By Erica C. Barnett

Mayor Bruce Harrell’s third State of the City speech was an oddly muted recitation of accomplishments and proposals he has touted many times before, from the addition of six staffers to the city’s 911 response department to the future opening of at least one opiate overdose recovery site to the Seattle Restored program, launched two years ago to help fill vacant storefronts downtown.

Far from running a “lofty victory lap,” as the Seattle Times put it, Harrell seemed deflated, even starting one round of applause himself after several notably silent minutes from the crowd. Impromptu sports jokes, a mainstay in Harrell’s speeches, elicited polite applause, What is the state of Seattle in 2024? “Persistent,” Harrell said.

The mid-term speech, though long (49 minutes) and full of buzzwords (variations on “innovation” showed up at least 15 times; “data,” five; and “silos,” three), lacked the energetic optimism Harrell has projected in previous speeches, and was light on concrete examples of both new initiatives and past achievements—unless you count an “83 percent increase” in shelter referrals at encampment sweeps (and here’s why you shouldn’t.)

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Harrell is fond of saying that with a new council friendly to his priorities in place, he’ll be able to really start getting things done, but the old council didn’t exactly say no to his priorities—hell, they even funded the ridiculous Shotspotter surveillance program—and he only vetoed one of their bills, a proposal that would have required landlords to provide basic data, including rents, about the units they own. In describing how he and the council will work together to implement policy—including the 10-year Comprehensive Plan update, a draft of which Harrell said will finally be released “within the next two weeks”—he brought up two primary examples: Public safety and the budget.

Referring to new public safety committee chair Bob Kettle’s plan to address the city’s “permissive environment” toward drugs and crime, Harrell said, “His six-pillar approach is a strong and good foundation.” But it was the previous council that passed a local drug criminalization law that is an essential element of that approach, and they hardly got in the way of Harrell’s efforts to remove graffiti or shut down nuisance buildings —in fact, former council member Lisa Herbold, replaced by Harrell-endorsed Bob Kettle, sponsored legislation to make it easier for the city to shut down nuisance properties, another one of Kettle’s six pillars.

Harrell also pledged to make “changes to how we think about budgeting,” “press reset,” and “revise our budgeting practices” to close a $220 million-plus budget deficit without raising new taxes. “While there are some who would suggest that the answer lies in new revenue, the fact is that passing a new or expanded tax would not address the fundamental issues needed to close this gap,” Harrell said. Instead, the city will need to do a “systemwide analysis of every expense stream and line of business as well as a granular analysis of every dollar spent,” he said. Shades of “audit the budget“? If so, the criticism is—to use a sports reference!—a bit of an own goal, since Harrell is in charge of the budgeting process and has been for the last two years.

Of course, going over every line of last year’s budget won’t actually fix the structural problem that started the city down the path toward the deficit in the first place—starting during COVID, the mayor and council have decided to pay for a lot of ongoing programs with one-time funds, including COVID relief dollars from the federal government. This happened as recently as last year, when Harrell’s proposed budget included nearly $50 million in new ongoing expenses that lacked long-term funding. The profligate use of one-time funds is a huge contributor to the deficit that city budget planners have been screaming about for years.

In the absence of new taxes, the only way to close Seattle’s budget gap cut the budget or raid the one highly lucrative tax the city has managed to pass in the past few years—the JumpStart payroll tax, which is supposed to fund housing, economic development, and small businesses. The JumpStart spending plan is now enshrined in law, but the council can change the law; look for the council, with Harrell’s approval, to start arguing that it’s important to be “realistic” about the budget situation and use this dedicated fund for any and all purposes—just as soon as they finish their City 101 orientations, which are still taking up most of the time at committee meetings four months after last year’s election.