The budget chair’s amendments would add millions of dollars for Ballard—including a bus route to his own neighborhood that’s likely near the bottom of Metro’s priority list.

By Erica C. Barnett

City Council budget committee chair Dan Strauss wants to wrap up the budget process this week, despite other council members’ objections that they don’t feel prepared to learn about amendments, debate them, and vote them up or down all in a single day.

The council already has very little time to consider and amend the mayor’s budget, which the mayor announces on the fourth Tuesday of every September. (Prior to 2022, when the council held its main meetings on Mondays rather than Tuesdays, the budget came out one day earlier). This year’s published budget schedule, which is the basis not just for the council but for community groups to provide feedback, includes a vote on Monday, not Friday, giving an additional weekend for councilmembers to deliberate and get feedback,

In most of the last 10 years, council records show, the council (serving as a nine-member budget committee) has had at least one, and often two, days to deliberate over the budget before meeting for a day of votes. Until Strauss took over as budget chair in 2024, the council’s budget season went through the week of Thankgiving; that year, Strauss truncated the schedule to give himself and the rest of the council that entire week off. The shortened schedule has sometimes made the budget feel rushed and underbaked. Last year’s budget, for instance, devolved into a chaotic flurry of lat-minute amendments and what I described at the time as one of the least transparent budget processes in recent memory.

This year, Strauss is trying to outdo last year’s example, condensing the usual day for discussion and deliberation and the day for further deliberation and voting  into a single day-long meeting this Friday.

At a council meeting on Tuesday, Strauss—who introduced his own “chair’s package” of more than 150 amendments the previous Thursday—said council members should plan on being in chambers until 8:00 or later to put a bow on substantive spending amendments this week, wrapping up council budget amendments earlier than at any time in the past 10 years, which is as far as the council’s online schedules go back.

After this post went up, Strauss contacted me to say he planned to “go at a comfortable cadence” on Friday, leaving plenty of time for breaks; if it seems unlikely they can finish everything in one day by 5pm, he said, he’ll hold the rest of the meeting on Monday. He also said the mayor has started delivering the budget earlier than in previous years; as noted above, I checked the last going back ten years, and this isn’t the case.

The consent package generally includes amendments that have at least five supporters—enough to pass.—although this isn’t a requirement. This year, the package includes many amendments that have just one sponsor—Strauss—as well as 44 amendments that did not have majority support when the committee voted on them the first time.

The 44 non-consensus “consent” items include:

• An amendment to spend $100,000 a year to have two police officers stand in council chambers during full council and public safety committee meetings, in addition to the security officers who are already present at all times (three supporters);
• A proposal to increase the budget by $2 million over two years to fund nine long-vacant parking enforcement officer positions. Each year, instead of filling the positions, SPD uses the salary savings each year for other priorities (four supporters);
• A proposal to spend $470,000 in one-time funds on an anti-graffiti “art wall” in Delridge, money that will in reality have to be ongoing (three supporters);
• A proposal to spend $500,000 on murals in the “Ballard Brewery District” (three supporters);
• $100,000 for a consultant to study the possibility of creating a special taxing district, subject to regular voter approval, to fund the fire department (four supporters);
• An amendment to prevent two layoffs and temporarily forestall 11 more, of 15 citywide layoffs total, at a cost of $1.8 million (three supporters);
• A proposal to spend $500,000 (spending identified as one-time that would almost certainly be ongoing) on additional abstinence-based treatment slots at the private Lakeside-Milam treatment center in Kirkland (three supporters);
• A proposal to take control of the city’s Sound Transit liaison away from the Department of Transportation, an executive department, and give it to the City Council. Strauss said last week that he proposed the change because Mayor Katie Wilson “didn’t support my priorities” for Sound Transit—an apparent reference to Strauss’ effort to convince the regional transit agency to build light rail line starting in Ballard (three supporters);
• $200,000 to launch a “sip and stroll” outdoor drinking program around the Ballard breweries (three supporters);
• $150,000 for “seasonal lighting” and Christmas decorations in Ballard, including an illuminated cat sculpture related to Seattle’s sister city, Reykjavík, along with an illuminated sculpture of Jimothy, the meme raccoon (four supporters);
• An amendment restoring two maintenance positions, with no funding attached, to the Unified Care Team, which removes encampments (four supporters).

The proposed extra spending in Strauss’ district is notable. Strauss has proposed 13 geographically specific spending adds, most of them in Ballard, totaling more than $14 million; of that amount, about $8 million is non-general fund money that would pay to re-turf a playfield in West Magnolia, while the other $6 million is part of the general fund budget that makes up most of the city’s discretionary spending.

In addition to the items that did not have consensus support, Strauss added more than a dozen new amendments to the consent package on his own—proposals with no cosponsors that have never been discussed or voted on at all. Some of these are standard budget-chair stuff—changes that resulted from the October revenue forecast, for instance—but most are not.

The most contentious item on this list will probably be Strauss’ proposal directing SDOT, to spend $2.5 million from the voter-approved Seattle Transit Measure restoring bus service to the North Beach neighborhood in Ballard, where Strauss lives. This would involve asking King County Metro to either resurrect the Route 15 Express to Blue Ridge or expand service on the 17 Express to Sunset Hill.

The 15 was eliminated, and the 17 saw reduced service, after King County Metro opened the RapidRide D line, which is largely redundant with both routes. Strauss’ proposal would use a one-time budget proviso, or restriction, to direct the spending, but if Metro did agree to restore the service (any change would require.a separate King County Council vote), the spending would undoubtedly be ongoing, not one-time.

Strauss has frequently complained that there is “no transit service to Ballard” in non-commute hours. That’s untrue, but direct service his neighborhood, a single-family enclave near the city’s northwestern edge, is limited. The corridor ranks low on the priority list SDOT uses to determine which new transit service to buy with Transit Measure dollars, which incorporates factors like ridership, housing density, and equity.

On Tuesday, Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck said she planned to pull the bus proposal from the package for a separate discussion. “I really think it’s important, as a part of our partnership with King County Metro, that we work closely with them … and we’re really data driven about this,” she said. Councilmember Eddie Lin echoed Rinck’s comments, saying, “I strongly would prefer to be going through [the prioritization] process than us sort of picking and choosing which routes get additional service through the budget process. I just don’t think that’s the right way for us to be adding service.”

In an unusual three-page memo to the council, SDOT itself cautioned strongly against using the budget to push specific bus routes to the front of the line for funding,, writing that earmarking money for a specific route goes against the “equity-centered, data-driven methodology” SDOT uses, as well as “policy established by City Council in the Seattle Transportation Plan (STP), the Comprehensive Plan, and the voter-approved Seattle Transit Measure (STM).”

“Directing funds to specific fixed route services through a proviso or other mechanism would require foregoing other service investments,” the memo says. “As a result, higher priority routes and community-identified needs for funding through the new STM would receive less service over the life of the measure.”

As examples, the memo includes a list of 18 high-priority transit improvements that would cost the same amount each year as Strauss’ proposal to serve Sunset Hill, including more frequent weekend service, expansion to 24-hour or later night service, and improved all-day service on crowded, heavily used routes in every council district.

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Other unilateral additions Strauss unveiled last week include an amendment that would require SDOT to prevent left turns at an intersection in his district, a project he said a group of unidentified “neighbors” asked for in a petition; the transfer of $31 million in revenues from the JumpStart payroll tax over two years to pay for new spending; a decision to reduce JumpStart’s emergency reserve fund below the legally mandated level; and a brand-new, never discussed 0.01 percent sales tax increase for human services.

Strauss has tried to limit discussion about his proposed changes to the budget.

During a committee meeting where he introduced his balancing package last week, Strauss explicitly instructed the rest of the council not to ask too many questions or engage in detailed discussions. “Debate, or really getting into the depth of topics—that should be reserved for Friday the 13th when votes are happening.” This accelerated schedule was news to some, since it means the council will have just one day to process the amendments, deliberate, ask questions, and vote on the entire budget, including the consent any package, amendments council members pull out of it for separate votes, and more than two dozen “self-balancing” amendments council members plan to introduce that day, plus several dozen other pieces of budget-related legislation.

Strauss, who has punctuated every budget meeting this year with what he calls “Google Maps” updates on how long it will take the council to get out if everyone feels the need to ask questions or talk, said council members could easily get out of chambers earlier than 8:00 as long as they don’t spend too much time discussing the budget legislation. “If we all speak to the items which are important to us, we will be able to get out by 5 p.m. If we all speak to every single item, we will not,” Strauss said.

Maritza Rivera, who has been a vocal advocate against overspending this year, said she didn’t understand why Strauss was in favor of “rushing through the process,” given that councilmembers weren’t able to have a discussion about the consent package, including all the new amendments sponsored solely by Strauss, last week. “It’s my hope that we’re able to have the conversations Friday that we were unable to have in chambers, if we need that, and then use Monday, which is already on the schedule, to continue doing those votes,” Rivera said. Councilmember Dionne Foster chimed in to agree.

Strauss responded that he has “never seen a consent package include so many of our proposals,” adding, “I have the faith in the world that we will be able to be completed by 5pm [on Friday]. I’m just simply stating that extra three hours on Friday is something that we should prepare to reserve because in our—in my conversations regarding this process, it will be less impactful than coming back on Monday.”

On Wednesday evening, Strauss echoed something he said at Tuesday’s council meeting—that this year’s consent package includes the most council-sponsored items he can remember. While the total number of amendments in the package—139—is high, it’s not precedent-setting. There were more consent amendments during five of the last 10 years, with many coming coose, including 129 items last year.

Editor’s note: This post has been updated after our conversation with budget chair Strauss. The neighborhood served by the 17X bus route is Sunset Hill, not North Beach/Blue Ridge, so we corrected that error. We also added Strauss’ comments from our conversation after this story went up, along with some additional detailed information about the council’s historical budget schedule obtained from publicly available records.