The note that saved Nickels' budget
Seattle Deputy Mayor Tim Ceis threatened to yank the funding for a Green Lake fire engine if the City Council didn't let Mayor Greg Nickels keep a big increase in his office budget.
The message, in a handwritten note, was delivered to Councilman Jim Compton during a heated budget debate Thursday, after a majority of council members voted to slash the mayor's proposed office budget.
The note, written by Dwight Dively, the city finance director, said: "Because of the Council's vote on the Mayor's office budget, we can't promise the money for Attack 16 now. Sorry."
"Attack 16" is the Fire Department's term for the Green Lake fire engine.
After refusing to disclose the contents of the note Thursday, Compton released a copy yesterday in response to a public-disclosure request by The Seattle Times.
Dively wrote the note and delivered it to Compton. But Ceis, despite initially saying he didn't know about a note, yesterday admitted he'd ordered a message to be sent. He denied that it was a threat.
"I was just trying to get Jim's attention in a shorthand manner," said Ceis, who said he didn't consult with his boss, Nickels, on the matter.
Ceis said the note linked the Green Lake fire engine to the mayor's-office budget because the vote on the engine was the last item left on the table at Thursday's budget meeting.
"I was running out of leverage points," Ceis said. "If something else had been on the table, I may have gone after that."
Ceis' message worked.
After receiving the note, Compton, who had voted for the cut to Nickels' budget, declared he'd been "doing some soul searching" and made a motion to reverse that action.
"I had a difficult decision to make. There was a fire engine at stake," Compton said yesterday. "In the end it was messy, but I did what was most important for the community."
Councilwoman Heidi Wills, who sits next to Compton, also switched her stance, saying it "it's not worth war" with the mayor's office. That sealed a 5-4 vote that spared Nickels' office.
Compton said he needed the cooperation of the mayor's office to ensure that the Green Lake fire engine could be restored. It was Ceis who promised to come up with the final $400,000 needed to save the engine in a deal reached just before Thursday's budget-committee meeting.
Without the mayor's cooperation, Compton said, there was no guarantee that the money would be available.
But Nickels was also under political pressure to find the money for the Green Lake fire engine. Firefighters had planned a press conference to denounce the mayor if the budget did not restore the engine.
City Councilwoman Judy Nicastro, who had led the charge to cut the budget for Nickels' office, said yesterday she was disappointed by the mayor's last-minute tactics.
"To hold Engine 16 and public safety hostage to the mayor's budget is not a good way to do public policy," Nicastro said. "The people of Seattle deserve better."
Ref Lindmark, vice chairman of the Green Lake Community Council, said the neighborhood was happy to see the engine saved, but "it would have looked and felt better without this quid pro quo."
Last-minute huddle
While political threats and backroom deals are always a part of the lawmaking process, it is rare that they are so publicly exposed. But many people witnessed the obvious arm-twisting that went on in council chambers Thursday afternoon.
After the council voted to cut Nickels' budget, Dively, who was sitting at a table just in front of the council, turned and pointed his finger upward, toward the 12th floor of City Hall, where the mayor is located. Surprised mayoral staffers hurried upstairs. They returned with Ceis, who brandishes a reputation as the mayor's political enforcer.
Ceis huddled in the back of the room with others, including Michael Mann, the mayor's liaison to the council. Mann gave two notes to Dively, who wrote his own note and handed it to Compton.
Dively could not be reached for comment yesterday on what exactly was in the notes that Mann gave him. In response to a public-disclosure request from The Times, finance-department spokeswoman Katherine Schubert-Knapp said it was likely the notes had been destroyed.
"If it was a handwritten note, it's not the kind of stuff Dwight keeps," she said.
When Nickels unveiled his budget plan two months ago, he proposed increasing his office budget by $645,000 next year — at a time when most city departments are facing cuts. After economic news got worse, the mayor agreed to shave that by $92,000.
But the mayor resisted any further reductions, arguing that he was simply restoring a cut made by the City Council to his budget last year. Nicastro's plan would have cut about $200,000 beyond the $92,000 the mayor had agreed to cut.
The final budget, to be voted on Monday, would increase the mayor's budget to about $2.4 million, compared with $1.8 million this year. That would be comparable to the last year of former Mayor Paul Schell's administration in 2001.
Ceis said it was important for the council to not renege on the agreement some council members, including Council President Peter Steinbrueck, had made to not bash the mayor over his office budget.
"We had a deal on the entire budget," Ceis said. "When they pull out that block of it, the whole thing starts to unravel."
$400,000 found
As part of its budget plan, the council had crafted a proposal to restore $800,000 to the Fire Department budget to keep a medical aid car in the Green Lake neighborhood. But an extra $400,000 was needed to keep the more expensive fire engine and crew there.
In a noon meeting Thursday between Compton and Ceis, the mayor's office agreed to try to come up with the extra money by scouring the Fire Department budget one more time.
And sure enough, the Fire Department suddenly found $400,000, although Fire Chief Gary Morris had repeatedly told the City Council that he couldn't find any money in his budget to save the engine.
Yesterday, Morris explained that an efficiency study by the department had just identified $400,000 in savings.
"That information only came together in the past week," he said. "We had enough raw data to say we think we can do this."
Most of the $400,000 comes from trimming the Fire Department's overtime budget, which this year will spend an average of roughly $6,000 in overtime for every Seattle firefighter.
Specifically, the department will stop paying overtime to train engineers to operate the fireboat Alki, stop paying overtime for its staff-efficiency study and will pay less overtime to cover for firefighters who are out on vacation or sick leave.
Morris also said the department will "restrict or eliminate overtime" paid when fire boats spray water at public celebrations. Morris could not say how much overtime the city had paid for such displays in the past.
An hour after he talked to Ceis, Compton was told he had a deal to save the fire engine. Under the plan, the engine would be restored as a three-person crew (making it, in fire-department parlance, an "attack" crew) instead of the current four.
But after Compton sided with Nicastro on the mayor's office budget, Ceis sent the message to Compton saying the deal was off.
Despite the last-minute crisis, Ceis said the mayor's office was happy with the final budget package.
"We wanted Engine 16 back out at Green Lake. We're pleased with that outcome," Ceis said.
Seattle Times reporter Bob Young contributed to this report. Jim Brunner: 206-515-5628 or jbrunner@seattletimes.com.