1. The Coalition of City Unions, an umbrella group for 11 unions that represent more than 8,000 city of Seattle employees, reached a tentative agreement with the city this week that will—if the unions approve the contract—provide a 5 percent retroactive cost-of-living adjustment for 2023 and a 4.5 percent COLA next year, resulting in a total 9.7 percent boost for city workers in 2024. After that, employees will get an annual COLA equal to or 1 percent higher than the increase in the local consumer price index, a measure of inflation, with a floor of 2 percent and a cap of 4 percent a year.

The proposal does not include a “COLA bank”—an innovation in the new fire department contract that allows firefighters to store “excess” cost of living increases during years when inflation is higher than 4 percent. This means employees represented by Coalition unions could see their COLAs dip as low as 2 percent if inflation sinks to that level, without “saved” funds to add to their annual cost of living increases to keep their annual adjustments more steady.

According to a letter union leaders sent to represented staff Thursday morning, the new contract proposal also includes market wage adjustments for more than 170 job classifications, an increase in hourly pay for swing and graveyard-shift workers, and improvements to vacation time accrual rates.

PubliCola has been reporting on the negotiations since March, when Mayor Bruce Harrell started negotiations with a proposal to increase city employees’ pay by a sub-inflationary 1 percent, an offer union leaders and rank-and-file workers called “insulting.” In November, workers held “practice pickets” as a prelude to a potential strike.

2. Independent expenditure campaigns once again raised and spent far more money actual city council candidates this year, flooding mailboxes and dominating TV airwaves in the weeks before the November election. Together, six business-backed campaigns spent well over $1.5 million, including one—Elliott Bay Neighbors, which backed former Meta attorney Rob Saka in West Seattle’s District 1—accounting for almost a third of that amount.

According to campaign finance documents, all but one of the six IE campaigns funded by real estate interests this year spent significantly more than they raised, meaning that they laid out huge amounts to win elections, assuming that funders would come up with the money later.

There’s nothing illegal or unusual about campaigns spending money they don’t, strictly speaking, have, but the new expenditure reports do put into stark relief just how much real estate companies, landlords, the hotel and restaurant industry, and business owners in general were willing to spend to get a city council friendly to their interests.

Take Saka, who defeated Amazon labor activist Maren Costa in West Seattle’s District 1. According to reports filed this month, the independent expenditure campaign working on his behalf, Elliott Bay Neighbors, spent $472,000 to get him elected while bringing in $307,000—a $165,000 gap. In District 5, the similarly named Greenwood Neighbors spent $280,000 and raised $203,000 supporting former judge Cathy Moore in her lopsided race against social equity consultant ChrisTiana ObeySumner, while in the more competitive race for District 4 (northeast Seattle),  University Neighbors spent $337,000 helping former city Arts and Culture deputy director Maritza Rivera defeat urbanist attorney Ron Davis, against a total of $275,000 raised so far.

In downtown Seattle’s District 7, Downtown Neighbors spent $190,000 helping retired Navy vet Bob Kettle defeat incumbent Andrew Lewis while raising $149,000, and in District 2, Friends of Southeast Seattle spent $168,000 boosting neighborhood advocate Tanya Woo’s unsuccessful campaign against incumbent Tammy Morales, raising $118,000.

In fact, the only outside spending campaign that raised close to what it spent in the fairly amicable race for District 3 (central Seattle), where cannabis entrepreneur Joy Hollingsworth defeated transportation advocate Alex Hudson with the help of $106,000 from the Seattle Neighbors campaign. On a per-vote basis, businesses spent the most on Saka (about $26 a vote, based on current expenditures reported), followed by Rivera with around $24 per vote).