council, and even before that, the city has worked through a tremendous number of efforts to address homelessness.

And I know we're trying to do this while also doing our duty in, as Councilmember Foster put it, public space management.

And to that end, I listened to this discussion, and I appreciate all the thoughtful remarks and all of that, and I understand we're trying to grapple with those two duties, which is why this is such a sensitive topic.

And I wanted to ground us in, just in my preparation for today's discussion, I did a review of the quarter two report as a part of the SLI on the UCT.

And this report we received in August, it indicates that, you know, across the city, and they have different definitions related to different kinds of removals, and we had 1,286 removals so far this year that are of the immediate hazard and obstruction form of removals.

those are citywide and of those citywide removals only 52% with offers of shelter where individuals are present.

So I raise that because I don't feel like this conversation would be complete today if we didn't touch on the human component that behind every one of those numbers while there are people who accept offers of shelter there's the reality that our shelter system does not meet everybody's needs.

There's information in this report that talks about rationale and information why people may not accept an offer of shelter, whether it be around incompatibility with storage, whether it be around ADA accessibility, a myriad of reasons why someone will not be able to be placed somewhere.

And so I just want to lift up that human component because I know I've walked alongside many people who have experienced homelessness, who have been swept in the city and have had nowhere to go, have lost belongings, have lost documentation.

And this conversation wouldn't feel complete if we didn't acknowledge that reality.

And I wanna also express my appreciation to Council Member Juarez for the collection and providing us with this history.

Council Member Juarez, I did get a copy, thank you.

Yes.

I would love page numbers on it, but I appreciate the work here just to pull together the history of how we got here because I think it acknowledges an evolution in this work.

I still think, just given the points that I raised around the people who are not placed in housing or do not get shelter through the UCT, that we still have work to do in improving and moving towards a system that is orienting people and getting them into permanent housing options.

One of the programs that I would like to see us be able to expand more of is the Encampment Right of Way work.

and I lift up this example.

This was funded through the state.

I believe it was Governor Inslee who put forward this initiative specifically to clear encampments in state right-of-ways.

Here in City of Seattle, we took an approach of really putting forward a proposal of orienting that work towards not just clearing an encampment, but getting people housed.

And through that work, if I'm recalling my stats correctly, I believe after two years more than 80% of folks who were a part of that program remained housed after two years.

And so I wanted to pose a question to central staff to that end.

Could you highlight for us some of the core differences between the right-of-way resolution model and what we currently see with the unified care team?

Yes, I think first I'll talk just about similarities.

I think both the right-of-way program and the unified care team had as their goal to resolve encampments that were on publicly owned properties for the UCT that's city-owned properties, for the right-of-way program that was obviously properties owned by the state.

Outreach is definitely an important component of both the right-of-way program and the UCT.

And both programs actually, when they are planning, not for, I will say my comments for the UCT are really directed towards the planned or calendared encampment removals.

For those, you know, there is a outreach staff that go out, both contracted outreach providers, but also city outreach workers who build a by-name list, which is also what happens with the right-of-way program.

Really the biggest difference between the right of way and the unified care team is that when the right of way program, they pick a specific encampment that they want to remove or to resolve.

When they do that, they have funding for permanent housing and they identify the permanent housing and have those units in hand before and before resolving or removing the encampment.

So they are able to reach out to a specific encampment, build the by name list, and then offer everyone on that list a housing unit that has been secured.

And that is the primary difference between the right-of-way model and the unified care team model.

Thank you for unpacking that, Jen.

I would just close on this note that the more work we can do to orient our system towards getting people housed, I believe that's the work that is ahead of us on this.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Council Member Rink.

Really, really well said.

And Jen, thank you for sharing that information.

I will state what you just described about the right-of-way team, about identifying housing, and I'm gonna add, or shelter, doing that by name list and placement.

That's how the unified care team worked when it first was set up.

And I know that from specific experience, and maybe this was pre, official UCT, but that's exactly how we did the Ballard Commons Park removal.

That's exactly how we did the Woodland Park removal.

That's exactly how we did the work on Leary Way.

That's exactly how the work happened in the Pioneer Square project just a few weeks ago.

We know that, and I really appreciate you raising that, Council Member Rank, because it brings us back to the system, the employees, the positions, can be, their success is based on what they have access to and how they are led through that work.

Jen, I see you might have a, nope, you don't have anything else?

Well, then I'm just gonna close this out on UCT and bring us right back to HSD.

I just will take a little bit of issue, not with you, Ann, but the statement that you shared, because I've heard it as well, the mayor's administration is stating that moving UCT to HSD is in order to protect it from changing mayoral administrations.

That's the largest pile of horsepucky I've ever heard in my life.

I say that just because we need executive leadership for people who are in different departments.

When Council Member Rivera just asked the question of whom do I speak to for these pieces, SDOT, SPR, SPU, IT, they don't work for Human Services Department.

And so that's why I can't take that statement on its face.

That's not the statement that you're representing, you just shared it and I appreciate you raising it here because it's important to address.

And I believe that that transfer happened because the mayor's likely uncomfortable addressing homelessness.

because addressing homelessness requires both a lot of compassion and firm boundaries, and it can be very uncomfortable.

And I really appreciate Council Member Juarez bringing up the NAV team because a decade ago, the NAV team was police out front with outreach somewhere behind and no tiny homes.

no shelter, very limited shelter.

We still had mats on the floor in city hall.

And today the unified care team has outreach out front with the police somewhere behind and they have way more than just tiny homes.

And that's where, again, like coming back to what council member Rink was just bringing up about the right-of-way team, if we had statewide housing resources to pluck from or even region-wide, even county-wide, we'd have a lot more opportunities to do the correct match between the people who have become homeless in King County and the people that we need to re-house in King County because we know that the majority of people who come to Seattle homeless are coming from King County and the county is...

We need a little bit more help.

With that, we're gonna go back to slide, budget slide.

Ann, do you have something more you wanna share?

Yes, I would hate to have given the impression that the current mayor's office is disengaged from the work of the UCT.

In my experience, that is not at all the case.

I have personally benefited from the guidance and the strategic thinking of current mayor's office staff, particularly related to the UCT.

And I just wanna say that.

I have found nothing but professionalism coming from Mr. Mark Ellerbroek and I really appreciate you Mark.

With that we're going back to the HSD budget and this is where I'm going to turn it over to Council Member Rink as chair of the committee overseeing the department to talk about the department even though we don't really have any choice points.

Finally.

And then we'll come to vehicles and I'm sure it'll be quick.

Wonderful.

Thank you so much, Chair, and also a huge thank you to central staff for your work in preparing policy considerations and your continued work supporting us on Human Services Matters.

I will say, as Chair of Human Services, just ahead of getting into questions, I want to reiterate on the record when I said when HSD had come to present to us a couple weeks ago, We're in a really challenging fiscal situation as a city, and I was heartened to see that many of our human services contracts and our bodies of work remain in what the mayor proposed and brought forward.

In hard times, we often see major cuts to human services programs when arguably they are most needed in our communities.

And this budget was relatively mindful of that tension paired with then the continued expansion work into addressing homelessness and ramping up shelter.

That said, I am very committed to growing our investments in gender-based violence services.

And in this proposal, we saw several one-time ads from last year in this area actually sunset as a part of the proposed budget, including a one-time bump of $500,000 to gender-based violence services and the one-time increase of $400,000 for commercial sexual exploitation survivor services work within HSD's budget.

So I will note that yesterday my office alongside two dozen survivor service organizations held our press conference announcing that Seattle Stance with Survivors Every Step campaign, which I am viewing as a multi-year effort to grow city investments for survivor services, legal advocacy, and violence prevention.

So flagging for everybody's attention, my intent to bring forward in the 2027-2028 budget, an amendment to add $8 million to these services and programs, as well as bringing forward a statement of legislative intent to coordinate and align the work.

Again, I view this effort as multi-year.

It will take time to build this out and coordinate across the many departments that are engaged in these efforts, but I believe strongly this is a worthwhile effort and one that needs our prioritization and attention.

I want to give a thank you to Public Safety Chair Kettle, not only for joining alongside yesterday for really sending a clear message to survivors in this city that we see them and we're going to prioritize this work, Thank you for wearing purple today as well.

Shout out to Tommaso also at the table who's wearing a pin today.

I'm also wearing this pin in recognition of Domestic Violence Awareness Month.

Colleagues next week during the council meeting we will also be Recognizing this month with a proclamation, I also see you as well, Chair Strauss, wearing a purple tie today.

Anyone else I might have missed who might be wearing purple, thank you for wearing purple today.

With that, I'll also thank again Human Services Vice Chair, Council Member Foster for joining yesterday, thank you for joining, and Council Member Lynn, thank you, I appreciate it.

I'll close with just a couple of other notes in the Human Services front.

We are keeping a very watchful eye on the volatile changes happening on federal policy and how they're impacting human services broadly, particularly with the continuum of care dollars.

I know we started this discussion during budget last year.

We are continuing the saga unfortunately.

And we are also overseeing the process of bringing back nearly 120 human homelessness contracts into the city as a part of the KCRHA transition.

I can't overemphasize enough how much of a undertaking that is for the Human Services Department.

This needs to be managed very carefully to minimize disruptions to our homelessness response system and all the providers that are doing this work right now, especially as we are headed into a cold and rainy season where often severe weather shelter needs to be activated.

it can be a particularly dangerous time for people experiencing homelessness.

To that end, those are my opening remarks here, Chair, and I have just one question specific to policy considerations related to the Vehicle Resident Assistance Program.

Let's hold that for just a second.

I will hold that, and I'll defer back to you, Chair.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Colleagues, any questions about Human Services Department at large?

Any comments?

Any statements?

Any closing remarks?

Yes, we've got Council Member Foster.

Thank you so much, Chair.

And thank you so much, Council Member Rink, for that opening and the recognition, as well as the work you did leading into the press conference yesterday.

I think it was a really important moment to bring so many survivors, advocates, and community leaders together.

So thank you for that.

I want to just talk to one of the big things happening in the HSD budget, the return of the KCRHA contracts to the department.

I just want to ask a clarifying question first.

So as we know because of the work previous councils have done, and I thank them for this, there's been efforts made to address wage equity concerns within HSD contracts, as well as inflationary cost increases.

And so now that the KCRHA contracts are returning into HSD, can we just talk about in the budget for the out years, how that modeling anticipates any of those wage equity increases?

Even when those city funded contracts were managed by KCRHA or administered by KCRHA, they received the inflationary adjustment and the wage equity increases that all other HSD-administered contracts received.

So it's already built into the budget.

It's not a change.

Perfect.

Thank you.

And then can you speak to, in the current budget, what's happening in relation, or excuse me, what's happening in regard to inflationary cost increases as well as wage equity increases within HSD?

Jen will correct me if I misstate this.

There is an inflationary adjustment for contracts in 2027. There is no wage equity adjustment included in the budget for 2027.

Just to add, the inflationary adjustment is required under the SMC.

It's about, I think about 3.8%.

Thank you.

And then are there any assumptions of that wage equity adjustment coming back, or is there sort of an evaluation of whether or not we've reached our existing goals when it comes to wage equity?

Obviously, it's a challenging budget year, so I just want to distinguish between budget decisions that had to be made versus policy considerations that might assume that we've achieved an endpoint.

I think the maybe North Star that we have in terms of what the gap is is a report that the City of Seattle commissioned from the University of Washington School of Social Work several years ago.

It's been a few years since I've looked at that, but I think that the result of that report was that human service worker wages would need to increase by 59%, and not accounting for inflation, just on top of inflation in order to achieve parity with similar jobs in other industries.

And so in the past several years, there has been a, I think a 4% increase in 2024, and then a 2% increase in 2026. I may have those exact figures wrong.

So we provided it twice, so closed some of the gap, but certainly not all of it.

Thank you for that.

And I will take this opportunity to say that was my alma mater at the UW School of Social Work, and I taught there for a while.

I will say that one thing I'm just concerned about is our inability to deliver on this.

And I think it's really, and actually I don't, don't want to discount previous work to get that 4% and that 2%.

I know that was incredibly, incredibly hard one.

So thank you colleagues, folks who were here before.

But the reason I say this is just a couple of comments here in terms of we had folks here earlier in the year sort of presenting on turnover, I believe, and I want to thank Council Member Rank for organizing that presentation in your committee and talking about the cost of turnover within some of the human services providers and the impact that that has on our ability to deliver effective care and to get effective benchmarks.

So it's more of a sort of statement and just sharing with colleagues intent to look for opportunities to continue addressing those wage equity problems because I do believe if we aren't able to continue in making those investments.

It will sort of cost us in other ways in addition to the impact it has to those workers who are typically women and people of color.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, Council Member Foster.

Anything from the committee table at this time?

No.

Okay, thank you.

Council Member Rivera.

Thank you, Chair.

All I wanted to point out in HSD's budget is that You know, obviously HSD is responsible for a lot of contracts.

They contract out all the work that we do, all the human services work, which is really important to this city.

One thing that I'll be looking for, and you know, I've talked about this HSD audit is to make sure that our contracts, our house is in order, given that the county contracts have not have unfortunately come back.

as problematic I want to make sure that we don't have the same and so I feel it is really important for us to ensure how we ensure that our house is in order is by doing audits and I think we should embrace audits because we should be able to stand by the work that we do and stand by the contracts that we create and so this this audit piece and the contracts are important to me and I want to know how HSD you know, what outcomes they put in their contracts and what performance measures they are requiring in those contracts and then what comes back to us in terms of how we really have helped people.

Because if we're putting all this money into these various services and folks aren't actually being helped, then what are we doing?

And so I want the public to feel good in a similar way that I did when we were doing the FEP levy and we went through all of Deel's contracts.

or not contracts, sorry, all of their investments writ large and found out information about that and where we needed some improvements which turned out to be in the K through 12 space.

And the department is working on that in this next iteration of the levy.

In a similar way, I want to daylight what is happening at HSD and how we are helping people.

And I don't always feel like that information is readily out there and available.

There seems to be I don't know.

There's a bit of a lack of transparency and that's what I want to be able to daylight with an audit.

And as we move into the next biennium, I really want to know how well we're doing with our HSD work because again, it's so important.

So thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Councilmember Rivera.

We are going to go back to Councilmember Rank to close us out on HSD and then we're going to take up vehicles next.

Chair, as a point of clarification, I thought that the policy consideration on vehicle residency is a part of HSD's budget.

It is.

We'll get to that as it is intended to serve many different departments as compared to how the mayor has programmed this money despite many, many, many conversations.

So I would say let's close out HSD and then let's move to vehicles as a separate item.

Sure.

All right.

Thank you, Chair.

Appreciate the clarification.

Understood.

Colleagues, I'll just close on this note because there's been a lot of discussion over budget deliberations about chartered responsibilities and actually in service of that, I wanted to revisit our charter to ground myself in our task at hand.

And so I wanted to close just by speaking into the record the preamble of our city's charter.

Under authority conferred by the Constitution of the State of Washington, the people of the City of Seattle enact this charter as the law of the city for the purpose of protecting and enhancing the health, safety, environment, and general welfare of the people to enable municipal government to provide services and meet the needs of people efficiently, to allow fair and equitable participation of all persons in the affairs of the city.

to provide transparency, accountability, and ethics in governance and civil service, to foster fiscal responsibility, and to promote prosperity and to meet the broad needs for a healthy, growing city.

I found it really helpful to really spend some time thinking about that and our task at hand with the budget here.

particularly at this point, to provide services that meet the needs of the people, the broad needs of a healthy and growing city.

So as your Human Services Chair, I hope we keep that in mind as we consider balancing investments across all of the areas outlined as our chartered responsibilities.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Council Member Rink.

The premise of the City of Seattle, well said.

With that, if you'd like to go into our final item regarding the vehicle, Vehicle Resident Assistance Program funding.

And I'll turn it over to you.

And then Council Member Wink, if you don't mind, I'm going to open it up and I'll turn it right over to you if you need to.

Fantastic.

Great.

I'm also going to correct something I said before about wage equity and say that the 2024 increase was also 2%.

So 2% 2024, 2% 2026 for a total of 4%.

All right, our last policy consideration of the day is around conflicting uses of 3.5 million in ongoing funding for activities related to vehicle residents.

The 2026 adopted budget provided 3.5 million of ongoing funding for programs and activities related to vehicle residents.

The 2027-2028 proposed budget in Council Bill 121283, which was passed out of the Public Safety Committee on September 22nd, 2026, are in conflict with each other in terms of how to use that 3.5 million.

CB121282 would use it for costs related to implementing a new vehicle residence assistance permitting program.

And the proposed budget would use it to pay for the cost of a new safe lot, which would be both for recreational vehicles, but potentially for other vehicles as well.

Our options, our Council's options are to impose a proviso on the 3.5 million of ongoing funding in 2027, restricting its use only to costs associated directly with implementing the new permit program for motorhomes and travel trailers.

And I should note that that might also involve appropriating the money, reappropriating the money to other departments as well and imposing a proviso.

Identify a new funding source for the new safe lot, a combination of A and B, or no change.

Thank you, Jennifer Labreck.

I'm just gonna open this up to say I've been very clear about the $3.5 million ongoing the entire time I've talked about the Vehicle Resident Assistance Program.

I've been this absolutely clear with the Mayor's Office, with the City Budget Office, colleagues with you, with the public, and that intended use is not represented in the budget.

and what I mean by that is what I've expressed in the past is this funding is needed to expand contracted outreach, expand services including repairs, the human needs, helping people get their vehicles registered to them, helping them in many different ways.

This funding is also intended to stand up the permitting process.

It is intended to fund the city vehicle team and in the long run to fund a safe lot and potentially also shelter storage.

I see none of that represented in this budget.

In conversation with the Wilson administration yesterday, they stated that because the Vehicle Resident Assistance Program had not passed council when they were writing their budget, they made the executive decision on how to use this money.

I find this statement to be lacking in many ways.

mostly because I've been very clear in expressing the chart and how we get to a place where we can help people who are living in their vehicles, how we can address oversized vehicles on our roadways, and how we can center human beings throughout this entire process.

Cooperation and collaboration is not making decisions without conversation.

I see the motion made in this budget.

I see these actions that are made through this budget without the conversation, without taking into consideration everything that I've said publicly and privately, which has been consistent every single day.

It shows a lack of listening and a lack of partnership.

My door has remained open to helping the Wilson administration implement what I find to be a pretty clear path.

It's complex, but it's clear into how we can better address people living in their vehicles, how we can better regulate large vehicles, and how we can center human beings throughout this entire process.

And my door remains open despite this action of lacking cooperation and collaboration.

So I'm highly disappointed and I remain ready to work with anyone who asks because it's so critically important that we help the people who are caught in the middle or who are left without a place to live.

And so I will be bringing an amendment to reprioritize this money and it is critically important that we open another safe lot in addition to glassyards common and it's a critically important that we get shelter storage stood up as a program and it's critical that we regulate large vehicles on our streets.

at the end of the day, we need to center humans in these solutions.

So deeply disappointed and I look forward to sharing with you all the budget amendment that will just clarify the same thing that I've clarified since I've started talking about this vehicle resident assistance program.

Council Member Rink, did you have additional comments at this time?

If I could ask a clarifying question, understanding it again without a CBA before us.

So this CBA would be both for the safe lot, but also the funding to conduct the census and the run the permit program.

So as a part of ongoing funding, I mean, I understand that the census as currently in the proposed council bill imposes just a one-time census.

So theoretically, wouldn't some portion of, since this is ongoing funding, wouldn't some portion of that sunset over time?

Or could you just unpack a little bit more kind of how you're thinking about a longer-term budget plan?

Thank you.

I skipped over this section of my notes.

Yes, so we've got $5.8 million one time because that's accumulated over the last year as well as the first set of one-time funds.

So we have $5.8 million of one-time funds.

From there, we also have $3.5 million ongoing funds.

$3.5 million ongoing funds happens to be the same cost as a safe lot.

we also will have a bell curve of costs.

So costs are going to be much higher initially as we get things set up.

And as we, for instance, if we help contracted outreach, help people get the vehicles that they're living in registered to them, at some point that work stops, right?

As to your point, we do the census, whether it's three months, six months, 10 months, at some point that work stops.

What doesn't stop is the need to have that safe lot or that shelter storage.

And that's where I've been really clear that in the long run, this is the intended use.

A safe lot or shelter storage is the intended use for that ongoing money.

And before we can get to that final point, we have to do a lot of We have to create a bow wake of services because the city has been lacking.

We have zero city teams that are dedicated to helping people living in their vehicles.

We rely on two contracted outreach groups.

We have nowhere that is open for them today.

So we have to do a bow wake of services, which is a lot of one-time funds creating that bell curve of funding.

And then in the long run, shelter storage or a safe lot.

My hope was we could get there sooner.

The fiscal note that the executive departments have provided needs further refinement.

It currently says it's gonna be like $7.5 to $10 million to implement.

But in places they say that we are losing money because parking enforcement will not be issuing parking tickets.

And then in another section they say we need to hire more parking enforcement to do the job.

So I just say that to say that fiscal note needs further refinement and there's gonna be additional costs.

And in the long run, a safe lot, shelter storage is the appropriate use.

We just have to get there first and we have to get there by centering human beings.

Sorry, I thought I saw someone at the table.

Nope.

Okay.

Thank you for that answer.

I just wanted to unpack the component, understanding there's, as you've currently structured it and as a part of the legislation, there's more of a front-end cost associated with the one-time census.

I'll note for the record, and I know we'll get into the policy next week when the bills are before full council, I think an ongoing census would be worthwhile in considering in this.

But just keeping my questions focused on the financial components of an ongoing program, full support for a RV safe lot, it has been a longstanding need in the city to have a place for vehicle residents who are in RVs to go.

Thank you.

Well said.

All of the programs in the VRAP program are ongoing except for the RV permit, which will only serve people, the vehicles that are on our streets today.

We can get into that policy discussion next week.

Deeply disappointed in the lack of collaboration from the Wilson administration regarding this funding, and my door remains open.

Further questions?

Sorry, I thought we were done.

Councilmember Foster, you got more questions?

Thank you so much, Chair.

I appreciate that.

And so central staff, can you just walk us through, I'm not sure whether this is Ann or Jen, the existing spend plan for the 3.5 million referenced here?

Yes.

I'm going to just look down at my notes, too.

So, the spend plan can best be found in the council bill that I referenced, 121282, which is the appropriations bill.

So, so far, for that $3.5 million of ongoing funding, that appropriations bill that passed out of committee a couple weeks ago created seven new outreach positions at the Human Services Department for a total annual cost of about $1 million.

It also added one new permit technician at SDOT for a total annual cost of $230 million.

it added a new permit technician, which would cost about $216,000, or sorry, $232,000 per year, and also provided some one-time money just for some one-time Acceler cost.

The 3.5 million has not yet been fully programmed.

I just want to state that.

However, as Council Member Sarah Strauss just mentioned, the executive has identified other ongoing costs associated with this program.

I totally agree.

Some of them need more scrubbing.

Some of them seem like they could be ongoing costs, and I'll just give you some examples of that.

hold on, maybe a strategic advisor to oversee the permit program, increase contracts with contracted outreach providers, overtime costs for police officers to accompany parking and enforcement officers, potential increases to vehicle impound towing and disposal, and then, of course, as Council Member Chair Strauss mentioned, other things like ongoing costs for a new RV storage program.

So there is more than enough, I think, identified costs to fully utilize the 3.5 million and probably a good chunk, if not all, of the 5 million of one-time funding as well.

as related to the permit program.

But not all of it has been appropriated yet, or within the budget, or within the appropriations bill that the Public Safety Committee passed in September.

Thank you so much, Jen.

And I realize that actually I should have refined my question, although that was a, no?

I'm sorry.

That was a great summary, and I believe what you just provided was the spending plan in the appropriations bill that passed out of public safety that full council is gonna consider next week.

Is that correct?

No, and thank you for asking that clarifying question because I think that what is in the appropriations bill is the seven new outreach positions and the one new permit position and then some one-time Excella costs.

So, you know, that is about $1.3 million.

All the other things I talked about are just flagging other additional costs that the executive has identified that would be related to implementing this program, but they are not in the Appropriations Bill.

I'm gonna jump in to clarify.

I believe that that appropriations bill also funds contracted outreach expansions, startup, and additional services.

Is that not correct?

It provisos.

Thank you for reminding me of that.

All this money, this 3.5 million lives in the Addressing Homelessness BSL in the Human Services Department.

So in addition to those adding those new positions and appropriating funds, it also modifies and then imposes a new proviso on a total of $4 million, which does limit the use of that funding to expanding contracted outreach, and other services like RV storage lots or, for example, an RV buyback program.

I do want to say that is an appropriations bill that modifies the 2026 budget.

So those provisos will expire at the end of 2026.

Thank you for that, Jen.

Okay, now I want to understand, so just again, some of this is I think for the budget, obviously some of this is going to be in a committee or for full council next week.

Can you just speak to me a little bit more about the executive's proposal for the 3.5 million as it relates to costs for a safe law?

The executive does not have a, how can I put this?

The executive has provided a budget for a vehicle resident permit program.

And they have said, this is what we think it would cost to fully implement it.

In the proposed budget, the executive has used that 3.5 million to pay for a new safe lot, which is actually, you know, the executive does have, they estimate the total cost of implementing this program, the permanent program would be 10 million.

And that actually does include a new safe lot.

So they might argue that they've provided one piece of the picture of implementing this new program, it doesn't leave that money free to implement the permit program directly.

Okay, thank you.

I think one thing then, Jen, I'll follow up with you about this.

I'll just state it now, actually, instead of following up with you, is just trying to get, and I think this has been a question with this approach, is defining the cost, and I think that's part of it in terms of the the proposal that council is gonna consider next week.

So I know that is already there, but I think what I am looking forward to digging into a little bit more is that cost and then understanding the difference between the proposed allocation with a safe lot that's coming from the executive.

That's where things feel a little, I think we could tease those out a little further and I look forward to doing so, so we have a little bit of clarity on implementation of the proposal that we'll consider next Tuesday, and then a safe lot program ongoing, either with or without the proposal that council is gonna consider next Tuesday.

Thank you.

Thank you, anything else from the table?

Colleagues, that wraps up the second step in the council budget process.

Mr. Whitson?

Finish your sentence and then I, yeah.

Okay, so that closes out the second step.

Up next will be council member proposals, and that comes in about two weeks.

Your proposals are due by Monday at noon.

The portal is already open.

Tomorrow morning, we will have the revenue forecast.

That is just council president and myself here in chambers with the forecast council.

You can watch online, you can text me your questions, whatever you want, but we are not gonna have afternoon session.

and that's what I got.

Mr. Whitson, what did I miss?

I just wanted to note that attached to today's agenda.

We've dropped in a packet of additional overview memos for all of the other city departments that we haven't discussed this week.

Those include identification of any one-time ads from the 2026 budget that are not being continued, and they describe all of the different pieces of budget legislation you'll be asked to vote on in November.

Fantastic.

Anything else for the good of the order?

With that, that does conclude today's meeting.

Tomorrow's meeting is at 9.30, the Economic and Revenue Forecast Council.

And I've already said all this, so if there's no further business before the committee, we will be adjourned.

With that, go Hawks.

We are adjourned.

Thank you.