Harrell’s budget announcement was made at SDOT’s Charles Street Vehicle Maintenance Facility (Image: City of Seattle)
The Harrell administration’s first budget proposal released Tuesday is a $1.6 billion restatement of the city’s small but nationally followed attempts at shifting its public safety spending. It could also end up leaning heavily on revenues from the city’s controversial — but apparently much needed — payroll tax on its largest employers. In many ways, it is a step back on the progressive reforms introduced during the pandemic.
“After two very long pandemic years, today we stand at a pivotal moment in our city’s history. It’s at this intersection of change and challenge where we know the investments we make in this One Seattle budget proposal can chart Seattle’s course for years to come,” Mayor Bruce Harrell said in his statement on the 2023-2024 budget proposal. “Our guiding principle is how best to meet the urgent needs of our communities and empower our employees to deliver essential services.”
The proposal does include new spending including a plan that would provide around $88 million for the King County Regional Homelessness Authority, a nearly 13% increase.
But the bulk of departments will face cutbacks and belt tightening with economic forecasts projecting an estimated $140 million budget gap.
To help bridge this deficit and larger possible gaps ahead, Harrell Tuesday said he would ask the Seattle City Council to change the rules for the city’s JumpStart payroll tax on its largest employers to allow City Hall to dip into the revenue to patch up Seattle’s general fund. The tax, launched in 2021, was intended to fund pandemic recovery, solutions for homelessness and housing, and Green New Deal initiatives.
The Seattle City Council will now set about restoring some of the proposed cuts, adding new spending, and hammering out a compromise or two with the administration.
“As Budget Chair, I will be working with my council colleagues to finalize the biennial budget that builds towards a Seattle where everyone is housed and cared for, healthy and safe, and supports workers and small businesses for a more equitable and resilient economy,” Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda said in a statement. “We must protect investments in housing and maintain commitments with the workforce that cares for our most vulnerable, increase childcare to support workers and boost our local economy, prioritize climate resilience in programs and infrastructure investments, and stave off cuts to critical programs and city staff.”
Mosqueda’s efforts will include staving off transition of the JumpStart funding from its intended focus on addressing the pandemic, homelessness, and housing crises in the city.
One department not facing cuts under Harrell’s proposal will be the Seattle Police.
Harrell’s proposal would restore SPD’s budget back to $375 million — up $20 million from the current budget — by abandoning a compromise reform from the “Defund SPD” debate and transferring parking enforcement back to police control. In 2021, Seattle moved the around 100 parking enforcement employees in the city from SPD command to the Seattle Department of Transportation. At the time, the decision ended debate of whether parking enforcement officers should be part of SDOT or a new Community Safety and Communications Center. Around 140 emergency dispatch employees were also moved to staff the new center and SPD officials have advocated that the parking enforcement officers should join them.
Under Harrell’s proposal, SDOT and new director Greg Spotts could see the city’s Vision Zero budget to improve street safety boosted by $1.3 million to a total of $8 million while larger SDOT projects face a squeeze including plans to cut a pedestrian friendly redesign of Thomas Street in South Lake Union. The budget also keeps planning for the 1st Ave streetcar connection alive but does little more to address improving the struggling system.
“I have already heard loud and clear that the number one priority of Seattleites is safety, and one of my first commitments has been to initiate a top to bottom review of our Vision Zero program,” Spotts said in a statement on the proposal. “With new investments this year and future plans, I’m confident that we can make progress toward Vision Zero and I am excited to lead SDOT as we chart the future for this priority program.”
Other smaller elements of the massive budget, the first of the Harrell administration, echo with the years of the mayor’s time on the Seattle City Council. As councilmember, Harrell advocated for a program to pilot use of acoustic gunfire detection technology in the Central District. In 2016, federal grants were lined up to bring a system online. Now Mayor Harrell could finally get his wish with $1 million earmarked to deploy the ShotSpotter system in Rainier Beach.
Even spending on the Seattle Parks Department takes on a public safety hue in the proposal with the bulk of new spending proposed in the plan focused on building a 28-person Park Rangers squad to patrol the city’s public spaces.
The city council will now begin its deliberation and debate with meetings of the Select Budget Committee when the public will have the opportunity to comment on the proposals. Public hearings are scheduled for October 11, November 8, and November 15. Final adoption of the budget is expected on Tuesday, November 22.
Learn more about the budget and public engagement at seattle.gov.
A full announcement of the Harrell administrations 2023-2024 budget is below:
Today, Mayor Bruce Harrell delivered his first budget address and transmitted his 2023-2024 Proposed Budget to the Seattle City Council. This is the first biennial budget since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Emphasizing the importance of essential services provided by the City, Mayor Harrell delivered his speech at the City’s Charles Street Vehicle Maintenance Facility in front of City employees who serve the people of Seattle every day. Responding to a $140 million revenue gap, the budget proposal focuses on addressing the urgent needs of Seattle’s communities, getting the basics right, and delivering the essential city services that residents expect as we continue to build One Seattle.
READ: Mayor Harrell’s One Seattle Budget Speech Remarks as Prepared
WATCH: Mayor Harrell Delivers One Seattle Budget Proposal
EXPLORE: Budget Summary and Full Proposed Budget
“After two very long pandemic years, today we stand at a pivotal moment in our city’s history. It’s at this intersection of change and challenge where we know the investments we make in this One Seattle budget proposal can chart Seattle’s course for years to come,” said Mayor Harrell. “Our guiding principle is how best to meet the urgent needs of our communities and empower our employees to deliver essential services. I’m proud to say that we’re able to propose a budget that sustains the high-quality City services our residents expect, protects critical staffing, and makes smart funding decisions to address community priorities including safety, homelessness, access to opportunity, and more.”
The proposal makes key investments in creating safe, healthy, and thriving communities by supporting efforts to deliver effective public safety, build affordable housing and address the homelessness crisis, and drive opportunity and equity for all. This budget responds to the City’s ongoing and long-term revenue gap, balancing immediate priorities with the resources available while also identifying improvements and efficiencies.
Select highlights include:
- Increasing Seattle Fire Department’s recruitment class by 50% for 2023 and funding the Comprehensive Police Recruitment and Retention Plan
- Adding victims’ advocates to support survivors of domestic violence, sexual assault, and other crimes
- Funding an additional $4.5 million in community safety solutions and the Regional Peacekeepers Collective, as part of a $47 million overall investment in the Human Services Department to support safe communities
- Reestablishment of the Park Ranger Program through the Parks District and $2 million to fund programs exploring 911 response diversification
- Nearly a quarter of a billion dollars to support affordable housing – an unprecedented investment toward addressing the city’s housing and homelessness crises
- Investments to maintain thousands of shelter units and creation of additional options, including tiny homes and safe lots
- $88 million investment in the King County Regional Homelessness Authority to support outreach, shelter, and other critical programs
- $13 million for the City’s Unified Care Team – supporting ongoing efforts to ensure a clean city and transition from a citywide focus to geographically-based teams, providing tailored support to neighborhoods
- $5 million to support bonuses for Seattle’s 4,600 childcare workers serving over 20,000 Seattle kids and $5 million to support future generations of kids and educators through UW’s Rainier Valley Early Learning Campus
- $17 million dollars to support small businesses and economic revitalization programs through the Office of Economic Development
- A pilot program for the mayor’s Healthy Seattle Initiative, helping connect vulnerable residents to needed health care
- Over $20 million toward Green New Deal investments and the One Seattle Climate Justice Agenda, supporting a clean energy economy, good jobs, climate resilient communities, and pollution reduction
- Investments in a Tree Equity and Resilience Plan, increasing tree planting capacity, and greening of industrial properties
- $8 million to make traveling safer for our most vulnerable residents by funding Vision Zero projects in busy corridors like Rainier Ave S and Aurora Ave N
More information on key budget priorities for 2023-2024 can be found in fact sheets below:
- Public Safety
- Housing and Homelessness
- Access to Opportunity
- Healthy Communities
- Climate and Environment
- Safe and Reliable Transportation
- Parks District
The proposed budget includes approximately $7.4 billion in appropriations overall, including $1.6 billion in General Fund. Explore the Mayor’s 2023-2024 Proposed Budget here.
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After Harrell’s landslide win against Gonzales, he has a mandate to roll back the knee jerk progressive reforms and address the public safety issues they created.
I agree Chaz. Statistically cities with larger police forces have lower crime rates though prosecutions have to follow or it does no good.
I do hope the SPD budget gets trimmed until someone there explains what exactly they are doing with it to actually lower crime rates. People talk about how crime has risen – yeah, as police budgets and tools and militarization increased. There’s clearly not a direct correlation between higher police budgets and lower crime rates. So shrink it and put the money into the root causes of crime, and figuring out our overloaded courts and jails so there’s no costly revolving doors.
Glad to see a big chunk going to affordable housing, though we’ll see just how affordable it is!
It’s tough to lower crime rates when thousands of “petty” crimes don’t get prosecuted and rererererepeat offenders go free to continue their crappy lives committing more crimes.
The “diversion” programs rather than jail time aren’t helping either.
It’s tough to lower crime rates when industrial consumer capitalism destroys peoples lives through its natural process of resource extraction. Many people simply can’t keep up with the demands our economy puts on workers while being nickel and dimed to death, out of homes with no healthcare or really any prospect of a future for themselves. Our economy extracts wealth for a few and exhausts poverty for the many. Police and the “justice system” are just subsidies to corporations to continue their predation of the american working class.
Moving meter maids from SPD to SDOT was always a silly step because it was less an actual defunding of SPD than a symbolic gesture.
Moving them back under the purview of the SPD should hopefully neuter the talking point that Seattle defunded the cops (as opposed to the reality of cops quitting en masse).
I agree, and fully support the Mayor’s proposal to move them back to SPD. Since the change to SDOT, a dysfunctional agency, there has been a noticeable decrease in parking enforcement on our streets, including the tolerance of “abandoned vehicles”. The “72-hour rule” needs to be enforced for ALL vehicles!
This is a great start.
I’d reduce parking ticketers on the payroll to ~50% of what it is today, and use those funds to increase presence in neighborhoods where crime is rampant (including stealing from grocery stores, car prowling, property damage).
Enough normalizing crime. That’s plain stupid.
“Alternatives to police won’t work, we need more money for gun and badge cops” they scream, refusing to fund any alternatives to armed cops who have done nothing to reduce crime and can’t even use the money to cuz nobody will work there
By your same logic I guess we should stop funding all the homeless service providers around the city as well. I mean after all the homeless crisis has just gotten worse despite record spending.
We shouldn’t fund private homeless service provides who aren’t providing service that proven to prevent homelessness, and definitely not if that spending is going to staff people they aren’t hiring.
We should be funding more permanent shelters, getting homeless people into long term apartments through increase city owned housing and have job programs/ public works programs instead of our current model, of expensive sweeps programs and funding horrible communal shelters that most homeless people would rather not even go to.
I glad we’re on the same page.
District 13. Despite all the spending the homeless situation has gotten worse because it isn’t a money issue it’s a policy issue and until policies change all the money in the world won’t fix it.
Do we know if park rangers will be armed?
I understand they will not be armed.
The pandemic and our unraveling industrial consumer capitalist economy generate poverty which drives crime. Police and the criminal justice system are the ruling classes solution to subsides corporations so they’re not responsible for the human waste they generate by not offering living wages, healthcare, stable employment.. anything that would serve society instead of their market value.
Police.. no police.. that has nothing to do with our predicament. Rich people are happy to see the cops bust skulls to reinforce the fairytale they believe we live in and none of us, rich or poor, can escape this vicious cycle of economic boom and bust with the occasional global disaster.
“Police. No Police…that has nothing to do with the predicament” Lol. I agree that there are larger issues with our economic system but to not acknowledge that Seattle’s failed ideological social experiments have made the problem much worse is delusional.
To focus entirely on hiring more human garbage collectors is indeed delusional.
Is it Seattle’s failed ideological social experiments that rendered these exact same problems literally everywhere else in the country?
The only difference more police will make is endangering black and brown citizens more routinely and bloating the XL pick up truck contingency on Seattle city streets.
“That rendered these exact same problems literally everywhere in the country”. Lol. Dude, you need to get out of the Seattle bubble more!