Speaker 1: Thank you. The bill passes and the chair will sign. It will occur. Please affix my signature to the legislation on my behalf. Okay. We have arrived now at agenda items 35 and 36 colleagues, as I mentioned, at the top of the agenda. These are the the major budget actions related to the full city council budget as amended during our Select Budget Committee process. So this is an opportunity for if if councilmembers are interested in making comments about the budget as a whole, this would be the time to do that. Before we go ahead and have the clerk read these items into the agenda. I did want to make a note on behalf of the city clerk's office that the budget documents that were approved at the Select Budget Committee weren't able to be updated and pre-loaded into today's City Council agenda. So Council Bill 119938 and the other records. Let's see what else we updated with the updated records and is available online. So. So again, folks. These materials were not uploaded within the agenda was published but are now available online. So if you are interested in taking a look again at click file 314464 that is now updated on the registrar but was not included on our published agenda. Same for council bill 119938. So for the benefit of you colleagues and members of the public, these documents are now uploaded and available online for viewing by the general public and by each of you as council members. Okay. So I'm going to have the clerk read items 35 and 36 into the record.
Speaker 2: And.
Speaker 0: Excuse me, agenda items 35 and 36. Quick file 314464. City Council changes to the 2021 Proposed Budget and the 2021 three 2026 proposed capital improvement program. The Committee recommends the clerk copy approved and file council bill 119938 adopting a budget including capital improvement program and position modifications for the City of Seattle for 2021 and creating positions exempt from civil service law by two thirds vote of the City Council. The committee recommended the bill passes amended councilmembers Macheda Herbold, Gonzalez Suarez, Lewis Morales, Alice Peterson and Strauss in favor and council members to want to post.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Madam Clerk. Councilmember Mesquita, as chair of the Select Budget Committee, you are recognized before we vote on the next two items, and then I will open the floor to comments by other council members before I take up each item individually. So again, colleagues, if you'd like to make comments related to the 2021 budget as amended by this by the Select Budget Committee, now is the opportunity for you to get into the queue in order to make comments generally about the budget. I will after make after everybody has made comments we will take votes on, but on the clerk file first and then on the on the council bill. But I won't be asking for additional comments when I call up each individual item. So again, if you want to make comments, now's the time to make comments. You can do it on both the clerk file and council bill. Once we close out comments and debate, we'll just going to go straight into voting on each one of these items. But we're not going to open up. We're not going to open it up for comments once I call them up for a vote. Okay. Council members get a you are first up and colleagues as you feel moved to make comments, please raise your hand so I can begin a list in the order that I see folks council or state up, please.
Speaker 6: Thank you very much, Madam President. And I do hope folks feel moved to highlight some of the pieces that you all have included in this budget. And I'll make some opening comments. And then at the end, if there's pieces that haven't been highlighted, I would love to summarize a few additional pieces before we close out. I want to say thanks again. I am moved I moved by the testimony and the movements that we've all seen manifest across this country. I am moved by the urgent need to act to make sure that people have the services and the housing and the health services that they need in order to sustain the crisis of this pandemic. And I am moved by the urgency to make sure that our workers and our small businesses have the support that they need so that they can continue to offer services and that there will be employment for workers as we recover from this crisis. I'm moved to do this work because all of you have stepped up in so many ways this year to make sure that we have done the work of budgeting through a racial justice lens and that we have come together in this time that requires us to act outside of our comfort zone and push the bounds in terms of what Council had previously considered their responsibility as it relates to the budget. This was no easy task when it came to COVID and economic downturn, civil rights uprising and working remote back to back meetings and passing the jump start progressive tax revenue. It is a really an incredible list of things that this council has been able to act upon in a very short time. And we are going to continue to work together. We are going to continue to work to make sure that our community has the services that it needs. And we now, thanks to your work, thanks to central staffs, health and leadership as well, we have $40 million in reserves that we know we will immediately need to begin looking at as we help those who are dealing with a third wave of COVID and the unexpected nature of COVID and the economic downturn that will manifest in 2021. This will be a robust process, and we want to lead that effort with the community partners, many of whom we have engaged with over months, to create the jump start progressive tax proposal and identify ways that we can refund or rebuild that original spend plan that was planning to invest up to $89 million in assistance for COVID relief. We know that the crisis is urgent, and we have invested in many ways this summer and through this budget process in preparation for the worst yet to come. Your council, your city is working for you. We are stepping up to make sure that there is a hand, a hand to hold through this crisis of the economic downturn and the uncertainty that the pandemic is imposing on our health and our livelihoods over the next year. I'm really proud. I'm really proud of the work that we've done together. And I say that in the same breath where I say, I know we have much more work to do. This morning's conversation, the last two months worth of conversation, the conversation since June and May and previously in the spring of this year. We know there is tremendous work that must be accomplished together and that across the country people are demanding more of their electeds. And we need to be bold, we need to be courageous, and we need to keep pushing ourselves out of our comfort zone. We have done that in many ways, and we will continue to need to do so in the upcoming months. In this budget, you'll see the ways in which we have worked together to identify investments in not just recovery, but. A more equitable recovery, recognizing we should not go back to the way things were before when so many at the bottom had so little, and just a very few at the top in this city had so much . We want a more equitable recovery, and that's what jumpstarts progress a payroll tax begins to do. We've also invested in making sure that more folks, more working families, more small businesses can sustain this crisis by having assistance to small business support, rental assistance, eviction prevention, food assistance, childcare. You all have made it possible for people to have greater self-sufficiency and economic stability, which also helps our health. Because when we live in chronic poverty or generational poverty or we're on the cusp of not being able to pay our rent or paying for our property. If you have a small business, that chronic stress also hurts your physical your physical health. And right now, we need everybody in this city to be healthy. We've invested in direct measures to make us healthy as a city. We've made sure that there's handwashing facilities and garbage clean up. We've made sure that folks have access to good, high quality food through fresh Xbox program, and that we've also maintained commitments to make sure that there is access to ethnically diverse food across our city for our most diverse populations. You know, this is about how we invest through a racial equity lens and making sure that people stay healthy requires food and a place to call home. We've said repeatedly in this budget that in order to stay healthy, you have to stay home. That's the mandate. But far too many people in our city don't have a place to call home. They don't have a place to call home, even for a night, because our shelters are at capacity. And the crisis of living without the ability to have shelter in this moment is manifesting itself on the street. And every one of our neighbors, each one of us as council members, every resident across the city has seen the consequence of years of divestment in affordable housing and years of not sufficient investment in shelter services and the human services necessary to make sure that our outreach efforts and our housing efforts for those who are living unsheltered in our city are sufficient. And right now, we're seeing that play out with more people living in tents and RVs, more people sleeping in the doorways. And this budget makes historic investments in helping those who are living unsheltered in our community. We want to not only help make sure that they have access to the necessary resources, but help get them sheltered and inside. That's what I'm really proud about in this budget. We've invested in tiny homes. We've invested in hotel sheltering. We've invested in non congregate shelter options. Because even the homeless service providers themselves have said that the old ways of congregate shelters are just not working. There's more humane ways, a holistic ways to help make sure that people have the services they need. And our budget makes those historic and necessary investments. We're investing in direct housing as well. And we're doing it through the lens of what the community needs. Everything from making sure that the folks at Africa town have the pre-development costs they need to really invest in the shelter services that will lead to permanent supportive housing, to making sure that our friends at Aurora comments have the funding that they finally have been asking for for so long. We made sure that the $30 million that we had committed to two years ago through the sale of the public land at Mercer Megaplex is maintained. So that $30 million goes directly into communities at the highest risk of displacement. And that's our community of color population. We want to welcome new neighbors coming into our city and be a welcoming city just as much as we want to prevent displacement and gentrification. And this budget makes those investments. We're investing in the housing. We know we need much more, though, and it will require us to work in partnership with the county and also with the state. And I'm really looking forward to having those conversations with the new federal administration, because right now we're at a 40 year historic low in housing investments from our federal government. These issues of housing and homelessness, the crisis of mental health services and the lack of access to comprehensive services cannot just be addressed at the city level alone. And I'm really excited about the partnership that we could potentially have with the new administration to invest in housing, homelessness services and our health services folks in this budget. We have made strides towards actually investing in Green New Deal principles, and we're doing that by making sure that people have access to sidewalks from Rainier. Each to Beacon Hill from 45th Avenue to South Park. Sidewalks. Pedestrian ways. Bike by bike. Friendly avenue. So that people aren't in the street. And we're actually creating protected bikeways across our city. We're making sure that the Green New Deal investments that you all approved through the Jumpstart Progressive Tax legislation has an onramp for 2022. We've invested in making sure that our department's Office of Sustainability and Equity have the ability to get and the environment have the ability to actually ramp up for those Green New Deal investments by also making sure that they have the personnel direct titles that include Green New Deal labels so that we are getting prepared as a city and we're doing major investments and making sure that our buildings are energy efficient. This is what it looks like to make sure that our values as a council are represented in a city budget. And we've made tremendous changes to the proposed budget that came down. I think as folks comb through the budget and I hope you do, thanks to the incredible work of the communications team, you now have excellent tutorials on the screen to show you various components within the budget. I hope you will come through it and see the ways in which this Council has not only stepped up to lead in a moment of crisis, that is the economic downturn and COVID pandemic, but the ways in which these investments are centering communities of color as we think about what it means to be greater sustainability and self-sufficiency, but make sure that we're investing in areas that have been historically underfunded in the past, and let's lift those items in this budget up and recognize what we've done and where we still need to go. I'm really thankful for all of your work as it comes to public safety. I just want to reiterate the important work that we've all done and the historic nature of it. This council set out to really do three things this year shrink the Spd's budget in areas where we knew. We've asked our officers to step into areas of mental health services and case management that we should be actually doing through community. And you all have done that in partnership with the community. We've helped shrink areas where we knew those services could be better served in Health and Human Services in a stand alone department or in community investments. You all have made those reductions possible. We set out to invest in community alternatives. We're investing. It is historic amount in direct community strategies through the participatory budgeting process, through the task force, by making sure that the 10 million that we committed to earlier this year gets directly on to communities. Now, 12 million, actually. You've all made that possible. And the third thing is, we now have also committed to making sure that we're not growing the size of the police department, as we also seek to increase the size and capacity of our community partners. We've helped to make sure that we're scaling up community based programs and services, community based alternatives to addressing harm and making sure that there's a restorative justice pilot program programing for black girls and young women and black queer and trans youth. There's so many pieces that I will let all of you highlight in addition to the ways in which you have helped to pull out mental health services from our traditional public safety model and really make sure that we have our community being treated by those who have those mental health skills and and our firefighters. We have lifted up all of so many investments and all of them. I'll summarize on some of those pieces. We'll talk about the ways in which we've scaled up our our firefighter department by making sure that they have trauma informed counseling, because we know that this year has been tremendously hard and that they have the support that they need to scale up that third health one team. It's been a long year and I will try to not be any more long winded just to say thank you. And it's been a real honor and a privilege to be able to work with all of you. I would be remiss if I didn't get a quick few quick thank you's in Council President, so I don't miss those at the end. Thank you very much to my team chief of staff Erin House Policy Manager Freddie de Cuevas. Staff to our budget committee here. And Aretha Basu, legislative assistant, along with our new intern, Laurie McHugh. Also, thank you to the central to the central staff budget team could not do this work. And I'm just in every day of their skills, their patients and their talent. Ali Panini Chief, Dan Einar, Tom Meisel, Lisa Kay, Patty organ. And the entire. Every single member of the central staff. For all of your expertize or hours or careful analysis and all of the work that you've done on each one of these budget elements, the entire central staff has really been the heroes behind how we have made this budget balance, because let's remember, we received a budget with $3 million in reserves. You all have helped us build that back up to now $40 million. And they had a huge part in that. Thanks again to our clerks who always keep the show running smoothly here, our I.T. system, who's enabled this virtual deliberations to take place , and to our Seattle channel partners who make sure that this information is streamed live and archived for you. Thanks again to our community partners who have continued to provide public testimony, letters, calls. We hear you. We see you. And we will continue to work with all of you as we take additional steps to help make sure our city is healthy, housed and safe on our road to a more equitable economy. It's been a privilege and it's been an honor. And I look forward to wrapping this up with all of you as we think about the next steps that lay in front of us.
Speaker 1: Thank you. Councilmember Macheda I did get a message from Councilmember Morales that she would like to make comments and then I just saw councilmember verbal tango to Councilman Morales. If you are ready and available, happy to recognize you. And if not, I can go on. Great. What else? Please. You're. You are. You're recognized for your.
Speaker 5: Thank you. I won't be too long. I appreciate that. I do want to thank everybody, colleagues, we have had some heated debate over the last few months as we try to navigate a budget that reflects our economic realities, but also trying to deliver for the residents of Seattle. So and I want to say that thanks to our work this summer to pass the Jumpstart legislation, we've added we have additional revenue for COVID relief, and we're able to prevent the kind of austerity budget that I think we're all really fearing as we moved into the mode here. Council's really made significant steps and I'm proud of our work together and I look forward to continuing our work in 2021. I also want to thank the extraordinary organizing and advocacy of frontline workers, community stakeholders and advocates. I'm proud of the work that we've done together as a council, and I want to say I feel proud that I was able to use this very privileged position to bring the voices of District two into the halls of power. This council listened and through this budget process really delivered by taking serious steps to address homelessness, dismantling and replacing the navigation team, laying the foundation for a more humane and a more responsive approach to homelessness engagement. The HOPE Program will be expert led will expand outreach to unhoused neighbors across the city. We'll finally offer investments in hotels to ensure non congregate shelter, especially right now is being covered. We've also expanded city hygiene services for unhoused neighbors with 63 new public sinks coming and regular trash pickup for residents of 13 additional encampments. We committed $30 million to a new participatory budget process that will prioritize community members interests in how our community's safety resources are spent. And we made significant progress in shifting how we fund the Seattle Police Department with this 2021 budget proposal. We're investing in alternatives to policing. As was already mentioned, safety, coordinator's, health, one expansion. We're putting in a $6 million in vacancy savings and added the 2 million more this morning. So I think we've I will say again that increasing police staffing wrongly presumes that they can fill the roles of nurses and social workers and housing specialists . I think our commitment this morning is a strong indication of the work that we have done and the work that we know we still have to do. As I said before, I don't believe there is no research to prove. More officers on patrol equals community increase community safety, especially when we know that 2020 has been really hard for our neighbors for so many reasons. I'm excited that with today's vote we rejected the premise that more officers equals more safety. This budget, we mark an important turn investing in a new paradigm, health and safety. And I'm really proud of that. Also want to thank South End advocates. Folks, indeed you. See. $7 million in mobility investments, including sidewalk repairs and Rainier Beach and Beacon Hill and the completion, or at least the beginning of construction of the Georgetown the South Park Trail have three additional outreach workers to support our homeless neighbors in the South End and the $550,000 invested in the restorative justice pilot program at South Bend Schools. I do want to thank as well everyone in our Legislative Department for helping me navigate what has been an extraordinarily crazy year. The new council member. I've been really thankful to the policy and budget expertize on our central staff, and I want to give a special shout out to Greg Doss. Who. Somebody, Mr. Klein, that guy, so that he can take a break because he's been working so hard on all of our behalf. So thank you to Greg and the entire central staff, our communications team, who turn our ideas into easily digestible posts and visuals that support all of us with making sure that our community knows the work that we're doing and that he clerks who more than once helped set me straight on procedural rules. Thank you very much. And of course, the folks in I.T. who have helped all of us learn how to navigate new platforms, how to do my checks, how to deal with bandwidth constraints. Thank you all for really stepping up in this new, new virtual world. I want to thank again the community advocates and stakeholders, especially my constituents in District two, brought us budget proposals, pushed us to stretch our thinking and who continue to hold us accountable for delivering on our commitments to build a more equitable Seattle. And finally, I have to thank my staff, Alexis Charla, who is clearly the budget maven in my office, in my staff. There's a touch who always reminds us to make sure that we're including young people in our deliberations and Silverdale who make sure we do the same for our homeless neighbors. He's a farmer who is always making sure that our public safety and transportation priorities are are being met as well as our interns. Mihalic, Mr. Bonnie, Kari and Ezekiel Augustine. All been rock stars in managing these processes while also working really hard to keep up with constituent calls. And we were able to accomplish so much this year. I'm really proud of this team and I'm really proud of the work that we've been able to do this year. Thanks, everyone.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Councilmember Morales. Next in the queue is Councilmember Herbold and then Councilmember Sala.
Speaker 0: Thank you so much. Just some overall statements.
Speaker 1: And then I just want to lift up some of the individual budget actions as well. In response to widespread community advocacy in Seattle and throughout the country, in response to the murder of George Floyd last summer and generations of activism prior to that in the face of injustice and harm at the hands of police officers. The Council began work on a new approach towards public safety, an approach that does not assume that more officers means more safety. This budget charts the next steps, which will continue into 2021 and beyond. The budget includes unprecedented investments in alternatives to policing and reductions in the police department budget. It creates the Community Safety and Communication Center. This is a major step forward in the city's ability to reimagine policing and deliver city services that meets the needs of all of the community. Shifting nine one dispatch out of SPD, it also shifts out and asks the executive to look at expanding the role of parking enforcement officers. Perhaps we should start considering a different name for the role of these critical workers. It adds crisis responders and adds a new health one unit health too. Thanks to the leadership of Budget Chair Mosqueda and in line with the Council's action last summer, transfer victim advocates to the Human Services Department. Thank you, Councilmember Strauss. And from a total of 197 officer positions in the adopted 2021 budget sorry, in the adopted 2020 budget today the Budget Committee acted to adjust the funding in line with the number of positions SPD will be able to fill based on up to date information on separations with funding for three 1343 FTE ease with a request for an additional 35 out of order layoffs.
Speaker 0: Council has expressed a.
Speaker 1: Clear desire for up to date information with monthly updates on speedy staffing and use of overtime, as well as reporting on traffic stops, including racial disparities and recommendations on training and policy changes to address this. As far as the value of the SBB transfers and cuts, the 911 and people transfer and the transfer of victim advocates to HST total, a $37 million reduction in the SPD budget and the SPD staffing and related cuts directly to CPD is up to $42 million, including the provisos. So that is that is nearly an $80 million reduction in the SPD budget. Again, including provisos, transfers and cuts.
Speaker 0: The budget itself follows.
Speaker 1: Through on commitments to reimagine community safety and build and scale up alternatives to policing. It ensures that commitments made in previous years are honored. It funds the was.
Speaker 0: 10 million.
Speaker 1: In investments to community safety that Council provided in 2020. And this morning we added an additional 2 million as a result of the additional $2 million cut in committee this morning. This will result in $12 million for the Human Services Department to get out the door following a community engagement process to inform the request for proposals for these funds and expects to make awards by quarter one 2021. It clarifies that investment should move the city's community safety strategy towards a public health centered harm reduction model of restorative justice, crime prevention, and ameliorating the harm caused by the criminal legal system to individuals and communities most impacted. The budget also restores over $1 million to the Seattle Office for Civil Rights, for organizations pursuing alternatives to or addressing harms caused by the criminal legal system that were awarded grant funding through the 2020 collaborative grant making process. This funding was the result of years of advocacy by community groups that resulted in the Council unanimously passing a resolution for zero use of youth detention in 2015, and the funds were meant to be an ongoing annual investment. It restores the $30 million to the Strategic Investment Fund to address displacement in areas significant, significant risks. Thank you to the leadership of Councilmember Sargeant in this area. And it provides $30 million for a participatory budgeting process that will fund alternative public safety models and programs. Building on the 3 million that council provided in 2020 for Community Research into Community Safety, which is currently underway through the Black Brilliance Project, this budget action is funded through cuts to the SPD budget in 2021, and I think we all, all council members who introduced reductions can really take a lot of pride in that. Those actions have led to this $30 million for participatory budgeting. As far as some other actions that I think are important to this budget. I want to just lift up funding to reverse cuts of the fire department exams and reverse a cut of 20 officer I'm sorry, 20 firefighters from the fire department recruit class, adding funding to the fire department to fund automated external defibrillators, Lucas devices and ballistic sets. Making sure that we are doing a better job tracking overtime and off duty work, working to to fund the South Park public safety coordinator, and then also working to ensure that we get good reporting on the West Seattle Bridge repair work, as well as implementation of the Reconnect with Seattle program, which is Dot's mitigation program to fund projects that address the impacts of West Seattle detours on communities like Highland Park and South Park. We funded resources for the Landlord Liaison Program. We added funds to maintain family rapid rehousing case loads to ensure families don't fall back into homelessness. We've restored funding for the age friendly Seattle program, and we've included funding both to permit contracting with public health for services recommended by the 2016 Heroin and Prescription Opiate Addiction Task Force, as well as increased funding for services and harm reduction programs at social service agencies that serve people who use drugs daily, allowing them to expand hours , increase staff, expand to additional locations. We've also included funds for alternatives specifically to I'm sorry, I'm losing track here. We've included funds for outreach to people experiencing homelessness with some geographically focused services within District one. And I also want to shout out that the West Seattle Longhouse Crossing Project is fully funded in this budget with. $2.8 million to be included for the funding in addition to the funding that we, the Council, provided last year. We also included funding for the Social Service Provider Academy. And then lastly, I should have spoken to this during item 414 one to make sure that the viewing public knows that we also acted on legislation approving issuance of bonds, including an authorization for 100 million in bond financing for the West Seattle Bridge. The Council earlier adopted a $70 million fund loan to provide short term funding for the West Seattle Bridge and related work. And the bond sale will pay back $70 million to the internal funding source and provide 30 million in additional funding. Many, many thanks to my colleagues, especially to the vision and leadership of Budget Chair Mascara, who had a vision for a no austerity budget. Many thanks to the hard work of central staff in my staff. Christina Cut, Sebas Aldrich, Alex Clardy and as well. My heartfelt gratitude to the activism of decriminalize Seattle King County Equity now in the tens of thousands of people who contacted my office and marched in the street and testified in many hours of council public comment. Again, this work is just beginning and I commit to continue to work with you in this this exercise in re-envisioning how we can promote a structure for community safety that benefits all of our communities. Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember Herbold, for those remarks. Really appreciate it. As far as salons and then again, colleagues, because Salon is the last person I have who has indicated he or she would like to speak. So if you'd like to, please do let me know. Councilmember Strauss and then Councilmember Lewis got you all down and then Councilmember Peterson does more silent floor resource.
Speaker 4: Thank you. I will be voting yes on the group of Council amendments to the budget, but voting no on the budget as a whole. So I'm voting yes on item 35 and on item 36, which is the budget as a whole. I want to first convey my thank you for the tremendous and dedicated work by the City Council Central Staff on the proposals from my office and the People's Budget. Danny Dyer. Ali Banerjee. Tracy Radcliffe. Asha Bianca Drummond. Greg Doss. Geoff Simms. Amy Gore, Calvin Chao, Lisa Kay and Tom Mike. So thank you all. Thank you to all the community organizers and socialists who work in my council office, to all the organizers and Socialist Alternative and all the activists who have participated in the People's Budget Movement. As in previous years, since 2014, the people's budget movement and this year, along with the Solidarity Budget, has won important victories for working people. We restored funding for the Green New Deal Oversight Board and the $30 million Anti Displacement Fund, both unfulfilled promises from Mayor Durkan. We are one. Hundreds of thousands of dollars in funding for rental rights, organizing and eviction. Defense. Millions of dollars for three new dining halls, villages and funding for Nicole. Small and share meals, self-managed villages and funds for 24 hour homeless shelters. We want the beginning steps to pass transferable rent or background check legislation and standard lease legislation ordinances that my office will be bringing next year which, if passed, will have a major impact on renters rights. And we want the initial pre-development funds for Africa Downs project to develop a full city block of affordable housing in the heart of the Central District. Over the summer, tens of thousands of people flooded the streets of Seattle and over 20 million across the country to protest pervasive and ongoing police violence. These protests also captured the frustration with a society that offers little to the majority of working people and youth, a society that is riddled with crises, the pandemic , the recession and a dead end economy for many young people. It was a real testament to the power of that movement in the summer that seven of the nine Seattle City Council members committed to defunding the police by 50% at that time. And it is because of thousands of people speaking up from the people's budget and the Solidarity Budget and because the movement has its unwavering voice through my Socialist Council office that we have now won $31 million or 8.2% reduction in the police budget, not counting the mechanisms like moving the costs of parking enforcement out of the police department. We do not honestly represent actual cuts. And those millions of dollars of reduction are translating into available dollars for community programs and services. But taken as a whole, the budget the Democratic Party council members are going to approve today is a budget that deeply feels working people and marginalized communities, including working class and poor communities of color in the middle of a pandemic and a spike in COVID infections in the context of the worst recession for working people since the Great Depression. Democratic Council members will be carrying out brutal austerity. It is true that the city council's budget reduces slightly the size of the cuts proposed in Mayor Durkin's budget. But still, the Council is allowing almost $200 million to be cut from affordable housing, bus hours, parks and libraries. Funding for affordable housing has been cut from 131 million in 2020 to only $84 million in 2021, a cut of over a third to affordable housing while homelessness balloons out of control across the city. Funding for transportation has been cut by almost $100 million. Those cuts include millions more busses and tens of millions for essential maintenance and construction of our transportation infrastructure. And starting in April, the grocery voucher program that thousands of families have relied on will expire. For over two months, my gone to the office and working people organizing with the People's Budget asked council members, Will you make big business pay for the crisis? I put the burden on working people and communities of color. We know the answer now, and unfortunately it is not a surprising one. This is par for the course for the Democratic establishment. Not one single Democratic Council member was willing to support the people's budget and my office's proposal to approve a tiny increase in the Amazon tax that would have stopped all of the budget cuts. Corporations like Amazon, F5 networks and Starbucks have just reported staggering third quarter profits. Amazon alone has made $11.5 billion Billion with a B dollars in profits just since April. In other words, throughout the pandemic so far, instead of a tiny increase in the tax on these pandemic profiteers, the Democrats are choosing to put the burden of the crisis on ordinary people. Democratic Council members have shockingly claimed that this is an anti austerity budget, but that is simply a lie. The City Council's current proposed budget does reduce slightly the size of the vicious cuts proposed in Mel Dawkins budget. But there are still, as I said, almost $200 million being cut. They have made the bald faced claim, for example, that there are no cuts to parks while at the same time. Just a few minutes ago, voting for an ordinance that gives the city the legal authority to cut the Parks Department budget. On the other hand, the introduction to the mayor's proposed budget says, quote, spending reductions were necessary and quote, and this is how big business and the political establishment has always approached recessions. You will catch them either engaging in obfuscation and simply pretending that the budget cuts don't exist, or claiming that there is no alternative to draconian cuts to public infrastructure and essential services while the biggest corporations continue to absorb record profits. Part of my job as an elected representative of working people and as a Socialist City Council member is to expose the lies of the political establishment. As you can see, the claim that this is an anti austerity budget is the latest such blatant falsehood. It is true that the Council's budget amendments, which I have supported, have prevented the budgetary layoffs of City of Seattle workers. But that is only because the overwhelming majority of the budget cuts differ or eliminate public works like construction and maintenance projects that the city contracts out to be done by workers who are not directly employed by the city. Even a simple back of the envelope calculation shows clearly that these cuts will result in hundreds of layoffs and cancel job creation, if not more, which in turn will deepen the recession. We need to be expanding public jobs program, like in the New Deal that the labor movement led by socialists won in the 1930s by putting ferocious pressure on FDR. We do not need to slash public investments. We should be expanding the Green New Deal jobs program, not cutting infrastructure maintenance, as our movement has said. Austerity budgets are anti-worker, anti-union and I people of color, Democratic Council members even refuse to support our movement's proposal to develop legislation for an elected community oversight board with power to hold the police accountable. Every single Democrat voted against accountability. This is the eighth time I am voting on Seattle City budget and never before have there been more lessons for the activists and organizers of social movements than have been revealed this year. Throughout history, it has been movements that make progressive change, not the machinations of the political establishment, not electing the smartest technocrats and not the relationships between elected officials. Real change is driven by the balance of power in society as a whole, and particularly the organized forces of the working class prepare to fight. Two years ago I was the only no vote as the council approved the police contract, rolling back accountability and increased funding to the Seattle Police Department by tens of millions. Last year, with just me voting no. All Democrats then passed a special bill to provide hiring bonuses for new police officers. Now, after the Justice for George Floyd movement, many of the same councilmembers have voted in favor of $31 million reduction in police different police budget. What made the Democrats take even this limited step was the pressure of the movement. Similarly, had it not been for the powerful tax Amazon movement over the summer, there would be an additional $214 million of a hole in the budget in the first half of 2020. The tax Amazon movement mobilized hundreds, perhaps thousands of community activists and organizers. We held mass organizing conferences, which elected a coordinating committee that was held accountable to the rank and file where community members voted democratically on both the policy and the strategy to win. And those volunteers create gathered 30,000 signatures on the tax Amazon ballot initiative. And with the threat of a ballot initiative hanging over the heads of big business and the political establishment, we won this historic legislation. Members of the public may have noticed that I never used the phrase, quote unquote, jumpstart to refer to the Amazon tax. That is because that language is designed and approved by big business to try and erase that unprecedented role of the grassroots nostrum on movement from the history of our victory. You can see the. Pictures and videos of the DAX Amazon movement and hundreds participating in mass meeting. After mass meeting. There are no pictures of a movement called Jumpstart because there was no such movement. Only a watered down proposal passed under pressure from our movement. And it is essential that we recognize the vital role of the movement in these victories, which otherwise would not have happened. If we, as working people do not, then our future demands will fail. We should recognize and claim every victory our grassroots movements win. And I voted for every progressive budget amendment in this budget. But those victories continue to be on the margins of the budget. While the majority of the budget is an austerity budget, placing the burden of the COVID emergency, climate, emergency, homelessness, emergency and economic recession onto the shoulders of regular working people rather than big business and the rich. For those reasons, I will be voting no on this brutal austerity budget. Our movement needs to carry forward serious and sober lessons from this year and come back next year to fight renewed battles for COVID relief and a guaranteed jobs program to cancel rent and mortgages for those affected by COVID. To defend the Amazon tax against what will be round two of attempts by the Democratic establishment to pass a statewide ban on municipal big business taxes and for an elected community oversight board with full powers to hold the police accountable. But to win any of this, we will need movements, and the leadership of the movement will need to be independent of the political establishment.
Speaker 1: Okay. Councilmember Mosqueda, I think you wanted an opportunity to respond to some of those. Colorful comments. I'm I'm happy to allow for that to happen. I do have three other council members who are in the queue. So if there's no objection, I'm happy to allow that to happen. And so this proud Democrat is happy to recognize my Democrat favorite Democrat.
Speaker 6: Hey, thanks so.
Speaker 1: Much for playing on the council, please.
Speaker 6: Thank you very much, Madam President. You know, I just think it's really important that we recognize the work of the folks who really organize to pass the just aren't progressive payroll tax. I recognized when we did this this summer the movement of the tax Amazon folks and the gears that folks have been talking about this, no question . Well, let's remember the entire coalition that came together around Jumpstart that included communities of color, that included workers of color, that included small businesses. This is important to remember because it is absolutely false. It is a lie to say that anything related to Jumpstart was drafted by big business.
Speaker 3: Not true.
Speaker 6: And I just want to make sure that that's abundantly clear, that we have integrity as we talk about it, and that we recognize that this was people coming together to build on years of advocacy that I have also acknowledged. But we passed something collectively as a council that did bring in the 214 million. And we did this with a broad coalition that helped come up with not just the name, but the entire proposal. And I'm incredibly proud of that. Work is not something that large businesses supported by any means nor were nor were the work of the. Communities of color. Housing advocates. Green New Deal advocates. The folks who fought for environmental protections and homelessness services. All of the pieces that we got in there is a really, really robust effort. And I don't want their work to be erased by one person's words and a revision of history. So thanks again to everybody who did work on passing the Jumpstart Progressive Payroll Tax.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Councilmember Mosqueda, for those comments. In the queue we have councilmember strauss followed by councilmember lewis and then councilmember peterson casmir strauss.
Speaker 3: Thank you. Council President Thank you. Colleagues, I am really proud to see this budget before us, including my my priorities for food access, tenant protections, addressing homelessness, addressing climate crisis and investing in trees and in increasing our access to transit as well. I just want to start off by saying I wasn't going to mention this, but I am really glad that we have limited the lay off of city employees expanding housing, food and economic stimulus to Seattle residents. The council's budget prevents us against austerity. Budgeting, restorations and investments are included in this budget to stop cuts to government services and public sector workers who provide those services. Every budgetary layoff that was planned in the proposed budget has been replenished so that we ensure that the core services in critical areas, especially to our most vulnerable in times of crisis, are. Are invested in that. We continue those core government services in critical areas. The council's budget takes this anti-austerity approach. It builds back on all of the proposed cuts and it even builds back the reserves to around the Great Recession emergency reserve levels. Replenishing these emergency reserves just as jumpstart, spend, plan and vision. So I'm very proud of the overall work and wasn't expected to make those comments and. Proud and stand by them. Regarding regarding food access, I'm really glad that this budget has invested in the FreshBooks program. We decreased the waitlist incredibly, and I'm thankful for the additional emergency food assistance that is moving faster than expected. Also requesting that Office of Economic Development develop strategies to cut red tape to support farmers markets, bringing the farm to our market here in the city and adding to aid for the Special Events Program lead position to ensure that those farmers market support work is accomplished. Regarding my tent priorities for tenants adding money to Stsci for ten outreach education services. Not only adding those dollars for those education services, we added staff to C.I. for Tenant Outreach and Property Owner Assistance Group, and then also with SDI setting the reporting guidelines to ensure that STSCI permit processes times improve over this next year. For Homelessness Bringing Homelessness outreach services dedicated to District six and other districts across the city. Increasing the funding from the mobile crisis teams. Who are the first responders for behavioral health? Nine on one calls increasing behavioral health and substance use outreach for D six and across the city to invest up upstream and decrease nine on one calls for behavioral health, as that is what is often called in as disturbance in budgeting the budget overall, investing in housing in appropriate shelter because we know that outreach is only as successful as the shelter and housing resources we have available for climate. My budget proposal amendment was an thank you to everyone involved. Restored the Climate Advisor position. We also requested Seattle Public Utilities to explore the expansion of the Tree Ambassador program, and I'm very grateful for Councilmember Peterson bringing forward the tree statement of legislative intent, as well as partnering with Councilmember Peterson for transit on the transit multimodal corridor and ensuring that we can get that overpass over I-5 that is pedestrian friendly. Also, thank you to everyone who and Councilmember Lewis for taking up the mantle on Thomas Street Market. Mohi Smith, Coach Park. Another one of my priorities jobs and representation. So ensuring that OPD has dollars to support workforce development opportunities and that our census outreach engagement position is retained so that we're able to follow up with community insurance. Not the outreach is not just a one time experience. Rather that we ensure it is a relationship. Again, the Council budget overall focused on economic recovery, housing, health, community safety and addressing the climate crisis. So I just want to take a moment to thank you, Chair Mesquita and Sigal, for shepherding this process. We could not have done this without central staff. Thank you. Big thank you to Dan Allen Calvert, Greg, Yolanda. Tom, Lisa, Jeff. Brian, Carina. Carlos Lish, Ketel. Asha, Eric, Amy, Tracy and Patty. If I missed something, I'm going to be in a lot of trouble to our clerks. Monica, Joni Emilia. When that Traci Thao, Liz, Kris and Joel. And of course, we couldn't do this in this day and age without our information technology and sun, Eric and Bren comms. We couldn't do this if we're not communicating with folks Dana, Stephanie and Joseph and of course the folks on my team, Leena, Amanda, Peter and my budget lead know I could not have done this without you. So again, thank you, colleagues, for all your hard work in this unprecedented year. This budget addresses Seattle's immediate needs and invests in our future. I'm excited to stand with you today.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Councilmember Strauss, for those comments. Next up is Councilmember Lewis and then Councilmember Peterson.
Speaker 3: Thank you. Madam President, I will be brief in my remarks, but I want to start at the top. Following the lead of my colleagues and thanking everybody here at the department who was able to help bring this budget together and bring this budget together in a professional and progressive way for the final product we have ended up with. I want to say at the top really profoundly thank my staff Campbell Brown, Jacob Thorpe, Parker Dawson and Daniel Suarez. Without you guys, I couldn't do this work and really appreciate your commitment throughout this really difficult year and also throughout this budget process. In pivoting to talking about some of the specific items, I wanted to start at the top just by recognizing a recent comment from Danny West, Nate, that I thought really summarized the leadership of this council over this really difficult year that started off with Everybody loves to welcome the Seattle City Council, but when everybody was fiddling around waiting for somebody else to do some COVID 19 relief, Seattle acted. And I think we could also apply that similarly to restructuring public safety in a more equitable way, or towards making sure that even in times of crisis, we are planning for the future on climate resiliency and a Green New Deal, or making sure that we are still advancing tax equity. When a lot of critics told us that we couldn't pass Jumpstart or that we shouldn't pass jump start, this council acted and that action has allowed us to respond to the myriad of crises and challenges that 2020 has put in our way. And I do want to comment on a couple of things that I'm particularly excited about. I'm for District seven, District seven, which is overwhelmingly majority renter. We increased renter support and I want to thank Councilmember Swan for bringing that forward and was proud to sponsor increased legal representation for renters and increased support for renters, increased information and workshops so that renters know their rights, which is more critical than ever. I want to recognize the 545 additional transitional shelter spaces that we will be putting in our system almost a 20% increase in transitional shelter. And just for the record, those are shelter spaces with four walls of door that locks shelter spaces that guarantee dignity and privacy to the people who stay in them, and shelter spaces that have never been more necessary for people not only to have that quality of life that so many of us take for granted, but also to be able to secure in place and respond to the dynamics of the COVID emergency. The maintained funding for Thomas Street in District seven. A critical investment for East West connection for bikes and pedestrians is something I am very happy to to carry the torch for continuing the work of my predecessor, Sally Bagshaw, and the work of Council Strauss and his former position as the legislative assistant here in the Department. The preservation of critical positions and the Economic Development Office that will guide our recovery related to nightlife, related to maritime jobs, and related to farmers markets. These are critical investments. And of course, the significant investments, the scale and expand police alternatives like health one and two, re-envision and expand the role of parking enforcement officers to be more of a community civil civil service officer in line with models of public safety that a lot of other cities in the United States and Western Europe have adopted. And there's still more work that needs to be done. And I just want to finish by saying that if 2020 was a year with lots of challenges, it is my hope that we are setting the stage for a 2021 that is going to see Seattle bounce back in a significant and strong way based on the assets that we are putting into the community through this budget, that we will have a serious and determined administration in Washington, D.C. with the incoming Biden-Harris administration to be a partner in expanding our infrastructure support, in taking the public health emergency of COVID seriously, and being a partner in our relief efforts that we have led on as a city council, that there will be a vaccine rollout, that the city and King County and the Board of Health will have a role in to facilitate a strong recovery over the course of next year and finally have a federal policy that will mirror our local one in grappling with this virus in a serious way, that we will have a legislative session from our partners in Olympia that will finally get more resources from the state in play to assist our efforts here, not only in the COVID and economic response, but also in progressive new legislation that only the state legislature can pass to help strengthen this council's actions on building a new system of public safety that is equitable and responsive to community demand. And of course, the opportunity to negotiate a new and equitable contract with smog, which will be expiring at the end of this year and which will dominate a lot of the discussions going. These. Things in 2021. Give me hope that we were getting all this out of the way early in 2020 and that we can really set the stage with this budget. Chair Mesquita And thank you for your leadership on putting this together. It really makes sure that 2021 is going to be a year of action, and it's going to be a year where we get a lot of these assets into the field and to do the work that we know needs to be done. And I look forward to voting on this today and to moving forward to preparing for the stage of the oversight and the implementation of these critical initiatives. And I know that we have a good team here, not only in terms of our colleagues on the council, but also our central staff and everyone else here in the department who has done such a good job to bring this together and move us forward. So would that I have no additional comments. Thank you so much and look forward to voting on this.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Councilmember Lewis, for those comments. Next up is Councilmember Peterson. And again, colleagues, if any one else would like to make comments, please do let me know. And we in tradition and consistent with the rules. Councilmember Mosquito will have the last word to close out debate today. But next up is Councilmember Peterson.
Speaker 3: Thank you, council president and a special thanks to our budget chair, Teresa Mesquita and her team for their leadership during this fall's budget process. And to our city budget office and all the department heads who worked on this Budget Council central staff. So their hard work also our city clerks and Seattle channel for putting us on TV to communicate to our constituents. And I want to thank my team Ma'lik, Willa, Toby, Kara, Sienna and all the constituents who contacted our office about the city budget. Finalizing a budget always feels like a big accomplishment, and especially given this year's challenges a pandemic, a recession, a racial reckoning, the homelessness crisis, the West Seattle Bridge closure, and an antagonistic Trump administration. I believe the amended budget has both positives and negatives, and I believe it's important for my constituents that I acknowledge both. First, some of the concerns. I'm concerned this budget shortchanges average infrastructure. I don't think it fully revamps public safety with a plan. I don't feel like we have enough accountability for our response to homelessness. And I'm concerned that we're giving city government a pay raise, a pay increase, instead of investing more in our most marginalized communities. But this budget benefits every district, including District four. And the budget process was fair, thanks to the diplomacy of our Budget Committee chair. No budget is perfect. Our constituents have diverse and conflicting views. A budget with both positives and negatives is a natural result. And finally, people are yearning for a functional government. It's a budget does not pass. Nothing gets done. So after weighing both the positives emanate. It's I will be voting yes. Thank you.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Councilmember Peterson. Are there any other comments from any of my other colleagues?
Speaker 2: Nope.
Speaker 1: All right, Councilmember Juarez, thank you for confirming that you don't have any additional comments to add. I'll just be really brief. We we are spending some time in our newsletter, in my office and via our social media, highlighting the priorities that we had in my office around climate resilience, directing investments towards bipoc communities, including restoration of full funding for the legal defense network, and increased investments in housing and homelessness, particularly around rental assistance for families with school aged children and folks who have disabilities. And of course, much of the work related to public safety has already been discussed by many of my colleagues on the city council. So I'm not going to belabor those points. I do want to say thank you to Chair Mosquito for a very difficult job here. I think when she was talking to me as a future council president and advocating for an opportunity to be the the budget chair, I don't think she did that advocacy in the context of realizing that we were going to be facing a massive economic recession amidst a global pandemic. And and in the middle of all of it, a racial reckoning that has shaken the world, including our city. So thank you for your leadership in that regard. Huge thanks to also the council, central staff, clerk's office communications and yes, even our h.r. And operations folks who keep keep us running quietly in the background. So thanks to everybody for all the work that you've done during very trying, trying times. So I'm not going to belabor any of my priorities. I wanted to say just a few thank you's and I wanted to in the spirit of keeping things interesting, I wanted to read you all a quick little haiku that my office has written dedicated to all of you. And it reads, You all did a great job. You know who the real ones are? Team around out. Councilmember Skinner, you have the last word.
Speaker 6: Thank you very much, council president. I will just. So thanks once more. Once again, it's been an honor. It's been a privilege. And it's it's not over. We have a lot of work to do, and I know that that will continue for this year and into next year and early in our deliberation. I do want to take the opportunity to thank Ben Noble, our budget director at CBO, for all of their work in their time with the staff that he has made available to us. I appreciate all the work that the Senate Budget Office has done, and I want to read into the record the names of all of the central staff. I know that council members have already mentioned a number of names, but thanks again to interim director, urban eater supervisor Alec Nucci and Calvin Chao, Greg Doss. Brian Goodnight. Eric Makani. Carina Ball. Asha Lincoln. Matron Cato Freeman. Amy Gore. Yolanda Ho. Jeff Sims. Lish Woodson. Tracey Ratcliffe. Lisa Kay. Tom Meisel, Carlos Lugo and anybody else that I missed. Patty Morgan deserves a huge shout out for getting us all prepared every day. Thank you very much for all of your work to make these documents possible. And with that, appreciate all of you. Much more work to come. Thank you for all of your hard work.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much, Councilmember Mesquita, for those closing remarks. And without further ado, we're going to go ahead and move through the remainder of our agenda. We move very quickly through items once reserved for. But we all knew that there'd be a little little bit of a pause as we consider items 35 and 36 as as usual . So thank you to everybody for your comments and for in engaging in this conversation. Items 35 and 36 folks will I am going to now ask that the clerk allow us to continue to proceed with voting on these two items. And the first item on the agenda is clerk filed 314464. Will the court please call the rule on approving and placing the clerk file on file?
Speaker 0: Morales. Yes. Mosquera Hi.
Speaker 3: Petersen Yes.
Speaker 0: So what?
Speaker 4: Yes.
Speaker 3: Strauss Yes. Herbold Yes.
Speaker 0: R.S. Yes.
Speaker 3: Lewis Yes.
Speaker 0: President Gonzalez.
Speaker 1: Yes.
Speaker 0: Nine in favor, nine opposed.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much. All right. The motion carries and the Kirk file is approved and placed on file. Item 36. This is Council Bill 119938. We have already had debate and discussion, as I mentioned. So will the clerk please call the roll on the passage of the bill?
Speaker 5: Morales s.
Speaker 0: Macheda. Yes. Peterson?
Speaker 3: Yes.
Speaker 0: Sergeant?
Speaker 5: No.
Speaker 0: Strauss.
Speaker 3: Yes.
Speaker 0: HERBOLD. Yes. Suarez. Yes. Lewis.
Speaker 3: Yes.
Speaker 0: President Gonzalez.
Speaker 1: Yes.
Speaker 0: Eight in favor. One opposed.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much. The bill passes and the chair will sign it. Will the clerk please affix my signature to the legislation on my behalf? We just have a few more items, colleagues, to get through before we adjourn. As a reminder, we still have a Parks District meeting. Yay! Besides that, we're talking now. Now I've got Councilmember Suarez's attention. We have a Parks District meeting immediately following full council. So. So just keep that. Keep that in mind. Perhaps I should have had that reminder before the comments started coming out. Items. But I do want to thank our I.T. Department, who's going to be with us once again till the very, very, very, very end of this process. Nobody would know what we were doing if it wasn't for I.T. department helping us make this possible along with sales channels. So items 37 and 38. Will the clerk please read the short title of items 37 and 38 into the record.
City Council Changes to the 2021 Proposed Budget and the 2021 - 2026 Proposed Capital Improvement Program.