Okay so we’re about 15 minutes away from the D7 budget town hall with CM Lewis.

I will be live-tweeting in a thread below this tweet much of this town hall for those unable to make it.

Okay we are getting started. Lewis is introducing himself and explaning how he wants to give a quick overview of the budget, highlight some areas of interest, answer some questions people have and go over the general budget process.

He is planning on holding additional town halls throughout the budget season.

His office about a week ago put out a survey discussing areas of interest surrounding the budget (i hope you all responded). He’s using that as a beginning guide for when going through the budget.

Lewis says that the two main areas of interest his office has received feedback on have been SPD and homelessness (which if you asked him a question yesterday for this TH, those areas were highlighted in the question form).

Okay so now we’re getting into an overview of the budget process.

(I would like to think I’m one of the city council nerds he mentioned)

Ace is also tweeting this https://twitter.com/theurbanace/status/1314727798162874369

Under state law the mayor prepares and submits the budget 90 days prior to the next year. She has to submit a balanced budget.

The council then reviews and modifies the proposal. They then adopt a final (balanced) budget.

Lewis hopes to finish by thanksgiving (prolly wont)

Okay we’re now getting into an economic overview and forecast for Seattle to give us a baseline of where they’re starting at.

Obviously covid has impacted our economy because we’ve shut down and our tax system is incredibly regressive (thank you for bringing that up).

Tl;dr our regressive tax system is going to not allow us to recover from this for the next few years. We need to diversify our revenue streams (pls someone in the legislature fix our tax system and let us tax ourselves)

Ace is tweeting the slides. Lewis will have these on his website also if you were curious as to how the full revenue forecast looks. https://twitter.com/theurbanace/status/1314729460332032001

Okay we’re now getting into the 2021 proposed budget. I’m going to refer you guys to @TheUrbanAce for this bit because he is on an actual computer and has the slides in his thread which are important to see with this. I’ll pick back up with the Q&A.

Lewis mentions that the city hasn’t been increasing the funding for actual housing and prevention when it comes to homelessness spending and says that we need to do better (its true. It’s why we’re not getting enough people off the streets)

(The yellow part of the slide shows city spending over the last few years on actual housing and prevention) https://twitter.com/theurbanace/status/1314733042708041728

Lewis mentions he wants to have an entire town hall about the King County Regional Homelessness Authority. I definitely want to see that happen. I’m going to reach out to him after this and let him know that its a *great* idea.

Lewis says one of his priorities in the budget session is figuring out how to expand tiny house villages and other supplemental shelters.

(I am a fan also)

The replacement for the nav team proposed by the mayor does not include the police, but does include expanded contracts with current outreach providers.

Lewis notes that this will be one of the most controversial parts of the budget process. He mentions that a lot isn’t clear.

I’ll be real, I’m not quite sure how the replacement for the nav team is supposed to work. I don’t think council is very clear on it either, Lewis mentions a lot of it is unknown.

(we’re on slide 26 of 40 and we’re an hour in)

ah we’ve finally gotten to the police department.

Lewis also mentions that he’s talking a lot and that its taking a lot of time. He said he’s getting to questions people have asked tho so its “time well spent”

The proposed 2021 police department budget is $357,620,000 — a 12.1% reduction from the 2020 budget.

(Also while under the consent decree we’re limited in what we can and cant do to the police department and we need to coordinate with the federal judge on)

I do want to point out that the 12.1% reduction in the police budget is a lot smaller reduction than the ~20% reduction in projected funds that we’ll bring in.

Lewis mentions how important it is that we’re moving the 911 call center from SPD and making it an entirely civilian entity.

(I agree that its a good start to diversifying our public safety options and getting the correct response to calls instead of simply the police)

ALL RIGHT WE’RE GETTING INTO THE Q&A SESSION HERE.

Q: now that the nav team has been defunding what is the new city policy to help the homeless? Did you vote to defund the nav team? What would you propose to replace the nav team with?

A: the nav team is not the only entity (or not the best entity) to help the homeless. He did vote to get rid of the police presence on the nav team. We need to center that the unhoused dont have trust of police. He did not vote to get rid of nav team fully...

...it was a 5/4 vote. Council is in a situation where they’re trying to figure out a replacement for the nav team. Mentions the proposed replacement and that its something that still needs to be worked out, etc. Did appropriate additional community outreach.

Another question about encampments. Lewis mentions that we need a great sense of urgency about homelessness that centers getting people inside.

“There is no way we’re going to get a handle on removing encampments without additional supportive housing”

Q: if council is defunding the police what is the plan to continue public safety? Downtown no longer feels safe with so many homeless encampments and crime in the area.

A: the important thing to remember that its become apparent that we in the United States rely on the police to do a large number of things that peer countries would look sideways at.

The role and scope of police isnt as broad overseas. We need to consider what the role should be

Lewis notes that currently we use armed police far more often than we should. He believes theres still a place for armed police response, but it should be a lot more narrow in scope than it currently is.

Q: What are you doing to support local business in D7 struggling with COVID-19

A: city is limited in direct response. Can’t do what businesses need: an infusion of funds to help pay bills. Lewis has been trying to distribute federal funds as quickly as he can.

Q: what will you do to get funding for an upper QA off leash area thats desperately needed?

A: he’s been working with Parks and the QA community council to develop an area as a dog run. Mentions that Parks is getting hit hard in the budget cuts including expansion of dog parks.

Q: there are many streets in QA that need to be resurfaced and sidewalks that need to be repaired do you have a line item in your budget to take care of our neighborhood and invest in infrastructure?

A: his office has been working on pedestrian, bike, and traffic calming improvements in QA. Brings up specific areas he’s submitted requests. Notes he doesn’t have a car and he wants to see an expansion of safe bike and ped infrastructure. Unfortunately sdot has been hit hard.

Q: what are you and council doing to support new business, jobs, and tax revenue?

A: brings up Jumpstart tax bc it doesn’t hit small companies as hard and is a more equitable revenue stream. Mentions that it helped not cut as much as they would have had to otherwise.

He’s going off on regressive taxes and performance auditing.

Q: what is the status for funding for the magnolia bridge?

A: we’re looking for funding for bridges all over the city. It’s going to be a conversation we’re going to have to have. The best way forward is for Ballard interbay regional transit study to finish and then talk to SDOT

Q: what are you doing to bring back downtown?

A: we need to get a handle on covid-19. Until that happens we’re not going to see downtown back to what it was like pre-covid. Mentions encampments and getting people inside.

Ugh, he mentioned that moving the unhoused from neighborhood to neighborhood creates “issues” for different neighborhoods. That was a bad comment.

Damn, my question didn’t get asked.

Thanks for reading. Check Ace’s thread for the slides. Lewis said he’ll be posting them on his website also at some point.