Restoring fire overtime has wide support. Councilmembers filed two versions: $7.1 million or $5.1 million

Putting back the Seattle Fire Department's overtime money is the budget change most likely to pass this fall, KUOW reported on Monday. Councilmember Robert Kettle told reporters it "has consensus across the floor," and Budget Chair Dan Strauss is working with Kettle and Councilmember Maritza Rivera on it, according to KUOW.

The proposals for Wednesday's Select Budget Committee meeting are now posted, and they show the Council has not settled on one number. There are two competing fixes, $2 million a year apart. For residents, the choice decides how many fire engines and ladder trucks stay in service on a typical day.

This is a follow-up to our Oct. 23 story, Fire overtime and unfilled crisis responder jobs, which laid out Mayor Katie Wilson's proposed $7.1 million cut.

What our records add: the two proposals

Council Central Staff's Fire Department proposal packet for the Oct. 28 meeting (agenda item) lists four items. Two deal with overtime:

SFD-001: restore all $7.1 million a year. Sponsored by Dan Strauss (District 6), with Joy Hollingsworth (District 3) and Robert Kettle (District 7). It would keep the department's target daily staffing at 222 firefighters. Under the mayor's plan that target drops to 209.

SFD-002: restore $5.1 million a year. Sponsored by Dionne Foster (Position 9), with Eddie Lin (District 2) and Alexis Mercedes Rinck (Position 8). The packet says this figure comes from an analysis by the department itself:

• In 2025 the department had 1,094 "unit outages," days when an engine or truck went unstaffed. Those outages saved about $4.8 million in overtime.
• The mayor's full cut would mean roughly 1,600 to 1,700 outages a year.
• The department expects more firefighters in 2027, after the city funded 100 recruit slots in 2026 (60 in the base budget plus 20 each from the mayor and the Council). More firefighters on the roster means more people volunteering for overtime shifts.
• With that, the department estimated it would still save $2 million to $2.5 million from outages in 2027. Restoring $5.1 million of the $7.1 million matches that estimate.

Central Staff adds a caution: the department had never done this kind of analysis before, the work was done quickly, and the department may need more money in 2027 if the estimate is off. The packet says SFD-002 would not lower the 222 staffing target.

Both are General Fund changes. The bigger version costs $2 million more each year, money that would have to come from cuts elsewhere or from the roughly $13 million in room the October revenue forecast gave the Council, as KUOW reported.

The other fire items

• SFD-003: $60,000 for a study of a new fire station on South Lake Union that could serve both land and water calls (Kettle, with Rob Saka and Strauss). The packet notes there is no station in the South Lake Union urban center, and that a station would later need at least $14.4 million in one-time costs and $11.7 million a year for 67 firefighters, with no funding identified.
• SFD-004S: a request that the department report by July 1, 2027, on how it recruits, hires and trains firefighters compared with nearby departments (Saka, with Hollingsworth and Kettle).

What's been said

The mayor has defended the cut. KUOW reported that Wilson called it "around 2% of their operating budget" and said she was confident the department could absorb it. A firefighter told the Council at an earlier hearing that response times would suffer, according to the same report. Strauss, who has spoken about firefighters reaching him within minutes after he was hit by a car in Ballard in 2004, said at a September budget meeting, "We are snuffing out people's ability to live a fulfilling life," KUOW reported.

What's next

• Wednesday, Oct. 28, 9:30 a.m.: sponsors present SFD-001 and SFD-002 at the Select Budget Committee. No votes are taken at these sessions.
• Nov. 4: Strauss releases his balancing package, which will show which version, if either, survives. KUOW reported the package could come Nov. 3.
• Nov. 5: public hearing on the budget.