A RESOLUTION relating to committee structure, membership, meeting times, and duties of the standing committees of the Seattle City Council for 2020 and 2021; allowing for suspension of standing committee meetings for consideration of a Revised 2020 Budget due to the COVID-19 Emergency declared March 3, 2020; and superseding Resolution 31922.
Agenda Item three Resolution 31947 relating to committee structure, membership, meeting times and duties of the Standing Committees of the City Council for 2020 221. Allowing for suspension of Standing Committee meetings for consideration of a revised 2022 budget due to the COVID 19 emergency declared March three, 2020 and superseding Resolution 31922. Okay, colleagues, this is my resolution. So I will move to adopt resolution 31947. Is there a second? Second, it's been moved and seconded to adopt the resolution again. Colleagues, as I mentioned this morning during council briefing, this resolution is designed to support the summer budget session that will be undergoing over the next at least six weeks under the leadership of Chair Mesquita. The resolution is a standard resolution. It's similar to the one that we would normally adopt during the fall budget season, except we are adopting it in this context for the summer, since we know that there will be a longer and deeper dove into the rebalancing package that is going to be transmitted to us by the mayor's office later this week. And I continue to believe that it's important for us to make sure that we are focusing all of our resources, including attention from council central staff and from our respective offices and from each other, towards the efforts that will be before us. In terms of the work that Councilmember Mosquito outlined in council briefing this morning as it relates to this budget opportunity. So this resolution will suspend regular committee meetings. As I mentioned this morning, there will be an opportunity to have some exceptions to those rules, to the standard rule of no committee meetings. I would ask that you in those instances, if you have time sensitive legislation, I would ask that you reach out directly to my office to coordinate that work so that we can, again, make sure that we're fulfilling the intent of making sure that council central staff is able to focus on the many budget issues and questions that will be coming before us. So happy to answer any questions and take any comments. Councilmember Herbold Thank you. It would be helpful to get some guidance if not now later on on what bills you are okay with. Still moving directly to full council so that we can help. It'll help us make that decision whether or not we're going to ask for a special dispensation on on having a committee meeting or whether or not we should just continue the practice of moving the bill on to full council. Appreciate that. I think my staff is been working with council central staff on trying to pull together some of that language. So we'll make sure to circle back with you all so that you will have clear guidance on that or as clear as I can get it, to make sure that folks know what can be sensible counsel and when special dispensation is going to be needed for potential committee work. But I'm happy. I'm happy while we're on it. We're going to we're going to I hear the request and I'll make sure to circulate that hopefully before the end of the week. Thank you. You're welcome. Any other questions or comments? Councilmember Mosqueda and then. Thank you. Thank you. Council President. I just I wanted to take a minute to thank you again for your strong support for both the process that we outlined this morning, looking at the substitute budget and also looking into the Seattle Police Department's budget line items . And for the process that we'll go through, I really appreciate all of the words that you shared this morning and for all of your staff's engagement, as we. Think about. Lining up this process to to be, I think, a new and new structural change in how we address the budget going forward. So I just wanted to thank you for your words this morning and express my appreciation for your leadership. Thank you, customer Mosqueda. Appreciate the opportunity to work with you and your staff as well on making sure that we're putting forward a process that is going to be workable for for all of us. Really appreciate that customers want. Thank you. President Gonzalez, I just wanted to reiterate some of my points from this morning for members of the public who are watching. I announced midweek last week that I intend to bring forward legislation in support of the demand of the Justice for George Floyd movement to cut the police department budget by 50%, to defund police, and to instead fund grassroots programs for restorative justice. As I was mentioning earlier, this can be done, among other means, by ending the purchase of the so called crowd control weapons. But we will we will find other things to cut as well. And ending police violence against demonstrations. Additionally, the idea of an austerity budget, which corporate Mayor Durkan is bringing forward, that is cutting the funds of the city departments that support our communities is totally unacceptable. The COVID 19 crisis has created an economic crisis that is leaving over 100,000 Seattleites and tens of millions nationwide unemployed or with reduced hours. We cannot have elected officials saying that Black Lives Matter and then turn around and represent big business and the wealthy in passing an austerity budget or in opposing a legislation like the Amazon Tax, which my office has brought forward along with global memorials and with our movement. Austerity is not acceptable. The Amazon tax is a modest tax on big business to expand publicly owned rent, controlled social housing, to begin to strike a blow against racist gentrification that working class communities of color have faced for decades. It will also create decent jobs with priority hire and free apprenticeship programs. This is one way, a concrete way in which the City Council can put dollars to our words on the fact that Black Lives Matter. Throughout history, the greater the inequality in our society, the more militarized its policing needs to be for the ruling class to perpetuate and defend those inequities. Sociologically speaking, we can predict that in the coming years, Seattle or any other city will either make massive new public investments in jobs program, social housing and other policies that regular people need. Or we will see more and more violent policing. I also wanted to remind members of the public that my Socialist Council office, alongside our People's Budget campaign, has for years proposed defunding the police to fund housing, dining, house villages and restorative justice, and proposed to end the inhumane and ineffective sweeps of homeless neighbors for years. And Council after council, including current council members, voted against defunding the police and against stopping the homeless sweeps on a majority people of Color Council. I was unfortunately the only no vote on a Seattle Police Officers Guild contract and rolled back hard won accountability measures. What we are seeing now is how when there are movements and actually an uprising on the streets, the same politicians will simply feel the pressure to do the right thing. But our movements cannot relent. We will not win defund police to cut the police budget by half. If we do not build an even more powerful movement, that is why I urge community members to join me at Cal Anderson Park at 6 p.m. But our movement will discuss our strategy to win defund police, to win the Amazon tags, and to actually have police accountability and end racist gentrification. Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember Swann, for those remarks. Any other comments or questions on the resolution? Okay. Seen none. I would ask that the clerk please call the role on the adoption of the resolution. Let's get a. I Peterson. I so what i strauss. I Juarez. I replied. I. LEWIS Hi. Morales I'm. President Gonzalez. I nine in favor and unopposed. The resolution is adopted and the chair will sign it. And I sit. The clerk please affix my signature to the legislation. Okay, folks, we have a new item for. So I would ask that the clerk please read.