With election season already around the corner, cities that want their residents to vote on November ballot measures are moving to finish necessary planning work by an August filing deadline. Since January, Redmond has been leading engagement on a new public safety levy that would increase total annual funding for its police and fire departments by $10.4 million. The proposal, which would levy a $0.34 property tax increase per $1,000 assessed value ($340 annually on a $1 million home), would fund:
- 17 new firefighter full-time employees (FTEs) to staff Fire Stations #16 and #17, at $2.9 million,
- 12 new police officers, at $1.98 million,
- 5 FTEs for the support and maintenance of a new police body-worn camera program, at $935,000,
- 6 mental health specialists (including one mental health professional and five social workers/case managers) under the police department at $688,000, and
- An additional FTE and expanded services for the fire department’s Mobile Integrated Health program, at $360,000.
The remaining $3.5 million would go towards retaining 18 firefighters and 17 police officers that were funded by a similar levy in 2007. Because of inflation, city officials say the previously approved levy is no longer sufficient to retain these positions and additional funding is needed. The final proposal is the product of a four-month outreach process, which included a statistically-valid public survey, a hybrid community meeting hosted at City Hall, an online feedback portal, and a ten-member volunteer “Sounding Board” composed of Redmond residents.
Community feedback, in particular comments from the Sounding Board, did seem to push the city to redirect more funding towards alternative responses than what was initially planned. Before the above proposal was first presented to community members at the May 9th Sounding Board meeting, the city had planned to fund 13 police officers and only one mental health professional, plus an additional three support staff for IT and administrative work. At Tuesday’s briefing to City Council, Police Chief Darrell Lowe explained how funds for the three support staff and one commissioned officer could be repurposed to fund five licensed clinical social workers and/or case managers, which reflected the highest priority of Sounding Board members.
These mental health positions, who would primarily respond with police officers but could provide follow-up support without an officer, build upon Redmond’s current co-responder model. In 2018, RPD hired MHP Susie Kroll as a co-responder to calls which could benefit from “social service connections, referrals, de-escalation, and assessment for behavioral health concerns.” Kroll, who also teaches de-escalation and crisis response at the Washington Police Academy, appears fully supportive of the co-responder model and the institution of policing in general. A photograph of her in a bulletproof tactical vest was photoshopped by the City of Redmond to remove a Thin Blue Line flag, presumably due to the flag’s conception as a response to the Black Lives Matter movement and its subsequent use by white supremacists and insurrectionists.
