Tag Archives: budget

Raiding JumpStart, new capital gains tax, Capitol Hill public safety line items on table in final Seattle 2025 budget push

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The last big push of changes for the city’s 2025 $8.3 billion budget plan is underway as the Seattle City Council will host a busy week of public hearings and committee meetings including debate on a balancing package that includes a roster of Capitol Hill public safety investments and a proposal for a new capital gains tax in the city.

Meanwhile, a group of services, housing, and transit advocates are calling on leaders to back off a plan to repurpose the city’s JumpStart payroll tax on its largest employers to help cover a looming, more than $250 million budget deficit.

Tuesday’s scheduled includes a 5 PM public hearing on the budget followed by a Wednesday council session with split morning and afternoon hearing sessions focused on 2025 revenue including the JumpStart debate, adjusting a multitude of city fees and fines, and consideration of a new capital gains tax in Seattle.

The capital gains tax proposal from North Seattle City Councilmember Cathy Moore would implement a 2% tax on capital gains over $250,000 from the sale or exchange of assets like stocks, bonds and business interests. It would ride on top of Washington’s 7% capital gains tax. Last week, state voters defeated Initiative 2109 that would have repealed the tax. Continue reading →

As Seattle City Council tightens belt, proposals include increased spending for Capitol Hill ‘community safety coordinator’ and street ambassadors

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A rendering of YouthCare’s planned Constellation Center

As the Seattle City Council tightens the city’s belt in the final steps of the year-end budget process, District 3’s Joy Hollingsworth will have a busy couple weeks ahead defending her roster of proposed spending projects for 2025 and beyond centered around Capitol Hill public safety improvements and city investments around the Garfield High School campus.

The council Wednesday morning will begin the final steps to shaping a more balanced budget as it refines the city’s spending plan to meet a downturn in revenue that continues to worsen. Last week, the Seattle Office of Economic and Revenue Forecasts said its predictions for a downturn in revenue continue to worsen.

CHS reported here on Mayor Bruce Harrell’s budget proposal which leans heavily on the JumpStart tax and City Hall job cuts to overcome a $250 million budget deficit from growing costs related to inflation and soaring wages.

Council staff analysis shows a belt-tightening plan for the next two years that would shift to focus on new workers at Seattle Public Utilities and Seattle City Light and new officers in the Seattle Police Department while reducing headcount in the Seattle Department of Human Resources, Finance and Administrative Services, Department of Construction and Inspections, and the city’s Information Technology department.

The balancing package being unveiled Wednesday by budget chair Dan Strauss includes rolling back major cuts to Department of Construction and Inspections and the city’s Information Technology including reversing a much-criticized decision to end original programming on the Seattle Channel.

Hollingsworth’s line items in the balancing package, if approved, would address her priorities around public safety in Capitol Hill’s core. Continue reading →

Seattle City Council holds public hearing on 2025 budget

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The Seattle City Council will host the first of two public hearings on the 2025 budget Wednesday evening.

CHS reported here on Mayor Bruce Harrell’s budget proposal which leans heavily on the JumpStart tax and City Hall job cuts to overcome a $250 budget deficit from growing costs related to inflation and soaring wages.

Council staff analysis shows a belt-tightening plan for the next two years that would shift to focus on new workers at Seattle Public Utilities and Seattle City Light and new officers in the Seattle Police Department while reducing headcount in the Seattle Department of Human Resources, Finance and Administrative Services, Department of Construction and Inspections, and the city’s Information Technology department.

The council is now taking public comment and forming its amendments to shape the final budget across issues large and small. Continue reading →

JumpStart tax to the rescue, City Hall job cuts in mayor’s plan to overcome Seattle’s $250M budget deficit

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It will be the JumpStart tax to the rescue for Mayor Bruce Harrell and the Seattle City Hall budget in 2025.

The Seattle mayor Tuesday unveiled his administration’s 2025-2026 budget plan including proposals to overcome a projected $250 million deficit by grabbing JumpStart revenue and slicing more than 150 jobs at City Hall.

The city’s projected budget will reach $8.3 billion under the plan.

The tax on the payrolls of Seattle’s largest employers was instituted to help power pandemic recovery with affordable housing and social services but is now one of the only flexible sources of major revenue available for the city’s spending plans.

Tuesday, Harrell justified the 2025-2026 JumpStart decision, saying the revenue from the tax has doubled over the last four years and that the city has leaned on the tax to support general spending “every year since it was introduced.”

“The proposals you hear about in this budget – and the deep, unacceptable cuts that we didn’t have to propose – are possible only because of this approach,” Harrell said. Continue reading →

Seattle mayor proposes ‘net revenue neutral’ mid-year spending package focused on public safety

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Mayor Bruce Harrell says his proposed Mid-Year Supplemental budget package emphasizes needed public safety investments that would expand the city’s Community Assisted Response and Engagement police alternative effort, support youth mental health, and make more money available for recruiting and training public safety staff.

With the city facing cutbacks in a looming budget deficit, Harrell’s office says the new budget proposal will also be “net revenue neutral” by shifting spending away from other priorities.

“Seattle is making meaningful progress on our most serious public safety challenges and this package will ensure we continue that momentum with needed investments, improvements, and staffing,” Harrell said in the announcement. Continue reading →

SPOG deal approved as Seattle City Council approves big raises with a few accountability strings for its police officers

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No word, yet, on how the new deal will change the Seattle Police Officers Guild’s “Seattle Public Safety Index”

With reporting by Hannah Saunders

The Seattle City Council voted 8-1 Tuesday to approve a new contract agreement with the city’s police officer union that leaders including Mayor Bruce Harrell and Chief Adrian Diaz says will boost salaries and morale as the department struggles to hire more officers. Council members voting for the contract also said Tuesday the deal will adding limited new oversight resources and move more public safety work like handling automated traffic tickets and property damage to civilian teams outside the department to help focus officers on the city’s most serious crime needs.

Public Safety Committee chair Bob Kettle said prior to Tuesday’s vote the key to the contract is improving SPD staffing levels, and that the agreement shows a commitment to both SPD and improving public safety. Acknowledged that the contract is expensive and a challenge with the budget deficit, Kettle said Seattle cannot compete in the law enforcement labor market, then it cannot accomplish the goal of achieving public safety.

“This is not done. This will continue. This is an interim or partial agreement,” Kettle said. “I have high standards and high expectations for our police department.”

The deal retroactively covers 2021, 2022, and 2023 with a series of raises that will give officers an immediate 23% boost in pay. Continue reading →

City Council set for vote on new contract with Seattle’s cops

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Recruit Class 872 being sworn in (Image: SPD)

Despite complaints that the vote is being rushed without adequate public debate, the Seattle City Council is set to approve a new deal Tuesday afternoon with the city’s cops that will bring big raises, some new oversight, and more police work moved to “civilian resources.”

The meeting of the full council is set for 2 PM and includes a mandated opportunity for up to 20 minutes of public comment. Expect there to be demands for much more.

District 2’s Tammy Morales has called for the vote to be delayed.

“This contract with SPOG is an incredibly important vote about the future of police accountability and civilian public safety alternatives in Seattle,” Morales said in a statement. “The community deserves a chance to make their voice heard before we vote on it. We shouldn’t be rushing this.”

Council president and citywide representative Sara Nelson said this week the vote cannot be delayed, adding that it is urgent the city puts a new deal in place that she hopes will begin to address the city’s dwindling ranks of sworn officers. Continue reading →

‘Closing Schools for Excellence’ again, Seattle plan would shutter 20 elementary campuses

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The Seattle School Board has approved a plan that could shutter 20 of its elementary school campuses across the city to help cover an expected $105 million budget gap.

Wednesday’s vote approved a plan from superintendent Brent Jones to consolidate the system’s elementary school campuses from 70 to 50 based on the district’s “Well-resourced Schools” framework it says has been shaped by public feedback and establishes a base level of resources that should be available on every campus including the number of teachers per grade level and additional resources like “education intensive service classrooms.”

To achieve that level, Jones says the district must reduce the number of elementary schools it supports to more than 400 students per campus. It currently supports about 23,000 students across 70 sites — just under 330 per campus.

“K-5 students would be better accommodated in approximately 50 sites evenly distributed with 10 per region,” a presentation on the proposal reads.

The framework would also call for maintaining the district’s current level of staffing that has also added to the deficit under the three-year deal reached with the teachers union in 2022. In the three-year pact, the district agreed to 7% raises for educators across the board, plus a 4% salary increase in year two, and a 3% raise in year three to cover the cost of inflation.

Continue reading →

City Council gets its ‘audit’ showing inflation, wages at center of Seattle’s ballooning budget

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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. Continue reading →

Facing looming deficit, Seattle City Hall agrees on raises with employees — and a deal for higher pay for its cops

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(Image: City of Seattle)

The Seattle City Council approved new contracts Tuesday for more than 7,000 city workers across 16 different labor unions that will raise wages, catch up on back pay, and expand benefits.

But all eyes are on a deal that falls outside those bounds as details are emerging from an agreement between City Hall and the Seattle Police Officers Guild.

Under the agreements finalized by the council Tuesday, city employees will see a catch-up on raises with a retroactive 5% payout for last year, a 4% bump in 2024, a 2025 raise tied to the regional Consumer Price Index and gated between 2% and 4%. and, in 2026, raises of between 2% and 5% pegged to inflation, Crosscut reports. Continue reading →