Budget chair Strauss balked at requiring the council to pass a budget that’s balanced long-term. “I’m concerned with how much power we’re giving the executive.”

By Erica C. Barnett

City Council budget committee chair Dan Strauss released his “chair’s package” of amendments to Mayor Katie Wilson’s proposed budget on Tuesday. The proposal, which represents a starting point for the next few weeks of council budget deliberations, includes more than $40 million in proposed spending that relies on one-time funds for either one or both years of the two-year 2027-2028 budget to continue existing spending or fund new programs that will almost certainly be ongoing. If the spending the plan proposes funding just in 2027 is continued in 2028, that number balloons to around $60 million.

Each of these added priorities, from $5 million for programs that help survivors of gender-based violence (sponsored by Alexis Mercedes Rinck) to $14 million for firefighter overtime (sponsored by Maritza Rivera), will require the council to find new money to sustain it in either 2027 or 2028; otherwise, ongoing programs will lose their support from the city.

This number excludes all capital projects (things that will be built, as opposed to new city employees or services for people) as well as projects that are, or appear to be, time-limited, such as a contract with the National Network for Safe Communities to come up with a “focused deterrence” crime prevention plan (sponsored by Maritza Rivera).

Unsustainable spending, including the practice of funding ongoing needs with purportedly “one-time” funds, is one of the primary reasons the city has experienced growing budget deficits over the past several years. Last year, then-mayor Bruce Harrell and the council adopted a budget that fell immediately into a $150 million deficit in 2027, ballooning to more than $375 million by 2029. That budget, too, included tens of millions of dollars in one-time funding, but Strauss’ package would rely even more heavily on one-time funds for ongoing programs than the final 2026 budget did.

Notably, Strauss’  balancing proposal does not include some big-ticket items proposed by other council members, like $3 million proposed by Bob Kettle to remove graffiti from private property, or $11.4 million, also from Kettle, to hire additional police officers beyond the 66 new hires in Wilson’s budget. That doesn’t mean all those proposals are dead—the council is still at the beginning of the amendment process—but it does reflect that much of the council’s bellyaching over what Kettle calls the “unfund budget” (and Strauss calls “Mayor Wilson’s austerity budget”) has been more show than substance.

The programs and staff that will be paid for using one-time funds include additions from every council member. In addition to the gender-based violence programs and firefighter overtime mentioned above, here are a few of the dozens of additions for which money will run out either next year or in 2028:

• $470,000 over two years to “establish limited permissions, time, and space for artists to freely create graffiti/mural artworks on a structure” in the Delridge neighborhood (Rob Saka)
• $6.4 million over two years to “provide ongoing and dedicated support to the organizations that aim to preserve and revitalize Seattle’s Central District and Southeast Seattle Community” (Joy Hollingsworth)
• $1.5 million over two years to expand services at Seattle’s 14 senior centers (Saka)
• $500,000 for one year to continue and expand access to abstinence-based addiction treatment at Lakeside Milam, a private treatment center in Kirkland (Rivera)
• $200,000 for one year to fund programs that improve maternal health outcomes for women of color at Byrd Barr Place (Hollingsworth)
• $1 million for one year to expand the Back to Business program, which provides funds for businesses damaged by vandalism (Rivera)
• $200,000 for one year to “uplift semi-professional sports” (Saka)
• $600,000 over two years to continue a program, first funded this year, that helps refugee women artisans achieve economic stability (Debora Juarez)
• $7 million for one year to support the council’s district transportation funds, which pay for small projects every year (Saka)

And while this isn’t one-time spending, it would preclude the Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) from using these funds for any other purpose: Strauss included an amendment that would require SDOT to spend $2.5 million from the just-reapproved Seattle Transit Measure to increase service on Route 17 to Ballard and reviving the 15 bus route to Ballard, which was replaced by the RapidRide D. The 17 serves Strauss’ neighborhood but currently has limited hours.

Many of the council’s new spending proposals are arguably essential, particularly those that fund health care and human services as a new federal law cutting off benefits for millions nationwide takes effect. Others, like the very recently adopted council district funds, could be cut without much impact. But all will lack ongoing funding if they make it into the final budget, which creates problems for the mayor and future councils, who will have to decide what to cut, what to continue funding, and how to pay for all of it starting next year.

For this year, at least, Strauss is proposing to move funds around, dig deeper into the JumpStart fund (a business tax originally earmarked for housing and other progressive priorities) and use up some reserves to fund the new spending. Strauss’ proposal would transfer an additional $31 million in JumpStart revenue into the general fund over two years—money that’s partly offset by higher-than-expected revenue projections—with a built-in assumption of another $11 million transfer in 2029. The city would also grab around $13 million from JumpStart’s revenue stabilization fund in 2028, lowering it to $20 million, the minimum requirement.

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Strauss’ plan would also reduce contributions to the firefighters’ pension fund by $22 million over two years and use that money to backfill the general fund; that’s on top of the $10 million transfer that’s already in the mayor’s budget.

The budget also assumes a new 0.01 percent sales tax for family shelter; that money will offset the King County tax that had Seattle Times columnist Danny Westneat hot and bothered, so the total hit for Seattle residents will still be only around $4 a year.

In addition to all the added spending, Strauss’ proposal also adds back funding for nine parking enforcement positions that the Seattle Police Department has never filled, plus $1 million as an “incentive” for SPD to actually try to hire for those positions instead of just using the money to pay for overtime and other police priorities. The PEOs would cost around $2 million over two years, but the budget treats them as a no-cost addition by assuming that each officer will bring in more revenue, in the form of fines, than it costs to hire them.

Standing outside council chambers after a press conference on Tuesday, Strauss took issue with my characterization of the council’s budget practices, including the use of one-time funds and transfers from funds intended for other purposes, as “tricks” and asked me for an example. I mentioned the district funds, which the council gave themselves last year. Strauss said those funds are “a really great example of what one-time funding should be used for,” because the small projects it pays for are one-time capital expenses. The flaw in that argument is that the district funds themselves are designed to just go to each council member year after year—they’re an ongoing expense, even if the projects they fund are not. 

Strauss also inadvertently made the case for why these funds—which allow the council to direct spending by SDOT, an executive department—may not go to the best purpose but the one that has the most organized neighborhood support. Typically, the most organized neighborhood residents are older homeowners, while most Seattle residents are renters. Strauss gave an example of a project just north of Green Lake, a primarily single-family area, where residents got a petition together and asked for a speed hump. There are a number of reasons the city doesn’t usually budget based on citizen petitions, including the fact that letting the most organized residents with the most free time dictate spending priorities often leads to inequitable spending.

I asked Strauss whether, in the interest of fiscal discipline, he would be supporting a proposal from Dionne Foster that would require the council to balance the city budget over six years, as the mayor is now required to do with her initial budget proposal. He said he was “happy to keep talking about it,” but that the way the budget process is set up, the council doesn’t really get enough time to come up with a balanced long-term plan.

“I think the thing that concerns me about that proposal is that the mayor has five months of actual budget work, ahead of the five weeks the [budget] chair has to balance it,” Strauss said. “And with having a strong mayor system, the mayor has the ability to implement or not implement anything that we pass in the budget or by law. And so, further tying the hands of council is a dangerous proposition. … I’m just concerned with how much power we’re giving the executive.”