Seattle councilmember targets compromise on proposed SPD budget cut

Seattle Police at a protest. (Photo: Jason Rantz)

Seattle City Council has been aiming for a $ 5.4 million budget cut for the police department for weeks. But after a presentation by the Seattle Police Department that sharply criticized this proposal, Councilor Lisa Herbold is seeking a compromise.

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The original plan was to move $ 5.4 million in SPD budget funds into “participatory budgeting” to encourage community-led efforts to reorganize public safety. A significant portion of that money would have come from “salary savings” resulting from the high rate of civil servants who voluntarily left the department in late 2020.

At the beginning of March, however, the mayor’s office and the SPD warned of dire consequences if the police lost their money.

“I have to be able to manage the department, and right now the instability of our budget is causing massive instability in the department, including our staffing levels,” said the acting SPD leader Adrian Diaz in front of the council members. “We don’t know what 2021 will look like. At the moment I know that we have no flexibility and cannot expect to use salary savings to make up for these losses. “

Things got even more complicated on Monday when Dr. Antonio Oftele, the federal monitor overseeing the city’s ongoing consent decree, issued a memo on the proposed budget cut. In it, he reiterated the SPD’s concerns and asked city guides for additional analysis of how the proposed funding cut will affect the police’s ability to comply with the decree.

Federal judge urges the council to pay attention to the approval decree

Instead, council members on Tuesday discussed a new replacement bill that aims to shift just $ 2 million from the SPD to participatory budgeting and then another $ 5.7 million in savings from the separation of officers across a range of targeted ones To distribute inquiries from Chief Diaz.

According to Kevin Schofield of SCC Insight, this would include money to rent a new evidence warehouse, hire psychiatric workers, fill open civilian SPD positions, provide more support for disclosure requests, pay separation fees, and more.

This was discussed Tuesday morning in the council’s public security committee, although council members said they would prefer to spend “more time” on the substitute law before moving it forward.

Ultimately, the committee instead voted 3: 2 for the replacement draft to replace the previous proposal for a $ 5.2 million budget cut while they await further feedback from the Federal Monitor.