In the shadow of worries about possible cuts to federal aid to his city, Mayor Ed Murray will sign Seattle’s more than $5 billion 2017-2018 budget Tuesday after rounds of changes and tweaks by the City Council.
The council voted on the budget plan Monday. As has been her wont, District 3 representative Kshama Sawant was the sole council member to vote against the spending package pounded out over the past month in City Hall.
“Today I rejected another biz-as-usual budget, while celebrating power of movements & our #Build1000Homes Coalition’s $29M #housing victory!,” read Sawant’s tweet on the vote. The Socialist Alternative councilor credited her Build 1,000 Homes coalition in the push for the addition of a $29 million affordable housing bond to next year’s budget plan.
“For everyone out there that wonders if it is possible to fight Trump and his racist, sexist, right wing agenda, you should take heart from victories such as these,” Sawant’s message read.
The mayor’s office, meanwhile, called the plan “a vision for Seattle focused on equity, safety, affordability, innovation, and good governance.”
2017-2018 Proposed Budget Executive Summary
The City of Seattle’s 2017-2018 Proposed Budget totals approximately $5.6 billion per year, including more than $1.2 billion of General Fund spending per year. General Fund revenues are projected to increase at an average annual rate of 3.5% over the biennium. This increase reflects both the impacts of the healthy local economy, and modest tax and fee increases approved by the City Council in 2016. These additional resources will allow the City to meet the increased costs associated with providing the existing level of municipal services, while at the same time expanding services in a number of areas to help meet the demands of our rapidly growing city.Mayor Murray’s proposed budget increases staffing for basic public safety activities, including both police and fire, while at the same time investing in core functions such as the recreational services offered by the Department of Parks and Recreation (DPR), the transportation infrastructure managed by the Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) and permitting processes overseen by the Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections. In addition, the Mayor has proposed increasing investments in areas to help ensure more of Seattle’s residents share in the economic vitality of this region. Equity and shared prosperity has been a hallmark of Mayor Murray’s administration and the proposed budget reflects a continued commitment to this principle. In particular, the proposed budget increases support for the newly independent Office of Labor Standards, provides funding for the City’s Equitable Development Initiative, increases access to the City’s community centers and expands support for youth employment.
In developing the proposed budget, the Mayor has also maintained and enhanced his commitment to good governance and ensuring that Seattle government is both more efficient and more effective in delivering basic municipal services. Consistent with this commitment, the proposed budget continues with the work of consolidating the City’s information technology functions, standardizing human resource policies, enhancing the measurement and monitoring of department performance, increasing accountability and oversight of the City’s human services contracts, better coordinating the City’s infrastructure investments to support development and growth, and implementing a new accounting system to ensure consistent and transparent financial practices.
Beyond the $29 million affordable housing bond, in a spending plan with billions of dollars in line items, the second most interesting tweak to Murray’s plan from a Capitol Hill point of view just might be a puny addition of $150,000 that Council member and budget committee chair Tim Burgess is giving the Seattle Department of Transportation to study the creation of a Capitol Hill parking benefits district:
This proposal would provide one-time funding for the development of a parking benefit district pilot program. The pilot program could address commercial parking areas, such as the Capitol Hill EcoDistrict, and/or address residential parking areas with residential parking zones. The proposal would be funded from fund balance (Commercial Parking Tax).
CHS wrote about the department’s rejection of a proposed plan to pilot a program that could eventually create “parking benefit districts” across Seattle, giving neighborhoods a major slice of the revenue generated by pay meters on their streets. In 2015, Capitol Hill Housing’s Ecodistrict program was provided with a $20,000 grant to study the state of parking in the neighborhood. Later, the City Council asked SDOT to work with the organization to provide a report on a possible path to creating a district shared parking program that would more directly benefit the neighborhood. With that report in hand, SDOT said it believed that its “performance-based” management of neighborhood parking rates was already strongly established in the city and that a parking benefit district program would gum up good traffic management. The department will now have $150,000 earmarked for “development” of the pilot.
$5.6 billion plan
After taking on major initiatives like universal Pre-K and housing affordability in previous budget proposals, Murray set a more restrained and “efficient” course for the City of Seattle with his latest plan. Projecting the rapid pace of construction in the city will begin to slow in 2017, the mayor said his budget framework avoided making too many major longterm investments and puts money into the city’s rainy day funds. “If 2014 was the year of the minimum wage, 2015 the year of housing affordability, and 2016 is the year of education, it is my intention to make 2017 the year of good governance,” he said in September.
The 2017-2018 budget allocates an additional $12 million to address homelessness in the city and will fund a new one-stop-shop shelter and service center, increase outreach to encampments, and maintain existing shelter capacity.
The budget will also help Murray’s goal for adding 200 police officers above 2013 levels by 2020 stay on track with funding for 72 new hires in the next two years. A proposed restriction on the funding that would have required SPD to develop a “preference points system” that awarded preference “for applicants who are multi-lingual and/or have work experience or educational background providing important skills needed in modern policing, such as experience working with diverse communities, and social work, mental health or domestic violence counseling, Peace Corps, AmeriCorps, or other similar work or community service backgrounds” was not voted down by the council’s budget committee.
A proposed cutback on the city’s Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion program that expanded to SPD’s East Precinct on Capitol Hill in 2016 was also restored by the committee. Sawant sponsored the proposed $150,000 budget line item’s “green sheet” addition to the 2017 spending plan:
This Green Sheet would add $150,000 GSF in 2017 and $150,000 GSF in 2018 to the Human Services Department (HSD) for the Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion (LEAD) program. LEAD expanded to East Precinct in 2016; this funding would keep LEAD’s City-funded portion of its budget at the same level ($960,000).
Meanwhile, the council also left intact funding for Seattle Parks that will give Capitol Hill’s Miller Community Center budget for extended operating hours and set the groundwork for the center to be tabbed as a LGBTQ community hub — part of a strategic plan announced in September that called for the creation of a “hub-centric” pilot program.
