Select Budget Committee 101818 Session II

Come on, small but mighty.

Well, welcome back, everybody.

This is our second part of our budget for today, October 18th, 2018. I want to thank everybody at the table.

Thank you for my council colleagues, Councilmember Gonzalez, Councilmember Juarez, who are on time again.

Thank you, thank you very much for that.

The afternoon, we're going to have review from our central staff around SPD, Seattle Police Department and our Fire Department.

And we will entertain and accept public comment at the end.

So Ms. Murphy, thank you for coming and public comment will be open at the end of our discussion today, which will be roughly, I'm expecting 3.30 or so.

So, with that, welcome Councilmember Johnson as well, and Councilmember Mosqueda, thank you both for being here.

And I'm just going to turn it over to Councilmember Gonzalez for a moment, if you have a few remarks that you would like to make before we turn it over to Eric.

I do.

Thank you, Chair Bagshaw.

So, colleagues, this afternoon we're going to go over the budget issues identified as it relates to the Seattle Police Department.

I know that we all probably have on our mind, probably just as much as I have on my mind, the fact that we have a proposed tentative agreement with the Seattle Police Officers Guild.

I just want to highlight that those are issues that are not going to be discussed in today's issue identification.

In large part because the mayor's proposed budget as transmitted did not include that as part of our proposed budget, but we will have an opportunity to have a conversation about the proposed and introduced legislation.

that appeared on Monday's introduction and referral calendar through the full council process, which is ordinarily where the Labor Relations Policy Committee refers legislation, collective bargaining agreement legislation to.

So just wanted to make sure that folks didn't walk into the chambers today with an expectation that we'd be having a conversation of those issues that have been identified.

just in public conversation, and I just wanna make sure that folks understand that I is one of the sponsors of the Police Accountability Ordinance, and as somebody who comes to this dais with a lot of experience in the area of police reform and accountability, I just wanna make sure that you all understand from my perspective that I do fundamentally believe that the City Council and our central staff have an independent duty and obligation to evaluate the terms and conditions proposed to us through the proposed collective bargaining agreement.

I'm working closely with central staff to figure out the steps in the context of a very budget season as to how that independent evaluation will occur, and I anticipate sending a communication to all of you as the chair of the Gender Equity Safe Communities New Americans an education committee that will outline what I hope will be a good process for us to do our due diligence and fulfill our responsibility of making sure that the principles and the accountability reform legislation are ultimately upheld through the proposed legislation.

collection bargaining agreements.

So, more to come on that, and if you have any questions for me, I strongly encourage you to come talk to me.

If you are interested in speaking with the Community Police Commission based on their recent recommendations and analysis.

I strongly urge you to do that.

And you should also be aware that I've asked the other two entities to the accountability system to also provide us with their analysis and hope to be able to submit that request to them soon.

So, more to come, a lot more information for us to take into consideration so that we can all fulfill our obligation and duty to evaluate the legislation just like we evaluate every other type of legislation that comes to us.

So, thank you, Chair.

Great, and thank you for that clarification.

So, Greg?

Oh yes, Council Member Warren, she's back.

First of all, I want to thank Council Member Gonzalez and her leadership in passing and us working on this ordinance, this legislation.

And I just want the public to be on notice that we did receive and have looked at the memo and material provided by the Community Police Commission.

It is 34 pages and 55 issues.

And I understand there's some more material to come.

And I just wanted people to know that we are in receipt of that and we are looking at that.

so that when Councilmember Gonzalez shares, there's more to come.

I'm guessing we'll have some more conversations about that one, but I want to thank you for your leadership.

Nice comments.

All right.

Can I make a quick comment?

Sure.

Council Member Mosqueda.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Slightly different topic, but I do want to echo my appreciation for the Chair's update on that process as well from public safety.

Just from the health care perspective, I know many of us are used to serving on the Board of Health at this time.

I want to send a comment out there to the community that's testifying right now.

While we are not there in public health chambers with you at Public Health Seattle-King County, The three of us who are usually on that committee with you are in solidarity in spirit.

We know that many of the members from Planned Parenthood and NARAL and community at large are there testifying about the need to make sure that we have adequate information supplied to those who are going to so-called limited pregnancy centers, which are non-medical, non-clinical, non-science-based actual clinics, and we want to make sure that our information provided to every resident is accurate.

If we don't get there today, we're sending a strong message of solidarity, and I'm sure that we'll be back there at another time for quorum, but I just appreciate all the work they're doing.

Thank you for that.

And I have reached out to the chair of our public health committee, just so you know, to ask if even though they have rules that say there's no voice votes allowed, whether or not if they can deem this to be something where they need to take an emergent action, whether or not they would allow us to register a voice vote.

But initially we have been told that even though King County Council allows voice votes call in, that the Board of Health doesn't.

So they're looking into that right now to see if there is an exception that could be made, at which point the three of us could get on a conference call, take a short break.

and weigh in on that, so thank you for that.

Okay, so, appreciate it.

Mr. Doss, Eric, if you, let me turn it over to you.

Thank you, Council Chair, Finance Chair, Greg Doss, Central Staff, here to talk about the police budget.

At a very high level, the Mayor's 2019-2020 proposed budget appropriates $363 million for the Seattle Police Department, which is about a 10% increase to the 2018 adopted budget.

The biggest changes from a dollar perspective are technical and reflect the city's desire to change the way that Seattle ID, FAS, and human resources bill for their services.

But in substantive terms, the 2019 budget for SPD includes some efficiency reductions, some technology investments, and a change to the way that the sworn officers are budgeted.

or I'm sorry, I changed to the sworn officer budget.

So I'm going to go ahead and move through some highlights.

The first one would be a general fund reduction of about $4 million.

And there's several parts to this.

The largest part is a $3.1 million technical reduction that is a capture of what the agency calls turnover savings.

This is the savings that is achieved when a recruit is hired to replace an officer that is separating The officer that's separating is usually at a much higher salary, the recruit at a lower salary, and so this captures the difference in salary.

It's mostly a technical exercise that's done every year.

The second reduction is a reduction of $78,000 to the Office of Police Accountability's overtime budget.

The OPA received in the first quarter supplemental an administrative staffer that is focused on the work that used to be done on overtime, so this is a cut of the overtime.

There is a reduction to the department's fuel budget of about half a million dollars.

This is the result of an analysis that the department did where they looked at what they had in their budget for fuel over the last several years and what they actually spent.

And even sort of at the high marks, they found that they were still $500,000 over budgeted.

And so this is a cut to reflect a savings there.

And then lastly, there's a reduction of $300,000 to the agency's contracting resources.

The executive believes the department can absorb this cut because they've been paying about the same amount to a consultant that has been working with the 911 center on issues around Next Generation 9-1-1 deployment and deployment of communication staff, civilianization, and some other issues.

The largest changes in the budget have to do with sworn staffing.

There is a $3.5 million reduction to reflect salary and benefit dollars that the department will not need because they were unable to hire 37 officers this year.

Staffing for 2018 included projections for attrition and projections for hiring.

And with those projections, it was assumed that there would be a net new officer increase of 37 officers, and that didn't happen.

So, and we're going to talk a little bit about some recruiting issues that the department has when we get to issue identification.

But this is just a capture of that money that they no longer need.

Next, there's an add of $729,000 to the budget.

This is taking some of that money that they captured for not hiring this year, moving it into next year, and using it to hire 10 new officers.

There's an add in 2020 of $4 million that will fund an additional 30. So all together for the mayor's proposed budget, 10 next year, 30 the year after, a total of 40 officers.

Finally, the biggest issue I'll bring up would be the creation of the new community service officer program.

That's $1.3 million in 12 FTE.

It's a phased add of 10 community service officers and two supervisors, about half in the spring and then about half at the end of the year.

Now, there's a couple investments made around technology.

There's an investment to replace the mobile data terminals, which are the laptops that are in the officers' cars, and that investment is $4.8 million, and it's largely bond-funded and financed from Finance General.

And then the last one is a $2.3 million expenditure associated with the in-car video systems.

Again, that's the camera that is in the car, and that is funded through a combination savings that were achieved from other IT projects and some unspent monies in the SPD budget.

So that's my high-level overview.

Are there any questions before I move into the issue section?

Good.

Any questions, colleagues?

excuse me, on the reductions to the OPA overtime budget in the amount of $70,000, I think you mentioned this to me yesterday, Greg, but is it accurate to say that OPA believes that that won't impact their core functions?

Yeah, absolutely.

It was mostly transcription services.

They were paying folks on overtime to do it, and this new staffer is gonna do largely that body of work.

Great, thank you.

Council Member Ryan.

The community service officer program, I thought we added that two years ago, and so I'm curious why that shows up as an add here as opposed to a continuation.

You did provide the money two years ago to fund a community service officer program.

It was broken up, a good portion of it.

It was in finance general.

And so adding it to the police department now allows them to move ahead hiring.

It's more or less technical.

Great.

Thank you.

Do you have a follow-up?

All right, so I'll go ahead and move on to the issues.

The number one issue is staffing.

The SPD budget typically consists of about 85% personnel costs.

With a proposed budget of $363 million and 2,172 FTEs, it is the largest workforce of all city departments.

And of that number, slightly over two-thirds, about 1,457 are sworn officers.

Appendix B through D that I've provided in your staff report will provide information on the distribution of officers throughout the precincts, a breakout of how the officers and sergeants are distributed across department functions, some detail on proactive time and on specialty units, and then finally, an appendix that deals with response time and officers that have crisis intervention training.

So hopefully that information is helpful to you and I'm available for questions at the end about anything in the appendices.

As I mentioned, the department had planned on hiring to its force about 37 net new officers.

That didn't happen because of some trouble with both recruiting and then also with larger than expected separations.

On the first end, on recruiting, from 2016 to 2018, SPD has seen a drop in its recruiting classes of about 30%.

So these are the folks that, I shouldn't say recruiting classes, I should say showing up for the test, that sit down and take the test.

There were about 897 in 2016 that took the test and that number is down to about 602. And SPD indicates that this is largely the effect of an economy that has one of the lowest unemployment rates in recent history and really just a lack of interest in folks and going into the law enforcement profession.

Apparently it is the case that all agencies across the nation are having troubles hiring.

Council Member Johnson.

Thanks.

Greg, do we have a sense about how many of those folks are coming from other departments, police departments?

You know, one of the things that has been made clear in a lot of the interesting press coverage recently about our recruitments in other jurisdictions around the country is that when you hire an officer who's sworn from another location and has some experience, they are not required to go through the same sort of training that a new officer to the force has to go through.

The cost might be a little bit higher, obviously, because you're hiring somebody who's got more experience, but you could also get them on the job more quickly.

Do we have a sense of the 98 new officers that we've hired so far and for the intended recruitment moving forward, what the split is between those that we're intending to bring on as new officers and therefore then we'll have to go through the whole I'm just wondering if you can give us an idea of the ratio of people that are hiring for the state patrol training program versus those that we might be poaching from other cities and hopeful that they could come online more quickly.

In terms of trying to hire in the future, the SPD is focusing on lateral hires.

You may have heard or seen on the news that they've launched campaigns in four different states.

They're looking in Atlanta, Houston, Honolulu, which is the other one.

That's escaping me now.

They're looking in three or four different states and they're going to hold up to five different tests to try and get lateral officers in for all the reasons that you mentioned.

And they're actually going with another step.

They are doing an analysis of the cost factors associated with hiring a new recruit and those cost factors that are avoided by hiring a lateral and they're hoping that they can find that there's about $15,000 of savings there If that's the case, then they're gonna turn around and offer $15,000 hiring bonuses to laterals from other jurisdictions.

Okay, that's helpful.

Okay, good, please.

So I guess one last thing to mention on staffing is that the department plans to do a longer range strategic planning effort that will involve an analysis of the appropriate size of the police force.

And that is something that They're doing pursuant to some comments made by Councilmember Gonzalez during the police presentation.

And I'll get to options and there'll be an option around that issue too.

Any questions about hiring?

I think we have, we'll hold it in advance.

Okay.

A couple of the options around staffing and hiring, adopt a statement of legislative intent that would require SPD and the executive to deliver monthly reports on hiring data and maybe quarterly reports that were more descriptive about what's going on with hiring, whether these lateral exams in other states are working.

Option B would be to adopt a slide that would require SPD and the executive to keep council central staff.

appraised of the planning effort that I just mentioned a moment ago around trying to decide what size the police force should be.

C is both A and B, and D is no action.

Any questions?

No, no questions.

I just, I think both of these are, both options A and B are things that I would like to pursue as the chair of the committee.

I think it's really important for us to make sure that we continue to understand what the difficulties are and what the data and the numbers are as it relates to SPD stated goals in terms of their hiring and for us to be able to really evaluate whether there are issues with hiring and recruitment and retention or whether it's more of an issue with regard to the estimates being proposed by the Seattle Police Department as achievable or not achievable.

Yeah, Council Member Herbold.

Thank you.

I agree with Council Member Gonzalez that I think the information contained both in A and B are very important.

A, as far as it relates to bringing on the officers we've already committed to bringing on, and B, as far as it is involved with planning for the future once we have met our goals.

Another question that I had asked related to recruitment is whether or not the city SPD is providing funding for recruitment for new hires.

And you had said that that was done several years ago, and you were going to check whether or not they're doing it now.

Have we received information about that?

There are two dedicated recruiters.

I'm sorry, the signing bonus is what I was asking.

Oh, I'm sorry, thank you.

Yes, I talked with the department about the signing bonus.

It was $5,000 in 2008 and that's when we sort of hit the the peak of the boom.

And at that time, SPD was in a very similar situation to what they are today.

Historic unemployment, there was just not a lot of calling to the profession.

And so the city instituted $5,000 hiring bonuses and found that that was effective, although it's difficult to discern exactly whether or not it was the hiring bonuses that that lured people to SPD or the fact that the economy totally crashed at the end of 2008. Unemployment went up and folks were looking for jobs.

So when I asked them whether or not they knew if the 5,000 worked, they think it did, but the numbers aren't necessarily there to show that there was an increase that they could sort of bank on, I would say.

I asked them about a $5,000 signing bonus and whether they thought it would help, and they said that, anything and everything will help.

And they said that they think that it could potentially lure folks here, but they characterized it as sort of a micro action and a macro problem.

Given the overall economy, they think that it would help, but it wouldn't be a magic bullet.

Right.

I mean, it's one of those things that maybe we need to think of several strategies.

So in addition to hiring bonuses for new hires, I think it would be really helpful if we asked the department to do a national survey of incentive programs that other cities use.

beyond hiring bonuses if there are sort of...

Programs that are used to get young people, people from diverse communities, interested in serving on the police departments.

Whether or not there are cadet training programs that other jurisdictions might use to move somebody who might be interested from a civilian position to a uniform position, that sort of thing.

I would really like to maybe incorporate into the sly and option A, some research about practices in other places.

Just following up on what Council Member Herbold is asking, I'd like to know what they've done, what kind of history on this, because her point is really well taken.

I thought this has been done over the last four years.

If I'm wrong, I'd like to know.

But I think that she's raised a really good point.

And I want to know whether or not our police department has already done it, or if not, what's it gonna take to get them to do it?

In terms of the various kinds of hiring strategies?

Yes.

They do actually employ some of the things you mentioned, Council Member, but certainly they could benefit from finding out if there are other things that they're not doing.

And as it relates to the things that they are doing, I agree with Chair Bagshaw.

Knowing more about them, those individual actions, and how those individual actions are resourced above and beyond what the two recruitment staff are doing.

If I could just say that I think that that analysis and evaluation could actually be done by central staff.

I'm not sure it would require a slide ado, just because we have a lot of, there is a body, a prior body of work related to hiring and recruitment efforts and retention efforts, particularly as it relates to of folks from non-traditional communities that would serve in the police department.

So I think we might have the data that we need already and maybe don't need to include that in the slide, but perhaps Greg can look into that just to make sure that that data that we need currently exists.

And if it doesn't, then we can sort of fine tune it and have sort of laser focus on what data we think we need in order to accomplish that evaluation.

As you being the chair of the Public Safety Committee, I'm much more comfortable with you asking central staff to do that work than me assigning it.

So that would be fantastic.

Thank you.

Appreciate that very much.

Move on to issue number two, special events cost recovery.

So SPD, as you all know, provides police services at several different kinds of events, everything from parades, marathons, professional sporting games in the stadiums, concert, festivals.

a wide variety of events.

Event organizers can obtain police staffing in several different ways.

Events that occur in the city's stadiums receive police services through a contract or an MOU that requires reimbursement of the officer's time.

Different events held in parks or public places that meet certain criteria require a special events permit.

And of those permitted events, those that are commercial or athletic are required to pay a police services fee of $67 per hour.

Revenue from that fee in 2017 totaled $625,000.

There is a category of event that doesn't pay anything at all, and that would be free speech or mixed free speech events.

Those don't pay for any police services.

The $67 per hour rate that I just mentioned is specified in the SMC in the special events section.

And I can tell you that it does not cover the Seattle Police Department's costs.

The city auditor did last year a review of special events staffing and costs in the city and found that actually the costs for SPD staffing are closer to $73 per hour.

Pursuant to that work, central staff had some discussions with the executive about their cost recovery rate.

And they think that, the executive thinks that it probably exceeds the $73 per hour figure as well.

So there's interest on the executive side to work with council on figuring out what good cost recovery rate might be charged.

And then there's also some interest in taking a look at the special events ordinance.

at the different types of events and making sure that those that pay are consistent with the council's values on those that should be charged and vice versa for those that don't.

So there's a couple options here.

One might be to adopt a slide that requires council central staff to work with the executive to follow up on the auditor's recommendation specifically around cost recovery and then as I mentioned about event type as well or no action.

So this one's mine.

This is effectively a follow-up and a follow-through on a lot of the work that already occurred as a result of the City Auditor's 2017 report on special events.

And it does relate and implicate some of the body of work that is currently assigned to Councilmember Herbold's office as well.

So my thought here is it could be a joint interdepartmental team effort that would really dig into the particular aspects of what this recovery cost fee could or should be as it relates to public safety services that are being provided by the Seattle Police Department.

a lot of these special events.

So my hope is that the Office of Film and Music's Division on Special Events will be part of the Interdisciplinary Task Force.

I know that yesterday when we talked with central staff, there was also another issue related to paramedics.

and in the Seattle Fire Department and cost recovery that they do or don't get that is also related to special events that I was unaware of that.

So I think we should probably bring in the Seattle Fire Department as well just to make sure that they are at the table and that we have the benefit of their knowledge as it relates to how they staff special events.

So I think it's just a follow through.

I know that in the spirit of not wanting to create more work for departments, I think this is really just a follow through of work that has already been occurring and know that the executive has interest in making sure that we get the legislation and the calculation and the formula around reimbursement right, and that we clean up the systems to find additional efficiencies.

Great.

Council Member Herbold.

Yeah, I just wanted to add that I know that both Director Kate Becker at the Office of Film and Music and Chris Swanson with the Special Events Committee are very interested in collaborating with you and the other departments on this work.

That's great.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Issue number three is the records management system.

You may be familiar with the records management system issues that came along last year, so I apologize.

I'm going to go ahead and give a little bit of background.

The records management system replacement project is a $4.7 million undertaking that requires the transition of SPD's legacy RMS system to a Mark 43's cloud-based system.

The project recently rebased and adjusted its timelines, scope, and budget.

And as of March, or I'm sorry, as of August and October, they were on their schedule.

And they will, at the end of this week, complete data migration from the old system into the cloud, into the new system.

So the project is actually running on time and within budget, which is good news.

There is a proviso that the council levied on the RMS, and that required the executive to send monthly reports on, again, scope, schedule, and budget to make sure that everything was proceeding accordingly.

And as such, they are expecting to send a proviso release in the quarter for supplemental.

The reason it's not in the quarter three that you have now is that the contract still hasn't been signed.

And there were some issues that were raised last time around about privacy rights.

And until the contract is signed, they don't want to ask for the proviso lift.

So if I could just move into what may become another, yet another proviso for this record management system, and this is mine.

I am very interested in making sure that as this record management system goes live, that officers who are on the ground can very quickly learn whether or not somebody that they may be talking to is part of a LEAD program or other diversion program.

And we don't want to get the record management system up and operational and then say, oh, oops, we've got another work order we want to add.

So I've been working with SPD on this.

I've worked with LEAD and with some of the other programs.

And as we get into low acuity, which is something we will get to when we're talking about the fire department, this really is an opportunity for us to identify individuals who may be part of a behavioral health or mental health and not necessarily someone that should be arrested.

So those are parts of the program that we're going to have to work out through with Seattle Police Department.

But I just want to highlight this right now, that as we're dealing with a crisis response plan, we want to make sure that the connections are clear and easy for the officers.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

You stole my options.

That's exactly what I was going to bring up.

And we're going to have some discussions with the department about how much can be done before the project ends and how much can be done afterwards.

But that is essentially the option.

Thank you.

Move on to community service officers.

As I mentioned, community service officers, there's an add of 10 officers and two supervisors.

The community service officers are non-commissioned officers who are trained to work as a liaison between the department and the community.

They don't carry weapons or enforce criminal laws.

Instead, they serve as a bridge over the gap of the community and the services available and the police department.

A program summary of the CSOs can be found in Appendix A, and that's not a job description, but it's a vision for how SBDCs using the CSOs.

One of the options under this topic is to have a slide that would look closer at the duties of the CSOs and see if they are in alignment with what council's intention was.

There was a rather large process, a long process that the department went through working with the community, working with the council, the mayor's office, but ultimately it was the police department that put forward the proposal.

And so this slide might review that to flesh it out a bit and see what the specific duties of the CSOs would look like.

Councilmember Herbold or Councilmember O'Brien, do you want to speak to this?

Councilmember O'Brien.

Thank you for that, Greg.

If you have an answer to this, this is great, but I'll ask the question whether you do or not.

When the council put this in the budget originally two years ago, we laid out a couple-year plan, being very intentional about that process, to really be thorough and thoughtful about and engaging community members about how we wanted to expand.

You know, out of that, a lot of great work was done.

There was a racial equity toolkit done.

I'm curious, do we have a sense from the police plan, the police department's plan, how that lines up with that community process and the racial equity toolkit?

There was a report that was produced by the work group.

It didn't go into the racial equity toolkit, but it did outline the community's wishes for the CSOs.

And then, as I said, we have the program summary for the CSOs.

But I'm not sure the level of depth exists in the latter to really be able to crosswalk it to the community report.

That's something I think.

I think we would have to do with the department.

Okay, and that's what I'm really interested in.

So the option A here, you know, to make sure we spell that out so we can crosswalk that, both with the report and also the racial equity toolkit.

The other thing I'm really interested in is how And this may not be teased out in the level of detail that we need either, is how community service officers are anticipated to interact with our unsheltered population, which is a lot of, you know, I think it's a source of a lot of concern we hear from community members.

And so, I'd love to hear what role they may or may not play with that population.

So I think, you know, I think we're all excited and have been anticipating moving forward with the CSO program, and there was a minute there where we thought it might not happen, and I'm glad to see that this is one of council's priorities that is reflected in the mayor's budget.

And I'm really excited that the Seattle Police Department supports the bringing back of this program because I do think it's going to be critical to meeting non-life-threatening public safety concerns within our neighborhoods.

I think in reading the CSO program design summary that is on Appendix A to your materials, Greg, it really starts talking at a relatively high level.

what the program design will be.

And I think that I like option A in this context, but I also think that it is important to add a layer of making sure that we understand where these CSOs will be assigned.

I think when we're when we're talking about the fact that we will only have 12 CSOs, two of whom will be supervisors, 10 of whom will actually be in the field.

What I'm not getting a sense of from the program design summary is how the decisions around deployment will be made, what criteria will be utilized, what factors will be utilized, and I'm just wondering if we can get additional information about that, if it exists.

If it doesn't exist, then I think that there is an opportunity to modify option A.

or possibly have an option B that provisos the funds through the end of the year until we have a better sense of how those resources will be deployed.

And my suspicion is that there is a model that currently exists within the Seattle Police Department to make those deployment of resource decisions, similar to when we look at emphasis patrols, you know, Council Member Herbold and I have worked together on evaluating emphasis patrols, particularly in the context of the southwest precinct and alki when they're you know um upticks or when upticks of public safety issues or uh you know when we're asking questions about the mobile precinct van or the bike patrol van and so i just think it'd be really helpful for us to get an understanding on the front end during the budget process whether or not they have a model in place for how those deployment decisions are going to be and i suspect that there are several council members present here today who will have a very strong interest in making sure that there is a geographic parity there and that those decisions are being made in a way that is responsive to geographic parity but also that meets the realities of some of the, you know, lower tier, less, you know, non-priority one calls that do need somebody to go out to them but don't necessarily require a sworn officer to be that person.

Yes, please, Council Member Juarez.

Thank you, Council Member Gonzales, for that great lead-in.

I echo what Council Member Gonzales is saying in looking at how you would be deploying people from the South up to the North, Districts 4, 5, and 6. And the other issue that I'm concerned is that when we talk about what their actual jobs are, I remember what CSOs were a long time ago, and I used to do criminal law and a judge, but I know that's changed a lot, in particular on the non-criminal calls, where it's the most calls we get.

So many, the non-criminal calls are basically the unsheltered people that aren't doing anything but are just on the street.

If I'm off base on this, please correct me.

Is the CSO a lot like when the NAV team comes out with the SPD?

I think that the CSO may be more like the outreach workers that the city gets through contract in the sense that they are, when they're responding to non-emergency calls with officers, they will help them find services for individuals that are maybe have some mental health issues or chemical dependency issues.

They may be the one who takes the client or the person to the services.

Yeah, I think they're in that way going to be assisting.

Well, let me just ask you this, just as just straightforward.

So if you have 10 CSO officers, and you have citywide, or seven, I thought it was 10 office, I'm sorry.

Make it 14. 10, okay.

My point is, How are they, as Counselor Gonzales said, just on the ground, just walk me through how that call gets made and how they show up in conjunction with these other services that we're providing for non-criminal matters?

That's something I can pursue with them, with the department, to get to that level of depth.

Okay.

I'm sorry, I may have missed what you're

No, I think the reality is I'm not sure that Greg has that granularity of detail.

I think those are really good questions and it feeds well into the questions I was asking about deployment, right?

How are those decisions made?

What are the criteria that are being used?

What are the mechanisms for dispatch, right?

Is it just going to be 911 based?

Is it going to be assigned proactive policing as opposed to reactive policing?

I think those are pieces of information that I, from my recollection of looking at the report, I'm not sure that they looked at it from that perspective.

It was more about sort of what should the essential functions and duties be, but the implementation pieces of how to roll these positions out and this program out, I think are a little fuzzy in my mind.

And again, we're reinstituting this.

It's been a long time since we've had it.

Different cast of characters at the police department now.

And so I do think it's important for us to, in the context of our budget deliberations and making this ongoing appropriation, for us to get a better sense from the department as to what the details will be related to how we're going to deploy those resources and how it's going to be implemented and just function.

We are making a significant investment here.

I'd love for it to be more, but I do think that it's nonetheless, it's $1.3 million and we have to make sure that the public really sees a benefit as a result of it.

Right, and I guess my response to that is Council Member Gonzalez is We're making an investment, so this hope I'm guessing this time next year will be hopefully we have data points that we can say look at we spread these 10 CFOs across the city.

These are the places that it worked best and perhaps They deserve more money for more positions.

So that's just what I was getting at.

Oh, I'm sorry.

I must have misunderstood.

I'm sure they will be collecting data.

They collect data in the RMS system now on officers who do proactive work, what kind of outreach they do with the community.

Yeah, I'm sure that data will exist at the end of the year and help guide some of those decisions.

And I'm sure the department will be looking at that for those reasons.

But to Council Member Gonzalez's point, the program summary is a really high level summary.

It talks about central deployment, but doesn't get down to the level of how much time they would spend in the community, how they would spend it, or where they would spend it.

So that kind of detail could help you all.

I think from my perspective, and I'm not the chief of police, but from my perspective, I really think that the benefit of having a CSO program is the fact that they would engage in proactive policing as opposed to a complaint-based reactive policing.

And my hope is that's the direction that we're headed, but it's a little unclear to me from the 30,000 foot level summary that's before us.

Okay, Council Member O'Brien.

Thank you.

I also want to really appreciate the questions you asked Council Member Juarez because I think you summarized well the exact kind of questions I think that I'm struggling with too and so more information is going to be important.

I do want to address some of the things that historically CSOs have done and I think also came out of the kind of community work that could be doing.

to one of your questions.

So, you know, on the proactive side, you know, there's some that envision it a little bit like a beat patrol, where, you know, a CSO could be assigned to a neighborhood, or a couple could be assigned to a neighborhood, and they're, again, they're not sworn officers, they're not carrying weapons, but a lot of that work that a beat officer does is just walking the streets, being seen in the uniform, checking in on people, You know, businesses, residents, folks that are in the neighborhood for a variety of reasons.

When they see an issue that's out of order, they can follow up on that.

If they need to call the police, obviously they can do that.

And so, you know, but there's...

12 of them.

And, you know, you spread that over a couple shifts in lots of neighborhoods, it's not clear how that would go.

Other things, my understanding they could do is, you know, they can take certain police reports.

And so, to the extent that we hear from constituents that, you know, I've waited for hours and hours and hours for police to show up to take a report, They might be able to show up and do that.

Also, a police officer may show up because a 911 call happens.

There might be something that requires a sworn officer to do something, but there may still be people around that need some assistance where a CSO could hang around for the next hour and work with folks getting connected to services, while the sworn officer may need to jump on the next call in a few minutes and move on.

But again, With only a dozen of these and multiple neighborhoods and multiple possibilities, it's not really clear.

Are they going to focus on one of these strategies?

Are they going to focus on a certain geography?

Are they going to focus on a certain time of day?

And I think it's going to be good to get some clarity on that relatively soon.

My hope is that we get some feedback much before this time next year and can see what's working or not.

And I imagine that if it's done well, that may be an area that we want to see increased investments to.

And so, maybe pick a couple priorities and see if we can do that well.

Thank you.

Thank you all on that.

I concur with your instincts and the direction you're going.

Okay.

Please proceed.

Thanks.

The final thing I'll mention is that there's a technical change.

Relative to budget legislation, one of the things that the mayor's office does is to propose a budget that takes police facilities that had prior debt financing and swaps out the funding source for that debt financing where it had been general fund, it will now be REIT.

And so the legislation that will come before you will allow the city, per its financial policies, to make such swap to free up general fund.

And so this is more just an FYI thing to note that the budget legislation will be coming forward for this and that it is indeed funding police facilities and freeing up general fund.

And those amounts are in a table in the staff report.

All right, any question about that?

Council Member Johnson.

Greg, is that a long-time decision?

I.e., are we paying off these two years and the expectation is that we're going to continue to use REIT over the long term?

Or is this the final two years of some debt repayment that is set to expire at the end of 2020?

Can you give me some more details?

I think it's more of a longer-term move.

It's debt that goes all the way back into the early 2000s or mid-2000s that's being supplanted with REIT, and I imagine that the executive is also looking to do that going forward, although I don't have anything specific right now.

But the expectation here would be that we'd be resetting a baseline of REIT funding, and that REIT funding going forward would be the source for this debt service as opposed to general fund?

Yes.

Please.

And that's all I had.

I have several issues that are highlighted in the staff report, but all of those you've spoken to through the options that we've discussed.

Anybody have anything else you'd like to add to the options?

Actually, I misspoke.

I do have one more.

There is one more that could involve a sly, and that has to do with exploring the resource needs of the Office of Emergency Management, SPD, and particularly around outreach to disadvantaged and LEP communities around the subject of emergency preparedness.

And so that's something central staff will be doing more research on.

And the budget actions that were proposed by council members that in your memo start on page 8, 8 of 18. We have touched them.

Anybody have some additional questions you would like to dive in on?

No.

I just wanted to go back to the table one for SBD staffing and these are the hiring summaries with actuals through July 2018 with the mayor's proposed additions.

So, It is estimated that by the end of 2018, if I'm reading this chart correctly, Greg, you'll have to help me, because I was struggling with it yesterday, is by the end of 2018, it's estimated that we'll actually be down 33 officers.

Is that an accurate reading of your graph?

Yeah, between our hirings and our separations, that's correct.

Okay, meaning we've hired 64, but we anticipate And so you're talking about the department losing 97 officers by the end of 2018. That's correct.

And do we have a sense from the department the reasons for the separations?

Yes.

They've looked at exit surveys that are given.

And of the 64 or so that they're planning, that they think are going to leave, of the ones that have left so far, It's about half and half, about half the officers leave because they're retiring and the other half will leave because of jobs in other agencies.

When it's the latter, SPD has heard through these forms that it has to do with the cost of housing in Seattle and the commute time in Seattle and that those things are alleviated by moving to another department.

And then as I say, the rest are retiring.

because the other departments pay them more and they have cheaper living?

Is that the conclusion?

For the ones that are leaving for other departments, yeah.

That's what they're hearing in the surveys.

Okay, but we don't have statistically significant enough sample to be able to draw clear conclusions from that.

No, I asked that question and they sort of joked back with me that police officers spend their entire career filling out reports and the last thing they want to do as they're leaving is fill out another report.

So I have...

Maybe they should sit down and have coffee as an exit.

Greg, also, these numbers aren't screwing up for me as it relates to the 2019 estimated and the 2020 estimated.

So for 2019, it appears that the department is estimating that they will have 75 separations and 104 hires, so there's a, the net gain is 29 plus six, but we only have 10 budgeted.

10 additional positions budgeted for 2019. And then 30 for 2020.

Yeah, and so at the end of the year, the 29 positions that have been hired are going to move into the next year, and it's sort of, from a budget sense, each year starts over.

This table is confusing.

I told you that yesterday, Greg.

You did, and I've talked with the department already, and we are going to work to try and get something that's a little more intuitive.

Okay.

And so for 2019, that's 10 officers at, what's the cost of the 10 officers?

Well, this year in 2019, or I'm sorry, next year in 2019, it's going to be $729,000, I believe.

That of course is a number that's derived from hiring throughout the year and some of it will have to do with recruit costs, some of it will have to do with the folks that are hired laterals.

It's a lower number because the costs are accruing throughout the year rather than starting on the first day.

And I guess, you know, what I'm struggling with in terms of the goal of 10 in 30, 10 in 2019, 30 in 2020 is whether or not that's a realistic.

and achievable goal.

We have set goals in the past and have missed those goals.

And, you know, really I'm just frustrated with setting goals and not meeting them than being blamed for not meeting those goals.

And so I'm really going to be hard-nosed about pushing the department to show me their math and the formula on how they came up with the 10 in 2019 and 30 in 2020, because I want those numbers to be realistic and achievable, not sort of pie in the sky, we hope that we can get there.

I had a conversation with the chief last week, and I asked her what kind of formula she uses, sort of what are the best standards for estimating needs based on hiring realities and difficulties, and really didn't get, I think, the information that I think I would hope to be able to get.

So I just want to make sure that you have an opportunity to really test whether or not 10 in 2019 and 30 in 2020 is realistic and achievable or whether we need to be a little bit more realistic about, given the amount of time we've been spending on this issue and how we have consistently missed the mark on recruiting and how we have some work to do in terms of being able to meet these goals, whether there's a more realistic estimate of how many officers we believe we can hire in 2019 and how many we believe we can hire in 2020. And maybe that's, you know, 15 and 15. Maybe it's, you know, something else.

I don't know.

But I just think it's worth an opportunity.

It's worth the time for us as the City Council to make sure that we have a level of confidence in those two estimates.

And Councilmember, I would add that We can do that.

The department can do that.

They have a staffing model that goes down to a granular level that makes specific targets around laterals that they're going to bring in, around new recruits that they're going to bring in, about the amount of separations that they're assuming.

And so those assumptions can be, we can look at those and analyze those and compare them to how they fared this year and some of these other factors we've talked about with the economy and whether or not they're going to be achievable is difficult to ascertain, but at least we can know what kind of targets they're aiming for, whether, like I said, laterals, new recruits, and when.

Right, because we have the 10 and we have the 30. What we don't have is, you know, are these patrol officers?

Are they sergeants?

Are they lieutenants?

Are they captains?

What, you know, sort of, are they laterals?

Are they new hires?

And I think we need to get a clearer sense about that granular level of detail to better evaluate whether or not the forecasting that they have done for 2019 and 2020 are realistic and therefore merit the amount of proposed budget, budget that's been proposed by the mayor.

Please.

Anything else?

Yeah, I just wanted to add one point that I think has been said, but I just want to say it again for clarity's sake and for the viewing public.

The 10 and the 30 in itself are not unreasonable.

It's unreasonable when coupled with making up for all the separations that we've experienced in recent years as well as the separations we anticipate.

in future years, so that's the rub.

We'd like to add those 10 and those 30 new positions, but it's hard to do that as well as make up for the losses.

And I think your point's especially well taken since over the years when people ask, neighborhoods ask us to have more police, they want more visible police, they want more police on the ground, and we've been promising that we'll have an extra 40 and then another 40 and 200 over a period of years and we're now, in the whole, and that just, I appreciate how difficult it is, but nonetheless, I think the honesty that you're talking about and transparency bringing forward will be helpful.

Thank you.

All right.

Last call for questions for SPD.

Eric.

If I may just very briefly in response to Council Member Johnson's question about the use of REIT for SPD project debt service.

I have just a little bit more data here from CBO.

So the mayor's proposed two moves here.

The first of which is the change to the financial policies to allow the use of the REIT for the debt service on police facilities.

And the second is a specific dedication of some REIT funds in 2019 and plan for 2020, which Greg shows in table two on page eight of his staff report.

I just have two more years of data here for projections for that continuing debt service, which show it fairly stable in 2021 and then declining to about 1.4 million.

in 2022, so it may be that that is a diminishing burden there for REIT associated with those particular projects.

But of course, having changed the financial policies, that would open up the opportunity to reprogram further amounts of REIT for other relevant police facilities projects.

I appreciate that, Eric.

I think one of the things I'll be paying attention to this year is how much we've adjusted those financial policies to offload general fund obligations onto REIT, which, of course, is great right now when we are seeing a lot of our downtown office buildings trade hands, it results in a big increase in real estate excise taxes.

I just wanna make sure that we're not setting ourselves up to be unsustainable in the future by obligating debt financing towards a revenue stream that has that sort of level of volatility.

So this is one micro example.

I'm anticipating that we're gonna see more of that moving forward and I'm just gonna be looking at that as a macro level issue to be paying attention to.

All right.

Anything else?

All right, let's move on to fire department.

And Lisa, thank you for being here.

Greg Doss, thank you as you're exiting.

Appreciate your help.

All right, Lisa, do you want to introduce yourself and dive in?

Thank you, Madam Chair, council members.

I'm Lisa Kay, council central staff.

I'll be talking to you about the Seattle Fire Department budget today.

I'll give you a very brief overview.

I'll talk about three issues that I've identified, and we have one council member proposal.

The mayor's proposed budget for 2019 provides $220 million to the Seattle Fire Department.

That's about a 4% increase and about a 1% increase for 2020. It adds 8.5 FTEs for 2019, which is less than a 1% increase, which would bring the Seattle Fire FTEs to 1,167.

The proposed budget changes include an additional recruit class, one FTE for recruitment and professional development, and a vault response team.

The additional recruit class would be about $2.3 million to supplement their spring recruit class.

They'd add a second class of 35 in 2019, and then for an additional $2.3 million, they'd add a second class in 2020. Seattle Fire says that they've had ongoing vacancies in large part due to retirements.

The statistics look like that has ranged from between 60 and 70 vacancies a year since 2015. The one FTE for recruitment and professional development would be funded with existing resources.

That position is targeted to identify improvement in recruiting individuals from underrepresented groups and in the professional development of individuals working at Seattle Fire from those underrepresented groups.

That particular FTE would also be charged with developing strategies to improve equity and build a workforce that reflects the city's diversity.

The third add is about $283,000 would be coming from Seattle City Light to support a fire department vault response team.

That team would be trained, equipped, and given premium pay to respond to and mitigate damage caused by fires inside electrical network vaults.

I also wanted to call your attention for 2020, this isn't for this year, or for 2019, but for 2020, the budget assumes that the current EMS medical services, emergency medical services levy would be renewed, and that that renewal, as currently contemplated, would bring in about $18 million more in revenue for Seattle in 2020 than in 2018. As proposed in the mayor's budget, that levy would reduce the city's general fund contribution to Seattle Fire Department's emergency medical services program and redirect existing general fund revenue to other programs.

You'll see that there are three issues in my staff memo.

The first one is workforce equity.

In the July 2018 Mayor's Workforce Equity Accountability Report, the authors expressed concern that there is a lack of recruiting resources at Seattle Fire that could result in a small number of diverse candidates applying to be a firefighter.

And in fact, in looking at Seattle Human Resources Department data, Seattle Fire has made minimal progress in increasing the number of female or persons of color applicants over the past five years.

The number of persons of color applying to Seattle Fire has only increased by 7% over that time, while the increase in women applicants has risen only 1%.

You'll see...

Lisa, these are percentages.

Do we have numbers?

I would have to get back to you on that.

If you can get us numbers, that'd be great.

I think just as for a general practice, if we can ask council central staff generally that when we're getting percentages to provide us those numbers, it's very helpful.

Seems quite reasonable.

Okay, please continue.

A couple options with respect to this issue then are to add one FTE that would be tasked to create a targeted recruitment team within Seattle Fire.

Or a second option could be to add an FTE tasked with removing or mitigating recruitment barriers that impact one demographic group more than others.

And there are specific barriers that were identified in Seattle Fire's hiring equity analysis action plan.

Madam Chair.

Sure.

Councilwoman Johnson.

Lisa, how does this relate, these options relate to the paragraph, two paragraphs above where SFTE has as part of its base adjustment one additional FTE to work on recruitment and professional development.

These two issues seem interrelated or am I missing something there?

No, they certainly are related.

I think the question is really whether one FTE is sufficient to be able to make the order of magnitude change that

An important clarification that I hadn't caught.

Thank you, Lisa.

Moving to the second option or I'm sorry the second issue my paper low acuity response in this context acuity refers really to the intensity of medical care required by a patient.

So with Seattle fire low acuity calls account for about 40 percent of the 9 1 1 medical responses.

These are clients who often need something other than emergency room treatment.

These can include alcohol related issues or mental health issues possibly less severe injuries.

Council requested a sly on this in the 2018 budget and received a response in that response.

Seattle Fire had identified several alternative response models that are deployed throughout the country that dispatch multidisciplinary teams that can include not just a firefighter and an EMT but also in some cases a nurse or a behavioral health specialist.

I'm going to want to speak more to that but I'll let you get through your materials and then I'll dive in.

Thank you.

So options with respect to this issue would be to ask that the mayor initiate a decision making process that would lead to a recommended tool that would provide this kind of multidisciplinary low acuity response.

So basically ask for a process.

The second option would be more directly identifying funding that says we need to go ahead and create this crisis response unit.

Third option is, of course, no action.

Okay.

Did you want to speak to that now?

I think I'm going to let you get through and then when we dive into what the plans are for councilmember proposal, I'll just finish it up.

Very good.

My final issue is special event staffing, and as Council Member Gonzalez noted in your discussion with Seattle Police, this was an issue for police and it's a little bit less developed at this point from a staff perspective.

But we did investigate and found that Seattle Fire Department paramedics can sign up to work overtime at special events, similarly to what's done at Seattle Police.

However, Seattle Fire doesn't bill the paramedics at 100% cost recovery.

They don't include overhead.

In 2017 the special event billing totaled a little bit over a million dollars so if overhead was collected at say 20% that would be $200,000 a year in revenue to the city.

In 2018, through basically the first eight months of 2018, about 74% of the hours were billed to First and Goal and the Seattle Mariners.

About 10% of the hours billed were to Key Arena, the UW Athletics, Seattle Storm, and Seattle Rain.

And about 15% of the billing hours were attributed to community fairs and events, and a very few corporate events.

So, options with respect.

Did you want to talk about this further at this point?

You know, I just, I think this sort of is a great example of the cost recovery issue that we discussed in the Seattle Police Department context.

I mean, we're talking about a difference between $775,000 is what we're actually collecting and or billing.

I don't actually know if we've collected the $775,000, but we've certainly billed for it, which is another problem.

But if we were getting 100% recovery, it would be a million dollars.

I mean, that's a significant, it's a sizable amount of money when we look at the year by year by year by year.

lack of collection and recovery of those costs.

So this is just a really good example of why this body of work is important and why I want to make sure that Seattle Fire Department is included in the task force conversation that we discussed a few moments ago.

And I also would like to promote what you are recommending and put some dates on it that we have something back by first quarter or second quarter, not wait until budget cycle next year.

Yeah, thank you.

Thank you.

Did you want me to go over the options?

I mean, they basically are.

I think we've, I think it's pretty clear what those are.

So, do you have anything else that you would like to, because I'd like to dive into this low acuity in my recommendation and provide some.

And that would be the council member proposal listed here, so I will turn it over to you.

Okay, perfect.

Colleagues, I'm going to hand to you a chart that we put together and I want to say thanks to Joseph, thank you, to Joseph Peha, who put this together, and Allison McClain in my office.

So, at the top, if you think about this in thirds, the top section talks about how we're responding to whatever happens out on the street today, the middle section is where I'm going.

And we'll explain more of this.

So my goal in this next year is for our fire department to have a low acuity response team available to them.

And what that means is right now, and it's an example, if somebody in DESC calls for help or service, we send out not one but two large fire trucks, the fire ladder trucks.

And so there's often eight people are responding to something that it could be a low acuity call.

Not only is it really costly, but it puts a giant strain on our firefighters and first responders.

So, as an example and statistic, I want to say thank you to Allison for pulling this for me.

In 2017, at DESC's main shelter, just right down there on 3rd Avenue, our first responders, our firefighters, responded to over 1,000 calls.

And if you think about that in one year, that's three times a day that they're sending out the ladder trucks.

And the Union Gospel Mission had 852 responses.

Once again, that's more than two a day that our fire department is going out.

So we have done some review of other models nationally.

One is Colorado Springs that we think has a positive approach.

Mesa, Arizona is another, and our own Kent Valley is yet again another.

And I want to acknowledge John Ellerbrook in our fire department has created a low acuity program, which is really out doing training at this point.

But the goal where I want to move toward is having an emergency response team that has somebody who is technically trained for a quick emergency response and triage, someone who will ride along, who has behavioral health expertise, possibly a third depending upon the need of the call.

But what that does is it provides another option for our first responders to choose how they're going to respond to something.

And the good news is I've been working with our fire chief, I've been working with the head of our labor, our firefighters union, And they're very supportive of this so long as they can be part in helping put this together.

So I have reached out to the executive and have agreed that I'm going to move forward with this recommendation because I think it's going to save us money and it's a much more positive response to the individuals who are on the ground because part of the response team is to take them someplace where they need to go.

And you will see that in the little blue box at the bottom.

rather than just being in a spin cycle of taking somebody to Harborview, having them released the next day, and all the costs that are attributed to that.

This, we can get somebody where they need to go, whether that's a behavioral health bed, a sobering center bed, mental health assistance, and have a warm handoff to a case manager or others who can help.

The goal is to break the spin cycle as well as to provide some relief to our first responders So you'll be hearing a lot more from me about that.

I have Asked the executive if they were will be willing to put a first quarter deadline on it I'm I would like us to put some money earmark it we will proviso it but I want to be working with our mayor with the fire department and to make sure that we are building on models that have worked, that we have it properly funded, that we pilot it downtown for a first year, and perhaps in another geographic area, depending if somebody is anxious to have it out north, as just an example.

But this is a new program.

but it's not one that is new to the world.

Other cities are doing it successfully.

So that's what I'm gonna be asking for, and it's one of my top priorities this year, and I just really appreciate your support when we get there.

Council Member Juarez.

Can I just ask a couple questions?

Absolutely.

First of all, I have to up my budget game because this is pretty dang nice.

This is Joseph Peha, so we can thank him.

And not only that, but he did it within an hour of the time that I said I need it in an hour.

I'm going to have to get some visuals on some paper here, I see.

So I know that we have talked about this offline, but just quickly.

From the phone call to the, on your low-equity mobile response teams, the person-centered, less expensive.

So, you're asking us that you're going to come back to this with, we'll have a price tag?

Okay.

I mean, more or less, I'm going to be putting a half a million dollars on it.

It may be a little less.

We've got some examples, but I think that gives us some breathing room.

The one, and I'll certainly collaborate with you, but the one thing that I want to make sure that I understand, and for everyone across this town and this city, is how we are going to use when you get to that point where a behavioral health diversion team is dispatched, and the patient may be provided, and you list all these, Sobering Center, Crisis Solution Center, et cetera, how a CSO, police officer, nav team, how that all fits in there.

That's what I'm going to be worried about.

And I don't want to keep beating a dead horse, but going back to what Councilman Gonzales said as well, you know, one of the greatest untapped resources or one of the things that we have in this city that is pretty amazing is that we have neighborhoods, neighborhood knowledge, and community-based organizations that have institutional knowledge, history, and understanding of the people and the human condition in their neighborhoods.

You can literally, we've learned from the NAV team that it'll take four or five times to build trust to get somebody into shelter.

But we've learned that people like God's Green Acre has known this unsheltered person for 10, 11 years, and it takes one time and they will go right in because they know them.

So I'm hoping that we are going to leverage all of those community assets.

in each district and across the city.

Really good point.

And when you were bringing that up earlier, I wanted to jump in and say, this is a place for that coordination.

So I am absolutely with you.

I think we spend so much money, but we don't necessarily have the outcomes we want because we're doing the same thing over and over again.

And that's what I'm talking about, the spin cycle.

I don't want an individual being picked up you know, taken to Harborview or taken somewhere for a 12-hour shelter, and then they're right back on the street again.

That, one of our firefighters told me that they picked up the same guy three times in one day.

It just doesn't make sense.

So, having a coordinated approach and like you're talking about, including the neighborhood resources, That's what we need.

So I think I'd just say stay tuned on this one.

And I want you, and I will ask you to participate with me as we're working with the mayor's office and IDT to solve some of these problems.

Right.

And harnessing, which I've coined, just the humanity on the ground.

Yeah, nice.

That's what we need to do is just harness those people that know that aren't coming from the south and up to the north and that don't know these individuals.

I think that, again, I keep pushing for that.

So, thank you.

Yeah, it's very good.

Council Member Mosqueda.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I just want to echo my support for this component in the budget.

This is not only the smart thing to do to save lives, it's also the fiscally imperative thing to do to save money, both for the city and for our community partners, including those at Harborview and other community health clinics that often see individuals who have put off health conditions for a very long time.

In the ride-along that I did with the local fire department or fire station, We went on five calls within a two-and-a-half-hour period, and they were all for low-acuity issues.

One individual that I saw down by the Union Mission had an abscess, and the firefighter who treated this individual said, if we had not caught him, and frankly, he walked by, and the firefighter smelled the infection, if they had not caught him, he may have actually died from that infection.

People are putting off care, right, for treatable conditions, for cuts, for wounds, and for diseases that we know that there is treatment for if they can get in early.

So part of what I think you're doing here is you're saving the city and the system money you're also saving lives and saving hardship.

And we know that the firefighters have been looking for more flexible ways to respond.

And I really appreciate Kenny Stewart and the work of the low acuity team who've been looking at other cities in Washington state that you are pulling from and other cities across the country, because these are real healthcare needs, but they can also be addressed so much more efficiently if we have a team like this with a social worker, with an EMT firefighter in a van going out.

That's a lot less intimidating as well for some of our community members who might be living on the street and fearful of calling for help when they need it.

And I also think it helps prevent people from having to call 911. And maybe we don't need a police officer to show up.

We'd need a social worker and an EMT to show up.

it will really be that connective tissue that Councilmember Juarez is talking about to help connect to other areas.

So thank you for your work on this and very happy to support you in the budget on this.

Thank you.

Thank you both.

I just appreciate the fact that you understand the system connections.

That's, I mean, that's my goal.

Council Member O'Brien.

I'm just going to chime in and pile on here.

Council Member Bagshaw, I think I really appreciate your leadership on this and I think it's symbolic of the type of thing we need to be thinking about across the city.

Just in general, you know, as systems get more complex, as the needs get greater, how can we be smart about being more specific about what resources need to go where?

And, you know, you do a great job of explaining this and making it really clear.

you know, sending, you know, eight firefighters in a ladder truck out to address something that could be done with one or two individuals and done much better because of the resources they might have.

And I'm fully behind this and appreciate your work and the department's work.

So this is the last, but I do want to extend a big thanks to our firefighters and our first responders.

I don't want anybody to walk away thinking that we're unhappy with their work.

We appreciate them so much.

We're trying to provide the relief.

and a cost savings, and again, a system view.

And you guys are going to get really tired of me saying this throughout this budget, but the goal is to make sure that our system is working as effectively as it can, caring for individuals, making them healthier, and helping them move on to a place where their lives are going to be better.

I think that we can do that.

In fact, I know we can do that because we've done it.

We're just going to do it again here.

Okay, anything else for this?

All right, Lisa, thank you so much.

Eric, thank you.

Anything else for the good of the order?

I'm just checking these folks out at the table.

All right, well, we are going to open public comment.

We will have two minutes a piece for those of you who are here.

Thank you very much for coming.

And I believe the Honorable is up first.

I think he signed up.

Oh, Marguerite Richard?

Okay.

Please.

And then the Honorable's second today.

Good day everyone.

I'm calling this place into order again.

What am I thinking about?

I'm always thinking about something.

I think it was the fact that you said thank you for coming.

I came this morning.

And I'm very, very disenchanted that we would have to wait two or three hours for how many, no time in particular.

Well, they did say four.

It's not four o'clock.

And I'm very, I'm speaking to all these people out there that watch this.

Oh, I was gonna say Lion Channel.

That we have had enough of it.

It's vexing my spirit.

to no end, that this kind of stuff can go on.

It's unethical practices.

You have a rule that said we get ten, would I say ten minutes?

Yeah, that's right.

We demand 10 minutes.

We're sick and tired of getting told two minutes and come up in here and somebody just because, oh, they're elected official, Queen Pearl, they can do that.

Is that right, huh?

I don't think so, because even the President of the United States, oh, we said this is a sanctuary city, and then they said, a sanctuary city?

And then he says, well, no, I'm going to take that border and then people and all of them, then we're going to build a wall, and you're going to stop coming up in here illegal, because you won't let black people's lives matter.

When you get through with the budget, there's nothing there for us.

There's no center over there where we can talk and speak and do without major interruptions coming from this council, King County Council, and that governor up there sitting up in there in his lollygagging self seat.

Okay, honorable, you are up, please.

First, I thank my God for being here.

Sally Bradshaw, it's a conflict.

What gives you the right, the authority, or the power over we the people when you beg for their votes?

November the 6th is coming up.

You have the audacity and hope to have the audacity and the gumption to say, oh well, We the people can only talk at the end.

I ain't nothing, you know, Sally Bradshaw, I've been in this business over two and a half decades.

You just come in 2009. You understand?

I was educating you then about our homeless veteran family sleeping on the street.

Sally Bradshaw, what are you doing now?

Our homeless veterans.

on the streets right now.

And you're sitting up here violating the Federal Immigration and Nationality Act, Title 8, U.S.C. 1324, A in parentheses, 1 in parentheses, A in parentheses, I, B in parentheses, B in parentheses, 3 I's in parentheses, I and A, 274, A, A in parentheses, 1 in parentheses, A in parentheses, Title 8, U.S.C. 1325, improper entry.

Agents are smart.

They can learn.

That's Bradshaw.

I have taught you since 2009, and our veterans sleeping on the streets.

But then you want to pay all these billions of dollars of unauthorized and undocumented aliens?

All y'all supposed to answer to me today.

I gave y'all copies, and I won't answer.

I won't answer.

Mr. Zimmerman, And after Alex, Kay Kirkpatrick, and John Perkins.

Hi, my dirty Nazi pig.

A pure cretina.

anti-Semite, tax sucker, and killer.

My name is Alex Zimmerman, and I speak from Tacoma to Everett in Seattle 2,000 times.

Today is my fifth speech here.

I want to speak about police a little bit.

Yesterday commission, so we come with these people, with Beryl and Michael.

Nobody accept us.

Guys, I try to understand, are you all freaking degenerate, cretina?

How is this possible?

Yesterday, like, two dozen bureaucrats, including a few judges, Seattle attorney, and this ten idiots who sit at the table, you know what I mean, who are police commissioners, don't give a chance to speak to people?

We're talking about this for how many, four years?

This unique commission.

Nobody, I'm almost in every commission meeting in Seattle for the last 10 years.

There's only one commission.

What is don't have analogy, what is I speak in many cities, what is don't have public comment.

And you degenerate, cretin, a pure Nazi pig with Gestapo mentality.

Cannot change this for four years.

You won't change policeman work, this never will be happen.

And you know this, I know this, and people know this.

But right now, 700 brainwashed idiots, very angry.

The situation changed right now.

This is number one.

And number two, who's this freaking idiot who gives us speakers for two minutes, four o'clock?

African country council have morning speech, public comment, and afternoon public comment.

Why are you acting so idiotic?

Why are you acting so cretino?

Why are you acting like a Nazi Gestapo pig?

When this will be happen?

So right now I speak to the 700,000 emerald degenerate idiot who live in this city.

Say, hi, my Fuhrer.

We need clean this Dory chamber from this Nazi pig, from this cretino.

Stand up, America.

Kay Kirkpatrick and then John Perkins.

I'm sorry that you had to wait through the theater.

I'm sorry, I haven't done this before.

So I'm off topic, but this is the only day that I can come in.

But I'm here to propose a little amendment to the transportation CIP, which would be the inclusion of the Highland Park roundabout as a project that the city needs to support going ahead.

And I have a packet here that has a letter about that, because I'm not going to be able to say it all in two minutes.

There's one for everybody, including support for this project from our state representative, our state legislators, our county representatives, our neighborhood action group.

This is for the Highland Parkway roundabout.

And I have a little visual aid for you, because it's kind of hard to understand if you don't live on West Seattle.

But there's three ways to get out of West Seattle right now.

And one of them is this intersection, which is...

Can you tell us which intersection it is?

We just can't see it.

Oh, sorry.

You can take the high bridge or you can take Myers way out of west Seattle.

And this intersection that we're trying to fix here is a five way intersection with no lights.

It has one stop sign.

It has had multiple accidents and near misses.

You're talking about fire and public safety here.

There's a gas main right here that was almost exploded last year because a car flipped over in this intersection and hit the gas main.

People are constantly at risk crossing this intersection.

Traffic has nowhere to go.

It's causing traffic to flow out into the neighborhoods, endangering our students and people walking around.

So that's my kind of like really fast 2020. 22nd thing about it.

So I know WSDOT is seeking funding from WSDOT for this project.

However, if it does not go through, we have some funds assigned to it and those funds need to be committed and they need to be in the budget so that if that does not go through, we still follow up with this.

Because West Seattle, I forgot to mention these other red circles, this is your HALA density that you're about to pass, I suspect.

And I don't know where you think these people are going to go to get off the peninsula, right?

But they're going to be coming right through my neighborhood, right?

14,000 cars a day are already using this intersection.

Thank you very much.

Okay.

Thanks.

Thanks for bringing the visual aid, too.

Thanks for your patience.

Very good.

John Perkins?

All right.

Hello, Council.

You've seen me before.

I'm here to speak on behalf.

My name is John Perkins.

I live in Northeast.

Hello, Council Member Johnson.

I'm here to speak about the Central Area Senior Center, the Bird Bar Place, and the Fenny Ridge Neighborhood Association.

The three of them are currently mutually offsetting benefit locations and they are determined to accept the properties and we hope that this year you turn it over to them.

One of the pieces of the MLB is that the city funds are responsible for upkeep and maintenance.

That hasn't been happening.

So the buildings are deteriorating.

But these are all functioning 501c3 nonprofits.

They are able to recruit funds.

They're able to get grants.

There are currently at least a million and a quarter grants they cannot get because they cannot tell the funder we will be here in 10 years.

They can't even tell them we will be here tomorrow.

So it's an easy, easy decision.

It could potentially cost $275,000 a year from the city to maintain them.

If you could turn it over to these functioning, effective non-profit leaders today, part of the transition is the intangible.

Who's going to be leading it?

What are they going to do?

They're prepared.

And the energy they're putting to get this decision could be put into putting in a better ceiling or expanding or space or fixing the sidewalk.

So, given the energy, given the responsibility of additional funding came from the state, at least for the Central Area Senior Center, it was $185,000 from referendum.

29, that was in 1972. Additional funding came from a donation, part of which was the Exxon Corporation, for $100,000 to transfer the property.

They were part owner of the property at that time.

So the benefit for the city is you can have the property run as a community treasure.

It's not an asset.

It's a treasure.

It's priceless.

It's sacred.

Time's up.

My name is John Perkins.

Please prove this this year.

Thank you, and I think Councilmember O'Brien has a comment.

John, thank you for your comments today and colleagues, I know we've all had discussions of these over the years and I really appreciate you highlighting it.

I intend to have something in the budget to really resolve the issue before the city of what we're doing.

Back in 2013, the city did some work and reviewed the facilities and said it makes sense for us to transfer the ownership of all these and here we are five years later and that hasn't happened.

I've been particularly focused on one in Greenwood, the senior center that's run by the Finney Neighborhood Association, but I know there's a number of others, and my intention, colleagues, in the budget is to, what I assume will be a slide to put in there too, to require that the department explain to us what their plan is.

We've had meetings with them and...

Green sheeted and asked the city council to...

Transfer?

There's nothing else to learn.

There's no major decision out.

Chair Bagshaw?

I also just want to add, because I understand that the reason for the most recent delay, and I know there have been several delays, is that there's some question about whether or not these properties would be acceptable for housing.

And there has already been an assessment for every one of those properties.

And they have been determined not to be appropriate for housing.

And really, are we going to take away the home of the Central Area Senior Center?

Are we going to take away the historical home of Camp?

I think it's time to move on this.

And if we could do something more prescriptive than a sly, I would really support it.

Let's work together on that.

I think the one thing I'll say is the 2013 memo made it clear what direction the city wanted to go and yet we haven't executed and in my ongoing work I can't tell if there's been a change of direction.

or if it's just a lack of prioritization.

And I think it'd be very important for us to make it clear that we think the direction is correct, if that's where we all are, and that we want this prioritized.

And we need to figure out how to get the executive side to move on that, if that's where we are.

Okay.

Well, thank you very much for that.

I appreciate it.

Mr. Perkins, thank you for coming.

And sometimes it's worthwhile showing up in our council chambers.

I tried to come for the public comment the other time and I was number 64. So you have my personal letter from that visit and this is from the committee.

We do have a public hearing next Tuesday, 530, and then also thank you to my colleagues for your engagement.

We will be adjourned today, and our next meeting is Monday, the 22nd, where we're going to be focusing on the sweetened beverage tax and the short-term rentals, and our council briefing will start that session at 1030 or later if our council briefing goes longer in the morning.

So I know that Council President Harrell is going to be looking for leadership.

Okay.

Thank you, everybody.

Thank you for coming.

This meeting is adjourned.