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Mayor says task force will shape her $100M promise made during Seattle’s Black Lives Matter protests — UPDATE

$100 million a year to fund Black-led community organizations was a key commitment raised by Mayor Jenny Durkan as Seattle’s summer Black Lives Matter protests grew and later as she tried to end CHOP and the occupied protest zone without a police sweep this summer. Durkan still ended up ordering a raid and sweep — but that promise remained on the table. Now the mayor is going about the careful business of trying to stay true to her word in a city facing a near future of COVID-damaged budgets.

As she prepares to present her 2021 budget proposal Tuesday, Durkan is also laying out a plan for the $100 million a year commitment that is taking on unexpected dimensions including a new task force the mayor says will be announced this week that will “engage communities in a collaborative process to prioritize how the funding can create opportunity and an inclusive economy,” “build community wealth and preserve cultural spaces,” “ensure community wellness,” and “achieve environmental and climate justice.”

“Communities must be empowered and resourced to determine what solutions may best address deep, systemic issues,” Durkan wrote in an op-ed in the South Seattle Emerald describing the framework for the much anticipated funding effort. Durkan appeared on Converge Media to announce the new program and the taskforce.

 

Publicola broke the news on another asterisk on the mayor’s $100 million. Her office is planning to pay for the spending with revenue from the $200 million a year business tax passed by the City Council this summer to fund housing, business assistance, and community spending and help Seattle recover from the ongoing COVID-19 crisis as well as revenue from Seattle’s Uber and Lyft fees.

The mayor has not yet announced who will be part of the taskforce but in her discussion with Converge, she said the $100 million effort will be expanded to focus on Seattle’s BIPOC — “Black, Indigenous, and People of Color” — communities, not only its Black citizens.

From past comments, it’s clear Durkan plans to reach beyond the organizations like King County Equity Now that have been most active during the summer’s Black Lives Matter activism and demonstrations.

“I announced many months ago that I was committing to $100 million of new community investments and we would have a process so those investments would be guided by community and the voice of community,” Durkan said after CHS asked about the $100 million promise during an August press conference following her ultimately unsuccessful veto of the City Council’s SPD budget cuts. “King County Equity Now wants to be the deciders in that? We will have those voices at the table but we will have a broader process.”

The BIPOC communities spending plan comes as nonprofits and activists await word on how the Durkan administration will deploy funding intended to be redirected to community groups after thee City Council’s override of the mayor’s vetoes reopened the path to cutting back SPD and redirecting more spending to social justice initiatives.

It also comes amid demands for a participatory budgeting process that many believe will give Seattle community groups and organizations more control over the funding city officials say is dedicated to their communities. The City Council’s package of SPD cuts and redirected spending included $3 million to grow a more community directed budget process in Seattle.

UPDATE: King County Equity Now says Monday it will announce details of its formation of “a 100+ member Black-led community-led research team” in partnership with local Black-led organizations including Bridging Cultural Gaps, East African Community Services, Freedom Project, and Wa Na Wari.

“The team is laying the groundwork for a true participatory budgeting process in 2021 that crafts real solutions to deliver equity now,” the announcement reads.

Mayor Durkan is scheduled to announce details of her 2021 budget proposal Tuesday afternoon.

 

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8 Comments
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EJ
EJ
3 years ago

Operation: Watch $100M Disappear begins!

louise
louise
3 years ago

I have a feeling we will never know where the money goes, we will never know how effective it is and we will just keep paying taxes to fund it for years on end. But call me cynical.

LRK
LRK
3 years ago

How does KCEN come to the conclusion that only allowing a demographic who makes up 6% of the city and county population and on top of that only allowing people in the fold with an extremely narrow ideological viewpoint constitutes equity and inclusion? 94% of the city are being told they have to sit in the back of the bus because activists have deluded the public into thinking that the treatment of blacks is significantly more important than the rest of the population. I am dismayed at the catering to the Africatown crowd who acts like the mafia. For the city and county to stress inclusion and diversity and then pander so much to what is really just a militant racial nationalist group who is really hostile to outsiders who don’t capitulate to their demands is shameful. It’s a power and money grab under threats of violence.

Sticky Stu
Sticky Stu
3 years ago
Reply to  LRK

Don’t you have a Klan meeting to be at?

K P
K P
3 years ago

Pandering to the Identity Politikers.

EJ
EJ
3 years ago

$133 annually from every citizen in Seattle FOREVER. How do I get a seat at the table with the task force?

-$20M Repair the sign in the lead photo and clean up all the
other graffiti
-$20M Repair Cal Anderson
-$30M Repair the East Precinct and City Hall
-$30M Repair all the other stuff damaged in Seattle’s
Summer of Love
-STOP I’ll figure out racism on my own for less money

Steve
Steve
3 years ago

This city is in a death spiral. Half the apartments in my building are vacant and have been for months. The building manager who has been here for 30 years says he’s never seen anything like it. After 15 years in Cap Hill, I’m moving Eastside. Lots of others are too. Amazon is taking jobs out of here before the head tax happens. Businesses closing left and right. So where’s the money going to come from? Raised property taxes? We’re paying ransom money to a group of people who are demanding to defund the police while crime rises in the neighborhood. Seattle will become a case study of how mismanagement turned a great city into a ghetto.

Sheryl
Sheryl
3 years ago

Want to see the criteria for ‘community group’ . Clear goals for what they do. Metrics for what they do. Want to see a hard stop if they do not meet these metrics. Want to see why it is we need to outsource instead of do the work with city resources with city employees. Critical – criteria such as leaders who do not support property destruction as a form of protest (aka Nikkita Oliver). This is my taxpayer money – deserve goals, transparency, accountability, not some ineffective grouping of groups as per some of our homeless response, or my tax money going to fund people who advocate destruction of my city.