The Seattle City Council’s process of making additions, subtractions, and changes to Mayor Bruce Harrell’s 2024 budget proposal begins Wednesday with the Select Budget Committee’s first hearing. The bigger budget battle will come next year.
With 2024 the second year of the city’s two-year budget cycles, changes proposed by councilmembers must be “self-balancing.” If they propose new spending, they will have to explain how it will be funded — “either by identifying new revenue or by taking money from somewhere else,” a council brief on the process explains.
Amendments will be released around October 27th.
CHS reported here on the 2024 Harrell administration proposal that emphasized affordable housing and a boost for treatment and diversion to join a crackdown on public drug use while also including spending for the city’s existing first responders at Seattle Police and the Seattle Fire Department to be maintained at status quo levels.
Council analysis shows the big changes in the Harrell plan include a planned 32%, $81.1 million increase in funding at the Office of Housing which would be supported by a renewed Housing Levy, a 7.1% increase to increase to Seattle Public Utilities mostly driven by an effort to pay of existing debt, a 11.7% jump at the Department of Finance and Administrative Services driven by “fleet capital replacement” and “judgements, claims, and litigation expenses,” and a $15.1 million boost to the Human Services Department driven by “wage equity and contract inflation.”
The council’s changes are expected to include solidifying affordable housing and homelessness spending along with trying to dedicate more spending to drug treatment and diversion resources while also holding onto “equitable wage increases for human services workers to address the city’s staffing crisis.”
The city’s looming budget shortfalls are an issue that the council could try to patch including possible rejection of the creation of more than 100 new fulltime positions at the city or attaching spending provisos that will require the council to make decisions “about how the City will address the projected deficit for the 2025-2026 biennial budget” before the hiring funding can be unlocked. The council could also seek “Improved Transparency and Oversight of Central Service Costs” by requiring better reporting at a deeper level at Seattle City Hall.
But the big budget debate will come next fall as planning begins for 2025/2026.
Budget forecasts show Seattle’s shortfall could reach $250 million in 2025 as revenue falls behind inflation and new spending. The pieces moved around for 2024 will only be a start in sorting out what the city can do to overcome growing calls for cutbacks and reduced spending.
You can follow changes to the 2024 spending plan on the Seattle City Council Budget Dashboard. The Council’s 2024 Budget Amendments will be posted later this month.
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Seattle is in a doom loop. The more dystopia city council create through wrong-headed policies that attract and enable drug addicts and their dealers and cause police to leave and crime to soar, the more businesses that close up shop. Fewer businesses and tourists and declining property values mean lower tax revenue to address the city’s huge problems. The city council then proposes more taxes that cause more businesses to flee, resulting in even lower revenue. Elections have consequences. Vote out the incumbents that created the doom loop and support pragmatic candidates rather than ideologues to dig us out of this hole.
The incumbents were voted out and this is what their replacements created. Vote for candidates that support cutting SPDs budget since they have decided to go on a quiet strike with zero consequences.
not exactly – now, when sawant and herbold are gone maaaaybe we’ll see improvement. of course costa is sort of a herbold clone so we’ll see…
The incumbents were voted out? We replaced the mayor and city attorney, but the Council has not been voted out. The upcoming election is our first chance to vote on the seven district Council member seats since 2019. The only “new” Council member is Sara Nelson. Sounds like you might need to check yourself, or at least your facts.
What in the world are you smoking and where do I get some??? Is there any truth at all in what you wrote? Have you been anywhere near Downtown in the last year?
yes, some businesses are closing — mostly those that served office workers who are no longer coming in so much. Tourism is doing just fine. Cruise companies have had banner seasons this summer and last. The arts community and music shows have also come roaring back, leading to plenty of people coming in, parking, eating, and shopping.
And where are these “declining property values”? I know plenty of people who probably wish their property value would go down so that they could pay lower property taxes.
We can all complain about crime and the need for more police officers, but a quick online search will show you this isn’t a Seattle problem, or even a liberal cities problem, but widespread around the country. It’s a post-pandemic problem.
And, finally, for every scary news story about some business “fleeing” there is a new story for a new restaurant opening, and old one RE-opening, and the most recent I saw is Arc’teryx closing its high-end outdoor closing store … to move into bigger space across the street. So they don’t seem to think their shoppers are afraid to come Downtown.
Of course the Amazon tax is projected to raise enough revenue to cover the projected 2025 revenue shortfall, but Council would rather ignore that and seek yet more new progressive revenue sources.