A review of the city’s spending plan by the City Council reveals Seattle City Hall is facing the same pressures as the rest of the nation when it comes to ballooning costs. A new study reveals nearly 80% of Seattle’s $1.7 billion budget increase is due to inflation and soaring wages. New programs accounted for only 19% of the jump with the remaining two percent of spending being powered by one-time revenue injections like federal aid during the padnemic.
The review comes as Seattle faces a looming $230+ million budget hole.
New, more conservative spending directions for the council have been accompanied by new thinking on the way the city spends. Call for an “audit” were a popular campaign trail message. Now that the Seattle City Council has released the much anticipated “first-of-its-kind 5-year review of the City of Seattle’s budget,” the answers on how to help bridge the coming deficit aren’t exactly more clear.
The 224-page report (PDF) summarizes the budget by department “to better understand how city resources are allocated, how the budget has grown between 2019 and 2024 and what has driven its growth over time.”
Chair of the council’s budget committee Dan Strauss says the body will use the new report to help it “throughout the summer and into the fall” shape a spending plan and address the projected shortfall
“This Council is working with urgency to address our budget issues, and as Chair of the Select Budget Committee I am leading a process that is already in full swing. We are already releasing an unprecedented level of data from our Central Staff analysts. In years past we have only analyzed the incremental change in the budget year after year. This year, we’re taking critical steps to solving our budget holistically, instead of incrementally,” Strauss said in an announcement on the report.
But more data doesn’t necessarily mean more and better solutions. Cuts could be coming. The city is already set to see costs jump again with new agreement on higher wages for its workers and a new deal with 23% raises for its police officers.
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This factoid from the report bears repeating:
“If you exclude reductions in SPD’s budget that resulted from transferring programs and personnel out of SPD (e.g., the transfer of the 911 Call Center), SPD’s budget would show an approximate six percent increase (25 million) between 2019 and 2024.”
Remember: SPD’s budget was never slashed.
lol, that was not the conclusion I was expecting. So a 6% raise for the entire dpt since 2019 seems downright austerity like for Seattle! If only every department was so trimmed!
Remember: There’s been about a 22% cumulative price increase from inflation since 2019, so anything less than that is a cut.
Hahaha. The new spin is going to be “we didn’t get budget increases that was 100% aligned with inflation, so it’s exactly like when we claimed the old city council slashed the budget.”
Sure, the budget wasn’t slashed as much as the ACAB zealots wanted, but the damage inflicted by that movement is longer lasting, and affects everyone in the city.
Cruel as it is, across-the-board % cuts to every department’s budget — fire and police included — is the right thing to do. Debating priorities among necessities is endless and futile. Across-the-board. Let department heads either squeeze out waste or find a new job.
Why are the police getting 23% raises while also having a large number of responsibilites removed?
Cops can and will never prevent crime because it’s not their job to reduce poverty…the main driver of crime according to the statistical consensus. What cops can do is be more responsive to community needs, and try harder to be better at conducting themselves professionally–still waiting on that change to happen since the consent decree that was so shamefully placed on SPD for sheltering literal racist troglodytes.
No other workers slated to get a raise are simultaneously getting a large part of their work exported to other departments in separate jobs like the cops are.
Maybe, the cops should show an ability to control themselves if they want people to feel that they “deserve” a raise. Instead, we get them whining, moaning, and complaining about “a lack of respect” when most of them don’t even live in Seattle. Keep showing your asses.
Post WWII, the top marginal tax rate was 90%, and lasted until 1964, when the thought of paying high taxes which benefitted the newly unsegregated black citizens became just too much; It was then lowered to 70% (just about DOUBLE the current highest marginal rate of 37%).
That’s where your budget is.
Why the quotes around ‘audit?’
My reading of the report is that (1) most city spending increased at about the rate you would expect given inflation and population growth, (2) revenue went down a lot during the first two years of the pandemic, (3) we got a big chunk of money from the Federal government that compensated for lost revenue during the pandemic, (4) revenue growth has not recovered to the pre-pandemic trend, and (5) thank goodness for the Jumpstart tax. I am assuming #4 is mostly due to the slowdown in the real estate market. Does that seem right?