No takers: Overflow seating for Nickels' budget speech
Update: Nickels is just finishing up his final budget speech, the eighth in his two terms as mayor. His voice shaking slightly, Nickels addressed a council chambers that was about a third empty—a major contrast from the usual packed house during such events. Gesturing toward the site of the old city hall, Nickels noted that when he took the oath of office there in 2002, the city faced a financial crisis unprecedented in the city’s history. “Today, we face similar challenges… but because of the choices that we made over the last eight years, we are well poised for a new era of prosperity.”
The speech concluded with a sweet story about Bertha Knight Landes—Seattle’s first and only female mayor—who predicted, back in the 1920s, that the city fathers would soon have a plan for rapid transit, and that, “in the meantime, we will be marking time.”
“More than almost anything else, light rail will transform how we travel and how we live. Bertha would be proud,” Nickels said.
Original post follows.
At 2:00 this afternoon, Mayor Greg Nickels will proposed a 2010 budget that eliminates about 310 positions citywide, eliminates about 200 city vehicles, uses a little over $25 million from the emergency “rainy day fund,” and includes a union-approved ten-day furlough that will save a little more than $6 million from the general fund, and $18 million from the budget overall.
“The conclusion was it’s not just raining—we’re having a monsoon,” city finance director Dwight Dively said at a press briefing this afternoon. The expenditure would leave about $5.2 million in the rainy day fund.
According to Dively, about 116 of the 310 positions proposed for elimination are currently filled. (The rest are vacant positions that will be eliminated through attrition). “They’re scattered all across city government,” Dively said, with about 205 represented by unions. Layoffs are planned to take place March 2; however, Dively said, “we think that of those 116 people whose jobs are at stake, a significant number will be able to find another job [within the city] by March 2.” Dively said that every person whose job is at risk should have already been informed that they may lose their job.
Those positions include 38 “executive, management, and supervisory positions,” according to the mayor’s budget highlights, as well as 16 strategic advisors. (Mike McGinn, one of two candidates running for mayor in November, has said he would eliminate half of the city’s “strategic advisor” positions, which he estimates at about 200).
The mayor’s budget proposal also includes an 8.8 percent increase in City Light rates, due to lower than expected revenues from wholesale sales of surplus power, which is selling at about half its rate when the forecast was done a year ago (a total of around $65 million, in contrast to the $140 million forecast). However, deputy mayor Tim Ceis noted at a press conference this afternoon, that’s still lower than rates immediately following the West Coast power crisis in 2002. The total proposed general-fund budget for 2010, at $905 million, is about 4.4 percent lower than the 2010 budget proposed last year.
“We have made significant reductions in City Light’s budget, we’ve reduced positions, but we still need to have a proposal to raise City Light rates,” Ceis said. The city is not proposing any increase in solid-waste, water, and wastewater rates.
The new budget also assumes the elimination of the “head tax,” a $25-per-employee tax, paid by employers, that exempts workers who don’t drive to work alone. The city council has expressed support for eliminating the tax, which brings in about $5 million a year for transportation projects. However, according to Ceis and Dively, reduced construction costs have allowed the city to put an additional $1.4 million toward implementing the bike and pedestrian master plans.
“One area that, in a funny way, is a bright spot caused by a bad economy is that our constrution costs in many departments have gone down,” Ceis said.
The budget would also add 21 additional patrol officers and maintain “direct human services” like homeless shelters and domestic-violence programs, as well as the mayor’s proposed Youth Violence Prevention Initiative; however, it would cut 22 administrative positions in the Human Services Department, as well as programs such as Reinvesting in Youth, a program that focuses on crime prevention and dropout reduction, and other “indirect” human services.
And the budget proposes spending a little more than $18 million on the proposed deep-bore tunnel on the waterfront, including the relocation of utilities along the current Alaskan Way Viaduct.
Noting that this would be the last budget proposed by Mayor Nickels, Ceis said, “Overall, I’d say our city’s budget is in much, much better shape than other governments at the state and regional level.” He added: “This new administration is inheriting a very good budget with a city in very good financial condition.”
