A recent “women in law enforcement hiring event” (Image: SPD)

The expected rift didn’t close but the Seattle City Council was able to pass a new budget plan for 2023 with a 6-3 vote Tuesday.

CHS reported here on the unusual alliance shaped as District 3 representative Kshama Sawant continued her annual opposition to the compromise spending plan while finding common ground in opposing the budget this year with citywide representative Sara Nelson and U District, View Ridge, Wallingford, and Wedgwood rep Alex Pedersen who complained the package didn’t do enough to address public safety issues and fund policing in the city.

Despite the last minute politics, the final budget heads to Mayor Bruce Harrell’s desk with much of his Seattle Police Department spending for hiring new officers and retention intact, including using savings from vacant SPD positions to provide the department with additional funding.

“This budget will allow us to move forward as a City and heal. I am both proud of the final product, and also energized by taking the vital steps forward today to make Seattle a city where all our residents are cared for and housed, connected and resilient, and healthy and safe,” budget chair Teresa Mosqueda said in a statement.

“There’s much more work to do to fully invest in a resilient and equitable City and I’m deeply thankful to the thousands of Seattle residents, my council colleagues, and Mayor Harrell and his team for the work we’ve collectively done to ensure that Seattle is a city that invests in our residents, workforce, and small businesses.”

CHS reported here on the council’s final tweaks to the 2023 budget that council budget chair Mosqueda called an “anti-austerity” approach to “keeping our community cared for and housed, connected and resilient, and healthy and safe” despite a predicted downturn in city tax revenues. The council’s most significant shift from the Harrell plan was moving JumpStart tax revenue back to its initial purpose of addressing the city’s resiliency and homelessness crisis including an important cost of living adjustments planned for salaries for workers at human service providers that will nearly double the $15.5 million the mayor was aiming to spend.

Sawant criticized the final package for its “austerity” and the council’s unwillingness to increase the JumpStart tax on the city’s largest employers. CHS reported here on other Sawant office initiatives as part of her annual People’s Budget rally.

In addition to keeping SPD’s hiring and retention plans intact, Harrell will also have full funding for his plan for a new Unified Care Team that will help maintain “clean and accessible Seattle neighborhoods, parks, and open spaces” including sweeping encampments and clearing tents from public spaces like parks. Smaller changes like axing the Harrell administration plan for deploying controversial gunfire technology in the city were also part of final changes to the budget plan. One small item of note for Capitol Hill is a spending restriction requiring the Seattle Department of Transportation to develop a framework for “promoting pedestrian safe design treatments” that could open the way to create spaces like a “Capitol Hill Superblock” in the Pike/Pine core.

A summary of council additions and changes to the budget can be found here (PDF).

Once transmitted, Harrell will have ten days to sign or veto the budget or simply allow it to go into effect.

PLEASE HELP KEEP CHS PAYWALL-FREE!
Subscribe to CHS to help us pay writers and photographers to cover the neighborhood. CHS is a pay what you can community news site with no required sign-in or paywall. Become a subscriber to help us cover the neighborhood for as little as $5 a month.