Expanded West Seattle SFD staffing reaffirmed, crime-fighting tech, and other notes from mayor’s budget announcement

(WSB photo – Ladder 13 on a call last January)

Last year, when the City Council finished its budget work, we noted that it included Councilmember Lisa Herbold‘s push to keep expanded Seattle Fire resources that were added during the bridge closure, Ladder 13 (added to Station 37 in Sunrise Heights) and Medic 26 (added to Station 26 in South Park). Mayor Bruce Harrell‘s original proposal then did not include them. But today, when the mayor unveiled his proposed budget adjustments for the coming year, it affirmed funding for the extra staffing – 24 full-time equivalents – required to keep those resources permanently. Here’s the mayor’s budget speech, given at “affordable high-rise” Blake House on First Hill (he starts speaking six minutes in):

You can read a summary of the budget toplines here. Several city departments have sent out their own lists of highlights. Regarding public safety, the mayor’s proposal notes:

With record-low numbers of police officers in 2023, the City must use technological support to boost the effectiveness of public safety strategies. Mayor Harrell is reinvesting $1.8 million of salary savings in the SPD into a new crime prevention pilot to implement automatic license plate readers, CCTV cameras, and acoustic gunshot locator systems to deter criminal behavior and hold offenders accountable. These technologies will be most successful when strategically integrated with SPD’s Real Time Crime Center to triage and coordinate patrol/emergency responses to crime events. These technologies will require an assessment to comply with the City’s surveillance ordinance and approval by the City Council.

There’s some hope for increasing those “record-low numbers” – the mayor said in his speech that applications for open police-officer jobs are at a two-year high, averaging 150 to 200 a month. Meantime, for housing and homelessness, the overview says you have a role to play:

2023 is the final year of the 2017 Housing Levy. The 2023-2024 Proposed Mid-Biennial Budget Adjustments assume passage of the proposed 2023 Housing Levy by Seattle voters in November 2023. Passage of the new levy would generate an estimated $88 million for affordable housing in 2024. When added to other funding sources, including $137 million from the Payroll Expense Tax, the proposed budget adjustments include $334 million for affordable housing in 2024, a 32% increase from the 2023 Adopted Budget.

And on transportation SDOT, meantime, would get $1.5 million more to fill potholes. But, according to this excerpt from the overview, some bridge maintenance would be deferred:

Facing reductions in bridge maintenance funding in the Real Estate Excise Tax (REET) Fund, SDOT is prioritizing staffing investments now that can build SDOT’s capacity to implement complex bridge maintenance activities on improved timelines and realigning planned spending accordingly. REET budget and planning assumptions for the Bridge Painting and Structures Major Maintenance capital projects are reduced by $2 million in 2024 and $1.8 million in 2026, deferring some maintenance work in these projects. Even with these reductions, SDOT will meet maintenance work planning expectations without impacting service levels or commitments relating to any grant awards.

There’s a lot more in the mayor’s proposal, and City Councilmembers start digging into it when they meet as the Select Budget Committee tomorrow morning, 9:30 am – the agenda is here, including the slide decks that will be used for the overviews to be presented during this first of many budget meetings over the next month and a half.

CAM September 26, 2023 (8:13 pm)

Please vote this down and don’t waste a single dollar on supposed acoustic gun fire locating technology which has ZERO independent evidence (meaning not conducted by the people profiting off the sale of it) demonstrating that it decreases crime over many years of use in places where it has been fully and enthusiastically implemented. The only research findings are either null or negative outcomes. The anecdotal findings are things like the murder of a 13 year old boy by police.
(https://www.thetrace.org/2021/08/chicago-police-shotspotter-gunshot-detection-shooting-contract/)
“The OIG’s findings were similar to ones from a previous study by Northwestern University’s MacArthur Justice Center. There, researchers reviewed data on police deployments triggered by ShotSpotter alerts between 2019 and 2021. They found that 89 percent resulted in no report of a gun-related crime, and 86 percent in no crime of any type. In the 21-month period the researchers looked at, they tallied more than 40,000 such ‘dead-end’ deployments.”

Rhonda September 26, 2023 (11:36 pm)

I agree 100%. Those acoustic gunshot locators are useless in an urban area when fireworks and car backfires happen all day and night in every direction. They were developed for wide-open battlefields where enemy troops are easy to pinpoint and there are no cars and fireworks.

bolo September 26, 2023 (10:13 pm)

“…some bridge maintenance would be deferred….”

Not so sure that is a wise decision. Last time that happened we were out a (very important) bridge for nearly three years.

Jake September 27, 2023 (7:30 am)

The gunshot locator is SO stupid. WHY WHY WHY are they doing this? Provably doesn’t work, and it has negatively affected POCs in most cities its relied on. Look at the data. What a waste!!! Harrell is embarrassingly bad at mayor.

wetone September 27, 2023 (9:57 am)

With Bruce Harrell’s new budget plans I hope he gets all his low income housing built soon so I have a place to live……. as I see increases in our taxes and other cost to live here coming soon. I agree with above comments about gun shot locator setup, useless in this city. But I really have problems with his money he wants for new housing… that $$$$$ number should be for mental health and drug rehab. Harrell’s plan on so called low income housing will do little to befit the people it should be built for as most units will go to hire income, but it sure befits the builders and property owners with his plan. If he was really concerned with providing housing for those living on streets, city would be using the block of tiny houses that have been sitting for year+ at Occidental & Horton. I see nothing going towards stopping the influx of bad drugs fentanyl and meth into area ? What I do see city promoting is how to do drugs safely, unbelievably. With surrounding cities making camping on streets illegal the influx to Seattle is going to be huge….

Jay September 28, 2023 (11:21 am)

The gunshot locator has been exposed as a scam long ago. It doesn’t work in theory or in practice. The main un-solvable issue is sound reflections off of surfaces. $1.8 million for scam acoustic gunshot detectors and license plate readers to catch street racers who cover their plates.