A Seattle City Council committee will host the first of two planned public hearings Tuesday on the proposed $1.45 billion transportation levy being readied for November’s ballot.
The Select Committee on the 2024 Transportation Levy’s hearing will focus on providing time for the public to speak in person and remotely on the proposed property tax. If approved by voters in the fall, the funding and spending plan will replace the $930 million levy approved in 2015.
The city says that under the current expiring levy, the cost to a typical homeowner is around $24 per month. The new eight-year levy proposal would increase the monthly cost by 70% to $41 per month.
CHS reported here on Mayor Bruce Harrell boosting his office’s proposal with an additional $100 million in spending for sidewalks, bikes, and transit in the now $1.45 billion proposal.
The additional planned spending followed transit, biking, and pedestrian groups calling for an improved proposal after criticism over the plan’s focus on repairs, replacements, and realignments over new street and transit projects.
Tuesday’s hearing is part of a sequence of committee and council activity including a second hearing planned for June 4th. The committee will also meet to debate changs to the proposal three times over the next month culminating in a hoped for final committee vote in early July followed by a vote by the full council.
The levy decision would then go to voters and be part of November’s ballot.
HELP KEEP CHS PAYWALL-FREE
Subscribe to CHS to help us hire writers and photographers to cover the neighborhood. CHS is a pay what you can community news site with no required sign-in or paywall. To stay that way, we need you.
Become a subscriber to help us cover the neighborhood for as little as $5 a month.
Hold up. They went through and refurbished Interbay and Ballard to give them RapidRide and now they want to add Light Rail to the EXACT SAME PATH?!
Meanwhile, Georgetown and South Park will get nothing. I’m sure it has nothing to do with Ballard being 79% white and South Park being 46% Hispanic.
Well, I live in Crown Hill and to walk from my house to get on the D line, then enter my workplace downtown, takes up to 75 minutes!
And yes I’m white, but who the eff cares!
When I lived at 110th and Greenwood, it would take 35-40 minutes to take a bus to get to downtown. If the RapidRide takes 75 minutes to get from Crown Hill to downtown, you should address the “rapidride.” But, really, you only need one bus to get down town.
To get from South Park to Downtown, it currently requires 2 bus routes and a transfer and requires an hour even without padding of having to walk to the bus stop as long as the connections operate accurately. We currently isolate South Park and Georgetown by transit. And, for South Park, it’s hard not to notice that it’s a minority-majority district.
Perhaps the answer is for all Seattle rentals to have a clause that automatically increases rent by all levy property tax increases. Hey it’s only another $50-100 a month.