(Image: SPD)

By Ryan Packer

A week remains before the City Council is set to finalize Seattle’s 2022 budget, providing most of the financial framework for the first year of Mayor-elect Bruce Harrell’s administration. As the council is set to debate last-minute tweaks, most of the discussion around the $7.1 billion budget has focused on the subject of funds to hire additional Seattle Police Department officers, and whether scaling back assumptions around how many officers the department will be able to hire constitutes a “cut” to SPD’s budget.

The budget prepared by Mayor Jenny Durkan assumes that SPD would have included funds to hire around 30 more officers than are expected to leave the department next year; the adjustments made by the council assume that staffing will stay steady, with 125 officers leaving and not being replaced. It is that difference, along with a few other tweaks that has prompted the outgoing mayor to accuse the council of proposing “one of the largest cuts to public safety to date”. From the perspective of multiple councilmembers, the adjustment constitutes a right-sizing of the fund for new hires, preventing SPD from having more funds available to move around for other purposes.

The total funds allocated to SPD next year would be approximately $365 million, the largest single portion of the nearly $800 million public safety budget that makes up half of the city’s general fund.

The council budget also would divert funds earmarked for an expansion of the Community Service Officer division, which is still scaling up its team of 18 officers. The CSO program, rebooted in 2019, has been held up as an example of public safety programs based around non-armed officers. But as that unit fully staffs up and reports on its results, the council is moving forward with alternative emergency response units outside the department. This budget would allocate $2.5 million to expand mobile mental health crisis services via teams currently operated by the Downtown Emergency Services Center. Those teams dispatch to a person in crisis at the request of first responders.

The Seattle Fire Department is also developing a team of civilian responders, called Triage One, but doesn’t expect to staff that team until late summer or early fall, and the council has responded by diverting most of the proposed funding for that program to other, more immediate priorities. The budget does include funding for an additional 20 recruits in the Seattle Fire Department, with 60 new firefighters expected next year.

These changes come as an updated revenue forecast proved slightly bleaker in several key areas, including the high-earner JumpStart payroll tax, which hasn’t begun to be collected but is now expected to bring in lower than expected revenue this year due to increased work at home rates. Parking rates downtown are also forecast to come in lower than expected. But city revenues from real estate are expected to increase, leading to some budget shuffling but fewer across-the-board impacts. But if remote work continues further into 2022 than the city currently expects, more cuts could be needed.

Budget chair Teresa Mosqueda described the council’s approach as looking for any funding that would be “sitting on the shelf”, not being immediately utilized to provide services or public benefit. “Every department saw the same level of scrutiny,” she said.

Last year, Durkan vetoed the City Council’s mid-year budget update over a disagreement over funding for SPD. The fact that it was overridden by this same same city council makes a similar move this year unlikely, and it would likely prompt a huge scramble to get a budget approved by the deadline

In the transportation budget, the days-long closure of the University Bridge this past weekend places increased urgency on the Seattle Department of Transportation’s work to upgrade the mechanical system on that bridge and on its other drawbridges. The proposed budget will authorize the city to issue $100 million in bonds to receive money upfront to make those upgrades. Paid back over 20 years, those bonds could end up costing Seattle taxpayers as much $52 million in interest but the actual interest rate is yet to be negotiated.

An increase in the city’s commercial parking tax rate is also set to be included, with half of the increased revenue going to bridge maintenance and the other half going to Vision Zero safety projects. 2021 is set to be the deadliest year on Seattle’s streets in at least a decade and a half, with 28 people having been killed in traffic violence so far this year, a mirroring of a nationwide trend that came as traffic volumes decreased and average vehicle speeds increased with the pandemic.

Many other budget amendments could lead to shifts in city policy down the line, from phasing out the use of gas leaf blowers, building a permanent cafe street pilot in Ballard, and piloting a universal basic income program. The bulk of the budget, meanwhile, will keep city staff continuing their work as Seattle continues its slow recovery while trying to battle its ongoing homelessness and housing affordability crisis.

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