The Seattle City Councilapproved new contracts Tuesday for more than 7,000 city workers across 16 different labor unions that will raise wages, catch up on back pay, and expand benefits.
But all eyes are on a deal that falls outside those bounds as details are emerging from an agreement between City Hall and the Seattle Police Officers Guild.
Under the agreements finalized by the council Tuesday, city employees will see a catch-up on raises with a retroactive 5% payout for last year, a 4% bump in 2024, a 2025 raise tied to the regional Consumer Price Index and gated between 2% and 4%. and, in 2026, raises of between 2% and 5% pegged to inflation, Crosscut reports. Continue reading →
The Seattle City Council’s Finance, Native Communities, and Tribal Governments Committee will hear an update on the numbers, an overview of how we got here, and a look at some of the possible paths to take climb out of the hole in a presentation (PDF) Wednesday morning.
According to the City Budgeting Office update, while the 2025 deficit will top $230 million, it could balloon to more than $452 million in 2026. Continue reading →
With work on the 2024 budget just completed, the Seattle City Council’s budget committee still has more work to do over the coming year to do its part to help City Hall overcome a looming deficit. The committee meets Thursday with an agenda of legislation (PDF) to streamline the annual fiscal effort with possible new schedules and requirements. Work will also be coming to identify options to address the looming deficit including possible new “alternative revenue” sources for the city.
According to the council, its final 2024 budget package deliberations and amendments “reduced the projected deficit in 2025 from $247 million to $218 million” — “but there is still a substantial amount of work to be done,” a council briefing says.
Part of that work could be legislation to tap into new sources of revenue in Seattle. Continue reading →
Six projects including a new Duwamish-centered community center and a push for new public restrooms in the city have been chosen by community members in Seattle’s $27 million “participatory budgeting” process born out of the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests. Implementing the projects will be the next project. Continuing the process? That appears to be off the table.
The results were announced last week following a month-long online ranking process in which the Office of Civil Rights says 4,000 votes were cast.
The city says the ranked choice process gave people “who live, work, or play in Seattle” the opportunity to vote on 18 ballot items by selecting their top four proposals. Five winning projects will be fully funded and the remainder of the $27.25 million will be allocated to the 6th place project.
Top Participatory Budgeting Projects
Native Youth: Past, Present, Future ($7,200,000)
Focus Area: Youth & Children
A Duwamish centered community center would offer recreational, educational, and cultural programs that foster community engagement, promote well-being, and support cultural preservation. It will serve as a vibrant hub of activity, facilitating connections within the urban native community, while also extending a warm welcome to individuals from diverse backgrounds.
People Not Police Crisis Response Team ($2,000,000)
Focus Area: Crisis and Wellness
Funding for trained mental health professionals to be first responders to mental health crises. Marginalized community members are more likely to be harmed when police respond to mental health crises, public outbursts (usually need- or trauma-driven), or behaviors not always explained or understood. A culturally competent, trauma-informed, compassion-based, peer-supported response promises better outcomes, long and short term. Continue reading →
The view from Capitol Hill’s Pride Place. Affordable housing spending will reach an all-time high in the city in 2024.
Teresa Mosqueda will step up to represent Seattle constituents the King County Council.
Kshama Sawant is off to start a new national party.
The two veteran Seattle City Council members marked the passage of the final city budget under their watch in familiar fashion with budget chair Mosqueda celebrating wins for human services and housing and Sawant standing alone in opposition to the final compromise package.
The final 2024 Seattle budget plan was approved 8 to 1 by the council acting as committee Monday. Tuesday will bring a final vote, a formality in the multi-month process.
“Thanks to affordable housing and homelessness advocates, our labor partners and human service workers, community members, and our Select Budget Committee colleagues, this budget includes the City’s largest-ever investment into affordable housing—yielding nearly $600 million for affordable across the biennium,” Mosqueda said in a statement. Continue reading →
Kshama Sawant knows who her successor will be on a shifted Seattle City Council. This week, the veteran District 3 leader is hoping to shepherd forward a few last key initiatives including millions of dollars for mental health services in the city’s educational programs and millions more for sustaining the city’s ability to boost wages for its workers as she makes her final pass through the city’s budget process before she prepares to leave office at the end of the year.
The Seattle City Council meets Monday to begin finalizing an amendment package with more than 120 items as it works to rebalance Mayor Bruce Harrell’s 2024 proposals. You can view the full slate of proposed 2024 amendments and voting results here.
Sawant’s core push in the amendment process comes with some of the positioning the city has grown to expect from its firebrand socialist councilmember. The amendments she has put her muscle behind this fall would increase the JumpStart tax on Seattle’s largest companies by $20 million to fund “K-12 educational supports, prioritizing services that improve mental health outcomes” and another $40 million to support wage growth for city employees. In her message to supporters, Sawant, of course, refers to JumpStart as the “Amazon tax” while also tossing yet another barb at the Democratic party.
“Amazon just tripled its profits. Other big corporations also have reported record profits,” Sawant writes in the message calling for support at Monday’s public budget hearing. “These big corporations can easily pay a small amount more in our city’s Amazon Tax so that public sector workers and public school students can get their basic needs met.”
The council’s budget process must now be “self-balancing.” “That means when an amendment proposes new spending, it will have to explain how it will be funded – either by identifying new revenue or by taking money from somewhere else,” a council brief on the process reads. Continue reading →
The Seattle City Council budget balancing proposal include the next maneuvers in the back and forth tug of war over attempts to loosen the strings on the JumpStart payroll tax revenue intended to fund important social programs and affordable housing.
The council is in the midst of finalizing the city’s budget for 2024 with an important meeting this week and a public hearing to finalize the package in mid-November.
Meanwhile, there are signs that the city’s economic recovery from the pandemic may be on more solid ground as the latest revenue forecast shows a predicted jump in funding from previous more-dire expectations. Continue reading →
The Seattle City Council’s process of making additions, subtractions, and changes to Mayor Bruce Harrell’s 2024 budget proposal begins Wednesday with the Select Budget Committee’s first hearing. The bigger budget battle will come next year.
With 2024 the second year of the city’s two-year budget cycles, changes proposed by councilmembers must be “self-balancing.” If they propose new spending, they will have to explain how it will be funded — “either by identifying new revenue or by taking money from somewhere else,” a council brief on the process explains.
Seattle’s efforts to shape the city’s 2024 spending plan are beginning with a proposal from Mayor Bruce Harrell’s office that he says “doubles downs” on his administration’s priorities with a more than 30% increase in planned affordable housing funding, maintaining the city’s more than $100 million in annual funding for the King County Regional Homelessness Authority, and $26.5 million to boost the newly formed Community Assisted Response and Engagement departments. But the proposal’s largest components including spending for the city’s existing first responders at Seattle Police and the Seattle Fire Department would be maintained at status quo levels.
“Seattle is a different city than when I took office nearly two years ago – we are continuing to see real progress, even while acknowledging the complex challenges still before us. Many of our toughest issues can’t be solved overnight but with a plan and solid investment strategy, we can show meaningful progress towards building the One Seattle we want to see,” Harrell said in the announcement of his 2024 budget proposal. “This budget doubles down on the priorities that matter for the city, focusing on critical needs like public safety and homelessness, supporting downtown and a healthy climate, and embracing a back-to-basics philosophy needed to advance Seattle’s economy, quality of life, and the essential city services residents deserve.”
The budget planning comes in a city facing challenged revenue forecasts in coming years. A workgroup convened to brainstorm possible “alternative revenue” sources has proposed options including capital gains, vacancy, and congestion pricing taxes. For now, the city is working with what it has including its more than $200 million a year JumpStart tax on its largest employers like Amazon and Starbucks.
(Image: The Rise)
Harrell made his budget speech Tuesday from First Hill at a newly opened affordable high-rise housing development on surplus Sound Transit land at Madison and Boylston, “these buildings represent the kind of outcomes we’re trying to achieve,” the mayor said. CHS reported here in May at the opening of the joint project from Plymouth Housing and Bellwether Housing where Plymouth operates Blake House on floors two through five with a total of 112 studio apartments focused on serving seniors and veterans who have experienced chronic homelessness while Bellwether operates The Rise on Madison on floors six through 17 with “250 homes affordable to families making 60% or less of area median income.”
“These projects provide affordable housing for our neighbors and bring people who have experienced chronic homelessness indoors with the support they need to live healthy, fulfilling lives,” Harrell said.
The proposed budget now moves to the Seattle City Council for weeks of public comment, debate, additions, and subtractions.
Seattle’s operating budget reached $5.92 billion in 2023 with just over 40% of that earmarked for transportation infrastructure, utilities, and environment spending, and nearly 24% for administration at City Hall. The single biggest category beyond that base remains Public Safety at nearly 14% or $805.4 million. Its capital budget climbed to $1.51 billion in one-time spending and improvement projects.
In total, the mayor’s proposal calls for $7.386 billion in spending — down slightly from 2023’s approved $7.433 billion budget.
A view from the 8th floor of the under construction Heartwood development, an affordable mass-timber apartment building from Community Roots Housing at 14th and Union (Image: atelierjones)
The mass timber Heartwood’s central stairs (Image: atelierjones)
Housing, and how to make more of it across the state, has been the driving theme in Olympia’s 2023 session. While some proposals fell flat, others including what amounts to an end to single-family zoning, pushed through and look likely to become law. There were, of course, dozens of other laws passed this session, and a budget is still pending.
The Legislature is set to adjourn April 23. In a budget year, like this one, whether or not a given bill is dead is tougher to pin down. There are a number of cutoff dates built into the system, and in theory, a bill needs to meet those dates, which typically involve being passed by either the senate or house. If it doesn’t meet the date, it won’t become law. However, if a bill has budget implications, then it can be revived even if it missed the dates. And since virtually everything has some budget implication, virtually everything can be brought back.
With that in mind, these are where many efforts stand as of the writing of this story, but, some things that seem dead make yet be revived, we won’t know for sure until adjournment. For details about any of the bills in the story, go here, and enter the bill number.
Keep in mind the session is not over. If you see something up in the air that you find compelling, now is the time to contact your legislators, state Reps. Nicole Macri and Frank Chopp, and state Sen. Jamie Pedersen.
(Image: seattle.gov)
HOUSING Washington needs about 1 million new homes by 2044, according to the state Dept. of Commerce. To open up options for more housing, the Legislature has decided to, essentially, end single-family zoning as we know it across much of the state with HB 1110. Cities with populations more than 25,000 will need to allow for at least duplexes on every lot. Cities with populations of greater than 75,000 will need to allow at least four houses on every lot. Some of the space is to be set aside for affordable housing. There are some exceptions and fine print surrounding environmentally critical areas and other specially designated areas. Cities will also be required to allow at least six of nine so-called middle housing types. These are all varieties of more density than single-family, without going full blown apartment building. The state defines them as: duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes, fiveplexes, sixplexes, townhouses, stacked flats, courtyard apartments, and cottage housing. All this adds up to lots of potential infill development in the coming years.
This does not mean, however, the bulldozers are going to start rumbling toward the big old houses in North Capitol Hill, let alone the rest of the city. Just because a type of building is allowed does not mean it is required. Homeowners can continue to live in their existing houses. They can tear down an existing house and replace it with another single family house if they so desire. This simply mean they would have the option of tearing down the single-family house, and replacing it with more units. In land use circles, the general expectation is that over time, most properties are eventually are built out to the highest density levels permitted and practical, though it can take a generation of more before it actually happens. Continue reading →
