Mayor Harrell’s Proposed 2025 Budget Would Beef Up Public Safety, Divert Funds From Housing, Marginalized Groups

by Ashley Archibald

Mayor Bruce Harrell announced a budget Tuesday, Sept. 24, that aims to close a more than $250 million deficit and add $100 million in new spending, while dodging major service cuts by diverting hundreds of millions of dollars from a tax originally intended to support investments in affordable housing and underserved communities.

If approved by Council, the approach would allow the City to preserve popular public-facing services, such as library access; expand investments in public safety; spruce up the downtown; and save 300 emergency shelter beds previously funded with federal money.

The biggest additions fall into public safety departments. The budget includes $10 million in police overtime to fund emphasis patrols. It also expands the new CARE Department, an alternative response to police for people in crisis, and the Unified Care Team, a multi-departmental group that clears homeless encampments.

Also included are millions of dollars in surveillance technology, including CCTV cameras and software targeted at specific Seattle neighborhoods that the Council is expected to approve on Oct. 8 despite opposition from community members and civil rights groups.

To balance the budget, however, the plan requires axing 159 City positions, roughly half of which are vacant, moving money out of the Office of Arts & Culture, reducing opportunities for community-led projects, and eliminating City funding for services that help vulnerable people, such as tax preparation assistance and legal services for homeless youth. Some parks outside of the downtown would see reduced staffing.

Councilmembers received an initial briefing about the plan on Monday, Sept. 23, said Councilmember Tammy Morales, who represents District 2. While she is still digging into the 735-page budget book, Morales said she was disappointed to see so much new spending toward law enforcement rather than affordable housing, which is a priority for her district.

“My big-picture concern is that we should be using this for more housing, not more pathways to jail, and that’s what it feels like this is doing,” Morales said in an interview on Thursday. 

“For my district in particular, that is always a concern, because we’re adding more ways for police to chase poor people around instead of having the police do policing work and investing in the treatment and services and social work and housing that could really be addressing the crisis that my colleagues say they are trying to address.”

Layoffs would be primarily “internal” functions, Harrell told the city in his address on Tuesday, and would be concentrated in three departments: Information Technology, Finance and Administrative Services, and the Seattle Department of Construction & Inspections (SDCI).

This would limit the impact on the public and negate the need for new taxes, he said. Other proposals included 14% cuts to all departments in the general fund or 30% to departments outside of public safety.

Mayor Harrell chose to focus on flexibility with existing revenue rather than imposing new taxes “at this fragile economic moment,” the Mayor’s Office said in an email on Thursday.

“My guiding principle as mayor is that it is my obligation to you, the people of Seattle, to do our best to spend every dollar we have toward the needs of the city and its people in a responsible, efficient, effective way,” Harrell said in his address on Tuesday.

Getting a ‘JumpStart’ on the Budget

The main tool used to balance the budget is $287 million from the JumpStart tax, a payroll tax on businesses of a certain size with Seattle-based workers that passed in 2020. The JumpStart tax came with a “spend plan” that directed a flat percentage of revenue raised toward “buckets”: affordable housing, a “Green New Deal,” and the Economic Development Initiative.

From its inception, JumpStart has outperformed the City’s forecast, and the Council has allowed some of the money to be used to backfill core functions as the economy suffered during the pandemic. Harrell’s proposed budget would eliminate the “rigid percentages” in the spend plan, freeing up what officials are calling “excess” revenue.

“Excess” is anything above 2020 spending levels plus 2.5% inflation per year. According to the Federal Reserve, inflation for consumer prices hit 8% in 2022.

That would leave roughly $232 million for the original JumpStart plan and $287 million for mayoral priorities in 2025. Another $40 million would be set aside as a reserve to hedge against volatility in the tax.

When combined with other sources, the City will spend more than it ever has on affordable housing under the mayor’s proposed budget and budgeted amounts for the Economic Development Initiative and the Green New Deal will both increase compared with past years. It is also true that all of those categories would see significantly larger sums if the mayor abided by the original spend plan.

In Wednesday’s Budget Committee meeting, Committee Chair Dan Strauss defended the strategy, saying that using JumpStart money this way was “nothing new.”

“Every single year that JumpStart has been in effect, we have used JumpStart to backfill the general fund,” Strauss said.

Final Budget Deadline: Nov. 21 

Now, the Council will embark on a two-month project to modify the budget proposal.

Interim Budget Chair Dan Eder cautioned Councilmembers that every available dollar had been accounted for in the budget — anything added to one area would have to be taken from somewhere else.

Starting Sept. 27, the City Council will hear from City departments about what the proposed cuts and additions will mean for their operations. On Oct. 16, Council Central Staff will brief the Council on the policy implications of proposed modifications to the mayor’s budget. After that wraps, staff from the Office of Economic and Revenue Forecasts (OERF) will brief Councilmembers on the most recent revenue projections — the Council last heard from OERF in August.

Budget Chair Strauss will take this information and craft a counterproposal to the mayor’s budget that’s due Oct. 30. His colleagues may then offer amendments.

The budget will be sewn up on Nov. 19, with a final vote on Nov. 21.

The public will have a chance to give public comment at committee meetings on Sept. 27, Oct. 30, Nov. 13, and Nov. 21, and there will be two public hearings on the evenings of Oct. 16 and Nov. 12. Written comments may be submitted at any time by emailing Council@Seattle.gov.

The process can feel frustrating, Morales acknowledged, but it is important.

“This is supposed to be a democracy. That doesn’t mean you always get what you want, but it is absolutely essential that people register their objections on the record,” she said. “It has to be on the record.”

Ashley Archibald is the editor of Real Change News and a freelance journalist with previous work in the Santa Monica Daily Press and the Union Democrat. Her work focuses on policy and economic development, and you can find it in the South Seattle Emerald, KNKX, and the Urbanist.