The Roundup: What's Up (and Down) With Wilson's Budget?

CN: Essentially, what the mayor's budget proposal is doing is closing a budget deficit that's been going on for the past six years. That's the easiest way to describe it, but this deficit has been here since the Durkan and Harrell administrations. The reasons the mayor gave for the deficit are rapid growth and the increased need for government services. That’s the spending side of it. And so the mayor wanted to have a budget surplus, even though her office didn’t like the term "budget surplus," they wanted reporters to call it a "rightsizing of the budget," and that’s a quote.

But what they did was move things around and did cuts to a lot of different departments in order to go from negative $175 million, which is what they were projected to have, to positive $15 million. So that was a lot of cuts, mostly into the Department of Transportation. But then there's also places that are getting more money. The police department is getting more money. They got a cut of $9 million, but somehow will also get an increase of $68 million.

Overall, most of the cuts are to staff, and most of those are to vacant positions. Those are the kinds of things that she had to do to right the ship, as she said, and to rightsize the budget.

CN: On top of the speech itself, I attended a technical briefing, and the mayor did have slides that named Rainier Beach. I also went through the 754-page budget proposal and searched for South End neighborhoods. And one of the big things coming our way is $600,000, which is not new money, it's a reallocation of money, to create a new after-school program in Rainier Beach High School.

There's also an additional $300,000 that's going to go to increasing the sites for the Teen Late Night program. There's going to be $108 million for new bathrooms at parks, and one of those parks is going to be Cheryl Chow Park, just off of Rainier Avenue. We're also getting money for cultural districts in Columbia City and Georgetown. And lastly, the South Precinct is getting $8 million more, and that is one of the larger increases for police precincts.

CN: When it comes to the police, I will say that it's a nearly 14% increase in the police budget, which is bigger than what Bruce Harrell did, and it funds Mayor Wilson's recent gun-violence plan. I asked in the technical meeting if Maritza Rivera’s plan was getting funded in this budget, and for an answer, [Wilson's team] actually read a script. They said a lot, in the end; they mentioned $300,000 for any other priorities anyone has.

But essentially, the gun-violence plan the mayor released and everything in it is included. I found it very interesting that we're going to 1,250 SPD positions, but we are cutting some civilian positions, like three civilian police accountability positions are being cut. But I will say, and this is a quote from the meeting: "This does not translate to any human beings being fired."

CN: With housing, and this is from the mayor's speech, there is no reduction to rental assistance or tenant services. Unlike the police items, this one does fit into her campaign strategy: preserving no reductions to services, and she is proposing a fee for the rental junk fee ban as well, like the fee for landlords. There’s also going to be $183 million toward homelessness services, which involves building out shelters, and $37 million is for shelter expansion.

One part that is interesting, and that I'm going to dig into more, is that she’s cutting $8 million to the shelters that we're losing because we no longer need to fund them. But I was like, What shelters are we talking about? That's something I'll be looking into.

And finally, I'll just say, I know we're talking about housing, but there's also $55 million for food security and access. That adds $6 million to Fresh Bucks and makes sure that universal meals are funded as well.

CN: From Wilson's speech, she said, and I'm paraphrasing, "I will not pretend that SDOT cuts are not painful." That was the biggest part of the deficit that Wilson was trying to deal with. So anything that was part of the transit levy: untouched. And that's in its own bucket of money. And she also said the things that involve her Vision Zero goal will be untouched. All of those will be funded, and they include traffic calming and safety projects on Rainier Avenue and MLK.