Seattle City Council Briefing 92120

The September 21st, 2020 council briefing meeting will come to order.

The time is 930 AM.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Morales?

Aye.

Mosqueda?

Peterson?

Oh, I'm sorry.

Here.

Thank you.

Peterson?

Here.

Sawant?

Here.

Strauss.

Present.

Herbold.

Here.

Torres.

Here.

Council President Gonzalez.

Here.

Eight present.

Thank you.

If there is no objection, the minutes of September 14th, 2020 will be adopted.

Hearing no objection, the minutes are adopted.

Really quickly for my president's report, just wanted to remind folks that tomorrow, Tuesday, September 22nd, at 3 o'clock p.m., we are scheduled to have a special meeting of the full city council.

The purpose of the special meeting is to take a vote on the three budget bills that the mayor vetoed in late August, immediately before we all broke for recess.

Those are Council Bills 119825, 119862, and 119863. I do intend to speak a little bit more about tomorrow's special meeting during my report later in this morning's Council briefing, but wanted to make sure that at the top of the agenda, everyone was aware of the scheduled special meeting of the full Council for tomorrow at 3 o'clock p.m.

Once again, thanks for making yourselves Available for that and look forward to having a further discussion about what we can expect on the 22nd and this afternoon.

For now, we'll go ahead and move into a preview of today's city council actions council and regional committees.

We will go ahead and call on council members as established by the rotated roll call for city council meetings.

This week, that roll call rotation begins with Councilmember Lewis, then Morales, Mosqueda, Peterson, Sawant, Strauss, Herbold, Juarez, and then I will conclude this morning's council briefing discussion.

This morning, we do not have any executive sessions or any presentations, so this will be the last item of business on this morning's agenda.

We'll go ahead and start with Councilmember Lewis, and then we'll hear from Councilmember Morales.

Councilmember Lewis, good morning.

Thank you.

Good morning, Madam President.

I will be brief for this morning's briefing.

There's no items on this afternoon's council meeting from the Select Committee on Homelessness Strategies and Investments.

I am going to be canceling the committee meeting on Wednesday for the Select Committee on Homelessness Strategies and Investments.

I had anticipated we would be able to have a lengthy discussion about the implications around navigation team and some other things on this Wednesday, but just given the posture where we are.

still resolving some of the outstanding issues from the 2020 balancing, I think it makes more sense to delay that conversation, to know what the delay in the land will be on some of those building blocks related to outreach.

So my intention would be to set a special committee meeting potentially for some time in early October to follow up on some of those issues.

But for now, I am canceling the meeting this Wednesday, just given that there's still a lot kind of up in the air to be resolved before that meeting, I think would be productive.

I want to just take a second, given the horrible and shocking news from Friday on the passing of Justice Ginsburg, just to express my condolences to someone who is a judicial hero of mine, someone who I had the great pleasure in law school for since one of my professors was a former clerk of Justice Ginsburg.

And Justice Ginsburg crashed one of our classes and taught.

pleading standards related to a federal rule of procedure 12b-6, and so I'll always remember that rule for sure.

If I ever appear in federal court, I'll have that one down.

But it's just losing such a giant of jurisprudence in such a year that's already been so challenging, and someone who has just left a big impression on the country and also on the law, and just wanted to express in this public forum my profound grief and just my profound respect for her leadership and her legacy, and that it was a great privilege to be able to meet her, albeit very briefly, and that her role in this country will be irreplaceable.

I do not have any additional updates for this morning.

Reference to a potential meeting of your committee that you speak to my office and chair Mosqueda's office once we start the budget process which will begin effective September 29th.

All committee hearings are considered scheduled unless they are pre-approved by the council president and the chair of the budget committee.

Let's talk after this week and see if a special meeting of your committee is still necessary.

If so, I'm sure that I and Council Member Mosqueda are happy to consider the request.

Certainly.

Thank you.

And I certainly intended to pursue that process if that's the route that I want to go down.

So thank you.

Okay.

Thank you so much.

Any other questions or comments for Council Member Lewis?

Hearing none, we'll go down the line to Council Member Morales, please.

Good morning.

Good morning, everyone.

I will be brief as well.

On today's full council, I have one bill, Council Bill 119887, establishing a permanent board for the Equitable Development Initiative Advisory Board.

Additionally, we have several appointments for different commissions.

Six different commissions have appointments coming through, so you should have all of those appointment packets, and we will be trying to get through that quickly.

I know we've got a lot on our agenda this afternoon.

We've been continuing to have constituent meetings, and I had several calls last week and several scheduled this week.

with neighbors who are particularly concerned about community safety and asking a lot of questions about kind of the paradox of being a community that is both over-policed and under-policed.

And so I have had one conversation with our crime prevention coordinator, and we'll be continuing those conversations to see if there's something we can do to address the concerns that we're having in several different pockets of District 2. That is really all that I have for this morning, and look forward to our conversation this afternoon.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Morales.

Any comments or questions on that report?

Okay, hearing none, we will go down the line, and Council Member Mosqueda is next, followed by Council Member Peterson.

Good morning.

Good morning, Council President.

Good morning, Council colleagues.

I have a few items for you today.

On the introduction and referral calendar, we have two items being referred to the Finance and Housing Committee.

First is an ordinance appropriating money to pay audit claims as per usual, and the Office of Accountability, sorry, the Office of the City Auditor's request for a one-year suspension of a citywide financial condition report.

On Finance and Housing Committee, we do have a Finance and Housing Committee this Thursday, September 24th at 2 p.m.

We will have a presentation from the office of housing on the city's rental assistance program and investments.

Last week, as many of you know, we had an announcement that $19 million in rental assistance and mortgage counseling foreclosure prevention funding was announced by the mayor's office and city council.

Want to note that about 8.7 million of this funding did come from the jumpstart COVID relief bill.

So I want to thank all of you council colleagues and the robust community partners who engaged in helping to shape what the COVID relief funding could look like.

Well, it was about a quarter of the money that we originally allocated for the overall relief in 2020. We wanted to make sure that we got around any roadblocks or objections and really got the funding out because what's most important right now is making sure folks have funding in hand.

And I was really happy to see that the funding is on its way to community, including additional fund sources that we approved from earlier this year.

with federal assistance.

So $19 million in rental assistance and mortgage counseling and foreclosure prevention, much needed, but much more is needed.

And that's what we'll learn about in the update on Thursday.

We will also have a briefing and discussion on a possible and possible vote on Council Bill 119890, which is the Loyal Heights transfer of property.

This legislation is implementing the surplus land disposition policy that I sponsored in 2018, enabling no cost transfers of city and city light owned property for the purposes of affordable housing.

This was a partnership that we did with the state legislation that passed.

And this piece of legislation will be the first property to be transferred for affordable housing.

In this case, affordable home ownership, which we know is a key component of getting out of the cycle of poverty.

And we're really excited to see these policies move forward.

And finally, on the agenda for Thursday, we will continue our conversation about transportation network company minimum labor and compensation standards for the drivers.

Thank you all for participating in the meeting last Tuesday.

If you weren't on the committee and want to catch up.

There is video of that and I'm also happy to do a one-on-one conversation so you can understand the policy context.

But it was really great to have Corina walk us through the piece of legislation.

There's two studies that we looked at.

We talked about the historic nature of this work and also the history of what got us here over the last a few years, so excited to work with all of you to finally put this last piece of the puzzle together.

I know many of you took a vote last November when I was on parental leave and some of you weren't yet on council, but this is the last component of our efforts, at least for now, to address compensation and labor standards in the Transportation Network Company arena.

And as I mentioned last week, we did ask for folks to send amendments who are on council to send amendments to central staff by Thursday last week.

So we could draft up amendments.

I will have a series of amendments that I mentioned on Tuesday that I'm hopefully.

going to be able to package together for you and send around as a substitute.

We have a draft in hand that will be coming your way so that we can have a robust discussion.

Any questions, we'll look forward to having that discussion on Thursday.

And my hope is that we can pass a strong piece of legislation on Thursday to continue to support workers and promote what we know is a key component to creating a robust economy and when workers have the wages they need.

Madam President, lastly, on the budget, we are expecting to get the 2021 budget transmitted by the executive on September 29th.

That's next week on Tuesday.

My office is working closely with central staff, the council president's office, and I look forward to working with each of you to develop this year's budget process and make sure that there's a transparent and collaborative process for how we work on the 2021 budget.

We did circulate a memo last Monday, and we, as you saw in that memo, made some key changes to the budget process this year to support this transparent process, including hard cutoff dates and times for our budget forms A, B, and C to support an earlier publication and earlier transmission of both amendments and any language for our central staff, for our staff in each of our offices, and for the viewing public.

I want to make sure that folks know that in an effort to support an earlier publication for council members, the staff and the public are intending to get the materials not only submitted to central staff earlier, but we will publish this earlier for the viewing public as well.

We've begun one-on-one conversations with council members on the process so that everybody is well aware of how the forms A, B, and C will be transmitted this year.

And thank you in advance for all of your time, your work, your collaboration on this effort.

If you have any questions that are lingering from the memo we submitted, please let our teams know, both at central staff and within my office.

And much of what we're putting into place is to ensure that everybody has the information earlier.

Lastly, I will echo the comments made by council members already.

Many of you, we were like many of you, we were shocked and saddened by the passing of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and just want to note that in our ongoing efforts to fight for workers' rights, gender equity principles.

We are not only in shock, but we will not be in despair.

We will continue to fight in her name to fight for basic human rights.

And with everything in our being, we will continue to advance all that we know we need to do within our corner of the country to stand up for workers, to stand up for gender equity and We will continue to make sure that policies that we've passed get set in law and are not further eroded to making sure that we uphold the principles that she fought so hard for.

It is pretty shocking as well to hear the news this morning from the Justice Department designating Seattle, Portland, and New York City as jurisdictions that have permitted violence.

We wholeheartedly reject this.

As I know, many in this city will talk about later today.

This is really a conversation about what we need to do as a country to promote public safety and to evaluate policing as we know it.

This news from the Department of Justice came with the threat to slash federal funding coming into the city of Seattle at a time when our businesses are shutting down, at a time when families are increasingly showing signs of food insecurity, at a time where people don't have jobs and need support, not just from the city of Seattle, but from the federal government as well.

And we are grappling with the possibility of threats to our funding.

It is.

It's inhumane and we need our federal partners to step up so that we can have not just a robust and more complete response to the pandemic in front of us from a public health perspective, but to address the other crisis that is the economic crisis that is coming down on us.

We will continue to push back and make sure that our city gets the funding that it needs for the residents of not just the city, but this country.

And I fully support the work that we can do in collaboration to push back on this federal narrative.

The last piece of good news over the weekend, congratulations to our Seahawks for their opening win over New England Patriots.

And the Emmys were also very exciting last night.

Good to see that there was a lovely tribute to Seattle filmmaker, Lynn Shelton.

Thanks for all of the work that Lynn has done to her family and friends for their support and her continuing contributions to the arts community in Seattle.

These efforts will not be forgotten.

Thanks so much, Madam President.

I hope you all had a good weekend since we finally got some fresh air and it was nice to see the blue sky again.

Thank you, Council Member Mosqueda.

Any comments or questions for Council Member Mosqueda?

Yes, this weekend was full of breaths of fresh air, literally.

And I know all of us were really happy across the city and across the Northwest, frankly, to finally be able to see and breathe, breathe good air quality.

So really grateful for that over the weekend.

Okay, folks, we are gonna go ahead and continue down the line.

Next up is Council Member Peterson, followed by Council Member Sawant.

Thank you, Council President.

Good morning, colleagues.

Thank you, Councilmembers, for your remarks on the sad passing of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

That was heavy on our minds over the weekend and will continue to be as we see what Washington, D.C.

does about it.

Today, there are five items on the City Council agenda from our Transportation and Utilities Committee.

Those five items include four items from Seattle City Light, as well as legislation from our Seattle Department of Transportation to budget more tax dollars for the Madison Street Rapid Ride Project, serving Council Districts 3 and 7, to qualify the Madison Street Project for a relatively large grant from the Federal Transit Administration The FTA required SDOT to provide a longer schedule and to fund a larger contingency.

So the budget's increasing from $121 million to $134 million.

$5 million of that increase is coming from city tax dollars.

I'd like to thank the Seattle Department of Transportation and the City Budget Office for honoring my request to beef up their fiscal note that accompanied this council bill.

to show the public and my colleagues all the sources and uses of funds so we know where the money's coming from and how it's being spent.

The sources and uses in this revised fiscal note illuminate several points.

First, the good news, only about 17% of the funding for this project is coming from city tax dollars.

But the purpose of the legislation shows that a large portion of the cost increases are coming primarily from the city.

So this has real impact to our transportation budget by moving $5 million to this project.

The revised fiscal note also stresses the reliance on other funding sources, such as Sound Transit, which is having their own financial troubles.

So my committee will keep a close eye on the Madison project to make sure costs are managed effectively going forward.

I'm confident in SDOT's ability to complete this project and plan to support this particular bill today.

I will, however, be cautious about diverting additional flexible dollars in the future if any of these non-city sources fall through.

As we know, the city has pressing maintenance needs, such as repairing our old bridges throughout our city, as we heard last week with the city auditor's report on bridges throughout the city.

I'd like to commend sccinsight.com for their thorough coverage of this back-to-basics issue.

As I mentioned at the previous council briefing, we're having a special meeting of our Transportation Utilities Committee this Friday, September 25 at 9.30 a.m.

We need this extra meeting simply due to the large volume of business that goes through our committee and the need to tackle this business prior to the official start of budget season.

Members of the committee, please let me know if you're not able to attend the special meeting this Friday at 9.30.

At full council today, we can also finally adopt Resolution 31933. When our city was still engulfed by the wildfire smoke for several days, I'd like to thank the members of the Governance Committee chaired by Council President Gonzalez for unanimously recommending Resolution 31933. This legislation will, for the first time, have City Hall formally assess future legislation through the lens of climate change, specifically carbon emissions and our resiliency to climate change.

It's important to note that the resolution will have the executive report back to us in March about the initial results of implementation, including any ideas for making it better.

Thank you.

Thank you so much, Councilmember Peterson.

Are there any questions or comments on Councilmember Peterson's report?

Okay, hearing none.

Next up is Councilmember Sawant, followed by Councilmember Strauss.

Good morning.

Thank you, President Gonzalez.

Good morning, everyone.

There are no items on today's city council agenda from the Sustainability and Renters' Rights Committee.

The next meeting of the committee will be this week, Thursday, September 24th at 9.30 a.m.

The regularly scheduled time for the committee would have been this Tuesday, that is tomorrow at 2 p.m., but because of the special meeting of the city council to overturn the mayor's veto of the budget needed to be moved to Tuesday, tomorrow we are moving the renters rights committee to Thursday instead.

Essentially we are swapping time slots for the special meeting of the city council for this week.

All the council members who are members of the renters rights committee have indicated that this new time works for them.

Thank you.

We will have two points on the agenda on Thursday.

We will discuss with renters and organizers of Seattle's cancel rent campaign.

We are confronting a tsunami of evictions and foreclosures in Seattle, Washington State, and indeed throughout the country.

Nationally, we are seeing record COVID-related unemployment is leveling off and at a staggering 1 million new claims a week.

Communities of color, of course, are disproportionately harmed.

Black unemployment is 50% higher than white unemployment, according to the U.S.

Department of Labor.

about a third of the renters nationally were unable to pay their full rent on time this month.

The Aspen Institute, no friend of working people and renters, estimates that 30 to 40 million renters, including three quarters of a million Washingtonians, face the risk of eviction in the coming months, quote, in the absence of robust and swift intervention, unquote.

That is why my office is working closely with community activists in the movement to cancel rent, mortgage and utility payments and late fees both for residential renters who have lost jobs and incomes and have faced financial devastation because of the worst recession since the Great Depression and related to the pandemic, and also for small businesses that are struggling for the same reasons.

At Thursday's meeting, we will review the staggering scope of the crisis and discuss steps the movement and the city government must take to stand with renters and struggling small businesses.

Secondly, we will also discuss with climate activists and organizers about the accelerating impacts of climate change, the smoke-filled skies, and how to organize against the financial institutions that fund fossil fuel infrastructure.

On today's City Council agenda, there is an item from my office for an honorary street rename in District 3 in honor of Douglas Q. Barnett, who played a monumental role in developing theater in Seattle's Black community over the course of his life.

He founded New Black Arts West, headed up over 40 productions, and acted in over 30. I will say more about this in the City Council vote this afternoon.

The Historic Central Area Arts and Cultural District nominated Mr. Barnett for the designated honorary street name and coordinated the logistics already and the funding with the Seattle Department of Transportation and we really appreciate their efforts.

As this City Council briefing is on, Sasha Somer, a community organizer from my office, is at 23rd and Union in the Central District in District 3 with community members with the United States Postal Service and members of the Seattle local of the American Postal Workers Union.

celebrating the opening of our Central District Post Office.

The return of the C.D.

Post Office is a win for the C.D.

community and for public services, powered by hundreds of activists who worked with our Socialist Council Office to demand that the federal government restore, Trump's government, restore our neighborhood post office, especially given the current attacks on the post office by the Trump administration.

Thanks also to the US Postal Service members the greater Seattle local of the American Postal Workers Union members of the Central Area Senior Center and hundreds of other neighbors who wrote letters and signed petitions demanding the restoration of the post office and of course we know this issue goes beyond our neighborhood.

The post office is under unprecedented and vicious attack by the Trump administration.

They would like nothing more than to tear down this vital public service and put mail delivery in the hands of big business profiteers.

So we are in solidarity with the American Postal Workers Union who are fighting back against this attack.

The postal workers all over the country are opposing this attack, and in a very small way, but an important way for us, the reopening of the post office at 2207 East Union is a blow against right-wing attacks on social services.

The community that needs the post office is the same community that is struggling to hold on to affordable housing.

Far too many working-class homeowners and renters, and disproportionately Black and other members of color, are being driven out of our city.

That is wrong.

And when we see the public institutions that symbolize a healthy community disappear, that's also wrong.

I congratulate everybody who wrote letters, signed our petition, came to our community meeting last year to advocate for this post office, which builds on our historic Amazon tax victory earlier this summer, which among other things, commits the city to invest a minimum of $18 million a year in affordable housing in the city beginning in 2022 to help bring back black working class households.

Um, according to Trump and the right wing, Seattle is apparently not just a socialist hellhole, but also an anarchist jurisdiction.

Donald Trump's Justice Department has labeled New York City, Portland and Seattle, and I think more cities are coming up as anarchist jurisdictions.

As part of its rationale for labeling the cities as anarchist jurisdictions, the Justice Department cited city councils voting to cut police funding and the refusal to prosecute protesters for charges like disorderly conduct and unlawful assembly.

I'm really gratified to see many political figures in various cities criticizing this move from the Trump regime, including Democratic Party politicians.

I would add that the real opposition that needs to be shown in our city, for example, in Seattle, by Democrats has to be led by following through on the promises to defund the police by at least 50 percent.

The first step towards this, of course, will be to overturn the Democrat, corporate Democrat Mayor Durkin's veto of the summer budget vote by the council and upholding the mild but important progressive gains that were made through that budget vote.

Last but not least, the Office of Professional Accountability has concluded in its newly released report that the police officer who doused a seven-year-old boy with pepper spray at the May 30th Justice for George Floyd protest was, quote, lawful and proper, unquote.

This is absolutely shameful and unacceptable.

According to the report, the officer directed the pepper spray at a woman who, quote unquote, grabbed onto an officer's baton and yelled, don't push me, you move back, as police tried to move a line of protesters standing in Westlake Plaza.

And apparently, in the eyes of the OPA, this is sufficient justification to use pepper spray on anyone, let alone a child.

This is yet another example that illustrates why working people need to fight for an elected Community Oversight Board with full powers over the police.

This is also a concrete example of how the democratic establishments in various cities need to set a better example because that is the best way to fight against Trump and the right wing.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Salant for that report.

Any questions or comments on that report?

Okay, hearing none, we will hear now from Council Member Strauss, followed by Council Member Herbold.

Council Member Strauss, you are on mute.

Thank you.

Good morning, colleagues.

Good morning, Council President.

There is one item from the Land Use and Neighborhoods Committee on the Introduction and Referral Calendar, Resolution 31970, the Comprehensive Plan Docketing, which sets the resolution for the 2020-2021 cycle of amendments.

There are no items from the Land Use and Neighborhoods Committee on today's full agenda.

The items I discussed last week, to be on today's agenda will be held for one week and we will take them up at next week's City Council meeting.

The next meeting of the Land Use and Neighborhoods Committee is this Wednesday, September 23rd, starting at 9.30 a.m.

There are three items on the agenda.

A public hearing and vote on CB 119877, which extends provisions for the virtual design review and landmarks board meetings.

a vote on CB 119838, the annual round of comprehensive plan amendments, and a vote on resolution 31970, the comprehensive plan docketing resolution.

Last week in District 6, I met with community groups and city departments about localized improvements at Sunset Hill, on Finney Ridge, and in Freelard, the neighborhood between Fremont and Ballard.

I spoke with D6 residents in District 6 meetings, our weekly resident meetings about addressing homelessness, public safety, Ballard Commons, transit, up zones, and parking requirements and new development.

This week, I continue to have D6 resident meetings and really enjoy speaking to members of the community.

If we were outside of COVID, I would be having these meetings in person, and I really miss seeing everyone face to face.

This Wednesday, I'll also join the Ballard Alliance members for a meeting to discuss homelessness and public safety at the Ballard Commons and Leary Triangle.

Regarding the passing of Justice Ginsburg, I must say that our nation is a more perfect union from the leadership Justice Ginsburg provided.

And in order to secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, we have much work to do.

The news from the Justice Department this weekend does not establish justice, it does not ensure domestic tranquility, it does not provide for the common defense or promote the general welfare for our nation or city.

And we must never lose focus of our work to create a more perfect union and understand that the Constitution of the United States was only ordained and established because the Bill of Rights was included.

We must hold fast as a people of the United States to work together to create a more perfect union that reflects the ideals of the Constitution and Declaration of Independence for all residents, immigrants, and refugees who make up our nation.

Thank you, Council President.

That is my report.

Thank you, Council Member Strauss.

Any questions or comments on that report?

Hearing none, we'll go ahead and go down the line.

Next up is Council Member Herbold, and then we'll hear from Council Member Juarez.

Good morning.

And thank you.

Good to see everybody this morning.

As far as items on the full council agenda from the public safety and human services committee, we have 1 item.

It's council bill 1198 79, which relates to the Puget sound emergency radio network.

Otherwise known as this is a new digital radio communication system used for.

emergency response, and it replaces a 20-year-old analog system that is no longer supported by the vendor.

This legislation allows us to enter into an interlocal agreement between 12 different jurisdictions and will then create a new non-profit to own, operate, and maintain the radio network.

The non-profit itself will be called PCERN, and the agreement before us This afternoon, again, is an interlocal agreement for the operations of that nonprofit among the 12 jurisdictions.

Other items related to public safety and human services, I'd want to just uplift, as I do every week, the efforts of the Seattle Fire Department and their administration of COVID-19 tests at their four sites.

Now, dating back to June 5th, they have administered more than 190,000 tests.

COVID-19 tests and again, just wanting to really recognize that important work that our fire department is. is participating in and really leading in.

I also want to uplift that the fire department, as mentioned last week, has issued a number of out-of-city deployments, also known as mutual aid, and a total of 34 fire department.

Firefighters have been redeployed to the Oregon and Washington fires, 31 to Oregon.

and three defiers in Washington State.

As it relates to a couple of items related to the police department, I just want to mention that last week as a follow-up to what we've recently heard in press accounts about the shortcomings in addressing overtime controls in the 2016 city auditor recommendations.

I sent a follow-up letter to Chief Diaz about implementation of those recommendations.

30 recommendations were in the report regarding budgeting and policy procedures, including tracking of overtime and off-duty work.

Many of the recommendations have, I should say, most of the recommendations have been implemented.

the recommendations that are listed as pending.

Many of them relate to work with the Seattle Information Technology Department to implement a new work and timekeeping system.

And though I thank the chief for the attention he is directing and dedicating to the issue of overtime, I think it's important that the council and the public get an update about the implementation of the recommendations of the city auditor.

Um, and, um, also.

that SPD should implement new scheduling and timekeeping systems while also enhancing existing systems to include non-automated controls to facilitate the tracking.

I've asked the city auditor to actually do a review of the sort of non-automated controls that SPD has been working under that we are working together while simultaneously working to implement the technology solution.

The upshot being just because the technology solution has, the timeline has lagged, that certainly doesn't mean that we should not and cannot be doing more manually to ensure that policies are being adhered to and off time work.

So I look forward to hearing more from Chief Diaz about that.

Another one of the questions I'd ask too is the chief has said that the redeployment away from specialty units into 911 is another element that will help him get track of overtime abuses or excessive use of overtime, even if it's not an actual violation.

I'm interested also, and I think other council members will be interested as well, to get some estimates of what number of overtime hours are likely to be reduced just from this.

that the chief has made to move 100 officers out of specialty units into 911 response.

So looking forward to getting that information as well.

I also want to mention another request to Chief Diaz.

There was an article last week in the Seattle Times regarding the arrest of an SPD captain for allegedly agreeing to pay for sex to a police decoy, posing as a prostitute, and the preferential treatment he received by other officers.

And in that article, there is reference to the fact that this individual is being paid while on leave.

And that was a decision that was made many months ago.

And the SPMA contract grants the chief the discretion to determine if leave without pay is necessary in order to maintain the public trust.

I've asked the chief whether or not he is willing to reconsider the prior decision to grant pay pending the outcome of the criminal charges.

And again, the consideration of the criminal charges has been greatly delayed and this individual is still being paid while on leave and it is This individual's been paid quite a lot of money over the interim, and I think it is really appropriate question for consideration of the chief of whether or not leave without pay is a more appropriate response to this particular decision to, again, the OPA did have a finding of, a sustained finding in this instance, And the chief did uphold the sustained finding as it related to the decision to have the individual on leave.

But the question is really whether or not the person should be paid.

during that leave.

And then lastly, in this area, before I move on to human services, I want to just highlight information that we've received, again, via a piece from the Washington Post picked up in the Seattle Times related to violent memes and messages surging on social media in a reference to a new report.

The report by the Network Contagion Research Institute, which previously had focused on right wing violence from groups such as the Boogaloo Boys warns that some left wing groups have embraced similar social media tactics, including memes.

and catchphrases to spread messages and help coordinate offline activity.

And the researchers pointed to possible signs of coordination associated with riots in Seattle, Portland, and other cities on July 25, involving fires, looting, and property damage.

The report acknowledges that left-wing political actors, including those who embrace the so-called Antifa movement have been responsible for far less violence than white supremacists and other right-wing groups.

And this is a finding consistent with the conclusions of law enforcement and other threat analysts.

But they recognize that Left-wing extremism is not immune from the efforts to coordinate violent responses.

And the researchers found that the growing use of memes is a worrying sign and argue that the spread of, and I think this is really important, of dehumanizing rhetoric on the left and the right that we can set a stage for continued serious incidents by what the report referred to as network enabled mobs.

I just want to reference that I do believe that this is a troubling trend.

I have stated that my concern around bias crimes and hate crimes when we saw the rise from the right and likewise, the increase of evidence of these trends is troubling when it's on the left.

I want to again reiterate my previous and often stated support for peaceful protests in opposition to property damage and violence.

Just a plug that the Human Services Department asked me to use time in the briefings meeting to get out the word.

Seattle Public Schools has been providing meal service to students throughout the summer, but they're doing it during the school year as well.

The student meals are available by bus.

They're prepared cold meals available Monday through Friday via eight different bus routes.

Specific routes are listed on the website, which is seattleschools.org forward slash resources.

You can click on the student meals link in the column on the left.

And then also there are meals available at school sites as well.

SAC breakfast and lunch meals are provided by Seattle Public Schools, and there are also reheatable prepared meals by Fair Start, and they are available Monday through Friday, 1115 to 115 p.m., and they're available for students, parents, and guardians.

Students do not need to be in attendance for parents and guardians or other authorized adults to pick up the meals.

food is available at 40 sites around the city.

We will be having a public safety and human services committee meeting tomorrow at 930 a.m.

on the committee agenda.

We have an appointment to the public safety civil service commission.

We have a judicial appointment to the Seattle municipal court.

We will hear a Seattle Municipal Court monetary sanctions report commissioned by the Office of Civil Rights.

We will also hear legislation to amend the whistleblower protection code to expand the definition of report in the City of Seattle's whistleblower protection ordinance to include reporting to the Office of Inspector General for Public Safety.

and make sure that whistleblower protections are extended in that instance.

We'll also be receiving a presentation from the Seattle Police Department on the community service officer program and how that has been implemented since hires in, I believe, early February.

And then we'll hear two briefings, one on the proposal for supervised consumption sites.

And we'll hear from the Public Defenders Association, the ACLU, NeighborCare, and Public Health.

Then we're going to be getting a presentation from CoLEAD, hearing how their transition from the LEAD model to the CoLEAD model during COVID-19, and we'll be hearing from presenters from the PDA, co-lead personnel, and a University of Washington researcher studying the program.

And lastly, I just want to highlight that on Friday, my office circulated a proclamation declaring December 21st to 27th to be Diaper Need Awareness Week.

And at this afternoon's council meeting, we'll hear from Toni Sarge of West Seattle Baby, who received the signed proclamation, as well as sharing her thoughts on diaper need in our community.

In order to sign the proclamation, each of you will have the opportunity this morning to affirm whether you'd like your signature attached to the proclamation.

For those who affirm, the clerk will digitally affix your signature today, and the proclamation will be ready with signatures this afternoon.

I believe the process that we've agreed to as far as collecting these signatures is Council President Gonzalez will facilitate that step in asking which council members would like to sign on to the proclamation.

And just two more announcements.

We'll be hosting virtual office hours again this Friday, September 25th, between 2 and 6.30 p.m.

And we've got another West Seattle Bridge Community Task Force meeting on Wednesday.

That's it for me.

Thank you.

Thank you so much, Councilmember Herbold.

Are there any comments or questions for Councilmember Herbold before we go through the steps related to the diaper need proclamation?

Any comments or questions?

Okay, hearing none, oh, Council Member Solan, please.

Thank you.

I wanted to briefly respond to the point that Council Member Herbold made about the left and the right, and I know she was quoting conclusions from a study, and I appreciate that.

But I'm gravely concerned at people in any way using the word extremism to refer to the left, because it is exactly what Donald Trump is doing.

trying to whip up fears about the left wing that are based almost entirely on lice.

And of course, much of this fear is whipped up in the by alluding to Antifa, which is in reference to activists who are anti-fascist.

And so, you know, they're actually not fascist, they're against fascism.

And I think we have, I mean, I certainly take this seriously, but I would really urge Democratic Party politicians to also take that very seriously and not use even, it doesn't matter that the study has used that word, but I think political representatives have a serious responsibility to not use the phrase extremism Because there is no evidence to show that the left wing is engaging in extremism and in fact throughout history, extremism and violence and all the things that are associated with the left through mainstream media is actually perpetrated by the right wing and by the state.

And so I think it is extremely important to avoid language that is used to equate the violence of the far right who murder people, the violence that is used by the state, by the police departments to repress protest movement and the so-called extremism on the left.

And I know Council Member Herbold was trying to be very precise and I as I said I appreciate all of that and that she was specifically talking about means but I'm sorry means simply do not equate actual violence the weaponry that is used by the state against peaceful protest movements and overwhelmingly the protest in the judges for George Floyd movement have been peaceful so I think we have to take that into account.

Thank you.

Thank you so much for those comments.

Any other comments or questions on Council Member Herbold's report?

Hearing none, we're going to go ahead and, as Council Member Herbold indicated, move through the steps related to the acquiring of digital signatures for each of the council members related to the Diaper Need Proclamation.

So this Proclamation Declaring Diaper Need Awareness Week will be presented, as she mentioned, at this afternoon's City Council meeting.

And before we can present it, signatures will need to be affixed to the proclamation.

I'm gonna ask that the clerk call the roll to confirm the council member signatures may be affixed to it.

But before we do that, are there any questions before I request the clerk to call the roll?

Hearing no questions, will the clerk please call the roll to determine which council members would like their signature affixed to the Diaper Need Awareness Proclamation as described by Council Member Herbold?

Lewis?

Yes, please affix.

Morales.

Yes.

Mosqueda.

Yes.

Peterson.

Yes.

Sawant.

Yes.

Strauss.

Yes.

Herbold.

Yes.

Juarez.

Yes.

Council President Gonzalez.

Yes.

Nine in favor.

Thank you.

The proclamation will be prepared with those council member names added to the proclamation and in time for this afternoon's city council meeting.

Thank you so much, Council Member Herbold, for bringing forward, as you almost always do annually, a proclamation to acknowledge Diaper Need Awareness Week.

Really appreciate your advocacy in this space.

Okay, we're gonna go ahead and hear now from Council Member Juarez.

Council Member Juarez, good morning.

Thank you.

Good morning, Council President and colleagues.

Let's see, the Public Asset and Native Treaties Committee.

We have two items on this afternoon's City Council agenda, starting with Council Bill 119881, relating to renovating Key Arena at the Seattle Center.

This legislation authorizes the mayor to execute an agreement with Seattle Arena Company, or as we know it, ArenaCo.

to coordinate design and construction of street improvements and pedestrian and bike improvements.

This is basically, as you know, those of you who've been around since January 2017, a continuation of legislation, three years in the making, addressing the improvement in transportation needs with OBG and DHL in the city of Seattle.

So this includes transit-only lanes for street use improvements along Queen Anne Avenue North and First Avenue North, a transit queue jump at 1st Avenue North and Republican Street, design upgrades for protected bike lanes, and additional improvements to Thomas Street.

The Memorandum of Agreement, of course, is to establish the roles and responsibilities of how we approach and work with the city and ArenaCo with respect to design and construction and responsibilities.

ArenaCo is responsible for contributing around $594,000 of the estimated total cost, $990,000 for the improvement.

The Seattle Department of Transportation would fund the balance of the cost for the project, that's around $396,000, through a credit to the street use fees that ArenaCo would otherwise owe for the redevelopment project.

ArenaCo is expected to owe a total of approximately $3.5 million in street use fees associated with the project.

And the MOA, the Memorandum of Agreement, requires that the credited fees only be used for the design and construction of the transit improvement.

The executives, and we all know, said this before, hopefully, The city of Santa Barbara expects construction of improvements to take approximately one year in time so the arena can open next fall in 2021. Big shout out to Brian good night.

He provided myself and my colleagues last Thursday, September 17th, a memo that provides the background and information on the city's relationship with arena Brian, good job.

It's really well done and well written.

It's an excellent analysis on the Council Bill 119881, and it really lays out nicely what the responsibilities are, what the costs are, and the relationship will be between SDOT, ARENA Co., and the improvements.

Second item, Resolution 31969, another matter that's been going on for a while.

Waterfront Lid Number 6751, the appeal.

This bill sets the time and place for hearing on the appeal from the findings and recommendations of the report of the hearing examiner that the council appointed I think now two years ago on the final assessment rule for the local improvement district 6751. The resolution sets the hearing date for December 1st and the public assets and native communities committee, that would be my committee, To meet the requirement, we still would have the quasi-judicial rules, and I'm sure Council President will remind us again and instruct us what we can and cannot talk about.

Basically, we cannot discuss this matter.

This will be set to meet the requirement, excuse me, should Council take action this week via resolution.

Again, please direct all questions either to our office, we're happy to sit down and go over this with you, or Eric McConaughey on central staff.

In regards to parks, again, our office will send our weekly responsibility of sending you all the parks weekly COVID-19 programmatic updates.

And as you all know, the parks have reopened because of improving air quality.

Yale Parks and Rec reopened all parks, boat ramps, beaches, golf courses, and play fields on Friday, September 18th.

Big thank you to Jesus Egale, our superintendent, We're always in close communication, and I appreciate that he checks in with me, and we talk at least two times a week, especially after Pier 58, which is continuing.

I'll have more information later on that when we finish up with parks.

So our indoor shower program continues to be successful.

From September 9th to September 15th, Seattle Parks Direct served over 300 users.

Delridge and Miller are closed on Saturdays, and all centers are closed on Sundays.

The Keep It Small and Simple campaign in the parks is still continuing for the reporting week of September 9th through the 15th.

The highest average number of park visitors were observed and reported at Golden Garden, Alki Beach, and Green Lake.

Starting Friday, September 11th, the city closed the parks as well as the social distancing ambassadors program due to poor air quality.

the best data collection had caused at that point.

This week ahead, I have a couple of meetings coming up with Sound Transit.

Tomorrow on the 22nd, I have the North King County meeting with Council Member McDermott and Chair Kent Cole of Sound Transit.

Then I have a full board transit meeting this Thursday, September 24th at 1.30.

That's it, thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Juarez.

Are there any comments or questions on that report?

Hearing none, I will go ahead and conclude this morning's portion of this agenda with my report.

Really quickly, just wanted to take a moment to acknowledge that this last week we had a momentous occasion here in our own community.

I'd like to take a moment to congratulate Tabernacle Missionary Baptist Church, which celebrated their 70th anniversary this past week.

Located in the central district, it is truly a testament to that congregation that they have survived the challenges of gentrification to civil rights movements and several economic downturns, their commitment to serving the community is an inspiration to us all and we continue to hold on to.

to our proverbial hats through 2020, so I want to congratulate Reverend Manoway and the congregation at Tabernacle Missionary Baptist Church on their 70 years of existing and serving our community in the Central District.

I had an opportunity to, as Council President, send over a letter on behalf of the Council acknowledging their 70th year anniversary and wanted to take a moment to, in this morning's council briefing, acknowledge publicly that they just celebrated that momentous occasion.

Also, just really quickly, nothing on this afternoon's agenda from the Governance and Education Committee meeting in particular.

I do have one item that I intend to walk on to the introduction and referral calendar this afternoon at 2 o'clock p.m.

Yesterday afternoon, central staff analyst, budget manager alley Panucci circulated to all of you a proposed bill that was developed over the past several weeks following countless hours of conversations between the mayor's office and council staff and my office in particular.

During this afternoon City Council meeting, I will move to suspend the rules to make a motion to place this legislation on the introduction and referral calendar.

There have been some updates to that legislation since I circulate since Allie Panucci circulated it yesterday afternoon.

My understanding is that she is getting ready to circulate that again this morning with some additional changes made to that proposed legislation.

This legislation serves as a vehicle for a possible compromise measure, which the Council could consider and take up in the event that the Mayor's veto of the Council's recent budget legislation is sustained by a vote of the Council.

Due to some of the provisions in the primary budget bill, which is Council Bill 119825, For all intents and purposes, a three-quarters vote of the council is necessary to effectively override the veto and allow for implementation of the intent in these bills.

Thus, if the veto override vote on Council Bill 119825 fails to receive at least seven votes, it may be necessary to take up action on the new legislation that I am proposing be placed on the introduction and referral calendar for potential consideration at tomorrow's special full council meeting at 3 o'clock p.m.

Again, I intend to have this legislation placed on the agenda for possible action tomorrow during the special meeting immediately following the consideration of the vetoed bills consistent with our city charter.

So again, because we don't, because we have to have our conversation around vetoes in open session, I want to make sure that depending on what happens with the override vote, that we have a alternative option present to the council generated by the council in the event that the override is unsuccessful.

It is still a priority for me to make sure that we get some agreed upon investments into community and to also try to strike a balance here in terms of some of the components that I think we have been able to find some common ground on with the mayor's office.

Allie Panucci is the primary drafter of the legislation and she, Dan Eder, and Greg Doss are all available between now and tomorrow afternoon to address any any additional substantive questions you might have.

I would acknowledge that the council's conversations with the mayor's office are ongoing and it is possible that we may see some additional changes or updates to the legislation before we take final action tomorrow at three o'clock.

But I do have Allie and Dan on the Zoom call this morning, wanted to provide Allie a quick opportunity to or Dan, whoever wants to take the lead, an opportunity to just quickly give an overview of what is included in that proposed legislation that I intend to walk on this afternoon for placement on the introduction and referral calendar.

Again, colleagues, with the goal, with the intent being that if the override of the mayor's vetoes are fail, then we would have an alternative bill to consider.

And so, so I, so Ali will take an opportunity to describe what is in that alternative version of the bill that could be considered by the council.

If again, a veto override fails tomorrow afternoon, Ali.

Thank you Council President.

Good morning Council Members.

Yesterday afternoon we distributed an email that with the draft of the bill and a table that offered a side-by-side comparison showing the changes that the Council made to the original budget revision ordinance and what is or is not in the replacement bill.

The replacement bill incorporates both amendments made to the, to council bill 119825 and adopted by the council, as well as conceptually pieces of the proposals that were in the other two vetoed bills, which were council bill 119862, that authorized $3 million of spending from the revenue stabilization account, to the Ledge Department as well as Council Bill 119863 that authorized an inter-fund loan that supported the appropriations in the adopted 119825 for investments in community.

The replacement bill includes an appropriation to the Ledge Department for participatory budgeting in 2020, that's $1 million.

It also includes a $2.5 million appropriation to HSD for community-led investments in the community safety space.

An Interfund loan would no longer be required to support those appropriations.

So the replacement bill captures much of what was included in the bill in Council Bill 119825 and the other two bills as adopted by the Council with modifications.

I'm not going to walk through each change, but at a high level, They, uh, many of the changes are included.

Most of the provisos related specifically to the Seattle police department are removed.

Um, the reporting, the request for reports related to SPD operations and financial information have been modified to better align with information that we can easily can get our hands on.

And we think we'll support council member interest in providing information as we move into the 2021 budget process, and like I said, it includes those appropriations to support some community-led investments and participatory budgeting.

Happy to answer questions offline if you have an interest in any specific amendment and whether it is in or not.

And myself or Dan Eder, who's also on the line, if you want to talk about vetoes and votes, we're happy to talk offline.

Hey, Dan, anything that you would like to add to Ali's remarks?

No, I'm available for any questions that people may have.

Great.

Thank you so much, Dan and Ali for that quick overarching.

view of what is in this proposed alternative.

Again, should an override of the mayor's veto fail, I think it's really important for us to have something in place that would be agreeable to The mayor and her administration in terms of immediate implementation and operability for 2020. So, so I just want to really quickly say that this bill is an attempt to try to move us forward.

It does memorialize certain council priorities that continue to be priorities, including creating a framework and a path towards the question around the size of sworn.

of the sworn personnel at the Seattle Police Department by, for example, creating a pathway towards actively looking at out-of-order layoffs.

That is an issue that we have had an impasse with publicly and privately.

With the mayor, we now have an opportunity to put into writing and memorialize a path forward that will allow us to meaningfully engage with the executive around our interest as a council that I believe is also an interest of community partners to really take a look at the size of the sworn personnel of the Seattle Police Department.

In order to do that, we have to pursue out of order layoffs in order to not roll back many of the achievements that we have made around diversity hires and diversity recruitment.

and also to be able to focus on officers that we believe from a policy perspective should be considered first, mainly those with disciplinary issues or with other problematic track records that, again, we would want the chief to consider for layoffs first before any officers that don't have similar issues.

It has become abundantly clear that much of the disagreements within City Hall have created an opportunity for our community to be pitted against each other.

I think this is an opportunity for us to, again, if the override fails this tomorrow afternoon, provides us an opportunity to find a path forward with the executive that will result in a series of shared policy goals, community investments, and a new commitment to collaborating on solving together as a functional government some of the issues and most pressing issues facing members of our community.

It does continue to be our responsibility to make difficult choices and this is an opportunity for us to see if there is an opportunity to memorialize some compromise.

The compromise budget package, much like the negotiations we had on the COVID-19 relief bills, reflect our sincere efforts to bridge past divides, to chart a path forward, and to turn the page and find a way for, again, the leadership of the city to come together.

and tackle seriously the many issues that face our constituents on such an important issue as the civil rights moment facing us, as well as many of the other priorities reflected in the rebalance package that the City Council considered over the summer.

This is an opportunity for us to do that and to try to move forward.

I just want to highlight a couple of things.

One is that originally one of our bills appropriated $14 million to HSD in 2020. A second appropriated $3 million for the participatory budget in 2020. And of course, the third set of amendments were related to layoffs and cuts to command staff salary amongst other issues, including the navigation team impacts.

Those were all issues that we continued to hear from the mayor was a concern for her.

We also had an opportunity to hear from many of our constituents that it continued to be concerns for them.

This particular bill, I think, would, again, if an override of the mayor's vetoes fail, would allow us to move forward with a $2.5 million appropriation to the Human Services Department that would be granted through an RFP process and dispersed to community partners in 2020. I continue to believe that if, if given the option between zero dollars and two and a half million dollars that I'm going to choose the two and a half million dollars, of course, I would want for that for the disbursement of fourteen million dollars to occur.

But it has become very clear to us that the executive does not believe that using an Interfund loan is the appropriate course for this proposed spending in 2020. In other words, Mayor Durkan has made it very clear that in spite of this council's allocation of $14 million to the Human Services Department, her administration did not intend to, nor would they spend any of these dollars as requested by the city council, leaving community with effectively a $0 investment in community safety initiatives that I continue to believe are the models we need to create true community safety.

So as a result of our ongoing conversations with the mayor, my office was able to secure an agreement with the mayor that she would agree to spend $2.5 million if appropriated to the Human Services Department that would be granted through this RFP process and dispersed to community this year.

Again, these dollars will be critical to supporting capacity building for community-based organizations.

and begin that capacity building.

And it's important for us to continue to invest in these community-based organizations who will deliver public safety resources and programs that are a shared priority for community, the council, and the mayor, such as youth and gun violence prevention and interruption, amongst many other investments.

Again, if the override vote fails, then this proposal, alternative proposal, also provides $1 million to a participatory budget process for 2020. And this is a recognition of a couple of things.

One is there is a real lack of resources remaining in the 2020 budget.

Secondly, the fact that there are only three months remaining in the 2020 year In which to appropriate and distribute these funds creates a significant administration challenge to whether or not we can actually spend the entire original 3Million dollar appropriation for 2020. So, in other words, for the remainder of 2020, it is possible that it might be necessary to right size the original 3Million dollar appropriation for 2020 to be 1Million dollars.

And I think it's important for us to recall that when community partners proposed and the council attempted to fund $3 million for this process, It was intended to support a nearly nine-month-long participatory budget process, and now we are in a place where we only have three months left in this year.

So this reduced level of spending acknowledges the reality that we only have three months left in the year and has right-sized the original $3 million investment for 2020. to $1 million.

However, in total, the bill that was circulated by Allie this morning for your consideration will still allow for a total of $3 million to be invested in a participatory budget process.

And of course, Council will have the opportunity to appropriate more funds in the 2021 adopted budget to support participatory budget processes and activities that will occur in 2021 because I think we all agree that we don't think that the participatory budget process is going to only take.

three months.

It will inevitably go into next year and there will be resources needed for next year.

And the mayor has agreed to identify and secure an additional $2 million for 2021 that will further seed the participatory budgeting process for a total initial investment of $3 million between 2020 and 2021 in the participatory budgeting process.

So these are opportunities for us to not only again, follow through on our commitment, though, slightly in a different way with a 3Million dollars in the participatory budget process being spent in 2020 and 2021. This will allow us to structure a process that will have influence and impact how the city will invest up to $100 million of investments that the mayor intends to invest in BIPOC communities across the city.

So that is, in a nutshell, what is contained in this proposed alternative specifically that would be changes.

I do wanna thank Council Member Herbold for her work on issues related to the navigation team that are reflected in the bill and would defer to her to make comments or remarks about what is included in this alternative bill that would be available for council members' considerations related to the navigation team.

Council Member Herbold.

Thank you.

I'm going to actually defer to Council Member Andrew Lewis.

I was involved in those discussions to a point where elements necessary to confirm HSD and the executive's commitment to make significant policy changes were not received well by the executive.

And since the basis for my support continuing to fund the navigation team has always been And continues to be a commitment from the executive to continuous improvement of the policies associated with removal of encampments.

sort of withdrew from those discussions when it became clear that the executive was unwilling to commit to that ongoing continuous improvement that they said on one hand that they were committed to, but on the other hand were unwilling to formalize that commitment beyond a verbal commitment.

So hand it over to Council Member Lewis.

Thank you, Councilmember Herbold.

And I will just share that that is an ongoing frustration as well on my side, too, given kind of where some of those discussions went last week and unfortunately where they sort of resolved on Sunday in relation to Some of the operational reforms all of us want to see in the navigation team.

That said, there are some significant and meaningful.

new things that have been put on the table by the executive on the navigation team that as recently as the spring would probably not have been on the table.

And I am happy to share those things with the council now and things that I believe are incorporated into the legislation that Council President Gonzalez has discussed.

One of those things is an additional half a million dollars for 2020 that will be offered for behavioral mental health services, diversion, and other important assets for the navigation team to be meaningfully responding.

to folks that are in need of a behavioral mental health component or some kind of immediate diversion to get them into a hotel or into some kind of housing situation.

And I want to stress again, that is just for 2020. So there's a possibility of building on that and increasing for 2021 based on the way that we're funding it, which is to eliminate five FTEs from the human services side of the navigation team to fund those additive services.

So that could carry over into 2021, reduce personnel, increase services.

For 2020, it would be half a million dollars.

The further the navigation team and HSD are going to look at ways to utilize good neighbor agreements with certain encampments to allow encampments to pursue some ways to work with the navigation team to potentially stay in place.

that is something that they're going to be reporting back to the council on as part of this arrangement.

Additionally, there is going to be a reduction of the police FTEs, of two FTEs.

This is something we continue to go back and forth with the executive on to determine the total that are on the navigation team.

But as it stands, This is sort of similar to some of the other reductions that we made in the fall to specialty units where the current vacancies on the navigation team for sworn personnel is two FTEs.

So eliminating those two FTEs that are vacant is something that is manifested in the legislation.

to reduce the police footprint on the navigation team.

There's gonna be some additional announcements that are gonna be made in the near future for what the navigation team in 2021 is going to look like in keeping with some of these changes that are reducing the scope and scale of transitioning the role to being more of a coordination and clearinghouse service for coordinating with service providers rather than doing as much of the outreach as they have been.

That pivot for the last couple months of 2020 is evident in some of these concessions the executive is making in downsizing the personnel and expanding the amount of service offerings I would add that there's an additional commitment for $3 million of non-congregate shelter for 2020 and a commitment from the executive to spend the $3 million on non-congregate shelter And so that is the update on the navigation team component of this.

I'm happy to answer questions, and I'm sure that more information will come in today and tomorrow before any potential vote on this.

But I do, just in closing, I want to expressed similar frustrations to what Council Member Herbold expressed over some other components, not being able to work their way in to the satisfaction of all parties related to some of the other structural changes that throughout this entire year, a lot of us on the council have been seeking.

But I do think that there are some very real

We lost Councilmember Lewis.

Sorry, Councilmember Lewis.

If we can get you back on via phone, we will make sure to do that.

So colleagues, before I go ahead and have Ali and or Dan walk through the procedural aspects of voting and voting requirements for tomorrow's special committee meeting, I just wanted to say sort of in broad strokes that I continue to support the original actions that we took in the summer budget balancing exercise, and I stand by Budget Chair Mosqueda's work that she did and led us through over the summer.

I continue to believe that the amendments that we made were measured, but important mechanisms by which to advance our goal to continue to respond to community partner calls to address this issue of racial reckoning facing all of us across the country.

So I continue to stand by what we did this summer.

I continue to believe that those were the right policy choices and I do continue will continue to support the actions that we took over the summer.

Now, nonetheless, because- I'm back.

Just wanted to say I'm back.

Technical difficulties, folks.

Thank you, Council Member Lewis.

Nonetheless, I do think that because the council operates in open public session, because there have been some members of the council who have expressed concerns about a path forward and about the possibility of changing their position, on the budget that we considered before recess, I do think it's imperative and appropriate for us to have an alternative proposal in front of the council for consideration should the override of the mayor's veto of the three bills fail tomorrow afternoon.

Again, this alternative approach is not you know, an opportunity for us to undermine what we did this summer.

It is an opportunity for us to acknowledge that if an override of the mayor's veto fails, then effectively all of the work that we did in the summer will be completely erased.

And I think it's important to try to find agreement where we can find it and on those things that are agreed upon, If the council wishes to consider it and to pass it by the requisite number of votes, then we will have an opportunity to move forward and put ourselves on a path towards still continuing to work on many of the important policy issues that this council has expressed are a priority for us.

So Dan, do you want to handle the issues related to the number of votes?

And then we'll go ahead and open it up for comments by council members.

Sure, I'd be happy to do that in a summary way.

And then if there are questions about any of the three particular bills, I'd be happy to do my best to address those questions.

I think in summary, I would say that the council president has talked about what it would take to override the mayor's veto of the three budget bills.

And in brief, it would take six votes on reconsideration to override the mayor's veto.

It would, however, take seven votes for two of the three bills to become operable, for the appropriations in the bills to become legal authority to spend money.

and those are Council Bill 119825, that's described as the overall budget bill, and also Council Bill 119862, and that's the $3 million to the Legislative Department for community-led work.

The last bill, Council Bill 119863, is the $13.1 million Interfund loan.

That bill, because it doesn't include appropriations, would also take six votes to override the mayor's veto, but it wouldn't need a seventh vote to become operable.

So six votes would be sufficient both for the override to become effective and for operability.

That's my attempt to summarize more complexity than it even sounds like.

but I can answer any questions that folks may have.

Okay, colleagues, any questions for Allie or Dan?

Councilor Solano, please.

I don't have questions for Dan, but I did have important comments to make on this issue.

And I have a question, not for the staff, but for the council.

So whenever you.

Yeah, no, please.

I think if there's no, if there's no questions for Dan or Ali, again, they are available to you off offline, but go ahead.

Councilor Solano, please.

Thank you, President Gonzalez.

I'm a little more than a little perplexed and nonplussed when I when I received this bill, because the.

I mean, because it seems to me that there is a strong assumption that the override of Mayor Durkan's veto will not be successful.

And I really appreciate Council President Gonzalez that you made very clear that you intend to support the override.

And of course, I have said that at last week's briefing that I intend to support the override of the veto.

But we haven't heard from many other council members.

I mean, I would imagine some other council members are also going to override the veto, but the question is, do we have enough, a sufficient number of votes to override it?

And so I'm not, I don't understand.

I mean, obviously I, as you know, I strongly agree that we want to get as much as we can get.

Without triggering a veto, but I don't understand the bargaining strategy for those of us who are willing to override.

the veto.

I don't understand the bargaining strategy to say already that here's another bill that capitulates on many things if the override doesn't succeed.

I mean, that doesn't present any incentive for the council members who may be intending to not support the override of the veto.

And that's where I have a specific question to council members I think you, not I think, you do have an obligation to state publicly where you stand now.

I mean, not now at the briefing, not tomorrow at the actual vote, because it's not correct for a council member to surprise members of the public on which way they're going to vote.

And it seems to me that other councilmembers have some knowledge about how other councilmembers will vote.

I don't.

I've not been part of any of these discussions.

And so on behalf of members of the public, I'm asking councilmembers to say publicly now where they stand.

Are they planning to support the override of the veto?

Are they planning to vote to sustain the veto?

In which case we will need an alternate bill.

And I'll just end on this.

Specifically, I think it's important that members of the public understand the alternative bill that has been emailed to the Council yesterday.

And I accept what Councilmember Gonzalez says that is still changing.

I appreciate that.

But even as it stands right now, it is significantly rolling back even the small progressive changes that the Council made in the It rolls back the tiny defunding of the police.

It rolls back the stopping of the sweeps.

It rolls back investments in the Green New Deal.

What it does not roll back on is the austerity.

And I would push back against this, which in my view has been a staggering attempt at a sleight of hand.

That bill is also good.

Councilmember Lewis made some points.

I just want to quote from Ali's memo.

$50,000 and assumed 14 FTE reduction in the personnel assigned to the NAV team.

This cuts this bill, new bill, alternate bill cuts $50,000 and assumes a 2.0 FTE reduction in personnel assigned to the NAV team.

And the 2.0 positions are currently vacant.

These are the positions I believe Councilmember Lewis was referring to.

So these are not even filled positions.

They are vacant positions.

But look at the stark difference in the reduction in SPD budget.

While what we passed before the August recess was not in any way sufficient, but at least it was a good start.

And now the alternate bill that's proposed is far, far less than that.

And so, as I said, I want to push forward as much as possible, but I don't understand the strategy of putting this forward now before council members have even felt any pressure to state publicly where they stand on the override and how they are planning to vote tomorrow.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Solant.

Any other comments or questions?

Councilmember Herbold.

And I think that's a hand up from Councilmember Mosqueda.

Okay, and then Councilmember Mosqueda.

Councilmember Herbold.

Thank you.

Council President, you had referenced the reduction in the community research project investment from the previous council approved $3 million to $1 million.

But you had said that there was a commitment from the executive recognizing that that work is going to be going into 2021, that there was a commitment from the executive to provide the additional funding necessary in 2021 in the sum of $2 million.

Can you just talk a little bit about in what form that commitment exists.

I have concerns about verbal commitments that are not in some way memorialized, as I mentioned earlier, related to the navigation team.

So would just love to hear a little bit more about that.

I think at this juncture, it is a verbal commitment, and I do think that there have been emails that have memorialized that to my office.

Now, I am happy to, as I mentioned at the top of this morning on this alternate bill, should it be needed, I'm happy to have my staff talk to the mayor's office staff about incorporating that commitment in a recital in this alternate bill as sort of part of the agreement, should the alternative bill be necessary because of the voting thresholds that would be required to make the three bills operable effectively.

I'm happy to, and hopefully my staff is listening, have them immediately get off the phone here and go talk to the mayor's office around some language that we can incorporate with that commitment.

And I appreciate the need and the desire and the interest to wanting to memorialize that in alternate bills so that we have a high level of confidence that the $3 million in total will come to fruition.

Thank you.

And then Council Member Mosqueda and then Council Member Morales.

Thank you, Council President.

I appreciate the opportunity to ask some questions here.

I think it's been the process of this council under your leadership to encourage us to ask questions of central staff during these council morning briefings, if that's correct.

I just have a few questions for central staff.

about four questions.

First, I want to say I too am hopeful that this council will continue to move forward and to override the veto.

I think it's important for us as a council, as a body to continue to provide education to the community that what we did in the summer 2020 rebalancing package was a 1% reduction.

In fact, a less than 1% reduction to the SPD budget.

It was $3 million reduced from a $409 million budget.

And in conversations with the mayor's office, she has acknowledged that about 95% of the cuts that were done to SPD were done because of what she had put forward.

The remaining small amount that we're talking about is really symbolic in nature, symbolic in our efforts to move forward the conversation that has been demanded across the country for us to really reevaluate what public safety looks like and to try to right size investments into community to recognize that there's many situations that 911 is being called for where individuals do not need to show up with a gun and instead we need those mental health counselors and we need those substance abuse counselors and we need crisis intervention counselors to be scaled up and for health one and more public safety.

servants to come to the call for 911, but not necessarily somebody with a gun.

This was a small investment, a down payment, as we said before, into what really needs to be a more robust conversation.

And that effort can continue.

As the council president mentioned, there is ongoing conversations about what those next steps could look like.

Absolutely, I believe this can be a both and.

this budget could move forward and we could continue to engage in a conversation about what 2021 looks like in a more robust conversation as we had proposed with the participatory budgeting process that was embedded.

I am hopeful that we continue to show that this improvement in how we hear community, how we engage in the almost 300 organizations as Council Member Herbold has reminded us that there was more than just one or two people we engaged with.

These were coalitions that represented large swaths of the public.

So my hope is that we will continue to support the efforts that we put forward.

That said, I'd like to ask a few questions about the proposal that's in front of us if the override is not not successful.

And for Council Central staff, would you say that the cuts that are being proposed here or the changes that are being proposed in the budget document in front of us is limited to just SPD-related issues?

Council Member Mosqueda, to clarify, I'm not sure I understand the question.

Is the difference between the budget that is being suggested, if the override is not successful, are the changes that are listed there just related to SPD or is it broader than SPD?

Primarily the changes, the differences between the revised bill and 119825 are related to HSD.

There are some changes related, excuse me, SPD.

There are some changes related to the navigation team and HSD and other departments that.

are in these modified provisos that are different.

And there are also some, what I would describe as some technical changes related to the appropriation changes for positions in OLS and OCR and the SOTO trail funding.

But it is those funds for the purposes to restore funding for those positions and to support the SOTO trail are still in this replacement bill.

And I think what this suggests is a commitment from the executive to move forward with those hiring.

It just may be the source of funds is different.

Okay.

And I see, um, within the SPD bucket, the main issues that were raised, um, at the press conference related to the veto where the exec salary, the a hundred FTEs and the navigation team.

Um, but can you confirm that the SPD cuts also are, sorry, um, changes put back into place, you know, the funding for Homeland Security and the school resource officers.

So is it broader than those three things that were mentioned at the press conference?

Dan, I think you may have more details on what was in the specific.

There were a number of provisos that restricted spending in all of those areas.

All of those provisos are removed from the replacement bill, in part for it is just a practical reality that Council Bill 119825 assumed procedurally that layoff notices would be issued at a certain time and all that sort of thing.

Here we are.

too much later almost from where we expected that to happen.

And so practically speaking, it would be difficult to implement those provisos.

And even if the veto is, if you vote to override the vetoes, there may need to be modifications to that because of those practical realities.

That's helpful.

And I know you spoke to that, I think in the Council President Din as well, regarding the timing And so is it mostly the timing that was an issue on those other pieces?

Yeah, I think that's a fair way to characterize the issue.

All of the provisos would have required notices to staff, affected staff, and we anticipated a minimum of an expected period of three months.

And because we are now In mid-September, that effectively doesn't leave enough time to recoup the salary savings that would flow from those layoffs in 2020.

And then just as a quick reminder on this one, so we had our providers assumed that on August 1st notice of those layoffs would go to officers under the direction of the chief of police.

It's not September 14th.

No layoff notices have been issued and we've continued to be at an impasse with the mayor related to out of order.

to address concerns related to what happens to diverse hires and the reality that without a exception to the seniority rule, that we could backslide on some of the progress we made around additional diverse recruitment at the Seattle Police Department.

So the change in this alternate bill acknowledges, it does not modify what the council has issued to be its policy priority.

It does, however, memorialize that operationally, we are not going to be able to to effectuate the intent of these provisos because it is the middle of September and we need at least three months to get an understanding of whether or not this would come to fruition and be real and at this point we are so far into the year that it does not appear we are going to be able to fulfill that and of course we know that the provisos were structured such that if the three-month layoff was not effectuated, we would have, as a council, had to reconsider lifting the provisos on November 1st in any event.

And so this is acknowledging that we have sort of a timing issue while also incorporating in the alternate bill a memorialized commitment and pathway forward on how the council will work with the executive and the chief on addressing the issues related to out-of-order layoffs, which will be done through the Labor Relations Policy Committee body, which five members of this council sit on and several members of the executive sit on.

And we will work with Labor Relations in that venue to effectuate the intent of looking at the size of the sworn personnel staffing at the Seattle Police Department.

Thank you, Council President, and thank you for the reminder that we have that valve included in there for the November date.

And then my last question is, we had intentionally included 4 million dollars for gun violence prevention.

This was 1 of the issues that was also noted during the.

I think it's really important to note that the $4 million that we put in there was intentionally working as community members in diverse sectors that asked us to address gun violence prevention.

Is the $4 million for gun violence prevention still part of the proposed package if the veto is not overridden?

Appropriations and provisos describing the intent for those appropriations in 119825, one was for the $10 million and one was $4 million for the purposes you just described.

There is now a $2.5 million total for HSD.

for community-led investments.

And then it lists a number of potential purposes.

My understanding is that it doesn't prohibit the use of the funds for that type of investment, but it is not specifically for those specific investments, but it includes responding to incidents of violence in high-risk communities.

I'm just taking a section, but I'd be happy to talk with you offline understand if this language is inclusive enough of your intent.

Thank you, Madam President.

Okay, thank you so much.

I think earlier I said that it's September 14th, but it's actually September 21st.

I like took us back into a seven-day time machine.

My apologies for that.

Council Member Herbold, please.

Thank you.

This is just a follow-up question, Council President Gonzalez, to the discussion around out-of-order layoffs and the council's unanimously supported goal to reduce the size of the police department by 100 officers and the removal of that council intent by removing the the provisos.

I do understand the the timing issue.

I also appreciate that we do have a commitment from the executive to pursue out-of-order layoffs, but don't quite understand It's a, it's a, as I read it, it's an agreement in principle that the chief that that we should work together to see that the chief can submit requests for out of order layoffs, but without there being a stated policy goal to.

reduce the size of the department by laying off officers.

I don't understand how that agreement as it relates to the out of order layoffs is triggered.

And I also want to just flag, as it relates specifically to the reports that our previous legislation required.

One of the reports, as I understood it, was to look specifically at how specialty units could be eliminated, reduced, civilianized, or expanded.

And this, again, aligns with the council's unanimous decision as it relates to the 2020 reductions and interest in reducing or eliminating some specialty units.

I'm just wondering whether or not that kind of work is still work that we are asking SPD to move forward.

Because again, it's, I think the, community vision that we have been hearing through the rebalancing process from large coalitions like And I think that the commitment to King County equity now and decriminalize Seattle goes beyond the commitment to freeze hiring to fill vacancies.

It is a broader systemic and structural look at the department and, again, the footprint of the department and, you know, not just 9-1-1 response, but this issue that I've

Councilmember Herbold, section 20 of the revised budget revision ordinance states, by establishing this section, the council expresses its policy intent for the Seattle Police Department to reduce the overall size of the city's foreign police force.

And then it goes on to list the expectations in requesting some work for recommendations of functions to be eliminated, reduced, civilianized, or expanded as further described below.

is in section 20 of the bill that I distributed.

Thank you all today.

I appreciate it.

Thank you, Ali, for highlighting that section and Council Member Herbold.

I agree with your observation that a commitment to pursue out-of-order layoffs is an empty commitment if we aren't hearing a commitment about deeply evaluating these issues around the size of the police force and whether or not certain functions need to be eliminated.

reduced, transferred, etc.

Section 20 does memorialize a commitment to engage in that analysis and to include counsel in in that analysis as opposed to having the executive and the police department do it without without city council and so I think that's an opportunity for us to be engaged in that interdepartmental team process to to engage in that process and to and to require that that report be publicly accessible so that we can have the data available to us that will be necessary to answer many of the questions and address many of the concerns that you have highlighted in your remarks.

Colleagues, any other comments or questions?

Council Member Morales, please.

Thank you very much.

very deliberative and cautious and listening to what our community is feeling and thinking about the direction that the city needs to go.

And I think as it relates to community safety and what that could look like, this was, as we've all said, a very small down payment on some important structural work that we need to do.

This process is just beginning, but this was an important beginning.

And so I do think it's really important that we stand committed to what we have discussed and what we have shared with community already.

That said, I do want to also echo Councilmember Herbold's concern about making sure that we have clear commitments from the executive about the work that her office will support, including an additional $2 million in 2021. for the participatory budget process and additional community investments since those are things.

If we don't override the vetoes, those are things that are not included in the bill as presented now anyway.

I do want to talk for a moment about the navigation team.

Our office worked really hard to try to make some important structural changes there.

We had an amendment that would have removed the police from the navigation team.

And what this proposal has is just leaving positions vacant, which is not the kind of structural change we were looking for.

And then amendment 40 did defund the navigation team entirely with a commitment to invest instead in our service providers who are already doing this work and who are doing it well, but do need additional resource to continue to do that, especially as we see an increase in our homeless population.

What we are left with instead is a $500,000 proviso that will fund mental health services and diversion and rapid rehousing.

but it effectively preserves the funding for the navigation team.

And that's not something that I personally feel is, and many of our constituents feel, is serving our homeless community very well at all.

So I am interested, and maybe central staff can clarify this for me, because I didn't see in the proposal that we have before us, if there was any shift in giving the NAV team sort of prioritization access to shelter services.

What we're trying to at the very least see is that our service providers can gain access to available shelter without having to go through the navigation team.

And I know that there is some language here specifically for the LEAD program.

I'm wondering if that will also be the case for other service providers.

Council Member Morales, there is no language in the bill that prioritizes access to shelter spaces for the service providers.

In the proviso related to the $500,000 for the mental health services diversion and rapid rehousing funding, that is actually prioritized for access for the navigation team to access specifically.

That is the only language related to prioritization, but it's for the navigation team, not for contracted service providers.

Yeah, and Council Member Morales, I'm happy to talk to you more offline about that priority you've just expressed to see if there is a needle we could thread there.

I will say that in my conversations with folks, it seems that there are some clear gaps in terms of access to resources for important services.

to actually meaningfully connect people to something better and that has really focused around the need to have additional resources for mental health professionals and also to individuals who are qualified to diagnose folks in the field if they are experiencing or using substances and there has to be a certification to be able to get those folks connected to the services that might be available to them should they want to take advantage of those services.

And that is also a service gap in the current model.

And then the reference to rapid rehousing, I would say that that is creating a connection between some level of prioritization of a different housing alternative for those individuals experiencing homelessness currently in unsanctioned encampments.

I would also just acknowledge that $500,000 is obviously not enough and will not meet the scale of the need, but it is an entry point into acknowledging that these kinds of services are currently missing from the model and are absolutely necessary in order to meet the needs of those individuals experiencing homelessness in unsanctioned encampments.

So again, happy to talk more.

about that.

And Council Member Herbold, I was remiss in acknowledging that you mentioned the removal of a particular language that would require reports and would provide zoning funding of the navigation team unless those reports were filed.

And I just wanted to acknowledge publicly that when I saw that language, I was supportive of the language and I continue to be supportive of the policy goals and intent there and look forward to if if that is not something we're going to consider in this particular alternative path, should it be necessary, then I certainly would want to and would be happy to consider and have a conversation about that language and that intent in the fall budget process that we're about to embark on here in a week, where we can look at serve longer-term planning and goals related to the navigation team and its structure and funding, et cetera.

So just wanted to signal publicly that I very much supported your policy direction on that point.

And hopefully, we won't lose sight of those policy goals and can consider them in the fall budget process.

and Madam President, sorry, Council Member Lewis here, it's always awkward over the phone, but if I could jump in on this too, if there's a second.

Yeah, go ahead, go for it, and then we'll hear from Council Member Mosqueda.

Thank you, thank you.

I would just add that as far as the $500,000 for behavioral mental health and investments, rapid rehousing and diversion, that is, and Council Member Herbal could correct me on this if I'm wrong, consistent with a best practice recommended by an audit of the navigation team that that is a resource that the team should have access to that has been depleted, like the diversion funds from the city have been depleted for the last couple of years and that has had a big impact on the ability of the navigation team to provide that service since it's been depleted.

So it's sort of in keeping with the spirit of that of that audit to provide that service.

I would add that there are there's going to be some additional ideas coming down from the executive around the navigation team.

So I think that conversation in the 2021 budget process would actually be a really sound idea and a really good conversation to have in conjunction with how we decide to deploy resources.

Just given that there are, I think there is going to be some responsiveness to a lot of the concerns the council and the community have raised regarding the navigation team over the last several months that will be manifested in some changes that are going to be announced.

I mean, as we get, there's nothing concrete that I've really heard yet, but it has been this idea of using the navigation team more as a centralized resource to coordinate service provider partners and to put more of that outreach focus onto community.

And I think consistent with a lot of what we have wanted to see, but, you know, we need to see more.

And to your comment, Madam President, about $500,000 being not nearly enough, I completely concur on that and would note that that's $500,000 just for the last couple months of this year.

So hopefully that sets a precedent that we can carry over bigger investments in rapid rehousing and diversion and behavioral mental health services.

as we make decisions for the 2021 budget that we'll carry that over considering $500,000 for just these last couple months of 2020. So I just wanted to get all that out there.

Thank you, Council Member Lewis.

And then I do want to acknowledge that there is language in the alternate bill that assumes an automatic carry forward of any amounts not spent in 2020 and that those amounts will be assumed in a 2021 budget.

So just want to acknowledge that that language does currently exist in the alternate bill should it be necessary for the council to consider this alternate bill.

Any other comments or questions, colleagues?

Oh, I'm sorry.

Customer Mosqueda, I forgot that you had your hand up, please.

Thank you, Madam President.

Just a question about process and perhaps this is for central staff.

I understand from our conversation the concerns around the delay since it's a month and a half after we passed the budget.

The concerns around the proviso language not lining up with where the cost savings could be.

I can understand the delay on The bargaining process is as we've been discussing the hundred FTES and the need to initiate bargaining.

There was also really important language included directly from feedback that we received from officers who would like to retire early but have no other health care options and the desire to see a bridge for them to get to Medicare.

is something that I think was part of the discussion and embedded into the legislation that we passed so that we could really offer some of the officers who would like to retire early that opportunity.

So I can understand on those two pieces that the timing might not be lining up given the delay in both the veto and not signing the bill.

We now have dates that don't correspond.

I guess my question, though, for central staff is if the veto were to be overridden, could we not do a follow up piece of legislation to make the changes necessary to the dates or even specific policy changes that we may now want to see, for example, related to executive pay or being more specific about where the FTE reduction should come from for the NAB team?

Is it not possible to override the veto and then have a trailer bill that specifically addresses a few of those pieces?

I'm happy to take that.

Councilmember Scudetto, we can do a number of things.

We can do all of those things.

We can do all the things we did in the summer all over again.

The alternate bill represents a bill that I believe will not be subject to a veto.

Again, any of us as council members are welcome to introduce any other bill.

Those bills will be subject to the same veto scrutiny that any other bills would be.

And so what I'm proposing as an alternate is a bill and a package that I have heard directly from the mayor on that she will not veto.

this alternate bill should it be considered and passed by the city council.

Again, all of the paths that you have described, we could certainly revisit all of them and basically do a redo of what we did in the summer, but they will be subject to the same danger of a veto power that the mayor has that the prior bills were subjected to.

Now, if there is a pathway for you to speak directly to the mayor and to her staff about proposed shifts, then obviously that's something that I would leave to you and your staff to negotiate with the mayor and to hopefully find a pathway to get those policies through without the policies being vetoed.

Any other comments or questions before we go ahead and close out council briefing?

It is 11.40 a.m.

Council Member Salant, please.

Yeah, I just had a question that occurred to me based on what you just said, President Gonzalez, just in terms of what, if the city council overrode the mayor's veto, then those bills stand, am I correct, just from a legal standpoint?

Yep, that is correct.

the appropriations would stand, nothing in the bills require the mayor to spend any of the money that we have allocated, but- But that's always true, yeah.

Yes, yeah, that is always true, but you are correct.

If the override is successful or doesn't fail, then the original bills as passed by the city council would effectively be law.

Okay, I'm glad we're clarifying that because so far, not all council members have stated publicly where they stand on the override.

And I want members of the public and also the city council to be very clear that if the city council overrode the veto, that would stand.

Yes, that's generally how vetoes work and overrides of vetoes work.

So I appreciate the clarity there.

Colleagues, any other questions or comments?

Okay, again, Dan and Allie are available to you if you have any additional questions or concerns.

Brianna Thomas and Cody Ryder in my office are also available for your staff or you to speak with.

I'm also available to you to talk through the alternate proposal and or any questions you might have about process or procedure at tomorrow's three o'clock special full council meeting where we will consider reconsider the bills that were vetoed by the mayor and assuming on what happens there um we'll either consider or not consider the alternate bill that we've spent a lot of time discussing uh currently sorry that's um that's Nadia in the background making herself known With that, folks, it looks like we don't have anything else to discuss, so I'm going to go ahead and adjourn our council briefing for this morning.

I will see you all at 2 o'clock p.m.

Thank you.