County Council Gives Itself a Little ($315,000) Gift; Saka's Effort to Divert Traffic Safety Funds to Sidewalks Fails

Your Afternoon (okay, Evening) Fizz.

1. All nine King County Councilmembers got an unexpected gift last month: a $35,000 add to each of their district budgets, to be spent any way they want—including, apparently on a mailing to constituents in the days before election filing week, which ends this Friday.

The one-time funds, allocated by verbal agreement in an obscure (and non-televised) meeting chaired by County Council Chair Girmay Zahilay, was originally going to be a loan to each office, payable next year, but the four members of the committee agreed that requiring repayment in a tight budget year might put councilmembers in a tight position next year. (The county is facing a $160 million two-year budget deficit). Instead, the committee opted to use "underspend" from last year's central administrative budget, which totaled about $1 million, to pay for the $315,000 add. Underspent funds become available in the next budget year.

Zahilay, who is running against fellow Councilmember Claudia Balducci, apparently used the funds to send a mailer to constituents touting his work for the district and King County. Zahilay did not respond to a request for comment on Tuesday, but during the committee meeting, a county council staffer noted that the funding was urgent because "we are ... up against some elections deadlines with folks who are running for office, and we want to make sure that if we are going to allocate $35,000 to the district offices that they have it in time to use it before those deadlines."

Balducci opted out of the money, saying her office did not have a deficit, and raised alarms about the way Zahilay chose to use it.

In an email to Zahilay late last month, Balducci wrote, "I want to go on record as saying I don’t think we should do this. I believe it is bad practice and possibly borderline unethical.... It is a bad look for the council to lard up our own budgets this way, especially as I am hearing this additional funding is possibly being used for public communications from offices whose members are up for election."

2. City Councilmember (and transportation committee chair) Rob Saka tried unsuccessfully to redirect future revenues from new speeding cameras toward new sidewalks, rather than the Automated Traffic Camera Fund, which is slated to receive 20 percent of the revenues from five new 24/7 speed enforcement cameras across the city. (The rest will go into the city's general fund). Saka's proposal would have reduced

The state legislature adopted new regulations on automated traffic cameras last year, including a change to allow civilian police department employees, rather than just sworn officers, to review traffic camera tickets.

During public comment, several traffic safety advocates asked the council not to divert funding for sidewalks. "The reality is that pedestrians in Seattle, by and large, are not dying because of a lack of sidewalks," pedestrian and bike advocate Ethan Campbell said. "They're getting injured and killed while trying to cross roadways designed for high speeds," like an 83-year-old woman who was struck and killed by a driver who fled the scene in SoDo earlier this week.

The money in the traffic safety fund would pay for safety projects, including improvements that "support equitable access and mobility for persons with disabilities; transportation projects designed to reduce vehicle speeds; and pedestrian, bicyclist, and driver education campaigns.” Saka's amendment would have also routed 15 percent of revenues from red-light cameras to sidewalks by reducing the amount that goes to traffic safety projects by 25 percent (from 20 to 15 percent) and cutting the amount of red light camera revenues that go into the general fund.

Saka had more success with an amendment asking the Seattle Department of Transportation to "review and evaluate" a specific list of 10 locations as possible sites for the five new speeding cameras. The list is a familiar one: It consists of places where people tend to race their cars late at night. In the past, Saka told SDOT representatives that there was no need for them to come up with their own list of locations for speed cameras, because the council had already did their work for them by making the list of racing sites.

In reality, the 2024 state law requires cities to do an equity analysis before siting traffic cameras; that analysis has to "show a demonstrated need for traffic cameras based on rates of collision, reports of near collisions, travel by vulnerable roadway users, evidence of vehicles speeding, and anticipated or actual ineffectiveness or infeasibility of other mitigation measures."

Most of the locations on Saka's list, notably, are not on the city's own Vision Zero High-Injury Network.