Budget Committee Meeting Session I 09-25-26

Good morning.

The September 25th, 2026 Select Budget Committee meeting will come to order at 9.30 a.m.

I'm Dan Strauss, chair of the committee.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Council Member Rink?

Present.

Council Member Rivera?

Present.

Council Member Saka?

Council Member Foster?

Council President Hollingsworth?

Council Member Juarez?

Here Council Member Kettle?

Here Council Member Lin?

Here Chair Strauss?

Here Seven present

Thank you.

Those not present are excused until they arrive.

We're gonna get right into, we have Council Member Foster here now.

We're gonna get right into presentations.

I should follow the Roberts Rules of Order.

So we will have three budget briefings today on the agenda.

Seattle Police Department, Community Assisted Response and Engagement Department, Seattle Fire Department.

I'll call for a break between the care department and the fire department for about 30 minutes.

So just to be aware, we're gonna try to roll right through today.

And so before we begin, if there's no objection, the agenda will be adopted.

and the agenda is adopted.

Just as people get settled, I'll give a couple points, which is that we will endeavor to take 30 to one hour breaks for the days that we are only taking 30 minute breaks.

Step off the dais for a moment.

You can see as we're wrapping up an item, I'll be calling ease between each items, but that ease is really only gonna be for 30 seconds, 45 seconds, however long it takes the next department to pull up their presentations.

So if you wanna leave just before that, we just need to keep five council members on the dais.

That's the housekeeping for this morning.

With that, clerk, will you please read the first item into the record?

As per usual, we will have the department roll through the slides and stop if there is a natural stopping point, but we're gonna try to get through the slides and then colleagues, you can ask questions for as much time as you would like.

I'm timing myself, but it's also important for you to get your questions on the record.

Thank you, clerk.

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

Thank you.

With that, Chief Sales, Mr. Eder, Director Panucci, Director Whitson, we have Councilmember Sacco with us.

Please introduce yourselves and take it away.

Good morning.

Andre Sales, Interim Chief of Police.

Dan Eder, Interim Budget Director for the Police Department.

Allie Panucci, City Budget Director.

Lish Whitson, Council Central Staff Director.

All righty, thank you everyone for this opportunity this morning to go over our proposed 2027-2028 Seattle Police Department budget.

I just wanted to first start off by reading our Seattle Police Department mission.

The mission of the Seattle Police Department is to prevent crime, enforce the law, and support quality public safety by delivering respectful, professional, and dependable police service.

As you can see, some of our pillars is crime prevention, community engagement, employee safety and wellness, continuous improvement, retention and recruitment.

Our best practices in policing, we would like to use best practices that includes officer safety guidelines and performance-based accountability to provide progressive and responsible police service to crime victims, witnesses, and all members of our community.

We also believe in ethics and integrity, foster an organizational culture where fundamental values are integrity, accountability, ethical decision-making, and respect for civil and constitutional rights, and our community partnerships, strengthening links within all community members and associations through open communication, mutual responsibility, and a commitment to service.

This is also in our Seattle Police Department policy.

We also like to identify, prioritize, and solve problems.

Identify and prioritize crime prevention and law enforcement and our challenges using flexible, problem-solving approaches and achieve these results by dedication and commitment.

Our structure and the organization is to support the SPD mission and field a well-trained, sworn, and non-sworn workforce that uses technology, training, equipment, and research strategically and effectively.

Now I'll turn it over to Dan Eater.

Thank you chief and thank you council members for the opportunity to present the SPD proposed budget.

This first slide provides the highest level overview of the proposed budget for 27 and 28. For most of these slides I'm going to focus on 2027 just because it's already a lot of information just for one year, but obviously it is a two-year budget proposal.

SPD's 2027 proposed budget is about $557 million in total.

That's $550 million of general fund and nearly $7 million of other funds.

There's obviously going to be more information in upcoming slides, but the key takeaways I want to leave you with on this slide is that the 2027 proposed budget includes about $12.5 million for additional funded police officers.

and the general fund grows by a total of about $66 million, the largest reason being about $58 million of increased labor costs from the collective bargaining agreements that have been acted upon by the city.

This slide breaks down SPD's 2027 proposed budget, a total of $557 million, into four categories of spending.

Personnel, overtime, inter-fund charges, and a broad category of other.

80% of SPD's annual budget is for staffing.

That's the blue, the largest wedge here in blue for personnel, and in orange, overtime.

Together, that totals $447 million out of the $557 million budget proposal.

An additional 15% is shown in green Those are centrally allocated and non-discretionary costs that come to SPD from other departments like the Finance and Administrative Services Department, things like fleet, rent, and other central costs.

IT charges us for basic computer infrastructure and support.

we get costs allocated to us from the central HR department and other similar costs.

As a result, 95% or $530 million of SPD's $557 million budget is for a combination of staffing and non-discretionary centrally allocated costs.

That leaves $26 million or about 5% for other costs most of which are also non-discretionary.

Here we're talking about the breakout on the right.

You can see professional services.

The largest share of professional services is about $7 million for the city's costs for automated traffic safety camera payments to the vendor who manages that program for the city.

There are also another category is technology, utilities, and intergovernmental charges, which includes charges to train new recruits at the academy.

And then also necessary equipment and supplies for police officers, including bullets, bulletproof vests, gas masks, helmets, tasers, and the like.

There's also small amounts of budget, about $770,000 for travel and training, and a little over $100,000 for capital.

Okay, I mentioned that staffing is the largest share of our annual budget.

That includes overtime and personnel costs.

The next several slides will address those two categories.

So this slide on overtime shows the budget for how much we spend on overtime in blue on the left side of the screen.

Another way to look at that is how many hours of overtime do those dollars purchase.

That's shown on the right hand side of your screen in red.

In brief, I'm sorry, in each of the slides there are three data points.

There's the 2025 actuals on the left of each slide, the 2026 adopted levels in the middle, and on the right side is the 2027 proposed budget.

So what I want to leave you with is that the cost of overtime dollars has increased from 2026 adopted budget to the 2027 proposed budget.

This is due to higher labor costs.

but the amount of funded overtime shown on the right hand side remains unchanged from 2026 adopted budget to the 2027 proposed budget.

You'll see that's at 473,000 hours in both 26 and the proposed 27. This is another look at overtime, and it answers the question, what do we use overtime for?

This is taking a look at the year-to-date spending for 2026. We think this is a pretty good approximation of what all of 2026 categories will look like on a percentage basis, and it also is representative of how we plan to spend the money in 2027 and 2028. At the highest level, about 70% of overtime is spent for the three categories in blue, red, and green.

I'll go through them one at a time.

The single largest use of overtime is special events.

This is shown in blue.

SPD is reimbursed either directly or through payments to the city's general fund for some of the overtime work that it does.

The second largest use of overtime is augmentation.

That's shown in red in the pie chart.

Augmentation is what we call assigning overtime hours to meet minimum staffing requirements.

As you know, deployable officers, which is the number of fully trained officers less those who are not able to work due to long-term disability or illness, is a key measure for determining whether SPD can meet minimum staffing on regular time.

SPD's deployable officer count is about 25% lower in 2026 than it was in 2018. Meeting minimum staffing is necessary for a number of purposes, not the least of which is addressing officer safety needs.

It's also an explicit commitment in the labor contracts, and it helps SPD meet goals for quick response times on priority 911 calls.

The last category in this 70% chunk of the pie chart is in green.

That's training, and it covers training for new recruits, the cost of field training officer trainers, it covers mandatory training for officers' certification, crowd control, and other types of training consistent with commitments from the consent decree and best practices.

I'd note that this is different than travel and training that I mentioned in the earlier slide, which was about conferences.

This is not about conferences.

That leaves 30% in dark purple for everything else.

That covers a wide range of things, including SWAT responses, narcotics, legal, investigations and arrests, court time, and emphasis patrols.

Okay, excuse me.

Thank you.

As a reminder, the single largest category of SPD spending is personnel and officers.

The cost of hiring and having officers is by far the biggest share of our personnel costs.

This slide is looking at officer hiring in 2027 and 2028. SPD uses a staffing plan to help our large, complex organization establish goals for the pace of hiring.

The data on this chart comes from the staffing plan.

The staffing plan maps out monthly hiring, training, and anticipated separations based on the funding that's available in the proposed budget.

I just want to note, maybe this has been noted in previous iterations of this presentation in past years, but your central staff analyst, Greg Das, is in large part responsible for the staffing model creation and fine-tuning.

I think that dates back to approximately 2012. We still use it.

It's still very helpful in our internal planning and for communication such as this presentation.

So the predicted numbers are not exactly going to match what actual hiring looks like.

It's not intended to be a perfect crystal ball.

We have some control, some more control over some things than others.

For instance, hiring and training is up to us.

And we make predictions about separations that are gonna happen, but we have less control over that.

We fine tune the staffing plan throughout the year as we get more data month by month and make adjustments accordingly.

So, I'm sorry, that was a lot of drum roll to explain what's on this slide.

The light blue line that is rising from left to right shows our plan for monthly filled FTEs.

That's all recruits, all trainees, and all fully trained officers.

It's after assumptions about new hires, the time it takes to complete various elements of training, and an approximation of what separations we will see.

and as you get farther and farther out to the right into 2028, I would say that the data is a guideline and a projection, but there'll certainly be changes.

The bottom line is that SPD is funded to support 1,250 FTEs in both 2027 and 2028. The hiring model anticipates that average filled FTEs that are shown in the dashed red line for 2027 and in the dashed black line in 2028 are I'm sorry, I should have said the numbers.

It's 1,229 FTEs in 27, shown in the dashed red line, and then it rises to 1,250 in 2028, the dashed black line.

I imagine there may be questions on a number of these slides.

I understand you're gonna be waiting until the end.

Recruitment and retention, I'm sorry, we're now moving into the key changes in the 2027 proposed budget for SPD.

The first category is recruitment retention changes.

These fall into two buckets, media marketing and hiring incentives.

I'll take them one at a time.

The proposed budget will eliminate $1.95 million annually for SPD's media marketing consultant.

This contract allowed SPD to create recruiting videos and promote them where potential applicants would see them.

SPD's overall marketing budget continues to include multiple initiatives, even without the media marketing contract.

Those include social media, job fairs, and professional networking to spread the word about becoming an SPD officer.

contracts with firms that streamline case management and the physical agility test and background screening processes, and five FTEs who manage this work attend job fairs and generally do what they can to get the word out about hiring opportunities within the department.

The second category is hiring incentives.

Hiring incentives are funded in the 2026 adopted budget at about $1.6 million.

The 2027 proposed budget reduces this amount by nearly a half million dollars, and the 2028 proposed budget removes the remaining $1.1 million.

SPD has already stopped offering hiring incentives to new recruits and laterals who applied after August of this year, 2026. Hiring incentives have been paid in two installments when we hire people.

The first installment is paid upon becoming an SPD employee, and the second installment is paid one year later.

SPD will continue to pay the second payments to any individual who qualified for a first payment.

But as I said, we have stopped qualifying people for the first payment as of the end of August of this year.

This slide covers a number of staffing changes and also in two categories, vacant positions and reduced staffing.

The first category, vacant positions, the general fund deficit caused SPD to reduce plan staffing by not filling about nearly $6 million of funded positions, and the proposed budget eliminates funding for all of those positions.

I do want to mention one or two things about some of these positions, and then I'll expect additional questions and do my best to address those.

I'm sorry, I'm just going to skip ahead here.

So I'll take these one at a time.

Parking enforcement officers, the proposed budget decreases nine funded positions, and that's about $3.1 million for the positions and some additional program funding that was also eliminated.

The Real-Time Crime Center, we will move forward with hiring an additional six FTEs that were originally funded in the 2026 adopted budget but have not to date been filled.

We will eliminate funding for three positions, but the position authority remains in the Real-Time Crime Center.

This would allow the Real-Time Crime Center to expand to 24-7, all other things being equal, and I think you know that there's a study that is ongoing.

I don't know if it's framed as an audit or a study, but there's some work that is still to be done before a decision is made about whether and when to go to 24-7.

The next category is the civilian investigative support positions.

The proposed budget would reduce funding by $1.1 million and unfund seven FTEs in that unit.

We use retired law enforcement officials to assist with investigations.

We still have funding for seven such FTEs and about $1.1 million of funding for these positions, so that will continue.

We just won't expand to an additional seven in 2027. HR positions, I want to talk about each of these one at a time.

They are a DEI officer that was funded at $207,000 in the 26 adopted budget.

That funding and the position is eliminated in the 27 proposed.

There is also a 30 by 30 work group support position that was added by council with a proviso to fund the position.

We have not filled either of those positions, and they are both proposed to be eliminated.

The chief has tasked SPD's full HR team to address his priorities, to have SPD hiring reflect the community that we serve and continue to make progress toward the goal of having more women serve at all levels of the police force.

Some examples from 2026 to date, we have had a 30 by 30 marketing campaign specifically geared to prospective women police officers.

That was through the media marketing contract.

And we also have built a process intended to ensure that SPD women officers attend training and conferences, including the National Association of Women in Law Enforcement.

The last category in vacant positions is long-term position vacancies.

There are three FTEs that are funded but have been vacant for over a year.

There are also two FTEs that were unfunded and sunsetting that are included here but have no financial effect because there was no budget for them moving forward.

The second category on this slide is staffing reductions.

SPD, of course, values all of its employees and the work that they do.

However, in light of the very challenging general fund budget deficit, the proposed budget included some very difficult choices, and the proposed budget would reduce staffing by two positions that are currently filled.

I'm showing on this slide three positions.

The top position in data analytics is subsequent to this deck being finalized is actually now a vacant position, so there would be no layoff in that position.

We would just, like the vacant positions up above, we would just continue not to be able to hire for that position.

There are two positions that will lead to layoffs.

One is a Weyerhaeuser 1 position.

It's shown as records support, and it would save $126,000 in 2027. The other position is an admin specialist 1 in auto records, another records position.

In both of these cases, the work will be absorbed by existing staff.

This slide is showing the implications for the planned program expansion of the automated traffic safety camera program.

We are anticipating installing seven new full-time speed cameras in 2027, which is expected to double the number of anticipated citations that need to be reviewed by staff.

So as a result, we are proposing to add both vendor costs to process those citations and add four full-time positions for the added work, and both of those categories would be funded by the Automated Traffic Safety Camera Fund.

It would also make some technical changes shifting costs, both staffing and the camera costs, between the ATSC and the General Fund.

And then the final substantive slide I have to share with you is baseline wage adjustments.

This slide is showing two technical baseline adjustments that I thought were noteworthy because of the magnitude of the costs.

The 2027 proposed budget includes a nearly $58 million baseline increase to pay for costs in the labor contracts.

Specifically, it's about $56.5 million for the Seattle Police Officers Guild, or SPOG, and the Seattle Police Management Association, SPMA, for their annual wage increase, and also for SPOG, the language and education premiums.

There's an additional $1.2 million for the Seattle Parking Enforcement Officer Guild, SPOG, and together that's about $58 million.

The 2027 proposed budget also includes about $12.5 million to pay for additional sworn officer costs.

There is a higher cost for officers hired in 2026 because they worked for less than a full year.

In 2027 it will be their first full year and it will cost more.

to keep them employed for a whole year, which obviously we want to do.

There are also additional costs for net new officers who will be hired in 2027, as I showed on an earlier slide.

That is the end of my prepared remarks and slides.

Happy to address questions.

Thank you, Mr. Eder.

Chief Sales, Director Panucci, anything else to add at this time?

Thank you.

Councilmember Kettle is chair of the committee overseeing this department.

You are recognized, and colleagues, if you'd like to raise your hands now, I will speak second to last.

I'll give the committee table a chance to respond after I speak, and then Councilmember Kettle will have last word.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you.

Welcome Director Panucci back, Chief Sales, Mr. Eder, and our own central staffs, Mr. Whitson.

You know, it's interesting going through this budget process, and yesterday we had a lot of talk about, you know, the budget process, talking about my amendment from last year, which kind of, in my mind, creates some discipline in terms of the out years, you know, to 2030 and so forth.

It helps us focus in terms of what we're doing on the budget front.

But I'm also a thought, and this came up yesterday, in terms of the comprehensive plan.

We as a council, with my amendment, got in public safety element into the comprehensive plan.

And that's important.

And in fact, the state, so OIR should have this on their list, the state should adopt a law that incorporates public safety element planning into the comprehensive plan.

and the reason why is we have to, when looking at public safety, look to the future.

If we had one 20 years ago, we might have a fire station on Lake Union.

Maybe we would have a new north precinct.

Maybe we would have a northeast and a northwest precinct.

I mean, there's different things that could have happened.

But we also have to look to the future in terms of 2030, 40, and 50. and I have a lot of conversations on this front.

And recently, one, an expert in the area, and we're having this discussion, and I was told, you know, in 2050, we're probably gonna have to have 1,800 officers in our city with the population growth and everything else.

If you look at our peer cities, we're supposed to have, if you go to ratios, Boston, these different cities, in terms of number of officers per 1,000 people, like 1,600 officers on the force.

Our goal the entire three years that I've been on this council has been over 1400 officers.

The number 1258 that I've been speaking to again and again this year is intermediate goal.

And it's a goal to keep the momentum moving forward in terms of police hiring.

Unfortunately, the 1250 number is not gonna help us.

Sad to say it was around down from 1258 instead of 1260. But in terms of budget speak, our numbers up to now was 1184. And we have these numbers because we can't budget and have all that money sitting out there for 1,400 officers plus.

You know, 1184 is the budget number, and it makes sense from the budget number.

But the issue now, if you look at these numbers from the administration as it relates to what we're looking to do, is problematic.

because it seems like we've given up on the goal of reaching 1400 plus, which is really the minimum that we need to have for officers.

In fact, the proposed budget for 2028 is a sustainment budget that has zero new net hires.

And should we as a council interpret this to mean that the mayor's office no longer wishes to grow the size of the deployment long-term?

It takes a year.

to train a police officer.

I say grow a cop.

It takes a year.

The statement budget in 28 will seriously set us back in terms of reaching our goal of 1,400 plus officers.

So my question, we could start with the mayor's office, is does the mayor share with the goal of getting to over 1,400 officers that was previously articulated by police chiefs, former administrations, and this council?

If not, how many officers does the mayor think we need in Seattle?

I'm going to defer that question for further follow-up from our public safety advisors.

But what I will say is that while that was a goal, it was not grounded in financial reality.

So if that is the goal, there needs to be a strategy for how to pay for those officers.

And what this budget does is reflect the resources available now to fund to 1,250 officers.

My goal is to create a safe base in our city.

My goal is to create a safer Seattle.

You know, the mayor comes out with a gun violence plan that was really interesting.

There's one area that was great of interest to me, and Chief Barton just left, and it's related to her and her relationship with the community safety folks as it relates to gun violence, building on what she's now doing with diversion.

but when the mayor comes out with a gun violence plan that says different pieces, oh, we're gonna hire more, we're gonna have more bike cops.

You cannot have more bike cops for gun violence.

You can't have more bike cops for Belltown and Little Saigon unless you grow the overall number.

So we cannot have this one piece where, oh, we're gonna have, trust me, how many meetings have I had?

Oh, we're gonna have more bike cops in Belltown that deal with the drug market.

We're gonna have more bike cops in Little Saigon.

90 days, we're gonna press forward.

I can go through an entire city, I can go down this road and talk about every part of the city and where promises were made to neighborhoods.

North Seattle, North Aurora.

or we're gonna have more bike hops.

It becomes an empty promise if we don't do the work on the budget side and make those hard decisions that we talked about yesterday.

If we don't make those hard decisions as it relates to public safety, everything else falls apart.

In terms of OED, the great work that they're looking to do, that's not gonna happen if we don't have the public safety.

If we do not have a safe base in the city, it does not happen.

So this is a budget meeting, but it also has to be routed in the realities of what's happening on the ground throughout our city.

Director.

Could I?

Yeah.

I would, you know, I will just say again, the proposed budget funds 1,250 sworn officers.

I hear you that you don't think that is the right number, but it's leaving growth open-ended.

It ends some of the funding, but it also, the budget keeps more than $100 million a year of investments in other public safety investments outside of traditional policing.

So if there is a different choice, you need to reduce spending in other places to continue to grow beyond that number.

So, for example, the goal, this new 1184 number, the budget goal, not a goal like in terms of growing the numbers, but a budget goal of 1250, basically in 27 leaves us with about 10 88 fully trained officers.

that's it.

And in 28, it's 1151. We'll always have, you know, in the pipeline, officers in field training, recruits at the academy.

Those are the numbers that we're gonna have for our city.

And that's gonna make a difference on the ground.

In terms of recruitment and retention, too, So, you know, I look at these numbers.

I support changing up what we're doing in recruitment.

Obviously, we're in a changed place.

We need to do things.

But at the same time, I'm concerned about what we've done to our momentum, like the incentives piece.

but lateral transfers, if we get lateral transfers, isn't that a net positive for us, Chief Sales?

If we bring in lateral transfers using an incentive for those, not the new hires, not somebody from the street, but from another jurisdiction with Washington State, does that make a difference?

Chief?

So I'm gonna jump in and facilitate a little bit more than I did yesterday, so I'm gonna be doing the back and forth.

Chief or anyone else from the committee table, feel free to answer the council member's question.

Yes, I believe looking at a way to provide the incentive for lateral hires, specifically here in the state of Washington, would be ideal.

We typically get anywhere between 15 and 20 lateral hires a year that would give us police officers that are ready that have done the job, that have left police agencies hopefully with good standing, and we wouldn't lower any standards to hire a person that left the police department because they're running for something, but we would get good qualified officers from the state of Washington that are commissioned here in the state of Washington that are readily able to go on the street after a reduced field training period here with the Seattle Police Department.

Thank you.

Anything else from the committee table at this time?

Councilmember Kettle, you still have the floor.

Thank you.

You know, in terms of recruitment and retention, I just want to know, we essentially had a whistleblower piece.

I recognize there's still pieces going on in terms of recruitment and so forth, but then there's also some indications that we're not doing what we could in certain areas.

And this goes to momentum.

This goes to what message we're sending, and as people say now, what's the vibes?

And that is of concern to me.

Shifting over, just two more points, Chair.

Shifting over to parking enforcement officers.

Why are we abrogating PEOs?

Why are we looking to drop this number when we bargained with SPOC to get more flexibility of using PEOs, parking enforcement officers for those in the chamber and outside to do that?

Why are we making decisions related to PEOs?

Director Panucci or Chief Sales?

This is one of the examples of areas where there have been proposed expansions of labor costs that are not sustainable within our existing resources.

It won't impact our revenue projections of what the parking enforcement officers will bring in.

And so this is one of the strategies used to address the budget deficit.

Thank you.

Anything further?

Director Eder.

Yeah, we have candidly had trouble filling these positions.

They have been funded for, I don't know how long, but more than two years, and we have not been able to make progress hiring the positions.

We currently have 17 vacancies.

It's hovered around that level for many months, if not at least a couple of years.

We do expect that with some changes that were made in the SPIAG labor contract that came through and was approved I think last week through the full council, that there is additional pay, we may be able to attract more people and retain the ones who are there.

We expect to fill seven positions by, I think it's by the middle of 2027. There are, however, nine positions that we're not able to fund with current resources.

Anything else from the committee?

Councilmember Kettle, you still have the floor.

So on this point, I recognize, you know, the issue here is, you know, we just passed the labor agreement.

I know there's been challenges there.

Chief Sales, you're my fourth chief.

And to be blunt, working the issues related to parking enforcement, it comes down to leadership.

And I recognize it's lower and level, but the emphasis, the leadership, showing some love to the unit, to be frank, hasn't been there over the three previous chiefs.

And that's a challenge.

And that's just a bottom-line fact in terms It's an organization that has not gotten the attention that it needs from a leadership perspective.

I'm just saying this out loud so you can look at it and maybe make some adjustments there.

Chair, my last question relates to the Real-Time Crime Center.

colleagues and for the people at the table and everyone here, we worked through so many bills related to our tech program and to include the Real-Time Crime Center.

We walked through all the pieces, we built in all the protocols, we built in the computer audits and all these different pieces that go to the Real-Time Crime Center.

The Real-Time Crime Center helps officers be better, more efficient, more effective, to really get more out of what they're doing day to day, particularly when we're in this understaffed sense.

To be blunt, people wonder why we still have the issues in our chronic public safety issues, because I've said this in committee, in public safety committee, it's because we're a city of two minds.

We can't make a decision and move forward.

We made a decision on the real-time crime center.

2026, the law says those nine positions should have been filled, and they weren't.

And there's some prerogatives given to the executive, but that was a mistake, because the real-time crime center makes a difference.

and being 24-7 makes a difference.

The real-time crime center from a civilian law enforcement view is really nothing different than what I did in my career.

You know, in 92 when I deployed on the carrier off Bosnia and Yugoslavia, and the watch that I stood on, or the watch that I oversaw as the head of the intelligence department on the carrier's dentist when we deployed in 2011 out of Bremerton in support of Iraq and Afghanistan.

And I had three other watch instances in between, very similar to the real-time crime center.

It's about having an understanding of what the real-time crime center brings to the police department.

Now, to be frank, the seventh floor does not understand what the real-time crime center brings to the police force.

They don't have that intrinsic understanding of what it means.

And so this has been a lost opportunity.

And to do this piece here with the real-time crime center on the FTEs is, again, an unfortunate decision that was made by the administration and it makes a difference.

So again, if we keep wondering why we have these chronic public safety issues on our streets, it's because we don't have the follow through.

Laws are not implemented to include budget laws.

and that makes a big difference.

And, Chair, just to close on this, you know, I mentioned about being inflection points, you know, Byte of Seattle being an inflection point, you know, the removal of Chief Barnes as Chief of Police being an inflection point, and the budget is the biggest inflection point.

And each time, there was a bit of a rosy story, Byte of Seattle.

Oh, no, no, it was over here.

Oh, no, it was a resignation.

Actually, it was removal forced.

and on Tuesday, the presentation at the library was very positive.

Oh, we're adding police officers.

But this inflection point, this piece right here, shows again that not so.

And SPD is key in this.

It also comes up, as we'll see in fire too.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Councilmember Kettle.

Committee table, anything?

There, no, we're gonna go on to Council Member Rink.

Council Member Rink, you have the floor.

Thank you, Chair Strauss.

I want to begin with just a statement of fact that the mayor's proposed budget includes record spending for SPD.

With a proposed budget of over half a billion, 557 million to be exact, in the pervasive issues that are within the police department, I will just say I have a lot of questions for today and I thank you in advance for the answers you'll be providing.

And to kick us off, I want to start with the training budget.

And so could you please walk through the trainings that are planned for 2027 with these funds?

I want to specifically understand and know about emphasis trainings on use of force, less lethal tools, crisis interventions, and crowd management.

Committee table.

The floor is yours.

So the training budget and the trainings that we provide our officers with yearly are state mandated trainings.

So we're gonna have like our qualification of firearms, making sure officers are culturally understanding of the city that we currently work in.

We have those trainings.

There's trainings that officers get sent to, like our ICAT, Internet Crimes Against Children, those trainings that they go to on a yearly basis.

Our SWAT team needs to be recertified, and the techniques and the tools that they use on a yearly basis going through with our officers.

We have gas mass training that's gonna be coming up that we're gonna have to use.

So there's a lot of trainings that provide in there.

There's a lot of trainings that officers go throughout the state and out throughout the country that they have to go through.

We do have a system set up for that, our 1.5 system that we do look through with a lot of that.

So there's a lot of trainings that we have that we have to go through yearly to train the 929 deployable officers that we have currently, and hopefully moving forward more with that.

Does that answer that?

Councilman Wink, Flora George.

Thank you, Chair Strauss.

A quick follow-up just to this point.

Thank you for unpacking that piece.

On slide six in the information related to overtime, I'm seeing here that there's a chunk of overtime spending that goes towards training.

Can you just unpack, are all trainings conducted using overtime, or is there a portion that is where trainings are used through regular staff time.

Chief?

It all depends on the officer's schedule.

With some of the trainings that we have, they do run over.

So take, for instance, our field training program currently.

We have somewhat of a backlog in our post-Baliyah.

So we have trainers that are trying to get the student officers through the post-Baliyah so they can go to the FTO program.

So typically, they will work a Monday through Thursday, 10-hour schedule, to train in post-Baliyah.

But with the numbers that we have currently in the post-Baliyah program, upwards there, I think, is 61 right now.

trying to get those officers ready for field training officers.

It is incurring overtime on like a Friday or Saturday.

So those officers that are trainers are coming in on their off days to train.

So that's creating some of the overtime.

Councilmember Maureen.

Thank you, Chair Strauss.

Thank you for that answer.

I'm going to keep us moving and also acknowledge that we're in the aftermath of a recent incident, particularly use of lethal force.

in a case where a woman was shot by an SPD officer in Beacon Hill.

The body cam footage that was released by the department, there was an exact quote from the officer who was outside the door of the incident asking, do we have less lethal or taser?

The offscreen officer answered yes, and yet lethal force was used.

There's a $4 million increase in the special operations bucket of the SPD budget, and it's my understanding that this is the budget that would provide crowd control, special event, and crisis support for SPD.

So could the table, whoever is most appropriate at the table, please tell me whether or not we have sufficient less lethal equipment for all call responders, patrol, and SWAT?

Chief?

I did check this week, worked with Deputy Chief Yvonne Underwood in regards to this, and we do have sufficient equipment for our officers.

I would like to say more, but unfortunately, with this case being with the IFIT King County, I'm limited to what I can go into any further details in regards to that case.

Thank you.

Councilmember Rinke, you still have a floor.

Thank you.

Understanding limited ability to speak to this particular case at this time, just a follow-up for the purpose of clarification and happy to continue the conversation offline if this information isn't available at this time, but I do want to get this question on the record.

Is SPD able to send and deploy officers and ensure that each one of them is equipped with a taser and to ensure adequate less lethal response?

Just to get an accurate response for you, I would have to ask our trainers, and then we can do an audit to assure that the numbers and the response I'm giving you is accurate.

I don't want to give misinformation.

Thank you.

I look forward to that follow-up.

This council has had robust discussion on crowd management training, and I'm seeking some clarification on one point because in 2027 crowd management trainings will consist of policy reviews, squad formations, and baton usage.

Are there any opportunities at all for live trainings, role play, and to ensure that sworn staff are utilizing all CMIC policies?

Yes.

Actually, leading up to FIFA this year, we did do some live training, so I'm not sure why that wasn't put in there.

Our officers did do some training down at Lumenfield in regards to crowd control and crowd management.

Thank you, Chair, and thank you for that response.

And building on that point, what is SPD doing to, pardon me, what is SPD doing to ensure that sworn officers through these trainings are comprehending and utilizing less lethal options when encountered with situations where they are encountering individuals with non-firearm materials

scenario-based training.

Yes.

And our instructors are putting people through live situations.

I know we do a good job of looking throughout the country to see some scenarios that have occurred in different areas and different regions, and we provide scenario-based training on a pass-fail.

And if the officers are not successful, they're put through a remedial in regards to that training, and we're assuring that they're using the appropriate equipment that we give to them and their appropriate de-escalation tactics.

Thank you.

I'm going to change topics to go take us to overtime.

So if we can go to the overtime slide.

I believe is slide six, that would be helpful.

I'm saying we have a proposed overtime budget of $62 million.

It's my understanding based on previous presentation that our central staff gave in the Public Safety Committee this year, that was on June 23rd, that SPD overtime has increased over $29 million since 2022, which is a 112% increase.

Now, taking a look at this year's numbers, am I correct in my assessment that this means that since 2022, we are looking at, in this proposed budget, a 138% increase in SPD's overtime budget.

I don't have the historical information at my fingertips.

I'd be happy to follow up and answer that question.

I do think that slide five tells some of that story, which is that you have to look at it, well, I think I recommend looking at it from both the perspective of the dollars that are being spent and what those dollars purchase in terms of the number of hours that are funded.

at least in the timeframe that's looked at in this slide, you can see that 2026 to 2027, it costs a great deal more to fund the same number of hours.

So the budget went up, but the funded hours stayed the same, and that's because labor costs have increased.

The cost per hour of overtime has increased even as the same number of hours are funded.

Thank you for impacting that, Director Eder.

I have two additional quick questions and hoping that these have short answers associated with them.

Could we get a breakdown of the technical services portion of SPD's budget?

I'm noting that this 34 million of technical support includes data-driven policing and technology programs.

I'm curious, how much of this is going towards the RTCC and CCTV programs?

I'd like the number of how much this program is currently costing the city on a yearly basis.

I'd be happy to follow up with that information.

Thank you, Chair.

My last question for today, and thank you for indulging me.

I'm seeing the reduction of $2.4 million in recruitment, marketing, and pausing hiring incentives.

Just to be clear on the record, how much money in recruitment and marketing is in the mayor's budget for SPD after this proposed reduction?

Unfortunately, I can't see the bottom of this slide.

There is $2.893 million for recruitment and retention in the 27 proposed budget and $1.786 million in 2028 proposed.

Thank you, Director Eder.

Thank you, Chair.

Appreciate your responses, and I look forward to those follow-ups.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Rink.

We have Councilmember Lin, and then I saw another hand, but no longer.

Councilmember Lin.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you to our presenters and colleagues.

Sort of an easier, quick question.

The firing range or the gun range, which is in Traquila, anything in the budget that could help address noise mitigation concerns.

We hear a lot from folks in Rainier Beach who due to the ongoing gun violence down there, here the firing range can be traumatic.

So just wondering if there's anything in here that could help to address those noise concerns.

Chief, committee table.

Looking through the budget, I don't believe we have anything in there currently for the suppression of those sounds affecting the south precinct area, particularly Rainier Beach.

Yeah, okay.

I can back that up.

That's correct.

Okay, well, thank you for that.

Certainly, it's a priority for my district to be able to address that, so I look forward to following up on if there's any way we can get that in there.

I guess, thinking about hiring, and I know that we have targets and goals in terms of our numbers, but just from a big picture perspective, as we think about public safety more generally.

Obviously, there's a minimum and an ideal staffing level.

I guess one of my questions is, how do we compare to other jurisdictions in our spending, whether it's police departments specifically or public safety?

more generally and because we hear comparisons to example to Boston that we spend a lot more per officer and I'm just not sure if that's true or if there's a reason for that but there's the number of officers but then there's just sort of the budget.

Can you speak to that generally or we can do this offline later?

Director Panucci, Chief.

To make the comparison in regards to Boston I think that's going to take a little bit of time to look at that just because you have to look at where you're at in a region cost of living and so forth but I think the biggest thing is putting eyes on what's happening here regionally and trying to be competitive with our neighbors and removing the incentives specifically for lateral officers has a potential to put us behind.

And we're competing from a very small pool of candidates in this area.

So we have to be as competitive as we possibly can.

And I'm looking forward to looking at ways how we can continue that specifically for lateral hires.

Yeah, thank you.

And I'd certainly be interested if, obviously, salaries and hiring bonuses and so on are one way to be competitive.

Certainly would be curious if there's other ways that we can also explore to be competitive as our region.

Kind of final question, you know, we often talk about sort of outcomes-based sort of budgeting, and I'm just wondering, From a public safety perspective, again, I do think we need more officers, but my bigger concern is the outcomes, especially representing District 2, South Seattle, where we have some of the most intense issues in terms of public safety, whether it's gun violence in many areas of the district, whether it's the open air drug markets and other sort of public safety issues in full Saigon, North Beacon Hill, North Rainier.

For me, I'm most concerned about having a comprehensive approach to public safety, thinking about collaboration between different departments, the care department, standing up our shelter and collaborating with King County Jail and the courts.

But again, looking at our budget for SPD, but also just wondering from an outcomes-based perspective, is there sort of a strategy, a targeted way that we can get better outcomes with our spending?

I think one of the biggest things over the last eight to nine weeks is being collaborative with our internal partners here at the City of Seattle.

Everyone coming to the table, talking about the resources that we have, understanding that law enforcement is not just only the police department, but working with our care, working with other partners that we have, working with the King County Sheriff's Office, pooling our resources together.

coming together and understanding that it doesn't matter whose name is in the headline as long as we're getting the job done for the community members of Seattle and making sure that we're providing a security and safety for the residents of Seattle and our tourists that come in and visit on a daily basis.

Thank you.

Director Pernucci.

Thank you, Chair Strauss, Councilmember Lin.

I just want to add to that that that is the work that we are hoping to undertake if we can get out of this kind of triage budgeting approach and focus more on outcomes and really just want to emphasize that part of looking at the outcomes, we really are looking at a comprehensive approach to public safety, and so that includes, of course, important investments in law enforcement resources, and focus on that for the people and places experiencing the greatest threats of violence, as well as investing in the upstream services and community partners.

So we really need to look at the entire system, and I think part of the outcome is ideally we can prevent the crises before they occur, and so it needs to be looking at that comprehensive system, The part of the goal of the effective government is executive order issued a couple of weeks ago to try to pivot towards moving towards that type of approach in future budget processes.

Thank you, Chair.

And just want to say, you know, anything we can do to support sort of the work of SPD and the officers and supporting that comprehensive approach, you know, I know that our officers are stretched in and have a very hard job.

And if we can work collaboratively to meet the needs of our community, but also to make it a little bit easier for that heavy lift that our officers are doing, I certainly want to support that.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Councilmember Lin, committee table, anything else to add?

We'll go on to Council President Emeritus Juarez and Council Member Foster and colleagues.

Thank you for using my nonverbal cues as a means of facilitation.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'm gonna make just a few comments and have a couple questions.

I just wanna make sure I get into the record and thank you for being here this morning.

It's good to see all of you again.

I believe that what the challenges that the city is having with public safety, that this budget doesn't properly address the current and future needs to keep our citizens safe.

On June 9th, 2026, Chief Barnes stated that the city was on track to have 1,250 officers by the end of 2026, with an officer goal of 1,400 by 2029, which is where the city was post-COVID, before COVID, pre-COVID.

Again, because I was there.

So why, question one, why is 1250 the number chosen to cap officers at for the next two years?

Why 1250?

The budget funds the number in the staffing plan that was set out last year, but wasn't fully funded.

Right now we are trying to put the budget on a more sustainable path.

So it isn't to say that if there are resources available, that that wouldn't be a decision that is revisited.

But right now we are trying to focus on and be real, like be transparent about what this budget can support.

Okay, thank you.

A few statistics that I think is important for the record.

From 2020 to 2026, we had a 10% population growth from 737 to 816,000, almost 816,600 people.

Yet from 20 to 26, we've had a 20% officer decrease, 1424 to 1120. So I'm sharing these facts because I want the public to see that this isn't, at least I'm speaking for myself, I don't think that you can arrest your way out of what we're seeing, but I do think that we need more officers.

So let me leave you with some facts and just some additions.

These are approximations that we pulled up, and I won't go into all the detail on the North Precinct.

Since the cameras were turned off in March 2026, citywide, we've had 302 shots fired and 12 fatal injuries and 61 non-fatal injuries.

In the north precinct, shots fired 57, two fatalities and 12 non-fatal.

In the south precinct, we've had 67 shootings, and we've had four fatalities and 11 non-fatal.

In the West Precinct, we've had 46 shots fired, and the non-fatal five, or five fatal, I'm sorry, and non-fatal 13. So this isn't about a political ideology of defund or increase.

This is about on earth one in the real world that we are seeing more crime because we have less officers to go out and keep our community safe.

Now, I understand what you're saying, Allie, about 1250 and being realistic, but I think that when we're realistic and we look how our city is growing, that we have to, if we look at, if the city only grows by 1%, approximately 8,000 people, then to keep a similar ratio, we would need at least 12 additional officers that would be needed.

I think that, quite frankly, the public safety plan, I think you all know what I think about the gun violence prevention.

I think what we're looking at in the next two years is just smoke and mirrors.

I don't think that we're getting to the issue.

And again, I'm not saying that you need more officers to just arrest more people.

those of us that have been around and read the consent decree and have been involved in the collective bargaining agreements with SPOG and understand the deaths that have occurred.

And again, I will share this and I'm sure the mayor's office is listening.

I'm not trying to make this political.

I'm trying to make it factual, particularly for those folks and I'm now speaking for the district up in D5 on Aurora and what we've been seeing.

And this isn't just, and what I've just shared with you is just the shots fired and fatalities and non-fatalities.

I haven't even spoken about the felonies and the crimes regarding sex trafficking, et cetera, or assaults.

I haven't even brought those numbers up.

So I just, I want to go on the record with that and I want SPD to know that we support you and the work that you're doing.

I want the mayor's office to know that we want to work collaboratively with them to be and not make this political and talk about the crime that we're seeing and how we can address it.

And yes, we all invested and will continue to invest and support all upstream programs is diversion.

Absolutely.

but again, I have a hard time believing because I watched this mayor during defund come here and here and scream defund the police, abolish the police.

So I have a hard time believing that somehow some of this on the executive branch is not political and I think that's offensive and it's not fair and it ain't right.

So I'll leave it at that, thank you.

Thank you, Council President Emeritus Juarez.

Council Member Foster, you have the floor.

Thank you so much, Chair.

And we'll just always start off with my appreciation.

Thank you so much, Chief Sales and Director Panucci.

I really appreciate you both and both of you being here.

I wanted to turn to one of the overtime slides that you have and start there first.

I know there's some questions about this previously, but one thing I heard you say, Mr. Eder, was that we have a certain percentage of our overtime costs are reimbursed.

And I wonder if you could shed a little bit more light on that in terms of how much of our overtime is reimbursed, particularly when we're covering other large events in the city.

Sure.

I will have to follow up with a precise sort of bottom line percent of how much of our overtime is reimbursed through contracts, permits, and special event arrangements.

We have different, I know we have a range of different kinds of reimbursement levels, all the way from nothing for certain free speech events and some parades, all the way up to full reimbursement for some major sporting events where we have contracts to reimburse us for our full costs.

There are many in the middle where we have some...

The SMC tells us that we can seek reimbursement at specific levels for different kinds of events.

in the half to three quarters range of our full costs.

And then there are other types still that are to be negotiated year by year with the event organizers.

So the bottom line, I don't know, but we can follow up and get you that information.

Thank you so much.

I'd appreciate that follow-up.

I think I just want to make sure that we're tracking that and that we have the appropriate approach there, given, you know, given increased costs and the important role that our officers play covering those events outside of their regular duties.

So thank you for that.

and I believe the slide I was looking at was slide six, but neither here nor there.

And then I want to turn to some of the changes that are made in the budget and I know one of the positions that is set to be removed, which is currently vacant, this is on slide 10, is the 30 by 30 work group support and the DEI officer position.

And I will say I really appreciate overall, I know one of the things that the mayor's office was was trying to minimize the number of filled positions that you were removing in the budget to minimize the impact on labor and people and families, and I sincerely appreciate that.

My question is more about what strategies will the department be undertaking to ensure that this important work on reaching our 30 by 30 goals and ensuring that our workforce really reflects our city.

How will you continue to make sure that we make progress there and that we hit this goal without these positions?

I know probably since last December or so, I've been probably quarterly meeting with Captain Heidi Tuttle and Captain Krista Baer in regards to these efforts.

Ironically, yesterday, something came across my email from Caliber Press in regards to placing women in command positions and upping that training.

I sent that to both.

We had a brief email exchange in regards to it and I know next week we're going to speak on identifying personnel within our police department that we want to send to those specific trainings and then also looking at ways to potentially send our recruitment team over to historically only women's schools to do that recruitment efforts.

I do have a friend that is the women's basketball coach for Sacramento State, and I've been texting him in regards to some of his players on his team and saying if they want to keep the team atmosphere, being an ex-college basketball player myself, trying to do some little free recruiting on that end.

But we're going to look at different ways to do things, I think.

You never want to do more with less.

You want to do different with less.

So we're trying to come up with some ideas of our own here at the police department to continue that effort and push that effort forth.

Thank you, Chief.

I appreciate that.

And I think this is an area where I'll continue to follow up because, to me, what's important is the progress toward the goal.

It may be that the strategy has changed from having one position to having a set of strategies inside the department, some of which you just mentioned.

What I know we want to look for is significant progress towards that goal and keeping us on track.

So it may look different without these positions, but I am looking for some concrete, clear strategies and forward next steps, because I know we share, and I know that you and I have spoken about this, I know we share this goal for our police department, so I appreciate that.

Chair, I've just got one more, maybe two, we'll see.

So if we can go to slide 12 here, I just, I appreciate the conversation and I will just second Council Member Lynn's interest in sort of understanding our overall budget investments.

I know we've heard other Comparison of Seattle to Boston or Seattle to other cities.

So I think those are great questions, Councilmember Melinda.

I second those.

One thing I just wanted to, you know, obviously it wasn't here last fall.

So I want to make sure there's a couple of things that we're just getting clarity on on the record here in terms of the overall budget and just reflecting on the presentations that we had yesterday and looking at some of the reductions.

So I know while there are positions that are removed or vacant positions that are moved in, I think four filled positions that are removed, can you just walk me through the overall change in SPD's budget as a percentage from the adopted budget last year to the proposed budget this year?

Sure.

I think this slide, the first slide, gives you that kind of overview.

I don't have the percents shown here, but the difference between just looking at the general fund, which is the vast majority of our funding, from 2026 adopted to 2027 proposed, we've increased about $66 million.

As I said in my opening remarks, the biggest change is the change from the collective bargaining agreements.

That's about $58 million.

There are other changes as well, including the $12.5 million for funding additional officers and some smaller moves that have ins and outs.

Thank you.

Director Prudenshi.

Thank you.

I'll just put the percent on it.

Overall, SPD's budget compared to the 2026 adopted is increasing by 13.8%.

It's a $68 million net increase when you include all funds and continues to be the largest area of investment from the general fund.

Thank you, I think that's helpful.

And I appreciate you, Director Eder, for pointing me to the different slide.

I think for me, I was looking at slide 12 because I know, obviously, last year when this Council adopted the budget, the new contracts had not been completed.

Their negotiation had not been completed at that point in time.

They were negotiated and then adopted later.

So those then necessitated additional changes.

in the SPD budget is part of my understanding and that this budget from the mayor's office reflects those changes.

Did we model just what the cost would be?

I know other council members were talking about sort of different goal numbers.

Did we model what that would be if we were to maintain that goal?

Director Panucci.

Thank you.

I think there have been some different modeling.

I can offer an example.

So it would cost about $14 million in 2028 and $26 million in 2029 and beyond to fund 1,352 full-time officers.

So that is one example.

There can be other models run.

Dan mentioned earlier, Greg, who helped develop the staffing model.

I'm sure we'll be running lots of models for you all.

I'll thank him in advance.

Oh, please.

I'm sorry to mean I speak over you.

It costs about $200,000.

It's a little bit more than that to fund an average-filled FTE over the course of the year.

So adding 10 average-filled FTEs over the course of the year is on the order of $2 million.

That's very helpful.

Thank you for that.

And then I'll just ask you on this line of questioning here, because, you know, obviously we're in our budget process and we're thinking about cost, but what, again, what we're really trying to drive towards is a city that works for all of us, a city that is safe for all of us.

And so if you could also just speak to how you'll be looking at different metrics to understand the impact of hiring.

I know one thing I hear a lot about and I care a lot about is response times, you know, whether that's getting to the seven minutes or other metrics.

So can you just speak to, as you propose the budget with this increase in officers, how you'll be tracking the impact of these really important investments?

Yeah, I'm happy to do that, at least to get started at the table here.

As I mentioned when I was talking about the staffing plan, we do sort of update the plan monthly with actual information to replace our which are, in this case, more than two years in advance.

So we will have more information every month about how many new hires we have, how long it's taken for officers to get from the academy through training to become fully trained, deployable officers.

And that last statistic is the most important from my perspective.

The number of people who we can actually put on the street and doing police work, whether they're on patrol or otherwise, is what drives everything else.

We can't control how many officers are on long-term disability and illness.

That's just information that we receive.

We can't control how many officers ultimately leave the force, either for one reason or another.

So what we have left is the number of officers who are able to be deployed as fully trained officers.

That number is significantly lower on a projected basis at the end of 2026 compared to where we were in 2018. but it's a lagging indicator.

It takes more than a year to train a new recruit and get them into the position of being a fully trained deployable officer.

So our projection is that we will have more fully trained deployable officers in 27 than we had in 26 and still more in 28 than we are projecting to have in 27. So that line is increasing, which is a good thing.

Thank you.

And I just wanted to clarify what I'm asking, and that was very, very helpful.

It was a little different than what I was trying to ask, which is, as we continue to staff up, and even though this is a lagging indicator, how are we tracking our delivery here in terms of the impact that we're having on public safety?

So tracking, you know, once we get to our next goal of officers, what impact that's having on our response times, what we're seeing in terms of outcomes for our residents, and some of the important things that my colleagues have already mentioned today.

And that'll be my last question, Chair.

the ways that we track our response times and so forth.

We do that during our CSTAT meetings that we have once a month with our captains of each precinct.

We look at the response times for priority one, two, and three calls.

And I think as we go forth, we can start implementing this is how many officers you had at this time.

Month three, you have an additional three or four officers that have graduated from the FTO program.

what is your response time looking like that?

So I think that's a tool that we can add into probably not C-STAT, but our management team meeting to start tracking that to see once we start putting student officers in seats, not with FTOs, how does that bring it on our response time?

So we can add that.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Councilmember Foster, Councilmember Rivera, followed by Councilmember Saka.

Thank you, Councilmember Strauss.

I just wanna, I have a few questions, but I do wanna make a few comments related to our public safety budget in general.

First off, I just wanna say, Councilmember Juarez, I appreciate your comments and I agree with you.

This isn't about ideology, this is about politics and responding to our constituents and making sure that we have a safe city for everyone that lives in this city including all our families and all our kids.

Kids deserve to live in a safe city, full stop, and they shouldn't be afraid to go to school because they fear their safety.

I will say this is police, fire, and 911 are chartered responsibilities.

Let me say that again.

Fire, police and 911 are chartered responsibilities of this city.

They need to be treated like that in our budget.

But this isn't a budget that prioritizes our chartered responsibilities.

I will say becoming a fully staffed police department comparable to other cities of our size in the United States should not be controversial.

This should not be controversial.

To have enough officers so that our response times should be what best practices are and so that our constituents on the ground are feeling, because we hear anecdotally, they call and police don't show up for many hours later.

And I understand why, because I've sat at the 911 call center to see for myself what is happening.

And as calls are prioritized, some of those lower priority, quote unquote, lower priority calls, they don't feel lower priority to the person who's called 911. but those lower priority calls go unanswered because we don't have a fully staffed police department.

That is the bottom line.

And we can make all the, you know, ideological statements that we wanna make, but at the end of the day, when someone calls 911, they want police officer to show up and help them.

And we cannot provide that service today in the level that we should.

I will say on slide number seven, I was looking at some of this pace of hiring conversations and Councilmember Juarez also, you made some of the statements that I was going to make.

In 2019, we had about 14 and 24 sworn officers of which 1281 about were deployable and we had about 753,000 people.

But in 2026, we now have almost I believe it's close to, you said Councilmember Juarez 816 and I think it might be even a little more than that and we have at this point about 1197 sworn officers with only 927 deployable officers.

So at the end of the day we do not have sufficient officers to meet the needs even though our constituency has increased by about 70,000 people.

And my understanding is that we're below the national average for ratios of police to residents.

The national average I believe is 26.5 per 10,000 residents, but we have about 18 per 10,000 residents.

and just quickly looking up Washington DC has about 702,000 constituents or residents and their staffing ratio is 54 per 10,000.

So when we're looking at other cities and we're looking at what our Seattle department looks like, it is not where it needs to be.

And I think council member Juarez, I keep going to you mostly because we were both here during COVID.

We both understand when there was a want to decrease the police department.

People argue about defund because they say we never actually defund it.

We did decrease it in dollar amounts, and also a lot of officers just left because they felt unsupported.

So that's just the bottom line.

Those are facts, as you like to say, Councilmember Juarez.

Then on slide 10, I have some questions about the staffing changes.

One that just struck out me, struck, struck, excuse me, stuck out to me were this record support and decreasing the 1FTE because I know that historically the Seattle Police Department has had difficulties getting out.

There have been public disclosure requests and getting information out and whether they have the staffing available.

there's just so many public disclosure requests.

So we don't wanna do something that hampers a department's ability to respond to those public disclosure requests.

So I wanna make sure what impact is this gonna have on that because Dan Eater, I know that you know this has been an issue for the department historically.

Sure, I'd be happy to...

Would you like me to jump in right now?

I'd be happy to talk about the two positions that will involve layoffs.

I don't think either of them are involved in public records requests.

One of them is a Weyerhaeuser I position.

The job duties are to support the physical transfer of records and related supplies from across the department.

and we have been transitioning to a digitized system and so the need for this work has changed and diminished.

The other records related position is an admin specialist one The primary job duties are in auto records, and they work with police officers and data techs for towed, stolen cars.

They coordinate between tow companies and police officers.

For that position, there are about 38 other folks who do similar work, so that work can be absorbed by the existing staff.

Without impact, you mean.

Thank you.

My other question is about the Real-Time Crime Center.

Does this decrease eliminate the Real-Time Crime Center?

I can't tell from the budget.

And then I'd love to hear from Interim Chief Sales about the impacts to this reduction to the Real-Time Crime Center if it's not eliminating it.

Would you like to start?

Do you want to start?

Chief Sales or...

And if you could just give me an eye, because we missed a statement over here from Director Panucci a second ago.

We'll come back to you in a minute, though.

Chief.

I'll just kick us off.

So this would allow us to hire six FTEs that were originally funded in the 2026 adopted budget.

They are also to be funded in the 2027 proposed budget.

That would give us a total of 21 FTEs in the real-time crime center and fund us at a level of about $3 million.

What about 2028 and then what impacts will this have in terms of the work and the ability to investigate crime?

Because I feel like that's a huge reason why we have the Real Time Crime Center to begin with.

Funding continues into 2028 at the same- to fund the same number of FTEs, 21, as in the proposed 2027 budget.

And as I mentioned in my remarks, we would be able to go to 24-7 if the decision is made to do that.

Director Panucci, do you have anything to add here?

Nope.

Thank you.

Councilmember Rivera, floor is still yours.

Thank you, Councilmember Strauss.

I have another question about the PEOs.

I know that we have had issues being able to fill these positions, but what recruitment efforts have we had for PEOs?

They're an important part of the police department.

We know we've had issues dealing with even RVs that are engaged in illegal activity and the ability to be able to enforce.

We rely on parking enforcement officers for that.

So what impact will this have?

And what recruitment efforts first?

What recruitment efforts have been done?

Because what I'm hearing is, well, we're not able to hire them, so we should abrogate them.

At the same time, we need more PEOs.

So what have the recruitment efforts have been that we now have made the decision to give up on hiring them?

I would have to look into the recruitment efforts, but I know speaking with COO Smith and I over the last week, we looked at some ways to fix that problem with the PEOs.

There are some things that we want to try to look at.

Historically, if we had 10 vacancies, we would give out 10 offers to people and then say five of them didn't make it through background.

So there's ways that we want to try to increase that in regards to giving out more conditional offers.

And if we lose people in the background process, we're not just starting back over and trying to recruit more people.

So that's a way that we can look at doing that.

but I will have to look at what we're doing for the recruitment efforts to see if we're in alignment with what we want to do as a city.

I think it would have an impact with losing those positions, but a lot of those positions have been vacant for years.

So it was something we looked at was like, if we're not filling those spots, we're just maintaining and having things in our budget that appears to be an easy fix.

Thank you.

Director Panucci, anything to add there?

Flourish to the years, Councilman Rivera.

Thank you, Councilmember Strauss.

So in terms of Chief Sales, I heard you say that there will be an impact to losing the positions and you'll have to get back to me on what the recruitment efforts have been, if any.

I think that's really important because obviously we need this function at the department.

DEI officer and 30 by 30 positions that are being abrogated.

Obviously, we need a police department that looks like the people they are serving.

So I want to know what impacts this will have because my understanding is despite the fact that the positions were in the prior budgets, they have not been hired.

I do not know why.

This is still an important body of work.

and so with abrogating these two positions, how is the department going to engage in this work to ensure that we're recruiting folks in both these efforts?

The person that truly believes in police departments looking and representing the communities that they serve, I think this is a great opportunity for our recruitment team to readjust some of our recruitment efforts and where we go, looking at the demographics of where we're going, getting in spaces that we probably have not been in before, and really putting forth that effort and saying, look at Seattle, look at what we have to offer.

as a police department, going to these places.

Like I mentioned earlier, I spoke with my good friend, Aaron Koloff, who's the Sacramento State women's basketball coach.

I'm pretty sure he said he's never been contacted, but as a quick text message exchange for me, and he was going to Alaska to recruit, and we had dinner last Sunday night when he came back.

and talked about some stuff and want to do a Teams meeting or Zoom meeting with that group.

I don't want to go down there specifically, but now transitioning that over to our recruitment team and getting down there and recruiting those women with the DEI stuff, going to different historically black colleges, specifically going into different demographics that we probably haven't went into before.

Being a recruiter and myself in the past at my previous agency, going to some of our two-year colleges and looking at individuals that only want an associate's degree, getting those spaces, bumping up our explorers program.

We met with the East African community yesterday.

We've seen that we didn't have a lot of East African students in our explorers program, so getting to some of our kids here in the city at an earlier age and getting them through the pipeline.

I think that'd be another avenue that we can use for recruitment.

But looking at ways and looking at places we haven't been before and putting our logo out there in those spaces and having our officers talk.

Thank you, Interim Chief Sales.

I appreciate all those efforts.

I support it.

I will say that We put these positions in here to do the very thing that you're just talking about, so we've heard this before.

I don't know what ability you will have to be able to do what you just said without these two positions, because as I said, prior chiefs had said similar to what you're saying, and that's why the positions were there to help do that work, because we understand you can't be to do all that work by yourself.

And that's why.

So just want to leave that there.

And then thank you, Councilmember Strauss, for your grace.

I just have one last thing I want to say, which is we cannot...

It is true, I agree, Councilmember Juarez, we can't arrest our way out of the issues that we're seeing, particularly related to gun violence.

We also cannot service our way related to the gun violence issues either.

It's a combination of both.

And this is why, colleagues, you know I felt so strongly I've been working for the last year on this National Network for Safe Communities gun violence focused deterrence effort.

As I keep saying, they're the folks that the person that founded that organization actually created the focus deterrence strategy.

That's why I want to bring them to Seattle.

I noticed that despite the fact that we did pass, Council passed a resolution with high support for bringing this effort to Seattle, the mayor did not include the $418,000 over the biennium, which is a little over 200,000 each year.

It's a one-time ad to bring this effort here.

It was not included in the budget, so I want to say that for the publics, for constituents who may be watching.

And I also want to level set something because I think it's really important.

I understand that the mayor has a gun violence plan that she's revealed and I know that my colleague, Councilmember Kettle, has spoken to it today.

I will say it is really important not to keep using the term focused deterrence for efforts that are not actually focused deterrence.

And the reason why is the National Network for Safe Communities has made it very clear that if you do not implement focused deterrence the way that it was meant to be implemented, such as their effort, then it actually can lead to more harm than good.

And so I think and I appreciate and I understand that folks want to We talk about focus deterrence as this generic thing that encompasses all the things that we're doing, but it is not.

It also doesn't take away from all the things that we're doing.

We need all of it.

We need more tools.

We need every single tool.

And we need this specific type of focus deterrence.

So it is, in my opinion, really, it is not the right approach to keep using the term focus deterrence to talk about other generic things that we might be doing related to gun violence.

It's confusing.

And then when it doesn't work, then folks are gonna say, oh, that focus deterrence thing didn't work.

And that's not okay.

So we can say, we can keep talking about all the efforts that we're currently doing for years.

The city has been funding community safety programs.

We need those.

But those programs are not focused deterrence.

So we need to add something that we haven't done.

And that's why I was very intentional about the National Network for Safe Communities focused deterrence strategy.

If the mayor doesn't want to do it and she has not committed to doing this, clearly didn't put it in the budget, she's not committed to doing this, then she just needs to say so.

But I don't think it's okay for her to keep using the terms focused deterrence when that's not really what she's talking about.

that's not okay.

So in this budget, there is no focus deterrence strategy.

And I wanna say it because I tried and I've been working with the mayor's office since they got here to try this strategy here.

She hasn't wanted to do it, but I think the public really needs to know and they need to know it's not in the budget.

So I will keep trying to make this effort here in Seattle happen because I think it's needed.

It's important.

It's an additional tool.

We need all the tools.

Thank you, Council Member Strauss.

Thank you, Council Member Rivera.

Director Panucci.

Thank you, Chair Strauss.

I just want to clarify for the record, and I think this conversation is probably better had when Chief Barden is at the table for the care department's presentation, but for the record, there is $1.2 million being transferred from the Human Services Department to support the mayor's gun violence plan.

and about half of that is to fund three new positions to support that work.

$300,000 is for case management and referral system.

And there is a balance of about $300,000 each year for ongoing program evaluation, focused deterrence programs, direct investments and focused deterrence strategies.

So there is funding in the budget.

And also just want to note that respectfully, Council Member Rivera, the resolution was passed on September 15th.

And I know because we've talked about this, you've been on the executive side from a, For the budget office, this is just purely a technical thing.

We are not making changes to the budget at that point, but being aware of this conversation, there is that funding in the budget.

Thank you.

Councilmember Rivera, any last comments?

Yes, thank you.

So, Ali, are you saying that there's funding in the budget for the National Network for Safe Communities Partnership for their Focus Determined Strategy?

No, I'm not saying there's money for a specific earmarked organization.

I'm saying there's funding available to make that type of an investment in an organization that could provide that support to the city, if that is the decision.

But I think that Council, I would like Chief Barden to talk more on the substance, because I'm talking the budget here, the numbers part, but I think it would be the substantive conversation on that would be better held with Chief Barden.

Thank you, Ali.

Again, I want to make it really clear that saying you're doing focused deterrence doesn't mean you're actually doing focused deterrence.

It is a strategy.

It's a specific strategy, again, created by the founder of the National Network for Safe Communities, which is why I spent a year working on this effort to make sure that we were gonna get this right.

And that's why that is what I wanted to see in the budget.

And I appreciate that you're saying that, you know, I've been talking to the mayor's office about this effort for most of this year.

So it could have been included in the budget if that's what she wanted to prioritize.

And the last thing I will say is, up until the mayor submits, because I did work in the mayor's office and I was an operations lead, I know that up to the point that the mayor submits the budget to council, they can make changes if that's what they wanted to do, particularly for something small as this type of investment.

You could have even put it into the care if that's...

Well, really, you can't, because it is a contract that would have to be with the mayor's office.

That's the effort.

But nevertheless, we can agree to disagree on that.

If she had wanted to do this, she could have because this was not last minute.

That is what I'm trying to say.

I've been trying to work with them all year.

She chose to do differently.

That is her prerogative.

But I think the public deserves to know.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I'm going to keep us moving.

Councilmember Sokka, I see you've got your hand and Council President after

Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Interim Chief Sales.

Really appreciate the presentation and overview here.

Also appreciate the acknowledgement and shout out to Captain Bayer and Captain Heidi Tuttle.

I too want to shout out Captain Bayer and Captain Tuttle.

Captain Bayer is a Southwest precinct commander and has been an incredibly helpful partner to me and my office in addressing public safety issues, responding to constituents, having candid conversations around what's doable, in some cases what's not, because of lack of staffing, officer staffing.

but both are terrific leaders in the department, and you, Interim Chief, and every Chief before and every Chief after are incredibly lucky to have women like Captain Bayer and Captain Tuttle to be able to work alongside women like that.

I also want a plus one to a few of my...

Every last one of my colleagues, I've agreed with key elements of what they've said.

So plus one, the essence of that, highlighting a couple things, the importance of maintaining officer recruitment, hiring, marketing, and promotional budget activities.

Our budget and forecasting and goals should be, at least initially in the next phase, should be more mapped towards a 1,400, 1,450 total plus officer minimum rather than 1,250.

The key importance of the 30 by 30 positions and DEI positions.

might take as one of the council champions over the last couple years on that issue of addressing cultural reform and 30 by 30. I happen to think that those key positions are a critical component of a broader strategy.

They are an effective strategy to address some of the shared challenges and shared goals that we're all driving towards here.

because I don't think they're in competition with, I don't think they're mutually exclusive with any other efforts to address the same challenge.

What I've heard from the department so far, and Chief, not a knock on you personally, but I've heard it from effectively four chiefs now.

I've heard, when confronted directly about that question, I've heard a list of activities, I've heard a list of tactics, but what I haven't heard and what is crucially missing is a comprehensive plan and strategy to address the cultural issues that are well-known, well-publicized, well-documented.

And unless and until I hear a clear, consistent, coherent, articulable strategy that addresses that same thing, I do think that our council priorities that we've been clear on and consistent on for the last couple years in these critical 30 by 30 positions are a necessary component.

So, still waiting to hear from that, but we'll continue the conversation.

Parking enforcement officers, yes, need more.

Quick questions for you, Chief.

Would installing and we talked a little bit about security cameras yesterday, CCTV cameras yesterday at the Seattle Center, but truth be told, this is actually a better forum for that conversation because historically, maintenance and deployment of new camera expansions, that is something that comes out of SPD's budget.

And so I just wanna ask you, I'm really curious, Would installing CCTV cameras at Seattle Center be helpful to SPD in deterring and investigating crimes that occur on the Seattle Center campus?

Yes or no?

Yes.

Thank you.

So, had recent tragedy at the Byte, and investigators are hard at work, following up on leads, chasing down evidence.

But second question is, following the July shooting at the Seattle Center, did SPD have any city-operated CCTV footage from the immediate area or did investigators have to rely on video voluntarily provided by Seattle Center tenants, businesses, event attendees, and other third parties?

Yes, a lot of those cameras in that area assisted us at that time.

If you look at it really nationally and statistically, when you have cameras in use, it's three times more likely to assist us in an investigation and solve those heinous crimes sooner.

Thank you.

Very helpful.

Chief, that brings me to the proposed budget before us.

See, a budget is more than a spreadsheet.

Here's the budget.

Right here.

That's the budget right there.

A budget is more than a spreadsheet, a set of binders, documents.

It's hundreds of pages long, line items.

A budget tells the public what we have learned, what we value, and which specific risks we are prepared to accept or not.

And after the tragedy at the bite, I expected this proposed budget to include funding for CCTV cameras at the Seattle Center.

As currently proposed, it does not.

I find that omission extraordinarily difficult to understand and incredibly disappointing.

It's past time to center the crime victims, including Ashley White and her family.

Three people tragically lost their life at the Seattle Center shooting in July with five additional wounded, including a two-year-old.

One of those murder victims was Ashley Whitehead.

Now, Ashley was a 56-year-old.

She was an innocent bystander who went to a beloved community event and tragically never came home.

She was waiting in line for cotton candy when she was struck down by gun violence.

Her cousin Michelle Whitehead has publicly asked, pleaded with the city to install cameras, among other solutions.

We owe it to Ashley, her family, and every person who gathers at the Seattle Center more than our condolences, more than thoughts and prayers.

We owe them an honest examination of what failed what potentially hindered investigations and what could help the next time.

Some blatant operational contradictions at play.

Here's the key contradiction.

After a deadly shooting at one of the city's most important civic campuses, the Seattle Police Department had to seek video evidence, footage, from tenants, businesses, visitors, and people holding cell phones.

We're asking our investigators to essentially pass the hat for simple video evidence after tragedy strikes, begging, borrowing, pleading, passing the collection plate for simple evidence Apparently, everyone can have a damn camera in the city except the city itself, the city government itself that is directly responsible for public safety.

Everybody gets a camera except us.

How in the world does that make any damn sense?

Total head scratcher.

That is not a strategy.

that is a huge and gaping vulnerability that we have chosen to preserve and enshrine in our budget.

We need a more balanced, sensible approach.

Truth be told, cameras are not magic.

They are not 100% risk-free.

By the way, members of the public should rightfully question any leader or elected official or politician whose stated goals is 100% risk-free.

It's guaranteed to lock in status quo, guaranteed to keep us in the sunken place, guaranteed to keep us in analysis paralysis, and guaranteed to put us in a perpetual state of stasis.

Time to snap out of it.

Cameras do not replace officers, violence prevention, good lighting, nitty-gritty SEPTED design reviews, metal detectors and weapon screening equipment, non-police responses, event security, training, prosecution, or responsible management.

Privacy and civil liberties concerns deserve real safeguards, including limited access, retention rules, auditing and accountability.

But simply refusing to install cameras carries significant risk too.

The security benefits at a major event campus greatly outweigh risks that can and should be managed.

Cameras can deter some misconduct, improve situational awareness, preserve evidence, accelerate investigations, and help identify people involved before more harm occurs.

We can't say we're advancing a responsible budget and carrying out our charter responsibility to keep people safe without funding for critical CCTV cameras at the Seattle Center.

At least we can't say that with a straight face.

When we do that, the public understandably feels like they've been hoodwinked.

They feel like they've been bamboozled, snookered, hornswoggled, duped, swindled, played, hustled, tricked, fooled, misinformed, led, punked, sold a bill of goods.

So I know there's a lot of theoretical considerations at play, but more important practical realities should supersede and govern here.

This is sometimes presented as though CCTV at the Seattle Center were a radical idea, but a recent chamber poll found that 75% of surveyed Seattle voters supported cameras at the Seattle Center and other major event venues.

Ironically, this supposedly controversial technology has unusually lopsided public support.

This is not a fringe or radical position in Seattle.

Even in the Trump 2.0 era, Major event organizers and venue operators, including Climate Pledge Arena, the Seattle Center, Seafair, and others, have also urged the city to restore cameras in Soto and expand coverage to the center.

The people who host big crowds are asking.

The public is asking.

A victim's family is asking.

SPD experts have explained the operational and investigative value of cameras.

Yet confusingly, the proposed budget answers with silence.

We're at a bare minimum indifference.

We need to stop thinking that we're smarter than the people hosting big crowds.

We need to stop thinking we're smarter than the public, smarter than victims and impacted families, smarter than experts, smarter than the plain and clear common sense.

I understand the concern that surveillance tools could be misused, including by the federal government, but the feds have vastly superior resources and the ability to acquire and deploy its own tools.

Choosing to voluntarily blind Seattle does not blind Washington, D.C. The responsible solution is strong local safeguards, not completely shutting down and denying our own investigators and the public the basic infrastructure expended at a major civic cultural hub like the center.

The executive claims the proposed budget invests in public safety, yet the proposed budget does not fund a basic investigative capability at one of the city's largest gathering spaces.

Again, cameras are not risk-free.

Neither is refusing to have them.

Doing nothing on cameras is itself a public safety decision.

So I have a fairly straightforward question for the executive.

After July, what additional evidence are we waiting for?

I'm obviously an unapologetic supporter of responsibly governed CCTVs at the Seattle Center.

Pro camera, if you will, especially in big event spaces.

I'm also pro privacy safeguards, pro accountability.

pro-responsible implementation, pro-real solutions.

And I'll add that I'm anti-hypocrisy, anti-puritan progressive politics, anti-tomfoolery, and anti-status quo.

This is not about fear.

It is not about pretending one proven tool can solve every problem.

It is about refusing to leave a known gap in place where residents, workers, families and visitors gather by the tens of thousands.

The council and the executive share the same duty.

Keep the Seattle Center safe, open and welcoming.

We need to start taking public safety seriously in Seattle.

Good news, good news.

It's not all fire and brimstones.

The good news is that there's still time to correct this omission, fund the cameras, adopt strong safeguards, and make the responsible choice together.

I'm not angry.

I am, however, totally confused and utterly disappointed.

I'll be reviewing the public safety aspects of the proposed budget with a sense of incredulous skepticism.

I think we all should.

Thank you again, Chief.

Appreciate the overview.

More work for us to do together.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Councilmember Saka and members of the committee.

As a reminder, vulgar language is not allowed at our meetings.

Committee table, do you have anything to share at this time?

All right, we'll go to Council President Hollingsworth.

Thank you, Chair, and I will be quick.

Thank you, Chief Sales, for being here.

Appreciate you, Dan Eder, Ally, and Lish.

Y'all will be here all day, so it's a rotation right here.

So real quick, I really appreciate the presentation.

I know I appreciate all the comments that my colleagues have made as well, because we all have different perspectives.

One of the things that would really help for me, and we can go offline on this, but I'll just state it, is having actual data and information regarding if we are increasing budgets or decreasing, whatever it is, how does that impact response times, officers keeping drugs off the streets, gun retrievals, crime solves, the hotspots in Seattle?

Are we gonna have more or less undercover grocery retail theft operations?

does this increase our bike cops, beats on the streets, officer outreach, whatever.

All those pieces that I know that we judge how our police department is interacting with our community.

How does this impact that?

And that would be super helpful.

So, hey Joy, we only have this many officers on second watch at the East Precinct.

This would increase or decrease that opportunity or this would increase you know one or two officers that we could be able to move from the West Precinct to East Precinct or whatever it is that would help me get an idea about how the budget proposal that you all have given us today would be able to just to put and like Councilman Berlin said some of the outcomes and those are some of the outcomes that I'm looking looking for because since 9-8 excuse me, since 9-10, we had a shooting at Westlake Park, one dead.

9-6, Belltown, one dead.

9-4 on the block of Aurora, one injured.

9-1 in Delridge, one injured.

8-19, we had one injured.

8-19, this is just from shots, one dead in First Hill.

We also had in Pioneer Square, 8-17, one injured.

8-12 in South Seattle, one injured.

8-10 High Point, one dead.

Those are actual data points that I can look at to see, okay, how are we doing in our city?

And that's just what shots fired, because I know that we're going to be listening from our care team to talk about the gun violence prevention plan, so excited to talk about that.

And then also, too, you know, us going, well, Joy, the top five arrests in our city are assaults, theft, vehicle, and traffic crimes.

We have warrants and narcotics.

Those are the top five.

How will that impact East Precinct?

Because ours are assaults, narcotics, theft, warrants, and vehicle and traffic crimes is number five.

And how will the budget impact those pieces?

Will it impact arrests?

Will it impact officers on bikes?

And how many of those assaults were caught?

How were they responded to?

That's the information for me that's super helpful.

So when I...

and making a vote or I am telling the citizens, our constituents, this is why I voted on this.

This is because this is what we're gonna get from that.

So that's super helpful for me personally.

And then real quick, I know that we've talked about Baltimore and Boston in comparison.

and I had this information from a minute ago, so I know we're about 800,000 population.

We have 1.4 officers to 1,000 people.

Baltimore has 3.6 to 1,000 people.

Boston has 3.15 to 1,000 people.

So those are very...

I know we like to make comparisons with other cities.

I think Seattle is very unique.

We cherry-pick stuff, but Seattle is very unique to things.

And so, you know, when we talk about the success of Baltimore, Is it police?

Is it their crime deterrence?

What is it, right?

But it's hard to make that comparison when you're looking at the stats, when you have things like the police.

They have double more of the police than we do here in the city of Seattle.

So just wondering where that plays into part.

And last but not least, I know we can talk about cameras all day.

whether they work or not, but here are the facts, okay?

Council added 65 cameras in 2025 and we allowed SPD to have access to 145 traffic cameras in the city.

RTCC supported 17 homicides in 2025, and this is all online, leading to 10 arrests, 10 arrests, 17 homicides.

And I can tell you, I have talked about gun violence in my personal thing.

This month, finally, two and a half years later, I had a brother-in-law, unfortunately, who died of gun violence, was shot in the head, and the trial will go this month to King County.

It was caught on camera.

and that is the only way that they were able to arrest the assailant.

I'm not advocating for, I'm telling you this is the actual facts.

I had a cousin who was shot this year and died.

His dad was shot as well before that, two and a half years ago, and is paralyzed from the waist down.

He's now working in Seattle Public Schools.

His son was murdered this year on Rainier.

There was no camera.

He was shot in the head and died, unfortunately, and that's just really sad, that type of gun violence.

No one's advocating, I believe, for cameras to say, will they prevent crime?

I am talking about, can they help go and solve murders, investigations to lead to closures for the family.

I believe the camera talking point has been very political, and we can't even get past the noise to look at the facts.

Chicago, progressive mayor, 4,400 cameras.

New York, socialist mayor, 6,600 cameras.

Baltimore, 861 CCTV cameras.

If we don't want cameras, fine.

Take out the police cameras.

Take out traffic cameras.

Take out cameras in our chamber.

Take them all out.

Take out...

Parks Department has cameras for a lot of their parks.

Take them out, okay?

But we can't cherry-pick.

I'm telling you, we can't cherry-pick based on political ideology, and I'm tired of it, because people are getting really affected.

While I agree with people, I had a budget allocation that removed camera money and put it into people that are gun violence prevention I did that because that's what's in the time that we're in right now.

And I'm not going to sit here and argue if cameras are good or not.

I'm just giving you the facts of the crimes that they have led to solving.

The ones are in other cities as well.

And now we're at a really critical point where we see that we won't have enough officers that are in comparison to the other cities that people like to talk about and say, well, this is working in Baltimore.

and look at New York and look how amazing Chicago is.

Fine.

But we do need tools holistically in addition to not only cameras but also the gun violence prevention plan, the national network of safe communities.

We need it all, okay?

And I think that's the one thing that is missing because we just drill down on one thing that is so politically hot and not the whole picture.

We literally need everything.

So I just wanted to say that because as I'm looking through this budget and what would help me, again, would understand what points in which the Seattle Police Department characterizes success for our city and then how does this budget impact response times and so forth.

So that's what I will be looking for.

Really appreciate your time and help.

And I really appreciate my colleagues' comments.

I'm not here to argue about cameras if they work or if they don't work.

I'm just here telling everyone the facts.

Thank you so much.

Oh, and let me just say this.

This is my last thing, Council Member Strauss, I apologize, Budget Chair.

I really appreciate when we have folks that can just straight, just can answer a question.

and Councilmember Sacca asked you, hey, will a camera help solve a crime if it's being recorded?

That is a yes or no question.

I do not want to see people silenced on TV when they are sitting next to a politician if they can answer a straight question, yes or no, because it then goes against some of the characters and the people that I know that want to answer a certain question but can't because they feel silenced.

and it's just so disrespectful.

So I just want us to get to a place of common sense where we can just answer questions very simply, okay, regarding does this tool help us, yes or no?

That's it.

I don't want to hear a speech or a dissertation, okay?

Thank you, Chief Sales.

Thank you, Chief.

Director Panucci, table, anything to respond there?

Nope.

Council Member Rivera has her hand up because everyone other than myself has already spoken.

We'll recognize you for a brief comment or question.

Thank you.

I just really wanted to add to what my colleagues, Council Member Saka and Council President have said about cameras is that one point that hasn't come up is the fact that we've relied on personal cameras when something has happened, we're asking people if they've recorded.

Everyone has a phone with a camera on it.

And when things happen, they've recorded things.

Or businesses have cameras.

And then SPD's asking businesses or the public writ large if they've captured anything on their cameras.

So this conversation about cameras, to me, that's embarrassing.

That we have to ask the public for their camera footage because we're refusing to put cameras in places where they need to be so that when crime does happen, we're able to solve crime and provide answers to the folks that have been hurt by to solve crimes.

So to me, that is another reason why this whole camera piece, and Council President and I agree with you, this isn't a political, it's a facts.

We do ask people for their personal footage in order to solve crime.

That does not make any sense.

Thank you, Council Member Strauss.

Thank you, Council Member Rivera.

I'm gonna share my questions and statements and then we will pass it back to the committee table for final comments and then we'll pass it back to Council Member Kettle as chair of the committee overseeing this department.

We will then take an assessment of if we will go to lunch or if we'll just take a brief break between CARE and STD.

So that's where we are today.

And I don't have the correct slides in front of me because I took some notes, but can you share with me the difference between the Interfund charges and the professional services?

I know that you touched on the professional services when Council Member Rink asked about that, but that was about two hours ago.

Yeah, be happy to do that, Council Member Strauss.

Interfund charges are the kinds of non-discretionary, centrally allocated costs that come to most departments from our finance and administrative services, HR and IT departments, things like rent and computers and central HR functions.

Professional services, more than half of the, so on this slide, Interfund charges are the green wedge.

Professional services is a subset of the other, that black wedge.

Professional Services is about $12 million.

It funds a variety of things.

More than half of it is for the ATSC fund, our contractor vendor who manages that program for the city.

But it also includes a variety of consultant services that we hire on contract to supplement what our staff does.

Thank you.

You may have just walked into a trap unintentionally.

I will go to Director Panucci and then we'll talk about the automated traffic safety cameras.

Oh, that trap.

I'm not going to touch that, but I just wanted to also highlight for the Interfund charges, because sometimes it isn't clear where the budget is for large purchases, like vehicles, facilities, maintenance, that sort of thing, that is managed through our FAS department, so I just wanted to to sort of highlight a couple other very expensive items that drive up that cost for the viewing public.

Thank you.

We're skipping to the speed cameras because of this last question.

Are you telling me that we're spending $12 million a year to have zero speed cameras on our streets?

It's about seven million dollars in the proposed budget, so seven of the 12 million dollars is for the vendor cost for the automated traffic safety cameras.

I don't know exactly what share of that is for the seven new cameras that will be installed in 2027 for dedicated speed cameras, but it also includes the block the box, transit lanes, red light cameras, school zone cameras and the like.

Okay, I make that point because I've been waiting for two years now for speed cameras to be on the streets.

I have followed up with SDOT regularly.

It's to the point where we took a walking tour on 8th Avenue Northwest two years ago.

and made the request for a speed camera that had already passed through the Police Officers Guild contract, that had already passed through council, that had already passed through the state legislature.

This has been, for some people in the room, I believe they testified to this policy in 2014. I can tell you that it was that same year and before that I was working on it for the state senator from Seattle.

here in Olympia that is.

And so we are 16 years into this discussion.

We've had two years of both union allowances as well as legislative allowances as well as funding for these speed cameras.

And to date we have zero on our streets.

and what I'm hearing is that we have seven in the works.

And that's just, it's fundamentally not okay with me that we're spending this much amount of time to get to zero.

because we know that speed cameras are more effective than speed humps or speed cushions.

We know that speed cameras are more effective than any of the traffic engineering options that have been provided in the past, whether it's narrowing of lanes or what I've heard from SDOT using bike lanes to try to slow down traffic.

Nine out of 10 people who receive a speed ticket or red light ticket or school zone ticket, nine out of 10 don't do it again.

that is more effective than the F-150s that I see careening over these speed cushions in our streets.

And so you're getting a bit of seriousness from me in a different camera type than my colleagues, but it's because we have literally paved the way two years ago, and I don't see any on the streets today.

If there's something you'd like to share there, there wasn't a question, but I made a pretty intense statement right now.

So if you'd like to respond, you have the floor.

I'll just say the mayor shares your interests and priorities in moving this, and it was named in the executive order.

This budget is trying to move these things quickly.

There are some implementation challenges that we're trying to accelerate that we inherited to some extent, and I'll follow up with more information because it's a number of departments that are impacted by this, but we'll follow off on, excuse me, we will follow up with you with more details.

Thank you.

For historical context, I think it was Greg Spotts who was the director of SDOT when this was passed, if that puts any clarity into perspective.

Chief Sales, I bet you don't even know who Greg Spotts is.

It's been that long.

Oh my goodness.

We'll get to SDOT next week.

Want to focus in on coming back to page 345 of the budget book, reflect current staffing levels of civilian investigative support.

I want to check and confirm.

It's my recollection that in the last Police Officers Guild contract, we had an allowance for former officers to come out of retirement to assist in general investigations because we had a shortage of officers, which meant that we needed to take detectives and put them into patrol.

means was a way of effectively bolstering our ability to follow up on police reports, investigate crimes, and make the case for prosecutors to take to court without having to go through, and we'll come back to the two to three year period that it takes to get an officer from submitting their application out to the street.

But is this that group, is this item on page 345, is this that group?

and anyone?

And so are we effectively saying that we bargained for this ability to have better investigations and now we are walking away from it or I guess what's the statement here?

I wouldn't say that, Councilmember.

We have seven FTEs who have been hired to do this work and will continue doing that work.

We did not have the resources in the proposed budget to expand the number of retired police officers, civilian support staff to help with investigations.

It would be great to be able to afford to expand the number of civilians who are doing this work, but there were trade-offs that had to happen in the general fund.

So for the residents of my district in the entire city who I work with on a regular basis who report to me that they've made police reports about the same individual, same groups of individuals, or the same types of crimes happening repeatedly, whether it's our small businesses being hit with copper theft, our restaurants are experiencing this as recently as, in the last six months where they were going into the refrigeration units, picking the locks, putting the locks back on so folks wouldn't notice.

That's not a fly by night.

That's a sophisticated crime.

Are we saying that we have enough people?

Because what I'm hearing from my residents is that they aren't having these crimes followed up upon.

And so what would you like me to say to my residents at this time about how we are investigating crimes?

As a Chief of Police, we understand the frustration.

We clearly do.

We hear it when we show up to the calls a couple days later, when we're getting the voicemails and the emails.

We clearly understand the frustration of those community members.

But in a time where we have limited resources right now, we have to go through and triage these cases.

We have to look at the severity of the crime, alleged crime that happened, the solvability rate, and then put our resources where we believe that we can solve this, and then, unfortunately, put some of these cases and the calls on the back burner, and then we have to get back to them.

It's unfortunate.

I don't know if you know how much it pains me to say that because I don't want to be a person that is looking in the eyes of a community member and saying, sorry, but your case is not important to us right now.

We have to go on to this next one.

I know our police department and the police officers work in the streets.

Our follow-up units come in every day.

They're working very hard.

and we're trying to do the best we can.

I know nobody wants to hear that, but we're looking at ways to try to figure this out and move forward collectively as a police department and put our best foot forward for the community members here in Seattle.

Thank you, Chief.

And I'll say that in the last six months, last nine months, thanks to Chief Barnes and yourself, I have seen a higher level of responsiveness to reports being filed The problem that I have is that it has taken years of momentum building to get to these last nine months.

And these civilian positions in General Investigations Unit have been something that has assisted to get us here today.

And so what my concern is, is by eliminating these positions today, are we gonna be able to follow up on the copper theft that happened at Loyal Heights Community Center?

We've got kids that are playing sports in the dark right now because we are allowing copper theft to go on.

And so Chief, I don't have an issue with how you're running the department right now because I think you're doing the best you can with the resources you have and I'm seeing improvement.

but what I'm concerned about is if we don't have enough detectives to follow up on the copper theft at Loyal Heights playground that's putting sport rec leagues unable to play, then why are we reducing this today?

And so it's not for you, Chief.

I see Director Panucci's trying to jump in.

So, Director, if you've got anything to share here.

I would just share, I appreciate that you've seen an improvement.

These positions have never been filled, so the current level of service will be maintained.

I understand that it is not perfect or meeting all of the needs.

The mayor really prioritized where she could in this budget.

Direct services to people, in this case, in the police department, given the cost of maintaining the staffing plan, and that was said to be funded in last year's budget but needed an additional increase, the priority was funding officers to have out on the street.

And so I hear you, and this budget had to make some choices, and so working with the police department and their current staffing levels is where we landed in this area.

Thank you.

And just to clarify, things have gotten better, but they have not yet met my level of expectation of the service that we should be providing to our restaurateurs, to the kids who are just trying to play soccer, to the families across the city.

I'm gonna quickly move on.

I forgot to put my timer on.

Sorry, guys.

I'll let that roll an extra 10 minutes just for it.

I wanna come back to parking enforcement.

I wanna say about parking enforcement, the parking enforcement officers and our Seattle Department of Construction Inspectors have the hardest jobs in our city.

and I say that because they bear bad news for residents, that they're not in compliance or that they are not, in some cases that a 85 degree angle is not perfectly 90 and therefore you can't pass inspection.

no matter what, I mean, that's the letter of the law, right?

That's the letter of the code, I should say.

And so parking enforcement without them, we'll see people over parked in places like Uptown where we have specifically set the parking rates to ensure that the neighbors and the folks trying to go to the restaurants have a place to park.

We see that parking, paid parking is an effective tool at increasing the turnover in that neighborhood.

We saw it even in Ballard around Ballard Commons Park.

I thought it was gonna be a horrible idea to put paid parking on the north side of the park because there's a bunch of residents around there.

And in fact, it's made the park sight lines much better.

We don't have people parked there for seven days in a row.

and parking everyone, I can, looking around this room, I can tell everyone loves getting a parking ticket.

So, you know, that's why I say parking enforcement has the hardest, and our SDCI inspectors have some of the hardest jobs.

I guess the news doesn't even think parking enforcement, you know, I see what's going on here.

All that to say is when I saw police recruitment start to take off, It wasn't because the mayor's office had changed.

It wasn't because city council members had changed.

It wasn't because we had given them hiring bonuses or lateral bonuses or moving bonuses.

I saw recruitment start to take off once we had made contract changes to take them from the 20th best paid department in the state to the first best paid department in the state.

That's when recruitment started taking off.

And so I'm challenged right now by we've had these unfilled positions.

We've been going through bargaining with the Police Officers Guild to pay them what their work is worth because they do incredibly hard work.

I've found park enforcement folks eating their lunch in their small little, I don't know what the tricycle patrol vehicle.

I mean like these folks do some of the hardest work and we just passed their contract.

And so my assumption here from past experience is that we will finally see an increase in parking enforcement applicants.

Can somebody from the table help me understand why we are reducing?

I mean, and I know Director Panucci, you've been sharing the line.

It's not fiscally within our realm.

and if that's the answer, that's fine, but why are we reducing these positions just as we are passing a contract in order to recruit them?

I mean, you'll get sick of me saying the same thing, so I won't repeat the same thing I've been saying, but it is about having to make choices in a constrained resource environment, and there are significantly more than eight vacant positions, so we are not eliminating the funding for all of the vacancies, and we hope that this helps, but I will also know, or just highlight what you said, which is these are very difficult jobs, and even with a pay increase, they will be difficult job, so we will see how the change in contract changes retention and recruitment, but what I have heard from the department over the last six months, because we meet at least monthly, it's one of their favorite meetings, I'm certain, is that even as they bring people in, it is hard to keep the positions filled, so there is high turnover.

So we'll keep an eye on this, but this is really a decision that is based on available resources and leaving still, I think, you know, nine to 10 vacancies.

Thank you.

I'm gonna move on to the auto records unit, but I'm gonna keep talking about parking enforcement as well.

If I understand the conversation from some time ago during this committee, is that the auto records unit are the folks that are following up on stolen vehicles?

Are they also doing junk vehicle affidavits?

Are they engaged in enforcing our junk vehicle code in any sense or form?

I actually don't have specificity to answer that question on the fly.

Me either.

That was a position that I didn't know we had until this was brought up in the budget.

No problem.

Don't mind me.

I've just gotten into the weeds of our junk vehicle code and all of the ways that we have a small number of individuals hoarding vehicles on our city streets.

You'll see them with pallets, the flatbeds with the three flat tires and RVs full of pallets.

I mean, when I'm getting to this work of saying that people are hoarding their personal belongings on our streets, this is what I'm talking about.

And so what I'm worried So I'd like more information about this unit and specifically how they formed.

But my worry here is that we are reducing parking enforcement positions.

And my worry is that we are reducing this records unit that would effectively undercut the work that we are endeavoring to do to take private property that is inappropriately and illegally stored on public property off of our streets.

Thank you.

We'll get back to you.

Looking forward to getting back to you.

My colleagues have touched on all of the other things that I was gonna talk about, but I wanna come back to what council president was saying.

She was running down the numbers.

She was running through the stories.

And I wanna bring us back to where we are today.

We're in council chambers of the city of Seattle.

It feels like we're just talking about the seven districts and the seven hills of our city.

it sometimes feels like we are just focused between the borders of our city.

Councilmember Rivera and I attended Association of Washington City's Board of Directors meeting yesterday.

I showed up very late, but I still showed up.

And I was reminded that the folks who live in Leavenworth and Wenatchee, the news cameras that are here today are their local news as well.

Out of the blue, I got a note from somebody that I went to high school with that lives in Northern Snohomish County.

So closer to Skagit than to King, who shared with me that their kid, one of their kid's friends was shot and killed here in the city of Seattle.

And a little bit about the impact that had on their life.

And so I just share with the committee table with the folks in chambers and the general public that What we do here in the City of Seattle is not just about us.

It has regional and statewide impacts and it's our job to protect our city, protect our state, protect the people here because the decisions that we make in these chambers ripple much farther than our city boundaries.

Anything else from the committee table and then I'll turn it over to was about to call you captain.

Council Member Kettle for final remarks, but anything else from the table?

Seeing none, Council Member Kettle, floor is yours, take us home.

Thank you, Chair.

Just quickly, I just have to thank you because I didn't speak to this, the automatic traffic cameras.

Colleagues, you should, everybody should know that I got introduced to city budgeting from then and essential staff deputy, Ali Panucci.

And for the record, I deeply respect her in terms of what she's doing on budget.

Obviously, I'm not in sync with the mayor's hard choices as it relates to public safety.

But I did learn at the feet of Ali Panucci as it relates to budget and also the stakeholdering piece.

So thank you for bringing automatic traffic cameras up, because I wasn't going to speak to it.

But here's the thing, and this is typical in city government.

The splash is, you know, oh, we're going to install these cameras.

but you have to work the entire system.

And so I engage in the entirety of the public safety system.

I have nine entities that report to my committee.

I spent the last two years cleaning up OEMs, emergency management budget issues, and getting them right ship shape, if you will, to use the parlance of the day.

But here we go with automatic traffic cameras.

This is all great, but if the Seattle Municipal Court's not set, then that's a problem.

And so, you know, we have a 1.2 million general fund over to this ATC, you know, for current operations, but I think in those early lessons that I got on budget, we would call that a gimmick.

And there's a challenge with this because this is volatile.

This is kind of like with, you know, permits at SDCI, because usually you have a big surge of funds coming in from these cameras, and then people adjust, and then there's less.

and this could create problems for the Seattle Municipal Court.

So this is a lesson that if we have issues like this, we have to work it all the way through.

So thank you for bringing that up.

Also thank you for highlighting the role of the labor agreements in terms of recruitment and retention, although I will start and I'll always say this, number one thing is leadership.

And I think that this council, from day one, at least for those I started working with on January 1st, 2024, showed leadership in engaging with the police officers across all precincts, the roll calls and all the above, and that really started to set the stage, of which obviously the labor agreements have a huge piece in.

Okay, just to go, I just, quickly, I just want to say I'm centered, I think we're centered, both on our neighbors in crisis, but also our neighborhoods in crisis, and for those neighborhoods in crisis, we do need more officers.

You know, one of the things I keep speaking about is that we need to replenish, this kind of popped up here and there, our specialty units, the gun violence reduction unit, the gang unit, community police officers, I used to work with them all the time back in my community days, and they made a huge difference.

Detectives, we have to fill all these up, and so it's so important.

But I and I think all of us agree that we have to have this one type of approach, the comprehensive approach.

And that's what we've been doing in this council and in the Public Safety Committee.

We've been doing this comprehensive approach as it relates to gun violence, We've been doing it as it relates to public drug use and possession.

I was just on the phone this morning with Lisa Dugar from PDA, working those issues, working the issues with KCJ Health, all those kinds of pieces.

Alternative response, I think Chief Barden will speak to that and all the issues related to that.

We've been working that because we have to.

because it's about addressing the scene between public safety and public health, housing and human services.

Now, I see in the briefings both sides are becoming public safety, which is fine unless we use it as a means to cut traditional public safety or not resource properly traditional parts of public safety.

Colleagues, just to the other cities' point, Boston comes up, similar size.

We share I-90.

But I should add, East Coast, West Coast policing is different in terms of staffing and so forth.

Looking at other cities, Portland, San Francisco, Denver, and sometimes, depending on the topic, Vancouver, BC is like our kind of natural ones.

When it comes to labor relations, it's the West Coast 7, as we talk about.

But at the end of the day, we need to look at what we're doing here locally.

and from a budget perspective, the SPOC agreement hurts from budgeting.

Just like when the Trump administration does different things that impact inflation, that hurts from a budget perspective.

The SPOC agreement and the SPEMA agreement hurt.

It's needed, I support it, but that's what's driving these numbers.

So these numbers are used different ways.

Clearly the labor agreements are driving those and I say that just in a matter of fact way.

we were not set up for success in those agreements because of the bad decisions and the legacy of decisions made a half decade ago plus in this chamber.

not including my Council President Emeritus, of course, and I do support my colleague, my chair here, too.

But they had impacts, and we're living with those impacts today.

But at the end of the day, we're at an inflection point right here as it relates to public safety, and budget is ground zero in this, and we need to be looking at this very indefinitely.

So thank you, colleague, Chief Chair Strauss, the rest of my colleagues, but Chief Sales, really appreciate Great, yes, no answer to Council President.

Love it.

Mr. Eater, we've been working together for a few years.

Again, I learned at the feet of now Director Panucci.

Thank you for being here for this.

And then obviously Mr. Whitson, who's taken on the reins there at Central Staff.

Colleagues, thank you for your continued support on public safety issues.

Thank you, Council Member Kettle.

I'm gonna share some facts about Boston and Seattle and an opinion.

Facts, the Hawks are better than the Pats.

shown it a couple of times.

In my opinion, that Kraft guy is out of his mind though.

Let's keep winning.

Let's keep winning.

Let's go Hawks.

With that, that does come to the end of the Seattle Police Department presentation.

during our budget process here.

It has been nearly three, it's been two and a half hours.

This is longer than a typical committee meeting.

I really appreciate all of the time and attention everyone's paid here.

Council Member Kettle, I wanna check with you.

Would you prefer a 12.50 start, a 1 p.m.

start?

Does it matter?

Fantastic.

We're going to come back at 1 p.m.

because it's noon right now.

So we're going to take lunch.

And thank you to the entire care department that has been here since 9.30 a.m., watching and waiting in the background, ready to go, right on time.

I appreciate you very much.

Now you have the context for the next part of the conversation.

and so we will start back up at 1 p.m.

and then we'll take maybe a 10 minute break between CARE and Seattle Fire Department and then we'll be done for the day.

I have been timing myself.

I'm up to 20 minutes today.

Thank you, colleagues.

If there's no objection, the committee will be adjourned until 1 p.m.

Hearing no objection, we are on recess until 1 p.m.

Thank you.