Council's Budget "Balancing Package" Restores Seattle Channel Programming, Grabs $59 Million More from JumpStart
It also sets aside $2 million to fund Rob Saka's "number one priority" for his district—removing a traffic safety barrier that prevented him from turning left into a parking lot.
By Erica C. Barnett
Seattle City Council budget chair Dan Strauss’ proposed budget “balancing package”—a first draft of the edits the council will make to Mayor Bruce Harrell’s proposed budget—would increase the amount of money pulled out of the JumpStart payroll tax fund to pay for general-fund priorities, further enshrining the practice of using a tax dedicated to progressive purposes to pay for unrelated political priorities, including police and downtown beautification.
Overall, Strauss’ plan pulls an additional $59 million away from approved JumpStart spending purposes over the next two years, for a total of a $531 million transfer into the general fund between now and 2026. As we’ve reported, Harrell’s budget—which used a majority of JumpStart revenues to fund additional spending and avoid budget cuts—included $100 million in spending on new programs, including an expansion of the city’s encampment removal team, large new investments in downtown Seattle (including almost $3 million to prep for and celebrate the 2026 World Cup), and live camera surveillance of neighborhoods around Seattle.
Harrell justified this raid on JumpStart by arguing it was the only way to close an estimated $260 million general-fund budget gap without major cuts. (See my previous coverage to understand why these massive transfers will probably grow even more, and why relying on taxes from a few companies to fund government basics is risky.) Strauss’ package dips even deeper into the fund, pointing to an October revenue forecast that shows a $48.6 million drop in general-fund revenues over the next two years.
Council members, understandably, want to add their own imprint to the budget, and in almost all cases, that means creating new programs or expanding existing ones. In addition, the council has proposed a number of amendments to restore cuts Harrell proposed, including a proposal to save original programming at the Seattle Channel.
I'll get to that in a minute, but first, some place-setting. Many new members of the city council, including District 1 Councilmember Rob Saka, focused on “fiscal responsibility” and “good governance” in their campaigns—arguing that Seattle’s giant budget deficit wasn’t a “revenue problem” but a “spending problem.” (Turns out it was very much a revenue problem, and the mayor addressed it by doing exactly what we and many others predicted he would: Using a new revenue source, the JumpStart tax, to avoid spending cuts.)
A year after the election, Saka has apparently decided that the most important budget need in his district, which includes Georgetown, SoDo, Pioneer Square, and West Seattle, is the removal of a traffic safety barrier that prevents him from turning left on Delridge directly into the parking lot of his kids’ preschool. (Strauss, clearly not wanting to take the fall for including this in his balancing package, noted that eliminating the road divider was Saka’s “number-one priority” in a recent budget meeting and said that even if he didn’t agree with it, he wouldn’t stand in Saka’s way.)
Saka’s amendment sets aside $2 million in SDOT’s budget—ensuring that it can’t be spent for any other purpose—to “resolve [vehicle] access conflicts with the operation of the Delridge RapidRide service.”
PubliCola wrote last year about Saka’s frustration with the safety barrier, which he compared to the border wall between the United States and Mexico in one of several irate emails to Seattle Department of Transportation employees and city council staff.
“Historically, barriers have been used to exclude, isolate, divide, discriminate against, project power over, subjugate, render less than status to, punish, segregate, humiliate/embarrass, harass, degrade, and so much more,” Saka wrote in 2022. “More recently, the Trump administration sought to build an enormous wall on the southern border with Mexico – presumably, to exclude certain individuals deemed ‘undesirable’ in the name of national security.”
The barrier, a common traffic-calming device known as a “hardened centerline,” prevents drivers from turning into oncoming traffic, which in this case includes not just two lanes of vehicle traffic but a bike lane and sidewalk used by, among others, children and their parents who walk or bus to school. Studies have shown that hardened centerlines are one of the most effective tools to stop left-turning cars from hitting and killing pedestrians.
Another Saka amendment would add $175,000 to turn angled parking at the Duwamish Head in West Seattle into parallel parking and restore parallel parking on Alki Ave. SW, as some nearby residents have demanded. According to West Seattle Blog, SDOT has resisted removing the angled parking because, as Saka himself put it in July, “it would actually create significant[ly] more space in the right of way for aggressive driving/passing of vehicles.”
Some of the other priorities included in the council’s proposed revisions—currently only available as summaries, with all legislation due by November 12—include:
• Restoring funds to the Seattle Channel, whose original programming Harrell (reportedly no fan of the station) proposed eliminating. Harrell wanted to cut the Seattle Channel’s budget in half, reducing it to a website and cable channel that would show council meetings and mayoral press conferences and events. The council’s proposal, which Strauss and Council President Sara Nelson vocally supported, would restore $1.6 million a year—less than Saka wants to set aside so he can turn left into a parking lot!—to preserve city’s award-winning source for arts coverage, interviews with elected officials, campaign debates, and other original programming.
• A proposal from Councilmember Tanya Woo to add $1 million in 2026 for still-unspecified “public safety improvements” in the Chinatown/International District, where she and her family own multiple businesses, including an apartment building and a restaurant.
Another Woo amendment would create a new position, at a cost of $279,000 over two years, to “support coordination and outreach regarding community organizing, mutual aid, and de-escalation efforts.” That just happens to be precisely how Woo describes her own organization, the CID Community Watch, in her campaign materials, leading some to suggest that she’s creating a job for herself if she loses her election bid to Alexis Mercedes Rinck on Tuesday. The council, which took a more conservative term in last year’s election, appointed Woo to a citywide seat after she lost to District 2 incumbent Tammy Morales.
• Reversing cuts to the city’s Priority Hire program, which funds community groups that work to increase the number of women and people of color in the construction trades. Harrell’s budget proposal would have slashed funding for the city’s Labor Equity and Construction Training and Clean Energy Jobs programs.
• Reversing cuts to a program that provides legal services to homeless youth, including the children of parents at risk of deportation; Harrell’s budget would have eliminated all city funding for the program, which receives half its funding from the city.
• Reversing a proposal to eliminate funding for the United Way’s free tax preparation services, which serves low-income people.
• Reversing Harrell’s proposal to allow admissions taxes to be used by departments other than the Office of Arts and Culture, which would have allowed admissions taxes to fund Winterfest and the Folklife Festival at Seattle Center, among other things. This change is notable because the council is demanding this tax be used for its original purpose, which arguably contradicts its embrace of Harrell’s proposed raid on JumpStart.
• Adding $200,000 a year for therapeutic services for sex trafficking survivors at Aurora Commons, which District 5 (North Seattle) Councilmember Cathy Moore proposed alongside her proposal to spend up to $2 million on a new “receiving center” for exploited sex workers.
The funding is the “carrot” part of Moore’s plan to crack down on visible sex work on Aurora Ave. N; the “stick” includes 24/7 live police camera surveillance along the corridor and the revival of the city’s repealed “prostitution loitering” law and Stay Out of Areas of Prostitution zones. Moore also proposed adding $216,000 to the two-year budget to deploy police cameras along 25 additional blocks, so that the entire Aurora corridor between 85th and 145th would be under 24/7 live surveillance.
• A resolution by Councilmember Maritza Rivera requesting a report from the city’s Human Services Department on how King County’s sobering center, which provides a warm, safe place for people—primarily people who drink excessively—to sleep, might be repurposed as a locked facility where fentanyl users arrested under the city’s new drug laws could go after they’re released.
In a press release announcing the proposal, Rivera said the sobering center “could be a secure location where those arrested under the drug possession law can sober up and be able to accept treatment services.” This reflects a misunderstanding of addiction. Heavy fentanyl users can’t just “sober up” or "sleep it off" without careful medical monitoring and replacement opioids; simply going cold turkey in jail or a locked “sobering center” is especially dangerous for opioid users, who often experience fatal overdoses when they use old dose after a brief period of enforced sobriety.
Replacing an unlocked sobering center for alcoholics with a facility for drug arrestees would also put alcoholics at risk, particularly those for whom the sobering center is a lifeline in the winter. Withdrawing from alcohol without supervision (and, in many cases, medication) can be deadly, as can passing out drunk in freezing weather.
• The restoration of a number of positions at the Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections and Office of Community Planning and Development, which Harrell’s budget slashed.
The proposed new funding would restore tenant services, including eviction defense and prevention; reverse proposed staff cuts at the city’s Design and Planning Commissions, which have recently issued reports criticizing Harrell’s proposed Comprehensive plan update and his plans to allow 10-foot-tall electronic billboards on sidewalks throughout downtown Seattle; and add $300,000 over two years to help the city plan for a new “regional center” in Ballard, proposed as part of the Comp Plan update.
• And speaking of Ballard: Strauss, who represents a large swath of northwest Seattle but generally focuses on his own neighborhood, has proposed spending (directly or through budget set-asides) $375,000 for various projects in the “Ballard Brewery District,” an area near the Ballard Blocks where a bunch of beer places are located. These include a $100,000 set-aside for “marketing, planning, and activation” in the area; a $175,000 set-aside for “urban design and pedestrian improvements”; and $100,000 for new murals in the district.
Hopefully Rob Saka's only reason for being elected was to remove that barrier. Now, perhaps, "Mission Accomplished", he fades away into obscurity. Hope you numbskulls that elected him feel remorse.
And nowhere do I see a proposal on how to prevent these disastrous budget shortfalls in the future.