Seattle City Council Select Budget Committee 8102020

It's August 10, 2020, and the Select Budget Committee will come to order.

The time is 10.36, and I'm Teresa Mosqueda, chair of the Select Budget Committee.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Here.

Strauss.

Present.

Gonzalez.

Here.

Herbold.

Here.

Lewis.

Here.

Peterson.

Here.

Chair Mosqueda.

Here.

Seven present.

Thank you very much, Madam Clerk, Council Colleagues.

Thank you so much for joining us.

I do expect a full Councilmember Morales is also here.

Thank you for your note.

I see you noting your presence.

both the 2020 rebalancing package and finalizing our changes to the SPD budget for this interim summer budget process.

If there's no objection, the agenda will be adopted.

Hearing no objection, the agenda is adopted.

Colleagues, we did commit to having at least 20 minutes of public comment today.

I will go until 11 a.m.

Again, we have a number of folks who've signed up for public comment, and I would ask people to, again, please provide your public comment within the 45-second window that's been offered previously.

We want to get in as many people as possible.

You will hear a 10-second chimer towards the end of your time to publicly speak.

We ask that you conclude your comments and then hang up on the listen, sorry, hang up on this participatory line and then dial into the listen-in line or Seattle Channel.

streaming, or viewing options on TV.

We are going to call the first three speakers in the order in which they appear on today's sign-in sheet, and we will get through as many people as possible.

If you're not able to conclude your comment or we don't get to you, please do send in your comments to council at seattle.gov.

Thanks again to our folks from IT and comms for constantly making this possible, and appreciate all of your participation.

Let's go ahead and get started.

The first three speakers will be Peter Shalito, Hannah LeBlanc, and Siri Gillespie.

Peter, good morning.

Folks from IT, just want to check in to make sure that we got Peter with us.

and if we could set the clock at 45 seconds.

And if we don't have Peter.

Peter's on the line.

Okay, wonderful.

Hey, Peter.

If you can hear me, please go ahead and get started.

Okay, I'm going to come back to Peter since I cannot hear him.

The next person is Hannah.

Good morning, Hannah.

Sorry for the confusion.

I'm a scientist in Wallingford, Seattle, District 4, calling about the SPD budget.

I want to start, but with a reminder that Seattle police are currently fully funded and have been all summer.

Reckless decisions on their part have injured Seattleites, suppressed the constitutional right to free speech, and eroded public trust.

We cannot continue with the status quo.

Fortunately, we already have a plan for something better.

It was presented to this body by community leaders in July and has been embraced and further developed by most council members.

If you're not familiar with it, educate yourself.

Justice, accountability, and public safety are easier when we work together.

Defund SPD by 50%, invest in Black and Brown communities, and free all protesters without charges.

Thank you for listening.

Thank you, Hannah.

Good morning.

Do we have Hannah with us?

Hannah's on the line.

Hannah, good morning.

Okay, I'm going to read the next three speakers.

I'm sorry for the technical difficulties that we're having this morning.

I do want to try to get through as many folks as possible.

So we have Hannah and then Siri.

And then we have Madison Hage, Robert Krushnick, and Walker Thomas.

Hannah, can you hear us now?

Moving on.

Siri, can you hear us?

Okay this is a slightly unusual because we usually have folks teed up.

Is there anybody from IT who has any update for us.

Can you hear me.

Hi Hannah.

Yes we are.

Hi Siri.

Please go ahead.

Keylock.

Good morning.

My name is Siri and I'm Alaskan Native Onangax therapist educator student and social worker currently living in District 4 on the unceded land of the Duwamish people.

I'm urging council to support defunding STD by at least 50 percent.

I urge all of you specifically you Alex Peterson to ask yourself this question in every decision you make.

What does this do for Black liberation and Indigenous sovereignty.

If your work does not center Black liberation and Indigenous sovereignty then your work is in direct opposition to Black and Indigenous people and will only maintain the status quo of systemic violence and oppression.

I urge council members to support decriminalized Seattle and King County equities now four point plan for community reinvestment of those funds.

I thank you and I yield my time.

Thank you.

Hannah are you with us?

Okay the next person is Madison.

Okay the next person is Robert.

Chair Mosqueda.

It appears that the public commenters need to unmute themselves using pound six when we let them, when we unmute them.

It could have been a technical change we weren't aware of.

So just want to give you a heads up on what's going on.

I'm going to ask folks to hit star six to unmute and we'll try it from the top again.

Hannah, are you with us?

Madison, are you with us?

Hi, can you hear me?

Yes, thank you, Madison.

Hi, can you hear me?

Hi, good morning.

My name is Madison Lynn Hockey and I'm a renter in District 7. I am calling in to voice my support of absolutely everything that makes cuts to the Seattle Police Department and have that reinvested into community-based solutions for public health and safety.

I want to remind both the council and the listeners that these cuts do not actually meet the demands of protesters, nor do the current plans for 2021. SPD must be held accountable, and as reform has proven time and time again with these folks, that they are ineffective.

The only thing left is to defund.

The road to defunding would be difficult, but I implore the council to stick to their promises.

Thank you.

I yield my time.

Thank you for your time.

Robert, good morning.

Yes, I'm here.

My name is Robert Crookshank, and I'm a homeowner living in Greenwood in District 6. I urge you to proceed with the defunding of the police department you voted for last week, as well as adopt three remaining defund proposals, $3 million for community research purposes, ending overtime pay, and placing 9-1-1 dispatch under civilian control.

This is essential because we've seen no remorse or apology from SPD for their actions.

They've never apologized for killing Charlene Lyles or Shea Taylor or Sean Fuhrer or anyone else.

They've never apologized for brutalizing protesters and journalists just within the last month.

They've never apologized for terrorizing a neighborhood with weapons of war.

They've made it clear they don't think they did anything wrong.

They will do it again.

Chief Bess has never apologized for any of this.

You were right to vote to cut her pay last week and should not make any changes to that.

When she apologizes for it and commits to stop the horrors her officers have unleashed on our constituents then maybe we can revisit the question of her pay.

Until that happens it's time to proceed with defunding in order to protect our communities protect public health and to protect Black lives.

Thank you.

The next person is Walker.

Hello.

Hi.

Hello.

Hi, my name is Walker Walker Thomas.

I live in district 3. I am calling in to add my voice to the chorus saying we need to defund the by at least 50%.

I work at a homeless shelter.

My partner is a public school teacher.

We both know how totally ineffective and useless the Seattle police are for the problems our city actually faces, and we know how much we need this money to do other helpful things during the pandemic.

The community's demands have not changed at all.

It's at least 50%.

That's absolutely the minimum.

You need to do it.

It's what we've elected you to do.

Do the right thing.

I yield the rest of my time.

Thank you.

The next three speakers are Sue Romney, Ashton Ebbe, and Katie Simpson.

Sue, good morning.

Sue, if you push star six, colleagues.

Sorry for the delay here, Sue.

Okay, the next person is Ashton.

Hi, can you hear me?

Oh, hi, Sue.

Please go ahead.

Hi, good morning.

I am a renter in District 4. Following the lead of King County Equity Now and Decriminalize Seattle, I call upon the council repeatedly to defund this militant terrorist group called the Seattle Police Department.

The protests of the past two months have shown that the SPD routinely terrorizes the very people it should protect.

At this point, we are repeating their atrocities in every public comment like a broken record.

What is the council waiting for to ensure the safety of its own people or to secure its position with its powerful donors?

Defund SPD by at least 50%, redirect the money to community-run safety and health programs, and drop all charges on protesters.

Thank you.

Thank you.

The next person is Ashton.

Ashton, can you hear us?

Okay, if we could line up the next three speakers and have them off of mute so that we're ready to go.

We have Ashton, Ebi, Kate Simpton, and Jamie Patek.

Folks, you will be unmuted.

I'm going to ask for you to wait until the person before you finishes speaking, then I think we can roll through it.

Ashton, good morning.

Ashton, please go ahead.

I'm sorry about that.

Can you hear me?

Yes.

Hi, my name is Ashton and I'm a resident of District 7. I'm calling to insist that the City Council do more.

The tally from the last Budget Committee that I attended puts the cuts at roughly 2% this year and 40% next year.

The sum of those two cuts fails to hit the mark.

This is not enough.

I call on the Council to do more.

Further, I hope the Council is prepared for an end-of-year battle with SPD on overtime spending.

A couple days ago, the everyday march was met by at least 40 officers at the precinct.

How many of those were on an overtime shift and are they planning on strongholding city government at the end of the year?

That's all.

I yield my time.

Thank you.

Kate, good morning.

Hello.

My name is Kate Simpson and I live in Capitol Hill.

I'm calling on you to defund SPD by at least 50 percent and reallocate the money to fund community-based public safety and restorative justice.

as many of you have already pledged to do in July.

We have the opportunity in Seattle to reimagine our public safety to prevent harm instead of just responding to it.

I urge you to follow King County Equity Now's four-point plan to defund the police and reinvest in housing, education, and more.

The protests over the last two months have made plain to the whole city what Black communities have known for years, that the police neither keep us safe nor are held accountable for their actions.

only by defunding their budget can we begin to heal the harm that the police have caused in Seattle's BIPOC communities.

Thank you.

Thank you.

The next person is Jamie.

Hi, can you hear me?

Yes, thanks.

My name is Jamie Patosik.

I'm a resident of the 6th district on Duwamish land.

Firstly, I applaud Councilmember Lewis for addressing the malicious treatment of protesters in Snohomish.

I've been with everyday marchers most weekdays and they are overwhelmingly positive and peaceful events to hinge on community engagement and support.

These are the leaders we should be listening to, not Mayor Durkin and Chief Best, who continue to perpetuate violence against the people they're sworn to protect.

I'm also calling in solidarity with King County Equity Now to demand you vote immediately to cut the SPD budget by 50% for the rest of the year and do the same for 2021. Additionally, I urge you to uphold the budget committee decision to cut the egregiously bloated salaries of the top SPD executives.

Not only have seven of you committed to cut the budget by 50%, but an overwhelming majority of the hundreds of people who've called into public comment about this issue over the past several weeks have been in favor.

If you don't vote for this budget, I don't know who you're representing.

Thank you.

The next three people are Summer Stinson, Shirley Henderson, and Brendan McGovern.

Summer, good morning.

Good morning.

Good morning.

This is Summer Stinson, a D6 constituent and on the board of the Economic Opportunity Institute.

I urge the council to meet the demands of BIPOC communities and other activists to defund Seattle Police Department by 50%.

Many of you have committed to this 50% reduction, but this budget proposal is not enough.

It is short of these promises.

As a labor and employment lawyer for the government, I understand that layoffs of our militarized police may require some negotiations.

But I also urge the council to remain strong and require that the executive, the Mayor Durkin and Chief Best, must follow through on your budget.

so that the bloated and militarized police department be stopped and not allow such violence to continue to occur to all citizens and especially to bi-part communities.

Thank you.

Thank you.

The next person is Shirley.

Please go ahead, Shirley.

After that is Brendan McGovern.

Can you hear me?

Hi, can you hear me?

Please go ahead.

Yes, thank you.

Hi, thank you.

My name is Shirley Henderson, and I'm one of the owners of Squirrel Chops, which is a queer run coffee shop in Harris Blount in the Central District.

And as a community shop, we stand in solidarity with council members who want budget amendments to defund the SPD budget by 50% and invest that $85 million in our BIPOC communities now.

The central district has been brutalized by racist policing and police murder of innocent folks of color.

And we're disappointed by the lack of action by the rest of the city council.

And we want to know why you voted no on the people's budget legislation to defund SPD by 50% and invest in black and brown communities.

We stand with our communities and with all the protesters, the Everyday March, Black Lives Matter organizations, and council members in demanding that you stand by your commitments you made to Black Lives Matter and defund the police.

Oops excuse me.

Brendan good morning.

Do we have Brendan with us.

After Brendan we will have Jessica Scalzo Maxwell Goldwyn and Thomas Hudson.

Brendan are you there.

Brendan is here.

He just needs to unmute himself.

Okay folks as a reminder please push star-6 to unmute.

Hi Brendan.

Please go ahead.

Hello, thank you.

I'm a D4 substitute teacher with Seattle Public Schools.

My name is Brendan.

I'm also a member of Socialist Alternative.

I'm calling to voice my support for defunding Seattle Police Department by 50% and voting to support the amendments from Council Member Swan's office and the people's budget amendments, as well as to support the everyday marchers' demands to not only defund SPD by 50%, but invest a significant more of that involved by parking is free all the protesters no new youth jail uh...

and mary mary durkin must resign uh...

you know uh...

seven of the of nine of you verbally claim to be fun fifty percent but now you've clearly voted against that out of last week and so uh...

we demand that you continue to defund fpd and to uh...

also and overtime pay civilianized on one one calls

Thank you.

Jessica, good morning.

Hi.

Hi, my name is Jessica.

Thanks for the opportunity to speak.

I live in District 3. I'm calling because I still want to encourage you to defund SPD by at least 50% and transfer that money to the Black and Brown Community Restorative Justice Programs, Education and Affordable Housing.

I see clearly it's not going to happen right now, and so I want to hold you to your commitment.

to dismantle the navigation team, take that $420,000 from executive pay, give it to the community, and also require that the police report excessive pay.

And we will have to keep organizing to push forward to defund SPD by 50% in the future so that we can actually build sustainable communities.

Thank you for the time.

Thank you.

And Maxwell Goldman.

Folks, Star 6 on mute.

Hello, my name is Maxwell Goodwin.

I'm a D3 renter and small business owner.

Increasingly, my friends are seeing that the Pew protests that destroy property target racist big business like Starbucks and Amazon and buildings that put kids in cages.

Boards are coming off of small businesses.

Satellites are debunking the evening news narrative and seeing police as a true threat to our businesses, our homes, our children, and our safety.

This is unsurprising when non-destructive protests are repressed just as hard by SPD and off-duty SPD like attempted murderer Molly Clark, who has yet to be arrested or charged.

As most of you abandon your pledge to defund SPD by at least 50%, your words are ringing hollow.

Show us they are not.

Defund at every opportunity.

Reallocate into Black communities.

Defund consistently with the demand of amnesty for all protesters.

Do not create exceptions to protect racist, corporate, insured property at the expense of human safety and freedom and taxpayer dollars.

Thank you.

The next person is Thomas.

Hello.

Hey, I'm calling to let City Council know that we are on the road to abolishing the police.

So we need to defund them as much as physically possible right now so we can get that money to places where it will help us for the future.

And right now, the police do not help us.

In the future, the police don't help us.

So we're going to need to find different solutions, and we can do that by reinvesting that money into Black communities.

Also, amnesty for all protesters.

Thank you.

Bye.

Thank you.

And then our last four speakers will be Erica Jacobson, Brittany Boulay, Daniel Kavanaugh, and CJ Williamson.

Erica, good morning.

Hi, can you hear me?

Yes, we can.

Good morning City Council.

My name is Erica Jacobson and I'm a renter in District 2. We are demanding that you divest 50% from the police budget and invest that in black communities and community services within the city.

We are demanding you use those funds on low-income housing.

We are demanding resources such as Nickelville tiny house villages for our houseless neighbors.

We are demanding emergency mental health services.

We are demanding for an emergency response better suited for our city and the needs of the city.

We are demanding rent and financial assistance for the working classes in the middle of a pandemic.

The bloated SPD budget is not helping our city.

The SPD has proven to not assist or positively affect any of the demands I just previously listed.

All of you council members who publicly committed to defund SBD went back on your word barring Sawant.

Follow Sawant's lead.

Do as you promise.

Uphold Black voices and leadership.

Respect BIPOC demands from orgs like King County Equity Now.

Black lives.

Thank you.

Brittany.

Good morning.

Hi.

Good morning chair.

Good morning council.

My name is Brittany Bole and I'm the chair of Sierra Club Seattle Group.

I'm calling because Sierra Club supports police defunding both as a local issue and as an issue, a priority issue from the National Org.

Our mission as an organization is to create a world that's safe and healthy for all, but our city is not safe for everyone until it's safe for our Black friends and neighbors.

And it's not safe for our Black friends and neighbors until we end violent policing.

We follow the lead of a Black and POC-led organization in the city of Seattle calling for 50% defunding of SPD and the reinvestment of the money into a community-led health and safety strategy.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Daniel, good morning.

Daniel Cavanaugh, are you with us?

Hi, I'm Dan.

I'm a renter in the Central District and I just want to say it's totally unacceptable that the council members are walking back their promise to defund by 50% and that they would propose a ridiculous, insulting 4% defunding plan for this year's budget.

And I want to be clear, they aren't supporting, you know, the council members don't want to defund in next year's budget either.

They're just biding their time and making excuses.

And I want to thank Council Member Sawant and Socialist Alternative for standing with the movement.

And I want to urge council members to vote to uphold the cuts to the bloated Seattle Police Executive Budget, where some police officers are making 200,000 or more a year.

I think that's ridiculous.

We're not paying our teachers that much, our nurses that much, so I think it's absolutely unacceptable.

Okay, thank you.

And the last person is CJ Williamson.

CJ, good morning.

Good morning.

My name is CJ.

I'm a renter in District 6. This weekend I got a call from my uncle from North Carolina saying that him and his friends signed a petition on Fox News.

People 3,000 miles away trying to influence our city's policies.

I really, really want to urge that you don't let outsiders influence your decision.

Satellites have been showing up and voicing their demands for a long, long time.

And you need to listen to that, please.

Some of these officers in our police department are making upwards of $300,000 a year and facing no punishments for misconduct.

We don't want those people protecting us." Angelica Charizaro from decriminalized Seattle said it best. The call to defund the police is clearly here to stay. We're asking you to help us build a better world that Charlene Alliles deserves. Thank you.

Okay, thank you very much.

For all the folks who called in, thank you for your time today.

We have reached our 11 o'clock time period.

Again, we will have full council this afternoon at 2pm.

If you'd like to make some public comments there, opening for public comment begins at 12 noon.

With that, that concludes our public comment for this morning.

And we're going to get right into the orders of business in front of us, given that this is a continuation of the conversations that we've had over the last few months.

In fact, we've been working on the budget process now for over two months, and I want to thank our incredible team, central staff folks.

I know I was on the phone with folks all over the weekend trying to hear additional last-minute ideas and making sure that all the T's were crossed, all the I's were dotted.

Thanks to all of you for all of your work over the last two months.

This is not a process that we engaged in lightly, nor did we engage in in a manner that was rushed.

This was a thoughtful process to address the crisis that is presenting itself because of COVID, both in terms of the decreased revenue and the impact on the health and economic viability of our community.

So I did want to just say thank you for all of your work.

This is slated to be our last committee meeting, and then we have the opportunity to have discussion in full council.

I did want to take a quick second to address the letter that we received from Director Noble.

Again, last night at about 10 p.m., I had the chance to talk to the director.

This morning, 12 hours later, at 9 a.m., the mayor sent the information around.

The email that the mayor sent raises some concerns about the jumpstart Seattle revenue proposal 20 minutes before council briefing was slated to start.

So I appreciate councilmember Herbold's questions.

I think the intent is to make sure that we have a robust discussion on Wednesday as slated regarding the use of emergency funds.

I will not be engaging in a And that includes folks who are seeking child care, rental assistance, food assistance, folks who need to open their small businesses and are looking for flexible funds, and the child care that so many business owners and Seattleites across Seattle have said that they need to have access so that the dollars can go into child care so that those child care services can stay open.

We've heard from SEIU 925, who works directly with child care providers, that there's so many small businesses that are child cares, 30% of which are slated to stay closed unless they receive immediate assistance right now.

I know, for example, that my sister, who has my young nephews, Her kiddo who was slated to go into second grade is now at this point planning to go to a child care that is adapting so that more kiddos can have a place where they can be during the day where they can learn and they can be safe while schools are closed.

It's important that we offer that type of support, not just to families, but to the small businesses, to the child cares across the city.

And that's what COVID's slated to do.

We will have a robust conversation about the jumpstart COVID relief bill on Wednesday.

And I think there's going to be ample time for conversation around the new and pressing information that we've received about the shortfall in the revenue.

It's no secret that we anticipated both a quick recovery and a slow recovery.

There is a V-shaped recovery synopsis and a U-shaped.

And as you can imagine, we are in that slower U-shaped recovery because folks have not been able to go back to school.

They have not been able to open their small businesses.

They have not been able to resume business as usual because it is imperative that we protect their health and safety by maintaining and continuing stay home, stay healthy orders.

the city.

It is no surprise that there is a slower recovery and it is tracking along the slow recovery strategy that was outlined in early June.

What is a surprise is to receive a letter 30 minutes before our Council briefing.

I think this speaks to our need for robust reengagement with what budgeting practices could be in the city.

setting out some guidelines or principles of ways that we'd like to engage more collaboratively and transparently with the public by having information presented from the city budget's office to city council and the public in a transparent way.

I would even suggest that includes regularly timed revenue forecasts so that we're not receiving information 12 hours before a slated vote.

Like it or not, we are our own full branch of government and our job is to appropriate money and to do so transparently.

And that is what we've been engaged in doing.

We want to make sure that the folks in the community know that we are engaged in that conversation and ideally anticipate having a robust discussion on Wednesday about the relief funds.

We will, as we always have, continue to work with the mayor to identify solutions for any budget holes.

And we are going to do that again this week and into the fall.

We again have a full budget process in front of us that begins just in September.

And we're going to be looking for ways to make sure that we close any of these gaps.

Council members, I just wanted to identify that what's, I think, most important for us over the next two hours here is for us to conclude this conversation about the budget, and we will have additional conversations in full council.

But we have a number of amendments that are in front of us, and we are very close to the finish line with getting these wrapped up.

And as Council Member Herbold noted, there is ongoing conversations to be had on Wednesday regarding the use of emergency relief dollars because we have the bill teed up for us to discuss through COVID relief.

So with that, I would just encourage us to make the tough decisions that we have in front of us.

We've come a long way as a cohort.

We have an incredible amount of work that has been put into identifying the 2020 rebalancing package, thanks to our central staff and the incredible teams within our individual offices.

We have solid professional work that has guided our to date.

And with the new information that we've received, we will continue to engage with the executive's office and the CBO about how to close that gap.

But as our budget director noted about three weeks ago or so, given the slower than anticipated recovery, we had also identified an $11 million gap.

we're going to continue to see a slow recovery given this crisis, but it's imperative for us to continue to move forward with this select budget committee to really wrap up our committee discussions on the proposed package in front of us.

None of this is easy, and we're all moving as fast as we can.

I know the city is not in a unique position as we grapple with both the impact on reserves and revenue, as well as the pressing need in our community What is unique in the city of Seattle and in the state of Washington is the extremely regressive nature of our taxes, and that's why we passed the Jump Start Progressive Payroll Tax to help backfill, replenish in full our emergency reserves beginning next year with the amounts that will be allocated or collected at the end of 2021 and replenished to the city in 2022. to be proactive about the regressive nature of our taxes in the city is why we pass the jumpstart package.

I would love for us to jump into the conversation about the amendments in front of us and then finish the conversation in a more robust fashion about what to anticipate throughout the rest of the week later in our conversations today.

Okay.

With that, Madam Clerk, will you please read into the record item number one.

Madam Clerk, are you on hold?

I'm sorry, are you on mute?

There we go.

Excuse me.

Hello.

Agenda item one, review of potential legislation related to Seattle Police Department for briefing and discussion.

Thank you very much, Madam Clerk.

Council colleagues, we have in front of us the review of potential legislation related to the SPD budget, and I'm going to turn it over to Allie, who I believe has a chart to show us a number of the pieces of legislation in front of us.

Good morning, Council Members.

Allie Pucci with your Council Central staff.

My colleague Patty is, thank you Patty, is posting a list of four pieces of legislation that are on the introduction and referral calendar this afternoon that are needed to implement some of the changes proposed today and discussed in this committee, as well as a resolution that I will discuss once I briefly describe those four pieces of legislation.

The first four council bills include Council Bill 119861, which would disaggregate the Seattle Police Department's Patrol Operations BSL so that appropriations for each patrol precinct are controlled separately.

Council Bill 119860, that would amend the Jumpstart COVID Relief Bill to reduce the total amount of spending by about $3 million.

Council Bill 119862, that would appropriate that $3 million to the Ledge Department to enter into contracts with community-based organizations to research processes that will promote public safety informed by community needs and Council Bill 119863 that authorizes an inner fund loan to support the investments.

in the Council's work reimagining community safety and specifically the investments that were approved through amendments to Council Bill 119825 last week to provide funding in the Human Services Department for this community-led work.

As I noted, these bills were discussed at committee last week and in previous committee discussions.

It was determined that these budget changes required new legislation, so they will be introduced this afternoon and considered at the special council meeting on Wednesday afternoon.

And unless there are questions about those bills, I'll move to the resolution.

Are there any council members that would like to speak to any of these bills that are in front of us here?

OK.

Seeing none, thank you, Ali, please go ahead.

So the fifth piece on this list is resolution 31962 sponsored by council members Lewis, Herbold, and Juarez that will be walked on for introduction and action at the council meeting this afternoon.

This resolution establishes the council's intent to create a civilian-led Department of Community Safety and Violence Prevention and what is expected to occur in 2021. My colleague, Lish Whitson, is available if council members have specific questions about the content of this resolution.

But for now, I'll turn it back to the chair and the sponsors for further discussion.

Thank you very much.

I want to thank Councilmembers Lewis and Herbold, I believe are the prime sponsors on this.

Council colleagues, would you like to speak to this visioning document and what you have outlined in front of us in terms of the resolution that both I think addresses 2020 and future work?

I think this is a really important element of the work that we're doing here today.

So Councilmember Lewis, please take it away.

Thank you so much.

And I'll be brief because I did just discuss this an hour ago in council briefing.

But just suffice it to say that we aren't just engaged in a deductive process and talking about the police department.

There's an additive component too in the work that is before this council and that we're discussing as a community, which is around how we make sure there is still someone on the other end of that 911 response when people call 911 and are requesting some kind of assistance.

And we've seen from our deliberations with the police department and the data that's been shared by the police department that 56% of the 911 calls SPD is currently responding to are non-criminal calls.

that those calls represent a variety of public health and low-level kinds of activity that could be addressed by a different type of first responder.

We've also seen a considerable number of functions within SPD that community has expressed an interest in maintaining the service but removing it from sworn SPD chain of command, and a good example of that is 911 dispatch.

given the confluence of providing new community-based forms of first response and transferring certain functions out of the police department, it makes sense to follow the lead of what other jurisdictions and other cities are doing to put those new functions and responsibilities into a civilian public department that is separate from a sworn and armed police department.

This is a practice that, you know, Minneapolis is currently looking at.

You know, Denver I think already has one.

Albuquerque, New Mexico is looking at a similar practice.

other cities have done similar work to reconstitute entire levels of how they do law enforcement.

Philadelphia passed a charter amendment recently creating a new type of public service officer, similar concept that is unarmed, that has low-level enforcement responsibilities.

So this resolution is the first step in setting up a process to create this department, a process that'll be comprehensive that's going to involve working with community, working with a broad range of stakeholders, and possibly even involving a charter amendment in the November 2021 ballot where the people of Seattle would get to have the final say at the ballot box over adopting this kind of approach.

we have a lot of work to do to make sure that we get this done.

So with that, I don't have anything else to add except to thank Lish for being extremely diligent in putting this together on a tight timeline working with a variety of I want to thank the city manager and staff in both of their offices and Camille brown in my office for shepherding this through and look forward to considering this.

This has to be part of the process of our defunding conversation.

This is not just a deductive conversation.

This is additive about what will continue to provide services, to diminish it, as has been a narrative out in the press that is completely not the intention of this council.

And indeed, as shown in this resolution, there are better ways forward and better ways to deliver some of these services.

And we're going to have a community conversation about it throughout the rest of this year and into 2021. So with that, I have no additional comments.

Thank you very much.

Council Member Herbold, would you like to add to this?

Sure.

Really briefly, um, in addition to the points that council member Lewis made about the intentions, uh, to create a new civilian led, um, department of community safety and violence prevention.

I want to lift up, um, the other commitments that the legislation makes, uh, for our conversations in 2020 moving into 2021. as relates to the department transfers of several functions of the police department into other departments.

Some of these transfers are transfers that the mayor and the chief have themselves identified as priorities, particularly the agreement around our shared interest to transfer 9-1-1 and the commitment of the mayor to deliver legislation to this council to do so before the end of the year.

The resolution also outlines what our goals are for our community-led research and participatory budgeting effort.

and also identifies what the council's priorities are for SPD response to 911 calls, and also identifies the council's interest to further deprioritize or continue prosecution of certain types of misdemeanors.

that lead to bias-based policing.

Again, these are conversations that we are going to have with the executive moving forward with the goal of reducing the impacts of policing on black and brown communities, impacts that have a long history of disparate impact and that perpetuate injustice in our city.

The legislation, the resolution also identifies the council's priorities for out-of-order layoff requests, asking the chief to make such a request to the public safety civil service commission director and lifts up the community's desire that the chief make these requests to the commission director focused first on officers with multiple sustained complaints.

We are going to have continued conversations with labor relations, the mayor's office, and the chief to identify other possible higher priority reductions in patrol staff.

the resolution speaks to the council's commitment to have compliance with our city's charter obligation and our expectation that the chief also comply with the charter obligation to to ensure that we maintain adequate patrol staffing in every district of the city, as well as our expectation that our budget actions are under the supervision and review of the court as it relates to our obligations under the consent decree.

I want to echo Councilmember Lewis's thanks to the inclusion from Councilmember Juarez and specifically call out I think it's important for us to make sure that we have a clear description of what that inclusion is, and that's the council's priority to work to create a police misconduct registry that is accessible to the public.

And this models some efforts that are being undertaken in the federal government.

Thank you very much.

And I will also appreciate Council Member Juarez.

I do want to clarify something that I said earlier.

Council Member Juarez has been officially excused.

She did ask for an excuse from today's meeting.

So just want to make that clear for the record.

Are there any other comments or questions on the resolution in front of us, colleagues?

Council Member Sawant and then Council Member Peterson.

I will be voting yes on this resolution stating the council's intents and hopes to defund the police in the future.

However, my message to the movement is that we have to be clear that a non-binding resolution stating the intent to hope to study defunding the police in the future, let me state that again, the intent to hope to study defunding the police in the future is simply not a substitute for actually defunding the police.

The city council can pass resolutions all year long.

So why is it today when voting on the actual budget, the actual funding of the police, why is it now the time that the majority of the council walks on for a vote, a resolution stating these intentions?

Our movement is clearly expected to accept these nice words about the future intentions as accomplished fact.

But unfortunately, I believe that would be a serious mistake for our movement to make because we have seen what happens with promises.

In Minneapolis, the city council promised to change the city charter to totally reorganize their police department.

And as Socialist Alternative in Minnesota had predicted, rather than taking any action as the city's highest legislative body, the Minneapolis City Council punted that question to the Charter Commission.

And again, unfortunately, as Socialist Alternative had predicted, the Charter Commission has said this is not possible.

That happened Wednesday last week.

So after all the pomp and circumstances of the defending promises, the Minneapolis Democrats are not defunding the police.

And here in Seattle, after my office had publicly pledged to fight for and stand with the movement of the police by at least 50%.

Six other council members, all Democrats, promised a 50% defund, but are now in the process of voting, and as happened last week, voted against reduction of the police budget.

by 50% as my office had brought forward an amendment which no other council member voted yes on on Wednesday.

And so the Democrats on the city council in Seattle are voting to reduce the police budget by less than $3 million.

and then are adding $3 million to the police budget to the second quarter supplemental budget, which has not come up yet, but I will be speaking to that also.

Last Wednesday, as I said, I proposed defunding the police by 50% now.

And as I said, every other council member voted no, saying the budget cuts could not be done in November, even though these reasons that have been stated by the council are not based in fact.

In response to the idea that this cannot be done until November, which I don't accept, but even hypothetically accepting that, I also brought forward an amendment defunding the police by 50% starting in November, that is starting on November 1st, and no council member even seconded that proposal.

To be clear, defunding the police is not an accounting trick.

Moving traffic and parking enforcement out of the police department but keeping its operations unchanged is not what our movement meant by defunding the police.

By defunding the police, we mean ending the repression of our communities.

By defunding the police, we do not mean budget cuts or austerity.

We mean the opposite of that.

We mean take public monies away from where harm is being done and put it in the communities.

So I will be voting yes, as I said, on this resolution because, of course, I support the intents in the resolution.

But at the end of the day, genuinely winning defunding of the police and an end to police violence will require a sustained and independently organized movement and also a democratically organized movement where we hold our movement leaders accountable and where we don't build alliances with the establishment, which ultimately does not stand true to its promises.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And councilmember Peterson, I saw your hand.

Also just note that the resolution in front of us was discussed as a draft last month on Friday in July.

So I wanted to make sure that that was also noted.

Councilmember Peterson, please go ahead.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

I would like to make a motion to adjourn.

I've heard this statistic a lot.

But I think another good metric to look at, rather than the raw number of calls, is the amount of service time spent on those calls.

Priority 1 and Priority 2 calls take longer.

Priority 1 calls, such as in-progress calls posing a threat to life, and Priority 2 calls, such as in-progress property crimes, total 71% of service time.

So that means only 29% of calls are lower priority than Priority 1 or 2. point out that metric as well.

A big picture question for the sponsors.

Could you elaborate on the potential scenarios for what happens to the police department in the organizational chart of city government?

So for example, as a police department under this resolution, is the vision it would be housed within the new community safety department or are there multiple scenarios that could occur?

For my perspective, I think there are, to your latter suggestion, multiple scenarios that could occur.

I am not considering a scenario where we do not require policing for clarification's sake, but whether or not that policing function would continue to be under a traditional police department and all of the other non-policing entities would be under the Department of Community Safety and Violence Prevention, that's one model, the other model could include the smaller, more focused policing agency to be under that umbrella as well?

I think these are all good questions and I'm sorry for not I just wanted to say thank you for your contribution to this resolution.

In my overview of the resolution, I apologize for not lifting up Councilmember Peterson's, your contribution to this resolution.

That was my fault.

on police response times.

I think that's really important.

And I also appreciate your lifting up the fact that, you know, number of calls may not be as meaningful as time to respond to calls.

So thank you.

I don't know if you have a follow-up.

I can add to that.

There are a lot of different examples around the country.

Denver, Colorado has a system like that where they have sort of a Department of Public Safety and the police are like a bureau within it still with a with the chief that runs that bureau who was sworn.

but who answers to a civilian director that is in between them and the mayor.

It could also be that we develop a system where instead of kind of having a, you know, like two public safety chiefs, like a fire and a police chief, there would now be like a third director of public safety, and those would sort of be our three public safety top officials, all with independent departments, all that directly account to the mayor.

I think the important thing is to not be too prescriptive, because we do want to have an open process where we look at national best practices and consult extensively with community and experts.

to come up with what is going to be the best division, but there are multiple national models and all of them involve I mean, speaking of cuts from her balls point I mean all of them involve still having the ability to have.

I think it is important to understand that we are not talking about, you know, armed police that can respond to exigent threats, but just in sort of a more specific role where there is other services that can take the role of things that police currently respond to and that they probably should not be responding to.

So I hope that provides some clarification.

vote in full counsel.

Okay.

I would just want to thank the sponsors as well and offer sort of a document that I have as an in the hip pocket document for us as we think about the next iterations here.

I want to appreciate the sponsors for bringing us this resolution.

Patty, if you'd like to bring up the document I think this is a complementary piece that goes along with the resolution to make it clear that there are actions that are being taken that will be able to be annualized over next year's budget.

As we begin our discussions in just a few weeks on the fall 2021 budget cycle, there are significant steps that we are taking in this budget that if continued this fall will be annualized and result in both reductions and also opportunities for us to invest in community.

This is an opportunity for us to show the chart that I had provided as a draft again last month, but to show what's possible.

In this summer's rebalancing package, if you scroll up to the very top, we have seen that the rebalancing package is going very far, as far as we can, but not as far as we all know that community is asking us to.

Our teams and community members have been working around the clock to really identify all of the places where we can reduce the footprint.

There are strategies that we put into place here that can help us in the 2021 cycle really elaborate and annualize these costs.

And we knew that we had to make investments now to get funding into communities so that community-based solutions have the time to scale up and to make larger, to take on larger volumes of work in the future.

So today is one step in this process.

Additionally, as you see towards the end of the chart, What lies in front of us is an opportunity for us to build on the community-led research process that will begin later this year to make sure that decisions are rooted in equity, reducing funding, but also making sure that we're investing in upstream community-led solutions, that we're also addressing things in the criminal legal system and calling for change there.

But we have to be intentional as we move forward.

This is a document that is intended to be aspirational, that is intended to be that we are going to be looking at a point in time analysis for where there could be further deprioritization, transfers, and reductions that will be baked into our conversations and discussion in this fall cycle.

Again, not to be too prescriptive, but to also show how serious, serious considerations are already being penciled out for us to consider for So thank you very much, Patty.

Again, this goes to the full resolution in front of us just to show that there's been a lot of work and research done to think about how we can move forward with the 2021 visualization of accomplishing some of the key priorities that are outlined in the resolution.

Council Member Herbold.

Thank you so much.

Is there a way for staff to show both sides of the document on the screen together?

I think that that can be accomplished or we could shrink it to if that'd be helpful.

I just think for the public, I would like to emphasize one of the points that you have made, Chair Mosqueda.

I think subtotaling or adding the two first subtotal categories is really important to understand the value Okay, that's, well, that'll work.

So subtotaling the 10.5 million plus the about 53 million, those two categories I think is a pretty accurate quantification of the value over, perfect, thank you, of the value over the course of a year of the the votes that we are taking now for the last four and a half months of the year.

I do, and I really, thank you, Chair Mosqueda, for putting together this document.

And I really apologize because I know we've talked about it a lot, but it's occurring to me that we are also voting to take what were

administrative uh proposed administrative reductions in the mayor's uh police budget and we're voting to make them um required reductions and i'm are they on this document you're correct and they are currently listed under um the first item under additional cuts for consideration i think i know where you're headed with that given that this is a point in time draft pull it up into the upper categories we can definitely do that and recirculate to folks And also happy to include any additional feedback that you have.

But this is exactly the purpose for us to have a kind of a menu in front of us.

And we did want to identify the pieces where we are voting today through our actions and sort of identifying those commitments that are being put in the resolution.

So your point is very well taken and that that edit will be made.

And I think.

conceptually the things that I'm thinking about as sort of our starting point for our September budget discussions are all the things under reductions and anticipated transfers that that's our that those things should not be in the proposed budget coming out of the mayor's office because we've already made these decisions and so I think Conceptually, I'm thinking of this as our starting point is a reduced 2021 budget of 60, about 75, yeah, $75 million, I think is my rough math of that.

that's a great idea.

Thank you.

Perfect.

That's right.

Thank you for that feedback.

We will make that edit.

And again, just a point in time reference to some of the items that we were actually, I'm sorry, that we are actualizing in terms of cuts this year, items that could be annualized next year as we get into the fall budget, and items for future conversation and discussion that would also yield additional I think that's all I have to say.

I just wanted to make sure that I understood the meaning of that.

There are lots of things that I like about resolution 31962. The enumeration or list of aspirational reductions is something that I think would require more time to get comfortable with.

I wanted to be clear that if somebody votes in favor of

No, just that we had had this conversation about whether or not it would be part of the resolution.

And we came to the conclusion that it's a good, it's a good visioning document, but that it should not be part of the resolution.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you for that clarification.

Councilmember Peterson.

Okay, colleagues, I think that gets us through the first.

I would like to thank you for being part of our agenda today.

Thank you for the discussion.

Allie, let's go to item number 2. Madam clerk, could you please read item number 2 into the record?

Okay, item number two relates to Council Bill 119825 as just described by Amelia, our clerk.

I will just note here there are about seven amendments and there are a few options for about three of the amendments.

So I will do my best to help walk us through these and highlight where there's only one choice amongst the options.

So the first amendment, Amendment B, as posted to the agenda, makes technical and clarifying amendments to Council Bill 119825. This includes correcting a reduction in the capital projects appropriations that was double counted and adding in the number for resolution 31962 where it's referenced in several provisos, adds language affirming intent to remain in alignment with the consent decree, and modifies wording in section 24 that includes the proviso that was imposed on command staff salaries as amended last week.

The modification here would impose the proviso on a specific amount of money budgeted for the command staff salaries rather than the entire police department budget.

That is amendment B as posted to the agenda.

There are two competing options that were distributed this morning of this amendment, amendments B1 and B2.

I'll describe them now and note again that only one of these options can pass, B, B1, or B2, but not all three.

The first option, Amendment B1, sponsored by Councilmember Lewis, includes the technical and clarifying corrections in Amendment B, but would strike entirely Section 24, removing any restrictions on command staff salaries in 2020. So that proviso would be removed.

amendment B-2.

Competing amendment B-2 sponsored by councilmembers Gonzalez, Herbold, and Lewis, also retains the technical and clarifying corrections to the capital projects and the resolution number and affirming the intent to align with the consent decree, but amends the proviso language in section 24 to modify how the chief's salary would be restricted and decreases the total amount of the SBD budget that would be that staff uncovered related to the command staff salaries.

So the main difference is amendments B and B-2 modify section 24. Amendment B-1 would remove section 24 entirely.

With that, I'll pass it back to the chair and the sponsors for discussion.

Okay.

Council, colleagues, we have Karina Bull with us as well in case there's any questions.

Councilmember Lewis, I see you are the sponsor of Amendment B-1.

I was the sponsor of Amendment B, which I will not go into detail just because it's technical in nature.

Councilmember Lewis, would you like to start with an overview of any of the items in the removal of Section 24 as you are proposing in Amendment B-1?

Well, do you so procedurally then, or should I motion to move this amendment or do you want to just.

Yeah, do you mind if you just do an overview as well?

I'd like to hear from the sponsor.

It's pretty simple.

I mean, it would just remove the amendment that we passed last week that would impose the pay reductions on the 13 non-organized executive leadership team in the police department.

Okay.

And then to, I believe it's council member Herbold, I see your name on B2.

Would you like to describe B2?

B2 would, in addition to making the technical changes that central staff has identified, it would prohibit spending $345,000 in the leadership and administration BSL employees and command staff positions is reduced for the remainder of the year as of the pay period beginning September 2, 2020. The reduction is one, the payment for the police chief's position is reduced to $131,000.

$275,000 a year.

And to the payment for the other command staff is reduced to the lowest hourly wage in each jobs classification pay zone under the pay zone ordinance.

the police department is required to enact equivalent savings elsewhere in the police department's budget.

I think, I'll leave the speaking points for the moment, because Chair Mosqueda, I think you just wanted a description right now.

So not gonna make any arguments right now for or against this particular position.

I'm going to go ahead and move amendment B1.

Yes, I can confirm that central staff, Karina Bull, has shared this version with law.

And that, as is always the case, because of that work with the law department, we have a different version of the amendment before us because of their input.

And I see Karina nodding along.

OK, great.

So can we do a little bit more discussion about these two, if that sounds OK, to the sponsors?

motion.

Councilmember Lewis?

Yeah, well, I mean, my understanding would be, and maybe central staff could clarify, and I'm happy to have a discussion absent moving either one of them, but that if B1 passed, it would make any other amending of section 24 irrelevant, because it would be completely gone.

So it makes sense to vote on B1.

first, because it would make me too moot.

But in any event, I guess I'm happy to speak to section 24 absent moving it in anticipation that we might move it to vote on it.

I guess I just, it seems like typically we queue up the conversation when we procedurally move an amendment for consideration, but I.

Yeah, since they're both in conflict, I also wanted to just give a chance for folks to have a discussion since this is the first time we're having that debate.

I'm happy to do it that way, Chair.

Thanks.

I just wanted to clarify.

But I'm totally happy to do it that way.

So I guess I'll speak to Section 24 on the merits rather than just on background now then.

I think that is a good point.

You know, bringing this amendment today, you know, is partly, I mean, obviously I want it to pass, but it's also just partly in the spirit of maybe having a bit more of a discussion.

You know, I did not speak on the amendment last week.

Sponsored by councilmembers to And, you know, I was on the losing side of that vote.

So I wanted to bring it back to have more of a discussion.

And, you know, I mean, it's not easy to bring it back because, you know, I have had a considerable amount of public disagreements with Chief Best and other members of the police leadership team.

But I do think it's also important as a matter of good public policy for us to have a consistent approach to executive pay as we're putting a budget together.

And I think that executive pay across the city needs to be reevaluated, especially in light of the massive budget shortfalls and the information we just got that 2021 is going to be a really difficult year.

Budget-wise, I think we should look at making sure that we have an executive pay structure that is not excessive in the city of Seattle, but I think that has to be comprehensive.

I mean, I don't know Right now, barring more analysis from central staff, whether or not the executive pay of the police leadership team is excessive as compared to pure cities.

Like, I don't know how we stack up relative to, you know, relative to, you know, like San Francisco or Denver or other cities of a similar size.

I also think that it kind of sets a strange precedent to just pick the police department for reducing the top executive band when we do have other departments with executive compensation.

And actually, you know, I want to give credit to Council Member Sawant for being consistent and wanting to apply the same approach across all of the executive departments.

She did bring amendments to do exactly that based on her analysis.

and I have respect for that consistency, but since I wasn't prepared to do this to every department in the city, to lower it to these pay bands, I don't see how I can, in good conscience, apply it just to the police department.

despite having massive disagreements right now with the police department that I personally have.

I just don't think that's consistent policy.

And I think there's a lot of collateral damage to that.

Because it's not just the chief or her sworn top command staff, it's also the civilian staff that have actually been extremely helpful to this council in developing our very intentional and very detailed plans about how we are going to restructure fundamentally public safety in the city.

I mean, Angela Soshi, who has provided us all of the information this council has requested, and Dr. Chris Fisher, who has come and presented at this council the 9-1-1 analysis and all of the details we've requested as to the inquest and the SPD's budget, their pay is getting cut by this amendment down to the lowest band.

I can't say that I've seen anything delinquent in their performance in responding to our requests with candor and in a quick and deliberate way.

and I don't see why the budget director of SPD should be treated differently than the budget directors of SPU or Seattle City Light or some of the other departments where there is excessive executive or compensation that we are determining here to be excessive.

It just doesn't seem like a consistent policy and I don't really see why they should warrant reductions in their pay when I don't know if it is excessive and it's not a policy being consistently applied.

And I think that we should be exploring, in addition to the pay, even more ways that we can hold executive officials accountable as a council.

The chief does not come up for reconfirmation.

We should maybe explore having the chief of police come before the council for reconfirmation like other department heads do.

there should potentially be council confirmation for deputy and assistant chief level officials to be able to better hold accountable folks that are in those positions still of considerable executive authority.

And in fact, in many cases, deputy directors become interim directors for a long period of time.

So I think it would make sense to maybe expand the number of officials that come before this council for that consideration.

But as it stands, I just, I don't think this is an application of consistent policy.

What I would like to see us do is take on executive pay broadly as a project in the budget committee in the fall.

and really look into how we can build a consistent policy across all executive departments that right sizes and realigns executive pay, that those cuts and reductions be phased in out of consideration.

I mean, in fairness for some of these folks, I mean, they were offered this position and presumably had other positions they could have accepted.

And to quickly and to quickly reduce the pay of one leadership team in the city just does not seem like a consistent policy.

So I think in the fall, we should look into this across all departments.

I'm bringing this forward because I wanted to say my piece on this.

If this amendment is not successful, I think the modification of section 24 that I've co-sponsored with council member Herbold and Gonzales accomplishes some of the similar policy goals.

that we are going to have a conversation about this.

I worry about the precedent that we are setting.

I have just brought this forward so we can have this conversation.

I would just like the clerk to advise us, because I'm not sure that if a council member voted no and the no side lost in committee before, I'm not sure if the council members allowed one of those no votes.

I mean, we passed this amendment 6-3 on the city council budget committee last week, and council member Lewis was one of the no votes, one of the three no votes.

My question to the clerk is, is the council member allowed to bring it back for parliamentary procedures in the budget committee?

I think it can be raised in the full city council this afternoon.

But my understanding is that it could not come again in committee.

But I might be wrong about that.

I just want to raise that.

Thank you.

Madam clerk, do you have a quick answer to that?

Not necessarily a quick answer only because I'm not completely familiar with the policy language and whether or not it has already been voted on, so it asks them to stop to also verify that.

But in just, if amendment was already considered in committee and it passed, the only way that you could reconsider it is someone on the prevailing side moved to reconsider that amendment because it did prevail at the committee meeting.

And so at this point of request, if someone did want to reconsider this amendment, to have Council Member Lewis's amendment before you, then that would be the next step that needed to happen.

Okay, and Allie, I saw you take yourself off mute, and then I want to turn to Council Member Herbold.

So the language in amendment B in section 24 was voted on was considered by this committee last week.

It is and then council member Lewis's proposal is to strike that amendment.

So if I am following um Amelia's advice properly I think what would need to happen is if one of if if any council member who voted yes for the amendment that added section 24 last week would like this amendment to be reconsidered you need to make the motion to reconsider and then you could move council member lewis's proposed amendment is that correct amelia that's correct okay

We will let Councilmember Herbold speak.

colleagues' amendment in front of us in B2.

Thank you.

Yes, please.

I appreciate the opportunity to address this amendment and to say that for myself, as somebody who was on the prevailing side of the vote on this amendment, I feel in retrospect that I made an error.

I did not have enough information about the impact of this vote as it relates to the police chief's salary.

I appreciate that we're all trying to do a lot to address many needs with very compressed time to make decisions.

and collect information to make sure that our decisions reflect a full understanding of that information.

I voted for a command pay staff pay cap without understanding that in doing so would result in this council saying that the chief of police should be the second lowest compensated department director in the city despite having the largest staff of any department in the city.

I learned that because after voting on the amendment last week, I requested information that showed the hourly rate of every department director in the city and what that hourly rate translated to in an annual salary.

I voted for salary cuts to reduce salaries in the police department.

I also voted for the salary cuts to specifically reduce the size of the police department, but also to convey my and the public's deep dissatisfaction with policing leadership of the last two months.

As Councilmember Lewis mentioned, we have very little accountability over the police chief.

This position is one of few that does not face reconfirmation.

There was a prior attempt in about, I think around 2008, to propose a charter amendment to correct that, proposed by then Council Member Nick Licata, and actually require the police chief to come up for reconfirmation.

But I feel like our vote to cut the chief's salary by 40%, more than 40%, puts the black woman who had to fight throughout her career, including during the period of time when she was not selected by the mayor's chief selection team.

She has faced race and gender discrimination throughout her career.

And our action, again, would pay her at a lower level than almost all other department directors, all except for one.

I don't want this council to compound that past reality of her struggle throughout her career by allocating wages in a way that results in a massive cut for a black woman in a non-traditional sector.

Again, the amendment itself would reduce the chief's salary to $275,000 a year instead of how we voted last night to the very bottom of her pay band, which is $185,000 a year.

The chief currently has a salary of $294,000 a year.

This is currently the third highest paid department head in the city, but moving her down to the lowest of her pay band would mean that She would be the second lowest paid department head despite managing nearly 2,200 full-time employees as compared to 65 full-time employees in the Department of Neighborhoods.

Not only does the chief manage the largest department in terms of FTEs larger than SDOT or either of the utilities, again, it's important to recognize the background around the national search being passed over by the mayor's selection team, and the fact that the community rallied to her cause.

Just a couple more things.

And I just want to say to the folks who might say it was our support who helped make her become police chief, and we don't care that with last week's vote, this may be an act of disrespect to a black woman leader.

And the reason that those folks might not care is because they feel, and not only do they feel, they have been disrespected themselves, they've been hurt, they've been traumatized by policing in our city.

I just wanna say I'm proposing this amendment not only out of my sense of fairness for the chief that I understand that you have not experienced, at the hands of police, but also from a concern that I don't want the fact that the city council voted to reduce the chief's salary to the salary of a department with far few staff to become the headline, a headline that will be convoluted and mixed up with the aims of the movement to defund policing in Seattle.

and distract us from following through our commitments on transforming policing and supporting community-based alternatives to public safety.

Thank you, Councilmember Herbold.

Colleagues, I do want to move us along.

Having voted on the prevailing side, Councilmember Lewis, I understand that you were not on the prevailing side.

At this point, I am going to expedite our conversation, recognizing that the issues that you brought up are important, and I would support the issues being discussed as a whole in the fall about overall executive pay.

I think at this point, it's important to talk about the institution that's in front of us being SPD.

This is not a personal issue.

This is not about one individual.

Just to move our conversations along, I move that the council consider amendment B-2.

Is there a second?

Second.

It's been moved and seconded that the council consider amendment B-2.

Is there any additional discussion?

Okay, Council Member Peter Lewis, please go ahead.

right, and I just want to acknowledge, totally respect the rules on being able to move B1, appreciate being able to say my piece on this, and certainly support the passage of B2.

Thank you very much, Councilmember Lewis.

Council colleagues, any additional comments?

Council, okay.

I see Council President, and then Councilmember Swann, and Councilmember Peterson.

Council President, please go ahead.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

Just really quickly want to, again, strongly signal my commitment to doing the work that Council Member Lewis described in his argument for Amendment B1, which is not being moved currently.

I do think it's important for us in due haste over the um, fall, summer, the fall budget session that we do take a look more globally at, um, at salaries, um, across, uh, the board.

We obviously are headed towards more difficult, even more difficult than we thought economic times.

And so it does make sense for us to do an evaluation of that aspect.

And so I do appreciate the conversation and certainly appreciate the highlighting to do this in a more I want to make sure that the council doesn't lose sight of that pending body of work.

I will be supporting B-2 as one of the sponsors and look forward to figuring out how we chart a path forward as described by

Thank you, Council President.

Council Member Sawant, I'm sorry, Dan, did you have something you needed to say?

Chair Mosqueda, I think what you are gonna wanna do is have B moved.

That would introduce a series of technical amendments and then consider B2 or B1, whichever one you want to consider as an amendment to B.

Okay, thank you, Dan.

We'll get to that process in just a second.

Council President, did you have something else?

Yeah, my understanding is that B2 is inclusive of Amendment B. So I don't think we have to move Amendment B.

and then Amendment B2, but perhaps Allie, I think, is the one who might have drafted this, or perhaps it was Karina.

If you could confirm that B2 is inclusive of Amendment B, that would be helpful, and maybe we can hear from Madam Clerk around the procedure there.

Council President, that is correct.

Amendment B2 includes the same information as Amendment B, but further modifies Section 24. Wonderful.

Anything else to add, Karina?

OK.

Well, just, Madam Clerk, can you confirm that we can consider that we do not have to move Amendment B, that we could just move Amendment B2 since it's inclusive of Amendment B?

We are on track.

B2 has been moved and seconded and we have

Thank you.

Just to clarify for members of the public, I just wanted to let everyone know that this amendment B2 is a different amendment from B1, so it could be moved by any council member regardless of whether they were on the prevailing side of the vote on Wednesday or not.

And also incidentally, it has been moved by a council member on the prevailing side.

So just to make sure that everybody knows that we're being consistent.

Our people's budget movement and my office's proposal to reduce the bloated pay of the top 13 command staff in the police department would save $375,000, which could be directed to urgent community needs, especially black and brown working class communities as our movement has demanded.

I am opposed to this amendment because it reduces the pay limitation that needs to be done for the bloated pay of one of those 13 command staff, the police chief.

Our proposal to cut the bloated pay is not personal.

We have nothing personal against any of the command staff, including Chief Best.

What we object to is the bloated pay of these executives.

Nine of them are paid more than all of the 50 state governors in the United States.

A recent national survey of The 2018 report showed that the The proposed reduction would leave, if this amendment passes, it would leave chief best salary at $275,000 a year for the remainder of the year, well above the average for major city police chiefs.

This is simply a matter of taking this, the amendment that we brought forward that six council members voted yes on is a matter of taking resources away from where they are not being used effectively.

and in fact are being wasted because on balance, the police department is causing problems to our community and taking it away from those problematic functions to fund urgent community needs.

It's frankly shocking that while tens of thousands of working people in Seattle are struggling to pay rent, put food on the table and keep safe, this council is spending time debating whether or not it is right to reduce some of these extraordinarily bloated salaries.

I would note that it's not accurate to say that Chief Best would be paid lower than other department heads.

The amendment which passed 6-3 last Wednesday would reduce the pay of Chief Best and executives for just the last four months of 2020. It would move her pay for 2020 from $294,000 to $258,000.

Then on January 1st, 2021, her annual pay would snap back to its original extremely high level in the absence of the fall budget that hasn't happened yet and won't happen until November, consider some sort of limitation similar to the amendment that passed on Wednesday.

I find it extremely unfortunate that the council members are using consistency as a reason to have brought these amendments B-1 and B-2 forward.

B-1, of course, is not being considered right now.

Because if you want to be consistent, then I'd be willing to bring the amendment that you all voted no on, which is to, or you said you would not support, which is to reduce the salaries of all executives.

And that way you could be consistent.

I don't believe that allowing SPD to continue bloated salaries is the way, that's the way to be consistent.

And I also find it extremely unfortunate that councilmembers are using identity to justify not limiting chief best voted salary because it is precisely black community members who are the most impacted by police violence and by not holding police officers accountable and by having a bloated police budget when the most urgent needs of our communities are being underfunded.

And when you have chronic underfunding of social needs, the people who are disproportionately negatively impacted are precisely black and brown community members.

And so on that, on the basis of identity, it cannot be justified.

A chief best role in perpetuating police violence against protesters and against black and brown community members cannot be absolved.

Mayor Durkin's role in allowing police violence, despite herself being LGBTQ, cannot be absolved.

former council member Harrell, who was a black council member, his actions in allowing police violence to continue and voting yes on a racist police contract two years ago when he was in office cannot be absolved.

We have to hold our actions to what benefits the vast majority of the black community.

That is the best way to stand and only way to stand in solidarity with black and brown community members.

And I would also remind members of the public that in response to the black community's urging, I did vote yes on Chief Best's appointment some years ago, but when I voted yes, I warned that I was not expecting that she would be able to bring any substantive change to policing in terms of the violence, the excessive use of force, the killings that are happening of communities of color at the hands of the police.

And at that time I said that it's not the fault of any one person, and I certainly would not hold her alone responsible.

But what I did say is that for her to actually use her position to bring about a change in the status quo would require her to fight against the entire establishment.

And believe me, from personal experience, I know what that takes.

And that if she were willing to do it, I would absolutely be fighting on her side, alongside her, but that I wasn't expecting.

And of course, here we are.

And unfortunately, The words I said at that time have been proved prescient.

I don't want it to be that way, but it is that way.

And so I will say that it is important that the council take a different position than voting yes on this amendment.

And I would also ask, what has changed since Wednesday when six of the nine council voted to cap SPD executive pay?

All the SPD executives are paid more than most, the vast majority of other workers in the city.

They have lost the trust of public and the public is demanding that something be done.

And this is the same council that has refused to defund the police, let alone by 50%.

And now if you roll back even this by allowing chief best salary to not be limited in the way it needs to be limited, I'm ready to vote.

Okay, thank you very much, Council Member Peterson.

Seeing no additional comments, Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll on Amendment B2?

Sawant?

No.

Straus?

Yes.

Gonzales?

Gonzales?

Herbold?

Aye.

Yes.

Council Member Gonzalez, was that a yes?

Yes.

Thank you.

Yes.

Thank you.

Morales?

No.

Peterson?

Aye.

Chair Mosqueda?

Abstain.

Five in favor, two opposed, one abstained.

Thank you very much, Madam Clerk.

The motion carries and the amendment is adopted.

Colleagues, we have a handful of other amendments.

I'm going to ask you to be brief in your descriptions of those amendments.

so we can get through this.

I appreciate it.

We've had robust conversations, but we have a handful of amendments, including a few that were walked on this morning.

So let's get to the next amendment.

Council member Sawant, I see that we have amendment 52, but there's also version three.

Is it your intent to have version three discussed instead of the 52 as it stands alone?

Yes, that's the way I would move it.

then let's have Allie read the summary of Amendment 52, Version 3, and then I'll turn it to you to move.

Thank you, Allie.

Sure.

Amendment 52, sponsored by Councilmember Sawant, imposes a proviso on the Seattle Police Department's budget to prohibit spending any funds to prosecute individuals for actions taken during the Justice for George Floyd protests.

And this would apply to any protests that began after May 25th, 2020. And I would just, again, reiterate, I think Council Member Sawant, you will want to move this version and then discuss.

Thank you, Council Member Sawant.

Thank you, Allie.

Council Member Sawant, I'll turn it to you to move it.

I move to adopt the new amendment number 52, which is 52 version 3, which was circulated to council members prior to the meeting today.

It's only difference on the published amendment is the addition of a date.

And basically what it does is what we had discussed last time, which is none of the money appropriated in the 2020 budget for the Seattle Police Department to be used directly or through contract to support the prosecution of individuals or actions taken while participating in justice for George Floyd protests.

I will ask that Allie, you provide us a summary of what's in the base of Amendment 56, and then potentially the, looks like competing amendments on Version 2 and 56A.

Chair Mosqueda, so I'll describe Amendment 56, and then this is, the 56A is actually additive, it's not really in competition, so what I'm going to suggest is that I'll describe it, you move Version 2 of Amendment 56 and then Councilmember Peterson, who is the sponsor of 56A, can move to amend.

amendment 56 to add what is what I'll describe in just a moment.

Thank you.

So amendment 56 is posted to the agenda would add in standalone sections requesting reports from the executive.

These reports were included in three separate provisos adopted by the committee last week and so that what was posted to the agenda didn't include the striking of those provisos.

So version 2 that I'm suggesting you move first, that was distributed this morning, just makes that technical correction to first strike the provisos and then adds the new sections requesting those three reports.

Version 56A, sponsored by Councilmember Peterson, retains all of that and adds a fourth report requesting information on the impacts of these potential budget reflections that are reflected in Council Bill 119825. I would like to make sure that council has additional information informing their 2021 budget discussions if I'm understanding correctly.

Thank you very much.

Do you mind putting the chart up on the screen one more time so we can see those numbers together?

Thank you so much.

Not in conflict but additive.

Councilmember Herbold, you are listed first.

I do want to note that Councilmember Strauss is the prime sponsor, so I prefer he speak to it, but I'm happy to move it.

Thank you so much.

Is there a second?

Second.

It's been moved and seconded.

Council colleagues, I'll turn it back over to you to discuss this.

Councilmember Strauss, please go ahead first.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

These are the two provisos that we discussed last week.

Seeing your text right there, Council Member Herbold, about moving it, thank you for that note.

Just wanted to speak to these two provisos, which specifically requires the executive to lay out a plan for fully civilianizing and or removing certain functions from the SPD, from Seattle Police Department, which could be better executed outside the chain of command or in a different city department.

These reports must minimally include staffing analysis with regards to what funding is needed to support these functions for the remainder of 2020 and in 2021. The deadline for this first report coincides with when the mayor would typically submit her budget proposal to city council and ensures that her office devotes appropriate thought to re-envisioning community safety concurrent with her office's budget deliberations.

My office has laid out those major areas of SPD's operations, which should seriously be considered for full civilianization and or removal to a different independent department by bureau and specific unit.

In order to meaningfully and responsibly move a more effective and efficient model of community safety, we must have deliberation and justifications with regard to rightsizing SBB.

And this first report is an important starting point.

It's not the endpoint for implementing a community-based long-term approach.

I am hearing some feedback noise.

I can hear you well, Council Member Strauss.

I hear a little clicking, but I can hear you okay.

Great.

I'm wondering if that might be coming from IT or one of the clerks.

I will speak to I will speak to the other reporting requirements held within this proviso.

It is to foster greater real-time accountability of spending in the city's largest departmental budget.

I am still hearing clicking from one of the clerks or IT, just wanting to know.

Amelia, I think that that might be your line if you don't mind muting for a while.

Thank you, Clerk Sanchez.

Thank you.

And the clerks do amazing work for us, keeping us fully functional here.

So I really want to thank the clerks.

So the second reporting aspect of this proviso helps the city identify the fiscal shortfalls within the Seattle Police Department and potential issues with their spending year to date.

We already understand that they ran through their overtime budget at the beginning of June and have used many overtime hours since then.

And so this is one way to ensure that we don't run into those similar problems for the rest of the year.

So this will require the executive to report every other week regarding the ongoing 2020 expenditures and key areas of interest, such as grants, contracts, overtime, personnel contracts, training and travel.

This regular snapshot every other week from SPD spending will also help inform the council's decisions with regards to next year's budget and how to best transition certain functions and funding outside of SPD.

The report shall include year-to-date amounts shown as totals and percentages, and after the report, changes from the prior report as totals and percentages as well.

This allows us to gauge the amounts of 2020 spending and the rates.

It will flag for the public and council which of these key areas might be in danger of being overspent before deficit spending takes place.

This also compels The police department to report annual expenditures since 2010. And these are the parts that Councilmember herbal was very helpful with for outside legal representation represent retained by the city to defend this police department or its officers against lawsuits.

The report shall also contain information regarding the types of claims, whether there's a pattern of claims made against the same officer and the claimant for each action brought against the city.

We can only chart a course towards bias-free policing if we take stock of how the SPD has performed in the past and the actions taken by the residents to vindicate their legal and constitutional rights against the city.

SPD will also be required to detail its expenditures in 2020-4 less far on weapons and equipment.

Finally, the Seattle Police Department will be required to disclose descriptions and amounts of all federal grants received in 2015 to the present.

These reports are so important because they provide further transparency regarding the priorities and spending of the department and help us chart a course into 2021 that is based on real-time and accurate information.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you very much.

And again, folks, we have a very limited time here for us today.

Are there any other additional comments or questions?

Council Member Herbold, please go ahead.

Thank you.

I just want to speak a little bit to the history of this item as originally proposed.

This was a specific request for these I would like to make a comment on the particular recording requirements from decriminalize Seattle and King County equity now.

We're sponsoring, as I mentioned earlier, but Decriminalize Seattle and King County Equity now ask for a vehicle with more teeth than a resolution.

So we collaborated with the Straus office to include them within a proposal that he was developing for a proviso that would require monthly reporting on a subset of these data points.

And I just, I want, my interest in transparency here is again to highlight that there are a lot of structural impediments to doing the things that community wants us to do.

We moved towards a proviso that would require monthly reporting.

And we, through conversations with the law department and And our colleagues found that a proviso on the entire department's budget through the end of the year in exchange for monthly reporting requirements was not something that was implementable.

So, you know, so again, we're back to making a statement about the information that we want to receive.

I really appreciate that we are really tying it to the mayor's proposed 2021 budget.

But again, I just, for members of the viewing public who thought we were going a different direction, I wanted to explain why that is.

Thank you so much.

We do have Amendment 56 Version 2 that has been moved and discussed in front of us.

We have an amendment to that.

Council Member Peterson, I'm going to ask you to go ahead and move your amendment to make sure that we get that piece included before any future discussion.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

I'd like to move to replace Amendment 56 with Amendment 56A.

The reason is that would add a fourth report to what we're expecting the executive to report back to us on.

Can I just confirm, you want to amend 56 version two with 56A, is that correct?

Correct.

Okay.

It's been moved.

Is there a second?

Second.

been moved and seconded.

Councilmember Peterson, would you like to speak to your amendment to 56 version 2 that is outlined in 56A?

Thank you.

So 56A, it's everything that was in the previous amendment.

It adds a report that we would like to see.

So as I mentioned during budget committee last Wednesday, this amendment would have our police chiefs send an additional report to city council on how our budget reductions will impact police deployment and response times.

So in addition to civilianization, expenditures and salaries, it would be about redeployment.

And that will provide a fuller picture to the public.

I know there's been a lot of concern expressed in the public about, you know, if we are going to reallocate substantial dollars, if there is going to be a change in the number of officers, what might that impact look like on the ground?

And so this would require a report on that.

And I believe that adjustments can be made in this round.

Adjustments can be made so that response times do not get worse if we are sending officers out mainly to the priority one and priority two calls.

This amendment to add this report, Council Member Strauss had some ideas about getting that even more detailed.

with, you know, hoping that our heads don't explode on parliamentary procedure, the idea would be that I would add a phrase to this amendment to provide additional detail as well.

Specifically, how the proposed layoffs would affect general redeployment and response times by precinct, and then add with details, including priority-level criminal versus non-criminal enclosure rates.

So just fleshing out the type of report we would like to see from the executive on redeployment and response times.

And we have two options here.

You can pull up the language or please tell Patty where to pull that language up so we can either see it or just want to check with central staff.

Is the language that we currently have inclusive of that and is legislative intent being expressed here via this call if we sufficient if we were not to make that amendment in writing today?

Allie.

I'm sorry, I'm not sure I followed the question.

Did Council Member Peterson just described an amendment to his amendment?

Yes.

Yes.

I think we can reflect that.

like verbally and we will correct you know make sure it is reflected correctly for the vote this this afternoon um amelia do you want to chime in here on any motions that need to be made to uh reflect additional changes to um amendment uh 56a that would be modified as described by council member peterson before you do that um council member herbal do you have your hand up

Thank you.

I'm not quite sure if this is what you're getting at, Chair Mosqueda, but it's my understanding that this language is being offered as an amendment because the sponsor did not get confirmation or was unaware of the confirmation that the same language was included in the resolution.

that we addressed earlier.

So it's my understanding that they moved forward with this amendment.

But I can tell you that I can confirm that my staff did share that language.

with Councilmember Peterson's staff.

I know there's tons of stuff moving around, but I do feel like this is duplicative to language that myself and Councilmember Lewis have voluntarily included in the resolution that also includes a lot of requests for additional information.

Colleagues, my hope was that if the language that's already included in 56 and now 56 a is basically we have clarified through through the statements that we're making here through this call way that this type of request is being requested.

And it's also in the resolution that we do not have to do this amendment on the dias if that is.

I would like to put that forward.

Just to make sure that we are clear as a body, but that it has been reflected here.

Councilmember Peterson, please.

you know if if if the council is going to go ahead with these reductions um what what is the plan and how will that look like how will things look on the ground and so this is really just making sure that we've got you know belt and suspenders we've got the council we got the resolution we're gonna get a report on what the impact will be can you verbally summarize your amendment again please Sure.

So 56A, which is in front of you, would simply be adding a phrase to it to provide more detail.

So where it talks about how it would affect general redeployment and response times by precinct, it adds with details, including priority level, criminal versus non-criminal, and closure rates.

Does anybody on central staff have that language in front of them?

I do not have that language in front of me.

This is Karina Bull.

I'm the drafter of the amendment, so I'm taking notes.

But again, repeating it one more time is helpful.

Thank you.

Yes, I'll send it to you as well now.

Thank you.

I just want to make a quick note.

I would like to have heads up when there's going to be amendments made in committee.

And the central staff needs to be able to have the information in front of them so that we can show it on the screen.

I think for lack of being in person, obviously, this would be sent around on paper.

So please repeat the language again.

And then, Karina, you can repeat it back to us.

colleagues, we do have a handful of amendments that we've got to get through.

I see this as relatively non-controversial.

I was just trying to figure out if there was a faster way to accomplish this.

But Council Member Peterson, could you please read the language that you'd like to add with details?

Sure.

So adding to 56A, which is already before us, is some additional detail that another council member was interested in having, which I support.

Please begin with details.

Yes, so with details, including priority level, criminal versus non-criminal, and closure rates.

And...

Reena, did you capture that?

One moment.

If I may, Chair Mosqueda, I believe we have the language from Council Member Peterson in an email.

So just to be very precise here, in version 56A that was distributed this morning, starting on page, let's see here.

It looks like, oh, there it is.

Thank you, Patty.

So this would be, you know, the council requests a report on impacts of potential budget reductions.

And then the highlighted in yellow would be what is being added to version 56A verbally, and we would reflect it this afternoon.

Okay.

And there also is the addition of regarding the Harbor Patrol that I would just say to the Seattle Fire Department or other city department.

Okay, it's been moved that we add this language to 56A.

I will second it.

It's been moved and seconded.

Is there any additional debate?

Council President?

Sorry about that.

I had to figure out how to toggle between all of the different screens I have going on right now with all of this varying language.

So I think I, in general, understand what the sponsor's intent here.

I will flag that I am I'm concerned about the leading nature of the question here, the call to the question here, that to me seems to imply that council's budget actions will have negative ramifications and seems to be an invitation, the language is free, seems to be an invitation that the to the city council related to question here.

So I think I'm just sort of flagging that I have a concern about how the question is framed, and I may just be too narrowly focused on that, but my preference would have been that the question be more fairly posed, similar to some of the other questions, You know, for example, saying how, instead of saying how would the layoffs affect, instead of phrasing it that way, asking how does the department intend to, you know, redeploy these personnel modifications and or prioritize E911 calls to I'm just flagging that I have a concern related to that framing of the report and sort of my anxiety about

Thank you, Council President.

Thank you, Councilmember Peterson, for bringing this up.

I will admit to my colleagues I was the one emailing back and forth with Councilmember Peterson, and I additionally had emailed back again.

I'm wondering, Councilmember Peterson, would you have interest in holding this addition and requiring a different report, maybe through the auditor or someone, just as I know that I emailed you back with additional questions and there's while moving in a general direction with this information called out in another place as well.

So just wanted to flag that question for you.

Thank you, Council Member Peterson.

Sure.

Chair Mosqueda?

Please go ahead.

Thank you.

Thank you.

This amendment is very important for me to support the council bill.

So I will state for the record that the intent of this is not to invite any report that's imbalanced, but to get at the core information, happy to change the language to say how the proposed layoffs might affect general redeployment if that would help, but just wanted to state publicly that it's not the intent to encourage any reporting that's not accurate, but really to get to the heart of concerns that others may have in the community that changes might impact We want to hear from the chief more.

We want to hear these details on how things will be redeployed as we try to find these and implement these reductions.

Council Member Strauss.

Thank you, and this is a question for you, Chair, or the clerks.

Are we moving the language that I had in 56 version two, or has that been supplemented or supplanted by 56A?

And I'm wondering what the additional, Council Member Peterson spoke to maybe making additional changes to his language.

How does that work within this process?

If you can pull up the language that was just in front of us regarding the amendment, the motion that is in front of us is making this verbal amendment to 56A.

Then we would vote on 56A as the sponsors have indicated that there is alignment with the language except for our willingness to accept 56A.

The question in front of us is whether or not this language is going to be adopted first before we consider the underlying.

language that was described in version 3 with the addition of the request.

Is that clear?

Yeah, so we'll vote on this language first and then we'll vote on the 56, the amendment 56.

Is that correct, Ali?

I believe the motion before you is to amend the version two of 56 and it would be amended as described in 56A along with this additional language.

So the first question is, do you want to amend the amendment?

And then if that passes, you would vote on the amendment as, as amended.

Right.

I don't know.

And then if it fails, you would vote on the original version two of the amendment that was already moved in second.

That's right.

Okay, can you please put the language up on the screen that has the described amendment language?

And again, this is to 56A, amendment language to 56A, correct?

Okay, Council Member Herbold, please go ahead.

Thank you.

Just in the interest of moving us along, I want to speak to the fact that I will be supporting this language because it is obviously very important to Councilmember Peterson, and I think it's important for us to move forward together.

and I've already agreed to including this language in the resolution that Councilmember Lewis and I discussed earlier in today's meeting.

I still do believe it is duplicative and the I think the explanation for why the sponsor thinks it's not duplicative seemed to relate to a belief that 56 is a proviso.

It is not a proviso.

That was what I spoke to earlier when I explained that we couldn't do a proviso on the rest of the year's budget.

But nevertheless, in the interest of moving us forward, this is the same language that's included in the resolution.

It's important to Councilmember Peterson, and I will be supporting it.

Thank you very much, Councilmember Herbold.

With that, Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll on the amendment to 56A as presented on the screen and highlighted in yellow?

I want.

Abstain.

Strauss?

Yes.

Gonzales?

Yes.

Herbold?

Yes.

Lewis?

Yes.

Morales?

Yes.

Peterson?

Yes.

Chair Mosqueda?

Abstain.

Six in favor, two abstained.

Okay, thank you very much.

The motion carries, and the amendment to Amendment 56A is adopted.

Now in front of us is Amendment 56A as amended.

Is there any additional comments?

Seeing none, Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll on 56A as amended?

Sawant?

Abstain.

Strauss?

Abstain.

Gonzales?

Herbold.

Sorry.

I'm sorry Council Member Gonzalez.

Yeah I'm going to abstain.

Herbold.

Aye.

Lewis.

Yes.

Morales.

Yes.

Peterson.

Yes.

Chair Mosqueda.

Aye.

Five in favor.

Five in favor, three abstained.

Thank you very much, Madam Clerk.

The motion carries and the amendment is adopted.

The 56A is included, okay.

Council colleagues, I see that we have about 15 minutes in front of us.

That gives us ideally about three to four minutes for each item.

I believe we can get through this if we can do this with expediency because after we get through these next set of amendments, the other items are very uncontroversial.

We've had very little debate, or I'm sorry, disagreement on these.

So let's try to get through these next few amendments.

Thank you so much, Ali.

Please take it away.

Amendment 57, sponsored by Council Member Strauss, would authorize adding two new civilian positions in SPD's 9-1-1 Communication Center, a director and deputy director, and requests that the mayor includes funding for these positions in the 2021 budget.

Thank you very much.

Council Member Strauss, would you like to move this amendment?

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

I move Amendment 57 to Council Bill 119825. Second.

Thank you.

Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you.

It's been moved and seconded.

Council Member Strauss, would you like to speak to your amendment?

Thank you.

I'll make this brief, Chair.

9-1-1 communications center program positions.

Approximately five years ago, the Seattle Police Department hired an outside consultant to evaluate and make recommendations regarding the city's 9-1-1 communications center.

One of the most significant recommendations adopted by Seattle Police Department was the eventual civilianization of the entire chain of command of the 9-1-1 center.

Doing part to the fact that emergency communications has become a very technical and software driven field, it is not realistic to expect captains, lieutenants, and sergeants who rotate in every few years to be able to truly manage such a complex operation.

The first step towards full civilianization took place in 2018 when three civilian managers were hired.

To take over the day-to-day management of the communications center, this has already greatly enhanced the functioning of staff and operations.

The only two remaining positions, which are sworn officers, and which the consultants recommended to be civilianized and Seattle Police Department agreed to civilianize are the captain and lieutenant assigned to the 911 center.

This amendment signals the city council's intent to create the positions of director and deputy director of the 911 communication center as recommended by the independent consultants and agreed to by Seattle Police Department.

and to call for the mayor to propose funding for both positions in her 2021 budget, which we shall take up in September.

As we move to separating the 9-1-1 Center from the Seattle Police Department, full civilianization of its leadership structure is both prudent and timely.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you for summarizing that so succinctly.

I also will note, Council Member Swan, I appreciated your comments earlier today that you are interested in bringing back the overall question of 9-1-1 in the fall.

So thank you for those comments earlier.

And I really appreciate that discussion, which we will be bringing up in just a few weeks here.

Additional comments or questions?

Council Member Swann, please go ahead.

One of the demands of the Justice for George Floyd movement is to take the 911 call center out of the control and chain of command of the police department.

Unfortunately, this budget amendment does the opposite.

It reinforces the bureaucracy over the 911 call center operations within the police department because the director and deputy director positions are being created within the police department, not in another department.

I think we have to be clear that civilianization doesn't equal removing from police control, because the fact that these positions are, quote, civilian, end quote, is totally meaningless.

I mean, who cares if the managers of the police department are sworn officers or not?

Because at the end of the day, it's a question of what actual difference it makes.

And for all intents and purposes, with this kind of setup, those two positions will still be part of the police chain of command I would be supporting this if it were concurrent with transferring 9-1-1 out of the police department, but it is not, unfortunately, so I will be voting no.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Sawant.

Those points were well taken and if there's any additional language that you would like to see added to this to ensure that it is clear that the intent is to move this entire department out of the Seattle Police Department, I welcome that because I am committed along with many of the colleagues here at Council to moving the 911 Communications Operations Center out of the Seattle Police Department.

As it is my understanding that this will take some time, it is important for us to take as many quick steps to improve and to implement this transition as quickly as possible.

If we have sworn officers in that department, those sworn officers won't necessarily move as the entire 911 center is moved out of the Seattle Police Department.

If we are able to make the transition to having the civilian we will be able to transfer that in a more holistic manner.

So my apologies if this came off as me trying to slow down.

I am intending to do just the opposite and move as quickly as possible to transfer the 9-1-1 center out of the Seattle Police Department.

Thank you, colleagues.

Yes, thank you.

I'm not quite sure if this is going to wrap this up.

I really appreciate the intention of this amendment as proposed by.

I would like to thank councilmember Strauss, but I also really strongly agree with the observation made by councilmember Sawant that we are assuming with passage of this amendment as written that the 9-1-1 would be staying in the police department.

I would like to make a motion on that.

I would like to make a motion on that.

I would like to make a motion on that.

Um, so I, um, do we have a, uh, this is a new section to council bill.

All right.

So I, um, I moved to amend the proposed new section to council bill, uh, 1198 25 to strike the words, uh, Seattle police departments.

It's been moved.

Is there a second?

Second.

It's been moved and seconded.

Is there any additional discussion on the verbal amendment to amendment number 57?

Council Member Sawant, please go ahead.

Yes, I have a question for Ali.

Obviously, I support not creating these positions inside the police department.

But I also I'm not clear how you can create positions but not assign a department home for those positions.

I'm not sure how that would work.

And if Ali could respond to that.

So ultimately, and I believe my colleague Dan eater may be on the on the line who drafted this and he may have more to add here, but in in general, this is creating new positions.

I would suggest that what would possibly need to happen is actually we are creating the positions in the police department.

right now in 2020 and should be adding language to say something along the lines and the council expects that with the transfer of 9-1-1 the 9-1-1 unit to another department that should include these new civilian positions.

So I might suggest that we actually that and by we, I mean you council members, pulled this amendment.

Give us a half an hour to figure that out and take it up in a short hour and five minutes at full council because I'm not, I can't say with confidence that it is reflecting, it is doing what Council Member Herbold and other council members have intended and I just need to confirm that.

Council Member Straus, I saw your thumbs up.

Would you like to pull this amendment?

I would be happy to if my colleagues would prefer that, whatever works best for the body.

Okay, Council President, please.

I just really want to flag the amount of pressure work that we are creating for our council central staff and legislative department by going down this path.

So the motion has been made, it's been seconded, I think we just need to call things to a vote and decide issues before we convene, before we adjourn today.

I feel really strongly about this.

It's 12.56 p.m.

We made commitments to council central staff that we would end by 1 p.m.

today in order to allow them enough time to package and repackage things and people need breaks.

So I'm just really frustrated with the direction that the conversation is going right now that will effectively result in Council Central staff having to work over the only break they're gonna get today.

So I think we just need to call it to a vote and see where it lands in terms of the underlying motion.

So it's been moved and seconded that we strike in SPD.

I think that the issues about implementation are important.

The question, though, is not about whether or not the council is committed to making this move in the fall.

It is I.

would like for us to vote on the motion, the verbal amendment, and then vote on the underlying amendment as the Council President has encouraged us to do to get us through this.

So with that, Council Colleagues, I would like to call for a vote on the amendment as verbally described.

And Council Member Herbold, can you again tell us the few words that you are striking in your verbal amendment?

Sure, I move to amend the proposed new section to Council Bill 119825 to strike the words Seattle Police Departments.

OK, it's been moved and it's been seconded already.

It's been described again.

Madam Clerk, can you please call the roll on removing the Seattle Police Departments as a verbal amendment from this amendment number 57?

Salant.

Salant.

Yes sorry I was thrown off because I thought I was second in the roll call today but yes on this amendment to the amendment.

Thank you.

Strauss.

Yes.

Gonzales.

No.

Herbold.

Yes.

Lewis.

Yes.

Morales.

Yes.

Peterson.

Yes.

Chair Mosqueda.

Abstain.

Six in favor, one opposed, one abstained.

Thank you very much, Madam Clerk.

The motion carries and the amendment to Amendment 57 is adopted.

Amendment 57, as amended, is in front of us.

Is there any additional conversation?

Seeing none, Council Member Sawant?

Just very quickly, I want to clarify that I will be voting no on the amendment as amendment because I'm not successful.

I'm not confident that the change would successfully remove the position from the SPD.

So I will be voting no, but I did support removing the worst Seattle Police Department from the amendment.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Council Member Swann.

Council Member Strauss, did you have your hand as well?

No, okay.

Thank you very much, Madam Clerk.

I do believe that Council Member Peterson is first on the roll call today.

Just want to confirm that.

It does not seem like there's additional comments.

So, Madam Clerk, could you please call the roll on Amendment 57 as adopted?

I'm going to call Swant because of the budget order.

Okay, okay.

I'm sorry.

I didn't realize that they were different from budget and full council.

That makes sense.

Got it.

So, Swant?

No.

Strauss.

Yes.

Gonzales.

Abstain.

Herbold.

Yes.

Lewis.

Yes.

Morales.

Yes.

Peterson.

Yes.

Chair Mosqueda.

Abstain.

Five in favor, one opposed, two abstained.

Thank you very much, Madam Clerk.

Colleagues, the motion has carried and the amendment is adopted.

Ali, please remind us where we are at on the list of amendments here.

We are now on Amendment 58, sponsored by Council Member Herbold and Chair Mosqueda.

This would impose a proviso on funding for the community service officers in the police department's budget to ensure that implementation of any budget reductions I would like to speak to this.

I would.

Thank you so much.

Let me start there.

I move amendment 58 related

Thank you.

As Ali explained, the MMP imposes a proviso to restrict the purposes for which some of the police department's budget may be spent, specifically the remaining budget appropriations for the community service officers in the collaborative policing budget.

Budget summary level can only be used for that intended purpose.

The purpose of the proviso is to ensure that the CSO dollars will be spent on these purposes, cannot be taken to be spent on other purposes, or plug other budget holes.

These are civilian positions for which the council has worked over many years to re-implement in order to take staffing pressures off of sworn officers.

These unsworn officers are able to prioritize non-emergency services associated with law enforcement, thus bringing up police officers to better respond to 911 calls.

CSOs assist with mediating disputes, follow up on calls for non-emergency services, help residents navigate services, support programming for at-risk youth, attend school and community-hosted events, Some of the work also includes assisting homeless people and individuals struggling with substance abuse to access programs like diversion opportunities, housing and behavioral health services.

serve to bridge the service gap on non-criminal calls for service and perform a variety of really important public safety related community service and outreach work that does not require the enforcement authority of a sworn police officer.

The CSO program existed for 33 years until 2004, when it was gradually reduced until it was finally eliminated due to budget cuts.

and as I mentioned, the council worked for many years to put the money in the budget to restart the program up again, to put it in the budget again when it wasn't implemented by the executive and it's taken several years to get it up and running and we want to make sure that we continue moving in that direction.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

It's been moved and seconded and discussed.

I will just add this is a very important element for me.

Thank you for allowing me to co-sponsor this in partnership with our partners at Teamsters 117. I really appreciate you putting this forward.

Any additional comments?

Seeing none, Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll on Amendment 58?

Sawant?

Yes.

Straus?

Yes.

Gonzalez?

Yes.

Herbold.

Yes.

Lewis.

Yes.

Morales.

Yes.

Peterson.

Yes.

Chair Mosqueda.

Yes.

Eight in favor, none opposed.

All right, unanimous.

The motion carries and the amendment is adopted.

Thank you very much.

Allie, if you could put that chart up one more time.

I believe that we are almost at the end of this list here.

Councilmember Morales, I understand that you have an announcement on the last two items here.

Could you please provide us with a quick update?

Yes, thank you.

Colleagues, as I mentioned this morning, we should very shortly have provisos number 59 and 60 back from law.

So we will be walking that on and distribute them to you as quickly as possible.

And we'll talk about those at full council.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

I'm understanding you're pulling amendments 59 and 60 for now.

For now, yes.

Thank you.

Okay.

Council members, I want to honor what council president has asked us for.

We have just four more items, and I believe that these are noncontroversial.

We have a real urgency to get done with this meeting, so I'm going to ask colleagues to be very brief.

Council President, my commitment to you is that it will keep us moving along.

If we have two minutes on each one, we will be done at 1.15.

That is the desire, folks.

Okay.

Item number three, Madam Clerk, could you please read the item into the record?

Allie, please?

Madam Chair, I believe you need to move the bill as amended and vote it out of committee.

Let's get this puppy out of here.

I'm so sorry.

Okay.

Council colleagues, we have reached the end of these amendments on our first item here.

I will move that Council Bill 119825, as amended, be moved out of the committee and to full Council for consideration.

Is there a second?

Second.

It's been moved and seconded.

Are there any additional comments?

Okay.

Will the clerk please call the roll on the recommendation that the bill as.

I'm so sorry, Councilmember Sawant, I did not see your hand.

Did you have a comment?

Yes.

Okay, please go ahead.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

This vote, just to make sure all the members of the public who are watching this know what we're doing, this vote essentially adopts the new 2020 budget, which enacts the mayor's austerity on top of a budget that already did not meet the needs of working people.

The people's budget movement in my council office and certainly the hundreds if not thousands of Black Lives Matter activists have fought for all the important victories that we have won as amendments to this budget, including every reduction to the SPD.

And I will say more about that when we vote at full council meeting this afternoon.

However, on balance, this budget cuts tens of millions of dollars from the essential work of the city across departments like parks, roads, and libraries, rather than increase the Amazon tax to eliminate the need for austerity, which is technically and legally possible, but it requires political will that is absent on the council.

On balance, this budget continues to spend more of the city's discretionary funds on the police than on any other department.

And for all those reasons, I will be voting no on this austerity budget.

Thank you.

Okay.

Are there any additional comments?

Seeing none, we will have an opportunity to talk about this bill in more detail at full council.

Seeing no additional comments, will the clerk please call the roll on the recommendation that the bill pass as amended?

Sawant?

No.

Strauss?

Yes.

Gonzales?

Yes.

Herbold?

Yes.

Lewis?

Yes.

Morales?

Yes.

Peterson?

Yes.

Chair Mosqueda?

Yes.

Seven in favor, one opposed.

Thank you very much, Madam Clerk.

The motion carries and the committee recommendation that the bill pass as amended will be sent to the full council for consideration.

Madam Clerk, can you please read into the record item number two?

Sorry, item number three.

Madam Clerk, you may be on mute.

Could you please read item number three into the record?

Agenda item three, Council Bill 119824 relating to the city's response to the 2020 COVID-19 crisis for discussion and possible vote.

Thank you very much.

Ali, thank you for walking us through what's in front of us in this item number three.

Council Bill 119824 would accept the Federal Coronavirus Relief Fund resources and appropriates that funding.

There's just one amendment to this bill.

It is a technical amendment sponsored by Chair Mosqueda that just corrects an appropriation line related to transfer of funds from the Department of Finance and Administrative Services to the Human Services Department.

And again, this is just a technical correction.

Thank you very much.

Council Colleagues, I move that the committee consider Council Bill 119824. Is there a second?

Second.

It's been moved and seconded.

I'd also like to move this technical amendment.

I move to adopt amendment number five as presented on the agenda and described by Ali.

Is there a second?

Second.

It's been moved and seconded.

Is there any additional comments or questions on item number three, Council Bill 119824?

Seeing none, thank you very much, colleagues, and thank you, Allie, for walking us through that technical amendment.

Will the clerk please call the roll on the adoption of Amendment 5?

Sawant?

Yes.

Straus?

Yes.

Gonzalez?

Yes.

Herbold?

Yes.

Lewis.

Yes.

Morales.

Yes.

Peterson.

Yes.

Chair Mosqueda.

Yes.

Eight in favor, none opposed.

Thank you, Madam Clerk.

The motion carries and the amendment is adopted.

Amendment five is adopted.

Are there any other further comments on the bill as amended?

Seeing none, Madam Clerk, could you please call the roll on the recommendation that the bill pass as amended?

Sawant.

Yes.

Strauss.

Yes.

Gonzales.

Yes.

Herbold.

Yes.

Lewis.

Yes.

Morales.

Yes.

Peterson.

Yes.

Cher Mosqueda.

Yes.

Eight in favor, none opposed.

Thank you, Madam Clerk.

The motion carries and the The committee recommendation that the bill pass as amended will be sent to the Seattle City Council full committee for final consideration.

All right, Madam Clerk, could we please have item number four read into the record?

You may be on mute, Madam Clerk.

My apologies, Council Members, I'm having a really bad time with the connection here.

Agenda item four, Council Bill 119818, and then the Ordinance 12600, which adopted the 2020 budget for briefing and possible vote.

Thank you very much.

Council Bill 119818 is now in front of us.

Allie, would you like to describe the amendment that is in front of us that is technical in nature as well?

Thank you.

There was one amendment posted to the agenda, Amendment 9, that made a technical correction to the section of the bill that would transfer the Victim Advocates Unit from the Seattle Police Department to the Human Services Department.

A new option distributed this morning, Amendment 9A, includes this technical correction but also makes that transfer contingent upon the ability of the victim advocates to access the information from within the human services department and the systems they need to do their job.

So I would also describe this as technical in nature.

It continues to implement the council's proposal to transfer that unit, but ensures that they have the systems in place in order to operationalize that fully.

And the 9A is sponsored by Council Member Herbold.

Thank you very much.

Council Member Herbold, would you like to move amendment 9A?

I motion to move to adopt amendment number 9A.

Second.

It's been moved and seconded.

The bill's in front of us.

Council, I'm sorry, the amendment is in front of us.

Council Member Herbold, would you like to speak to it?

Thank you.

In the interest of time, I am going to just say that I think Ali did a fine job of explaining the technical amendment.

Thank you very much, Council Member Herbold.

Council colleagues, is there any additional comments or questions?

Okay, I'm not seeing any.

It's been moved and seconded to adopt Amendment 9A.

Will the clerk please call their roll on the adoption of Amendment 9A.

Sawant.

Yes.

Straus.

Yes.

Gonzalez.

Yes.

Herbold.

Yes.

Lewis.

Yes.

Morales.

Yes.

Peterson.

Yes.

Chair Mosqueda.

Yes.

Eight in favor, none opposed.

Thank you, Madam Clerk.

The motion carries and Amendment 9 is adopted.

Are there any further comments on the bill as amended?

Council Member Swatz.

Thank you.

As for agenda item two, this vote also reflects the budget as a whole, which overall fails to meet the needs of working people.

So I'll be voting now and I'll say more about this later in the full council meeting.

Appreciate that.

Thank you.

Madam Clerk, please call the roll.

Sawant.

No.

Straus.

Yes.

Gonzales.

Yes.

Herbold.

Yes.

Lewis.

Yes.

Morales.

Yes.

Peterson.

Yes.

Chair Mosqueda.

Yes.

7 in favor 1 opposed.

Thank you very much, Madam Clerk.

The motion carries, and the committee recommendation that the bill pass as amended will be sent to Seattle City Council for consideration.

Okay, we are almost there, folks.

In terms of technical, we have a few last items.

Madam Clerk, will you please read into the record item number five?

I'll turn it back over to you for any walk-through on this item.

I will take that as a yes.

In the interest of time for items 5, 6, and 7, I don't have any comments unless councilmembers would like me to describe the bills.

These are part of the supplemental budget package and there are no amendments to them.

They are necessary to fully implement the proposals in

questions have been answered in our previous deliberations.

Madam Clerk will you please call the roll on the passage of the bill.

Sawant.

Yes.

Strauss.

Yes.

Gonzales.

Yes.

Herbold.

Yes.

Lewis.

Yes.

Morales.

Yes.

Peterson.

Yes.

Chair Mosqueda?

Yes.

Eight in favor, none opposed.

Thank you.

The motion carries.

The committee recommends that the bill pass and this recommendation will be sent to the Seattle City Council for a full council for final consideration.

The clerk, please read into the record item number six.

Agenda item six, Council Bill 119820, amending ordinance 12600, which adopted the 2020 budget for discussion and possible vote.

I move the committee recommends passage of Council 119820. Is there a second?

Second.

It's been moved and seconded that the committee recommend passage of the bill.

Is there any additional comments?

Seeing none, and Allie already walked us through this, Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll on Council 119820?

Salant?

Yes.

Strauss?

Yes.

Gonzales?

Yes.

Herbold?

Yes.

Lewis?

Yes.

Morales.

Yes.

Peterson.

Yes.

Chair Mosqueda.

Yes.

Eight in favor and none opposed.

Thank you Madam Clerk.

The motion carries and the committee recommendations that the bill that the bill pass will be sent to the August 10th Seattle City Council meeting for final consideration.

Will the clerk please read item number seven into the record.

I move the committee recommend passage of Council Bill 119821. Is there a second?

Yes.

Strauss.

Yes.

Gonzales.

Yes.

Herbold.

Yes.

Lewis.

Yes.

Morales.

Yes.

Peterson.

Yes.

Scher Mosqueda.

Yes.

Eight in favor.

None opposed.

Thank you, Madam Clerk.

The motion carries.

The committee recommendations that the bill pass will be sent to the Seattle City Council, full council, for final consideration.

Will the clerk please read item number eight into the record?

Agenda item eight, resolution 31954, relating to the city's annual budget process, repealing resolution 28885, and stating intent that the city will consider a one-year budget proposal for 2021 for briefing and possible vote.

Council Colleagues, I move that the committee recommends adoption of Resolution 31954. Is there a second?

Second.

It's been moved and seconded.

Is there any additional conversation or comments?

Council Member Herbold, please.

I'm sorry, is this the resolution related to the biennial budget process?

Yes, and I saw Allie.

She did have her hand up if you'd like to provide a quick overview of this first, if that would be helpful.

I was under the impression that you had an amendment, Chair Mosqueda.

I have real concerns about committing to a one-year budget process moving forward.

I have a number of speaking points to my concern, but I was going to not go into them because I was under the impression that you had an amendment that might address some of the concerns that I had.

I do.

It was good segue.

Thank you very much Council Member Herbold.

Ali, would you like to walk through the amendment?

So resolution 31954 would remove the requirement that the city considers a biennial budget and even calendar years, allowing for the writing of a one-year budget and signals the council intent to determine if future legislation is needed to consider biennial budgeting in future years.

Traditional practice has been to provide a biennial budget and even calendar years in which the first year's budget is adopted and the second year's budget is endorsed.

As transmitted by the executive, this would essentially remove that requirement indefinitely until council takes additional action.

Amendment one, sponsored by Chair Mosqueda to the resolution that was distributed this morning, would allow the mayor to propose a one-year budget to council for 2021 only, recognizing the unusual circumstances that we are currently in.

It also adds a request for a number of actions to achieve full fiscal transparency between the executive and legislative branch, including submittal of a six-year financial plan, a report from the budget office and consultation with council central staff outlining a plan for a non-modified true biennial budget process, and a report outlining a plan for upgrading the city's data-sharing platforms.

to minimize dependency for obtaining data for the legislative branch and the public.

Thank you very much, Allie.

Councilmember Herbold, thank you for prompting the question about what was in the amendment.

I, too, am very concerned about moving away from a biennial process.

This is something that has not been discussed with council and I think it requires robust dialogue.

But more importantly, I think it actually needs to move in the opposite direction.

So the language that you see from us in the amendment really sets us up for a transparent and accountable conversation, both with the public by making sure the information is made available to both the public and the legislative department in a routine fashion.

I think thinking through what a more robust process should be is critical, especially at this juncture, as we're seeing, you know, forecasts in some ways be politicized and used as a tool to try to interrupt processes.

We need to have a clear and transparent way for us to share information back and forth from the executive's office with the legislative branch.

I think it's also important for us that we set this process up going forward so that we not only stick to a biannual budget, but that we have, for example, a six-year forecasting, so that can help us create a more transparent budget going forward.

I appreciate Allie and the summary that she's provided here and the language that we have in the amendment in front of us to set us on that course for greater stability, transparency, and I think accountability, both between branches and with the public.

Council Member Herbold, anything else to add to that?

Just thanks to you for putting forward this amendment.

I hadn't had the ability to think of how to make this resolution that I was on the verge of voting against more palatable, and I really appreciate your forward thinking to do so.

We'll appreciate it.

And there's some great examples that we can pull from as we think about other strategies.

King County, the state, for example, have forecasts that are produced in very predictable ways.

These are strategies as well as many years out, like a six year forecasting.

I think that can help us out in the long term, regardless of whether or not we have the downturn that is COVID.

Okay, additional comments or questions?

Seeing none.