I'd like to call to order the city council study session of October 22nd, 2024.

Will the clerk please call the role?

Councilmember Bushnell.

Present.

Councilmember Daniels.

Absent.

Councilmember Diaz.

Here.

Deputy Mayor Hines.

Here.

Councilmember Rumba.

Here.

Councilmember Sidalgay.

Here.

Councilmember Scott.

Here.

Councilmember Walker.

Here.

Mayor Woodards.

Here.

Mayor and Council, your materials were sent at 11 a.m.

Thank you.

Our first agenda item today is we are going to be hearing from several different departments this morning who are going to be presenting the proposed 2025-2026 binary operating budget.

And we're going to have neighborhood and community services, community and economic development, and planning and development services provide their presentations today.

We are going to start with NCS, and I'd like to call on Neighborhood and Community Services Director, Alison Griffith to begin the NCS presentation.

And she is already here at the table along with Pat Beard, who is the director of who's the interim director for the community and economic development department.

And I think Peter will be joining us a little bit later.

So we will start with Alison.

Good afternoon, Mayor and Council members, and thank you for having me here today to present NCS's proposal package.

Before we get started, I want to thank each and every one of NCS's employees who have worked hard over the last few months to prepare a recommended package that we feel meets key council priorities while being conscious of the charge to build the public's trust through effective targeted service delivery.

The recommendations in this package are not made lightly, but we feel what is before you for consideration is generally a focusing in on our core services or a focus on building external partnership or excuse me, focusing in on core services where we believe the city should be in the lead and a realignment of service or a focus on building external partnership where we believe the city better plays a support role.

If we can move to the next slide, and I'll provide a brief overview of what we will cover today.

Thank you.

Council, this slide should look familiar to you as it's included in most department budget presentations.

We'll go over a department overview, cover a financial overview, talk a little bit about our major accomplishments for the past biennium, discuss some community issues and considerations that were part of building our budget package, talk a little bit about what I'm looking forward to in 2526, and then I really want to spend some time with you, council, talking about some areas of the budget that I think are going to be of particular interest, and that's a realignment of senior services, violence reduction and prevention, shelter services, and then also touch on our 25-26 funding process, which we bring to you as part of the budget process.

Here's an overview of how the department is structured.

And you'll see that this organizational chart is actually alluding to some realignment we're working on to complete as part of this budget process.

Currently, neighborhood and community services houses our homelessness response through both our homeless engagement and alternatives liaison team as well as our homeless systems and strategy team.

We also have a focus on community wellness with youth violence reduction programming, senior services, and domestic violence services, and our resource allocation and management team is responsible to do the contracting management that allows us to actualize our strategic goals while our administrative staff is responsible for supporting the day-to-day business of the department.

You'll see on the left-hand side talking a little bit about realigning our code compliance efforts to planning and development services, and I'll touch on that later in the presentation.

With some grounding in how the department is structured, I will now address the department's financials, and that'll be the next two slides, Council.

What you can see here is that our 2526 budget is basically an even split between general fund and our grants, taxes, and other revenues.

That grants taxes and other revenues includes the mental health and substance use disorder sales tax, criminal justice sales tax, the Department of Justice Assistance Grant or J Grant, as well as one-time revenues from the Washington State Department of Commerce and the U.S.

Department of Housing and Urban Development or HUD.

Those uh particular revenues are listed as grants for shelter, and we'll be touching on the specific investments a little bit later in this presentation.

I also want to note for council that the department's expenditures are primarily made up of support for personnel and investment in external services.

And I also want to note for you here that homelessness and housing services do make up the department's largest investment of our budget.

Here, council is a look at our Biennia over Biennial Ovie.

On the left hand side of the side of the slide, goodness gracious.

It appears that the department has experienced a steep decrease byania over biennia.

However, it is important for council to note that we made a conscious decision in 21, 22, and 2324 to invest one-time resources in emergent needs our community was facing, primarily as a result of the pandemic.

These investments included utility and rental assistance to support households in stabilizing and maintaining their homes, even as they experienced employment instability as a result of that pandemic.

Importantly, council also made a significant one-time investment in temporary and emergency shelter in our community.

When six-foot distancing was required, and individuals experiencing homelessness became increasingly worried about entering congregate shelter for health and safety reasons, the city pivoted to invest resources into non-congregate shelter options.

We'll be talking about how to address the gap that you see here on this slide going forward a little bit later in our slides.

The primary takeaway I would like council to have here is that without those one-time resources, the department's budget has been in the 40 million dollar range for the last two biennias.

So we're staying fairly consistent with that as we go into 2526.

Council, this slide is an opportunity for me to pause and celebrate the good work of department staff over the last biennium to be thoughtful stewards of the resources entrusted to us by council and the public.

Particularly, I want to focus on a couple of the bolded statements.

We have worked very hard to increase access and our equitable contracting by contracting with more black indigenous and people of color or BIPOC agencies, small business or women-led agencies.