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Kettle's police hiring plan: 92 more officers than the mayor's budget, $792,000 next year and $22 million by 2029

The proposal would keep the Police Department hiring 12 recruits a month through 2028. Central Staff's packet shows the cost is small in 2027 and grows fast after that.

By Seattle Politics staffUpdated

The biggest police proposal on the City Council's table Thursday would keep the Seattle Police Department hiring at its current pace instead of slowing down as Mayor Katie Wilson's budget plans.

Public Safety Chair Robert Kettle has warned since September that the mayor's budget would cap police staffing "at numbers not seen in over 15 years," MyNorthwest reported. Now his fix is on paper. Council Central Staff's police proposal packet for the Oct. 29 Select Budget Committee meeting shows what it would do and what it would cost.

What the proposal does

SPD-104-A, sponsored by Kettle with Rob Saka and Maritza Rivera, would:

  • add $792,000 from the General Fund in 2027 and $11.6 million in 2028;
  • require that the 2027 money be spent only on hiring police recruits at a rate of 12 a month;
  • produce about 135 net new officers over the two years, 92 more than the 43 the mayor's budget assumes.

According to the packet, the mayor's staffing plan expects 128 hires and 85 departures in 2027, for 43 net new officers, and no net growth in 2028. Kettle's version would add 23 net hires in 2027 and 69 in 2028 on top of that.

The cost does not stop in 2028. SPD estimates the city would need about $22 million more in 2029 to pay a full year of salaries for the officers hired under the proposal, the packet says. That is a future-year cost the Council would be committing to without a funding source named.

MyNorthwest reported in September that the mayor's plan would fund 1,250 officer positions, and that Kettle expects about 1,100 officers to be deployable by the end of 2028. Wilson's police budget still grows by more than $68 million, mostly because of raises set in the police contract, PubliCola reported.

The rest of Kettle's police package

The same three members filed three more items, per the packet:

  • SPD-113-A: $825,000 in 2027 and $1.1 million in 2028 to restore seven civilian paralegal positions that support homicide, robbery and gun crime detectives. The Council added 14 such positions over 2025 and 2026; seven were filled, and the mayor's budget would eliminate the seven that were not.
  • SPD-114-A: $383,000 in 2027 and $517,000 in 2028 to fund three of the nine vacant Real Time Crime Center positions the 2026 budget added for 24/7 coverage.
  • SPD-102S-A: a request that SPD study staffing for non-patrol units such as SWAT, Harbor, Traffic and investigations by Aug. 16, 2027, alongside the patrol staffing study already under way.

What our records add

The contract behind the raises. The police contract that drives much of SPD's cost growth, CB 121133, passed 6-3 at the Dec. 9, 2025 meeting. Kettle, Rivera, Joy Hollingsworth, Debora Juarez and Dan Strauss voted yes, along with then-Council President Sara Nelson. Saka, Eddie Lin and Alexis Mercedes Rinck voted no. So one of the three sponsors of the hiring plan, Saka, voted against the contract that sets officers' pay.

The positions the Council added before. The paralegal and crime center jobs Kettle wants to restore were Council additions in the 2025 and 2026 budgets, according to the packet. The 2026 budget, CB 121116, passed 9-0 at the Nov. 21, 2025 meeting.

Where the votes might come from. No votes are taken Thursday. Every police item that adds money has the same three sponsors: Kettle, Saka and Rivera. Under Central Staff's process, other members can add their names only in open session after each item is presented, and Budget Chair Strauss decides what goes into his balancing package.

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