In Transportation Levy Amendments, Councilmembers Saka and Moore Propose Cutting Program to Fund Community-Led Safety Projects
Levy committee chair Rob Saka said that whether small neighborhood projects originate in communities or in council offices, the basic result will be the same.
By Erica C. Barnett
Seattle City Council members have proposed stripping away funding proposed as part of the 2024 transportation levy for small, community-initiated transportation safety projects and giving themselves the authority to decide which neighborhood projects get funded in their districts.
The program, known as the Neighborhood-Initiated Safety Partnership Program (NSPP) is an expansion of an existing participatory budgeting program that gives neighborhood residents a direct say in which small-scale local projects the city funds. The current program, called the Neighborhood Street Fund, has funded work on the Garfield Superblock, safety and connectivity improvements on the Delridge Greenway, street lighting and traffic calming at Bailey Gatzert Elementary, and dozens of other projects.
According to SDOT spokesman Ethan Bergerson, the new program would "co-create safety projects with residents to directly respond to emerging community requests for safety improvements. The community engagement would go beyond the nomination and selection process of the Neighborhood Street Fund, and would also incorporate ongoing and iterative neighborhood engagement similar to our Home Zone Program," an equity-focused neighborhood street program.
The proposal came out of the work of the Transportation Equity Workgroup, which recommended that SDOT "include a participatory budgeting process in the next transportation levy package" specifically to "meet the priorities of BIPOC and vulnerable communities."
Harrell's levy proposal included $41 million for the neighborhood-based projects, plus $14 million for a new spending category called District Projects, which would fund emergent safety concerns and requests" in each council district. Transportation levy committee chair Rob Saka proposed an amendment that would cut funding for neighborhood-initiated projects to $25.5 million—a 38 percent reduction—and increasing the District Projects fund to $21 million.
At the levy committee meeting on Tuesday, Saka said he considered the new District Projects program a mere "rebranding" that would accomplish the same purpose as the Neighborhood-Initiated Safety Partnerships program; the only difference, he said, was that instead of community members, "the seven individual council members would decide" how to spend the money.
"At that high level, it's intended for smaller-scale capital projects, so there's alignment and consensus" even if "we have competing visions right now, currently, for what that looks like and who specifically decides on the neighborhood-initiated safety [or] neighborhood street funding."
Earlier this month, Saka abruptly shut down a presentation by SDOT transportation equity program manager Annya Pintak, which Bergerson said would have been about "how the levy proposal is integrated with the City’s Race and Social Justice Initiative," telling SDOT director Greg Spotts that the council already had "a good baseline on that."
A proposed amendment by Councilmember Cathy Moore would go further than Saka's, eliminating the entire community-initiated program and adding $21 million to the District Project fund, tripling it to a total of $42 million. Moore had to leave when her amendments came up and did not discuss this amendment when she returned.
Not everyone on the council supports cutting or eliminating the participatory budgeting program, which has been around since 2007.
Council member Tammy Morales proposed an amendment to Saka's proposal that would restore funding for the neighborhood-initiated projects program to the $41 million in Harrell's initial proposal by reducing the District Projects fund to $7 million.
"I know that as district council members, we know our districts best, but the truth is, we can't know every corner of our neighborhood because we don't live on every corner of our neighborhood and see how traffic moves around," Morales said. "So this funding would allow residents to work directly with SDOT to implement transportation solutions directly that directly affect them
Council president Sara Nelson also proposed an amendment to Saka's proposal that would reduce the new District Projects program to the $14 million in Harrell's, but would do so by restoring the old Neighborhood Street Fund, rather than increasing the size of the new participatory budgeting program.
"I am putting this forward as a way to bring [the Neighborhood Street Fund] back," Nelson said. "I am open to conversation about this. I'm not completely wed to this. I would like to understand more what the new program will do versus what the old program did, but I'm just saying that [the Street Fund] seemed to be something that was working well."
In a letter to the council, Harrell, and SDOT, the co-chairs of the Transportation Equity Workgroup, Jessica E. Salvador & LaKeisha Jones, said the work group was "disappointed to see the recommendations from Committee Chair Saka to divert funds from community to district-level decision making.
"Diverting the $15.5M from Neighborhood-Initiated Safety Partnership Program would also divert us from our goal of equitable investment," they wrote. "Equitable investment means that we are better able to serve communities by creating programs or initiatives that can be quickly implemented. Diverting the decision-making processes from neighborhoods is the opposite of empowerment. We need to ensure that our decisions are driven by community, for community."