1. Sage Wilson, Mayor Katie Wilson’s press secretary, is leaving the mayor’s office after less than seven months on the job, after deciding he’d be more effective as an advocate for progressive causes outside the mayor’s office than inside it. Wilson, who previously worked in media relations for the labor advocacy group Working Washington and the progressive policy group Civic Ventures, doesn’t have a job lined up yet; his last day will be in early August.

Sage Wilson is just the latest in a string of mayoral staffers to leave Wilson’s office, and the second top communications staffer. In June, as we reported, Wilson asked her communications director (and Sage Wilson’s boss), Seferiana Day, to resign after a string of bad press for the mayor, much of which occurred while Day was on medical leave. After Day’s departure, the mayor’s office hired Crystal Nicole Fincher, the political consultant, podcaster, and co-owner of KVRU Radio, to join her team temporarily as a big-picture communications consultant, and brought on longtime SDOT spokeswoman Dawn Schellenberg as a temporary media relations staffer.

Day’s old position has been posted publicly, but the mayor’s office has reportedly been talking to Gregory Joseph, currently the communications director for the Washington Alliance for Gun Responsibility. Several sources have told PubliCola the mayor’s office has interviewed Joseph “informally,” although the official line is that they haven’t done any interviews yet and are considering any and all candidates for the job. (The mayor’s office did not immediately respond to questions about the communications director position Wednesday morning).

Prior to joining the Alliance, Joseph was in the news in New Orleans for allegedly misusing $51,00o in city funds to create campaign mailers for his boss, then-mayor LaToya Cantrell, during the final stretch of an ultimately unsuccessful recall campaign against her.  Joseph was later accused of violating procurement policies with a no-bid contract as well. According to local media reports, the council found Joseph guilty of violating city policies, gross misconduct, incompetence and neglect of official duty and unanimously voted to suspend his pay, effectively firing him.

Another Wilson staffer, city council liaison Tracey Whitten, just went on an extended medical leave, telling the City Council in an email that she plans to return in November.  In her absence, Karem Levitas, a senior policy advisor to the mayor who spent a decade as a policy staffer for the city’s Office of Labor Relations, will take over.

The relationship between the council and mayor, as we’ve reported, has been rocky, thanks in part to early friction between councilmembers and two Wilson staffers, Jonathan Grant (who resigned in May) and Kate Kreuzer (reassigned to a different job two weeks before Grant was asked to step down).

Asked about mayor-council relations during a media availability earlier this week, City Council President Joy Hollingsworth gave an equivocal answer, saying the relationship was new, still  “building,” and getting better over time. But she also said Wilson’s team didn’t talk with the council before introducing their Families, Education, Preschool, and Promise levy spending plan, which led to a heated debate over whether to use levy funds to pay for universal free lunches or targeted spending on take-home food for low-income kids.

” I do not like a food fight,” Hollingsworth said. “Number one, if I were to have a conversation with the mayor about this plan before they announced it in April, I would have said let’s lower the [eligibility] threshold to 30 percent”—making schools eligible for free meals when 30 percent of their kids qualify for free and reduced lunches—”instead of 40 percent. … let’s get those schools that are on the bubble for the first year, and then the next year we can expand it.”

2. The city’s midyear supplemental budget is usually as boring as its name. This year is largely no exception—the proposal, before any council amendments, keeps the city’s 2026 budget mostly in balance, with just $500,000 in additional spending that does not have an identified funding source. (The council adopts supplemental budgets every year to keep spending in line with expectations and make any changes that the original budget, adopted every November, didn’t anticipate.)

But the staid supplemental does include a potential warning sign: The budget update assumes the city will spend just over $80 million this year paying retroactive (2024-2025) and current (2026) wage increases for SPD officers (represented by the Seattle Police Officers Guild) and officers with a rank of lieutenant or captain (represented by the Seattle Police Management Association), combined.

This total is about $12 million less than the city estimated back in 2025, when the fiscal notes, or cost estimates, for the new contracts totaled a little more than $90 million. And that was back when SPD estimated it would hire 100 new officers this year; more recently, the department said they were on track to hire 167 new cops, a pace that could require them to slow down hiring unless the city gives them even more money.

City budget director Aly Penucci told PubliCola the city already set aside enough in reserves for just this kind of budget uncertainty, and noted that $90 million represented the “estimate of what the potential maximum exposure would be that is refined as more information is known.”

Even so, the big numbers are ominous news for next year’s budget, for which Wilson has asked every department (including SPD) to come up with cuts of 5 to 10 percent. (The city is facing a deficit of about $175 million next year). Some on the council have reportedly signaled intent to hold the line on police spending, aka business as usual, giving SPD whatever it needs to hire as many new recruits as can walk through the door and meet the minimum standards.

With various public safety departments, including fire and police, taking up almost half a billion dollars,  holding police harmless this year will require bigger cuts to other city departments. Boring though supplemental budgets may be, the debate over whether to slow down police spending is shaping up to be the major battle of the upcoming budget season.