Seattle City Council members disagreed Thursday about how much the mayor's proposal to increase the Police Department's budget by 13.9% would actually grow the agency.

Mayor Katie Wilson's proposed 2027-28 biennium budget includes a $68 million boost for Seattle police. Most of the money would go toward increasing salaries and hiring new officers.

Council members' dispute focused on a proposed $12 million within the Police Department's budget to reach Wilson’s goal of funding 1,250 full-time employees by the end of next year, about 66 more than the agency projected it would have this year.

That goal should not be confused with the total number of sworn officers, because it includes funding for recruits and student officers who haven’t completed training or other requirements to start working, said City Council central staff analyst Greg Doss.

The number of deployable" officers funded through Wilson's proposed budget would remain at least 125 officers short of 1,250 through 2030. The total is projected to climb to 1,039 next year, 1,102 in 2028, then plateau at 1,125 the following two years, Doss said.

Funding for new hires would also partially come from cutting full-time salaried positions the Police Department has previously budgeted for but never filled, including some that have been vacant since 2020, Doss said. Among the unfilled positions facing cuts are:

* nine parking enforcement officers,

* three Real Time Crime Center employees,

* seven civilian members of the department’s Criminal Investigations Bureau, and

* two positions tasked with hiring more women and making the force more diverse.

The proposed job cuts, along with the persistent gap between the number of deployable officers and the total number of full-time employees, made Wilson’s staffing goal “more of a PR number,” said City Councilmember Bob Kettle.

“At the end of the day, this is an un-funding of public safety,” said Kettle, chair of the city’s Public Safety Committee.

Councilmember Maritza Rivera agreed, noting there would be fewer deployable officers in 2030 than in 2019, though the city’s population has already grown by at least 75,000 since 2019. Seattle police reported having 1,281 deployable officers in 2019, at least 150 more than the agency is projected to have in 2030 under Wilson’s budget proposal, according to Doss’ analysis.

Rivera said Wilson's staffing goal would not be enough to significantly reduce officers' response times to 911 calls, a major concern she said the mayor's administration is "not listening to."

“We need to be more aggressive in the hiring and retaining of our officers, and not capping ourselves (at 1,250),” Rivera said. “We are deprioritizing our chartered responsibilities. Period. Full stop. There is no other way to say it.”

In response to Kettle and Rivera’s remarks, Councilmember Eddie Lin told Doss he was “struggling” with his analysis.

“The budget proposal from the mayor adds officers, just to be clear,” Lin said. “So we are not defunding anything about the Police Department, correct?”

“Correct,” Doss said.

Lin said some city departments would be “unfunded (or) defunded” under Wilson’s plan, including the office of housing, which would see its budget slashed by about $65 million.

The Seattle Police Department — which Doss confirmed would receive the largest budget increase of any department in the city and grow its number of officers by 43 next year — is not facing the same problem, Lin said.

“(I want to) make sure we are characterizing what is actually happening in the proposed budget,” Lin said. “That being said, I do believe we need more officers, and I’ve said that and I continue to believe that.”

Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck said any discussions about the Police Department’s proposed budget should be grounded in its sheer size: more than half a billion dollars in city funding next year.

Unanswered questions remain about a June payroll error that resulted in the city overpaying more than 900 Police Department employees — mostly officers and sergeants — by more than $13 million, Mercedes Rinck said.

Under its contract with the Seattle Police Officers Guild, the city is required to bargain with union leaders over how to resolve the overpayments.

Doss said some officers may have had more than $30,000 added to their June 12 paychecks due to the error. The city’s labor relations office and the police officers union are bargaining over “how that money might be returned to the city," he said.

Wilson's proposed budget does not assume the $13 million will be returned next year or in 2028. The payments came from the city's general fund, Doss said, and could have been used to cover a $6 million overage the Police Department faces at the end of this year.

Doss said it is difficult to say whether any number of police officers, including 1,250, was the "right" number for Seattle. Comparisons between Seattle and similarly sized U.S. cities rarely work because they do not account for differences in geography, pay and an officer's typical workload, he said.

Hiring more officers may not solve a problem like overtime, which the Police Department is expected to go $2.1 million over budget for this year, and that is “always an issue,” Doss said.

Seattle police use overtime for "everything under the sun you can think of," Doss said, including officers working extra hours to help with criminal investigations, finish paperwork after the end of their scheduled shifts or fill in on patrol while others staff events. Any new hires would still be expected to work those overtime hours, and use overtime to receive mandatory training, something they are not allowed to do during their regular shifts, Doss said.

"It’s difficult to say that (overtime) would go down," under Wilson's plan, Doss said.

Wilson's office could not immediately respond Thursday afternoon to an inquiry.

In a Sept. 22 announcement, Wilson said her proposed budget affirms that public safety is about the essential work of our first responders, and it’s also about prevention, intervention, and upstream investments so that fewer moments become crises in the first place.”

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