The Seattle City Council Tuesday approved a mid-year budget update that includes increased funding for opioid addiction treatment, expanded pre-trial diversion programs, a $950,000 grant to boost the reopening of Cinerama, and $1.6 million to help launch a new “dual dispatch” pilot program in the city hoped to test the deployment of mental health helpers along with cops.

The council’s “mid-year supplemental budget update” was working with around an additional $16.8 million in revenue as part of the city’s $1.7 billion general fund.

Amendments to the spending plan included the boost for Cinerama. CHS reported here on the plans for the Seattle International Film Festival to take over and operate the historic Seattle theater a decade after it took over Capitol Hill’s Egyptian Theatre.

The budget update included a key injection of funding for Seattle’s dual dispatch pilot. CHS reported here on the pilot program that will deploy social workers and behavioral health specialists with Seattle Police officers for a limited set of circumstances when mental health expertise is needed and the situation is deemed safe for non-police intervention.

Under the pilot, 911 calls dispatched involving someone suffering a mental crisis will include the specialists arriving with police at situations that don’t involve someone who is injured or sick, an “imminent danger,” weapons, or narcotics.

The program comes as Seattle’s Community Safety and Communications Center Department is transitioning its 911 procedures to include a “quality assurance” software system already in use for Seattle Fire dispatch that officials say will take some of the guesswork out of the dispatching process by suggesting “questions for complicated situations,” suggesting follow-up questions, and help to standardize the dispatch process to “reduce implicit bias.”

The 911 dispatch changes join other logistical overhauls underway at SPD. Earlier this year, Chief Adrian Diaz announced a new scheduling strategy designed to make better use of available officers as the department tries to boost its ranks.

There are more than 10,000 calls to 911 a week in Seattle but only about 60% involve the dispatch of Seattle Fire or police, the city says. Any calls where mental crisis appears to be an issue — and no priority safety situations have been reported — could be a call where the dual dispatch workers could be included.

The program is expected to launch this fall.

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