The Seattle City Council’s Finance and Housing Committee is getting an update Wednesday morning on the city’s economic condition and forecasts as the impact of COVID-19 wanes but the uncertainty around war in Ukraine and inflation increases. Seattle’s use of some $300 million in federal pandemic recovery funds has also reached a new phase — sorting out what we did with the money and how much we helped the communities that need it most.

According to presentations set to be delivered at council Wednesday, the Seattle Rescue Plan will move forward by adding two new analysts to dig through the balance sheets as officials work to prepare annual Recovery Plan Report by August. CHS reported here on some of the most recent allocations from the around $300 million pool of federal recovery funding for cash assistance, food assistance, housing affordability, homelessness relief, childcare, and economic recovery.

Meanwhile, the city economic wonks are predicting a few hopeful bumps amid a choppy environment for jobs, wages, and inflation in Seattle. In the April report (PDF) released this week, economists describe the COVID-19 pandemic as basically “ending” in terms of its impact on the economy but say that turbulence and uncertainty related to the war in Ukraine has impacted global supply chains and sent inflation spiraling upward.

A glimmer of hope in Seattle? Tourists. The analysis sees “potential upside, relative to the national forecasts, as recovery in our Leisure & Hospitality sector catches up to results seen in other cities. Meanwhile, “regional employment growth in other sectors remains strong.”

The city budget update (PDF), meanwhile, notes that some sources of revenue for Seattle City Hall will be slow to recover including court fines — “significantly down due to policy decisions to suspend collections activity and credit card use fees; but some citation categories are also down due to diminished patrol hours and priorities related to traffic and non-traffic infractions.” On-street parking revenues also “remain low compared to pre-pandemic levels due to decisions about the rate of growth in hourly rates over time.”

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