Seattle’s latest revenue forecast, which will form the basis of the 2026-2027 biennial budget, reduced the. city’s projected two-year budget shortfall from around $240 million to about $150 million. The city’s revenue forecasters used a more optimistic model than the April forecast.
On the first of two Seattle Nice episodes this week, we discussed the broader implications of a proposed ballot initiative that would make it illegal to fall asleep outdoors in unincorporated King County, a Seattle ballot measure to raise business and occupation taxes to pay for housing stability and human services, and a lawsuit filed by City Attorney Ann Davison, a Republican who’s struggling to retain support, over a seven-month-old Trump executive.
The city council approved the business and occupation tax proposal for the November ballot, overcoming objections from some councilmembers that it shouldn’t be dedicated to any specific purpose, but instead should go toward any current or future general-fund purpose elected officials decide they want to fund. In general, voters approve taxes for specific purposes, and there is no recent precedent for sending a blank-check tax measure to the ballot.
This week’s local elections represented a massive rebuke of the people elected in the wake of COVID and the 2020 protests against police brutality. Across the board in Seattle, progressive candidates were leading big, from Katie Wilson (running against Mayor Bruce Harrell) to Erika Evans (headed for victory against Davison).
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City councilmembers have proposed more than 100 amendments to Mayor Bruce Harrell’s much-delayed Comprehensive Plan update, which only deals with neighborhood residential (former single-family) zoning. Some amendments would further shrink the size of neighborhood centers—small nodes of potential future density—while others would expand them and create new incentives for housing.
On this week’s second edition of the podcast, we debated what’s behind the shift toward progressive candidates this year. I argued that it’s a combination of people’s desire to have people in office who’ll fight Trump policies that impact Seattle and a rejection of politicians who’ve prioritized cracking down on minor crimes over solving the affordability crisis; Sandeep says voters are reflexively “lurching to the left” because of Trump, not any specific local issues.
A petition to “save the trees” is more blatantly misleading than usual, as the trees in question aren’t threatened by the development people are protesting. Maritza Rivera can’t seem to keep staff for more than six months. And the latest election results put Katie Wilson at 50.2 percent to Harrell’s 41.7, while Ann Davison and City Council President Sara Nelson lost ground too: The two incumbents have 33.8 percent and 35.8 percent of the vote, respectively.
Google image of the site before demolition; the “million dollar house” is the white house in foreground, with the closest tree to the property visible on the right.
1. More than 400 people have signed a Change.org petition imploring the city to “Save Three Sisters Park in Ballard,” which the petition page describes as “a trio of trees that must be over 100 years old” that, the petition claims, are now threatened by development.
“What was once a quiet refuge could soon be overshadowed by development. Someone’s living room window will be mere feet away from what was once a community space. All for what? So that some corporate entity can replace the existing million dollar home with SEVEN million dollar homes. Lining the pockets of capitalism.”
Just a few problems with that description. First, there’s no park called “Three Sisters Park”—as with other campaigns to whip up opposition to new housing, the petitioners have anthropomorphized the trees. (See also: “Luma,” “Kaia,” “Astra,” and of course, “Grandma’s Cedar.” Second, the “park” isn’t even a park—it’s a stand of three Western Red Cedars on what’s known as an “unopened street end,” like a planting strip that functions as a barrier to traffic, owned by the Seattle Department of Transportation. (The trees’ age is unknown).
Third, and most important: The trees aren’t threatened by the development next door. According to an SDOT spokesperson, “There are no current plans to prune or remove the Western Redcedars.If construction requires pruning in the future, the developer will need to file an amendment to the permit. This would be reviewed by SDOT Urban Forestry to assess the necessity and impact. If approved, the work would need to be completed by a Registered Tree Service Provider (RTSP).”
In addition, the developer, MRN Homes, plans to plant four new trees on a site that currently has nowsignificant trees, just bushes, adding tree canopy in the future. (It’s also ironic that the petition posits proximity to trees as a bad thing for people living in these future townhouses, when their more common tactic is to claim people living in new buildings will lose the benefits of shade if trees are removed).
Finally, it’s pretty disingenuous to claim that a “million-dollar home” is being replaced by “seven million-dollar homes.” MRN, a local Seattle builder, has built some large, almost-million-dollar townhouses in the city. However, their smaller townhouses sell for a more typical-for-Seattle price of around $700,000—not affordable housing, by any stretch, but considerably more in reach than the $2 million to $3 million single-family houses currently for sale in the neighborhood near this development site.
As for the “million-dollar home” that was on the site—an 875-square foot, 2-bedroom house from the 1960s? That “house” was valuable not because of the house itself but because of the land underneath it, which is zoned for multifamily use.
2. City Councilmember Maritza Rivera has lost another legislative assistant—the fourth person to leave the position in the 19 months Rivera has been in office. Unlike most other council members, Rivera has just two legislative assistants, or LAs—longtime aide Wendy Sykes, and another position that has gone under several different titles in Rivera’s brief time on the council, including “policy lead,” “policy director,” and “district director.”
The turnover rate is higher, by far, than in most council offices, which tend to have more staff and retain them longer. (Only Rob Saka has had similarly high staff turnover).
The latest staffer, who we were unable to reach, lasted less than six months. That’s actually a better record than some of Rivera’s previous staffers, who’ve lasted between four and six months. In 2023, according to the Stranger, 26 employees at the city’s Office of Arts and Culture signed off on a letter complaining about a toxic environment at the office, quoting workers who called her a micromanager who treated them with condescension.
3. Friday update: Yup, Thursday’s results were an anomaly. As of the latest vote count, Katie Wilson leads the mayor’s race with more than 50 percent of the vote, to Harrell’s 41.7 percent. That’s a terrible result for an incumbent.
Thursday’s election numbers, which reflected the second set of ballots counted since Tuesday (election night), saw a notable shift away from the progressive trend in Wednesday’s results, moving the needle back slightly toward centrist incumbents. In the latest batch of about 32,000 ballots, challenger Katie Wilson led Mayor Bruce Harrell 47 to 45; challenger Erika Evans led incumbent City Attorney Ann Davison 53.4 to 36.7; and challenger Dionne Foster led incumbent Sara Nelson 54.9 to 39.3.
Overall, Wilson is currently leading Harrell 47.8 to 43.8, Evans is leading Davison 53 to 36, and Foster is leading Nelson 55.4 to 38. Rinck has 76.7 percent of the vote.
It’s unclear why Thursday’s ballots swung slightly back toward centrist candidates. Thursday’s count may have included ballots mailed before election day, while Wednesday’s reflected ballots dropped off at drop boxes on Tuesday; later votes almost invariably trend more progressive.
In the race for City Council in District 2—the seat currently held by appointee Mark Solomon—city land-use attorney Eddie Lin was leading SDOT outreach staffer (and former Harrell transportation advisor) Adonis Ducksworth by 46 percent to 30 percent overall, reflecting a slight gain by Lin (considered the more progressive candidate in this race) in the latest round of ballots, in which Lin got 47.7 percent to Ducksworth’s 30.4.
As of Friday, there are about 15,000 Seattle ballots left uncounted.
4. If you couldn’t get enough of Sandeep and me beefing over the election results, and/or if you’d like to hear what an actual current council member thinks Tuesday’s election means, check out Week in Review on KUOW this week, with host Bill Radke, City Councilmember Joy Hollingsworth, and us two chuckleheads. It’s a fun, lively listen.
We recorded this week’s Seattle Nice podcast on Wednesday, just before the afternoon drop of results from King County Elections reinforced what was already clear on Election Night: Progressive candidates swept the local primary election in Seattle, coming in ahead of incumbents in the races for mayor, city council, and city attorney.
And it isn’t just a challengers-vs.-incumbents phenomenon. Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck, who was winning her 2024 race with 76.6 percent of the vote as of Wednesday afternoon), is poised to overtake Sally Bagshaw for the second-highest showing, by percentage, in any council primary election; first place is held by former councilmember Sue Donaldson, who won 81.5 percent in her primary in 1991.
Looking at just the latest batch of election results from Wednesday (which I’ll update to reflect Thursday’s vote drop when it arrives), challenger Katie Wilson was beating incumbent mayor Bruce Harrell 48 percent to 43.5 percent; challenger Erika Evans was beating incumbent city attorney Ann Davison 53 percent to 35.8 percent; and city council Position 9 challenger Dionne Foster was beating incumbent Sara Nelson by 55.8 to 37 percent.
UPDATE: Thursday’s results looked much more like election night, with Wilson leading Harrell, just in the new batch of votes, 47 to 45; Evans leading Davison 53.4 to 36.7; and Foster leading Nelson 54.9 to 39.3. Overall, Wilson is currently leading Harrell 47.8 to 43.8, Evans is leading Davison 53 to 36, and Foster is leading Nelson 55.4 to 38. Rinck has 76.7 percent of the vote.
Meanwhile, in the race for District 2, city land-use attorney Eddie Lin was leading SDOT outreach staffer (and former Harrell transportation advisor) Adonis Ducksworth 46 percent to 30 percent overall.
So what’s behind these results? I think it’s two things. First, people are terrified about what Trump’s policies will mean for Seattle, and they don’t see city leaders—particularly Republican city attorney Ann Davison—addressing the situation with urgency.
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Second, and related: Four years since the backlash election of 2021, voters have had plenty of time to see results from the people they elected, and they’re not impressed. Affordability is an urgent issue to Seattle residents struggling to live in an increasingly expensive city, but the council, mayor, and city attorney have focused more on arresting drug users and increasing fines for graffiti than providing affordable housing and services for people in need. Seattle has seen what the leadership of Ann Davison, Sara Nelson, and Bruce Harrell looks like, and they aren’t impressed.
Sandeep disagrees that people are concerned about, or even aware of, the policies Seattle leaders have been passing and overlooking over the last four years. He argues that local politics are now nationalized, and that fear of Trump has translated into a kind of throw-the-bums-out overreach that has resulted in a “lurch to the left” among Seattle’s “fickle” vote base. In this theory, Ann Davison lost not because she relentlessly promoted and passed policies that are broadly unpopular, from ending therapeutic court to reinstating ineffective banishment zones for people caught using drugs, but because she has an “R” by her name.
And David kind of agrees with both of us, saying people are “taking out their anxieties and their frustrations about the status quo against the incumbents who are in office,” but also that Katie Wilson is speaking to the concerns of ordinary people—like why a slice of pizza in Seattle costs $8.
Maritza Rivera’s amendments would shrink neighborhood centers—areas where 3-to-6-story apartments would be newly legal—across her northeast Seattle district.
The comprehensive plan sets rules for how Seattle develops in the future, including where the city will allow its renter majority to live.
By Erica C. Barnett
After nearly a year of delays, the city council is finally getting ready to put its stamp on Mayor Bruce Harrell’s proposed 10-year Comprehensive Plan—a document Harrell has branded with his campaign slogan as the “One Seattle Plan.” The council has been meeting for months to discuss elements of the plan, including the creation of a few dozen new “neighborhood centers” where apartments will be allowed for the first time in decades, but this week was the council’s first opportunity to propose tweaks to the plan—107 amendments in all.
The comprehensive plan sets policies for growth and development, designating where new housing, transportation, and other infrastructure should go and placing limits on housing density in the city’s neighborhoods. It’s updated every 10 years, with periodic amendments, and inevitably reflects the political priorities of whoever is in office at the time.
We’ve reported previously on the Harrell Administration’s reluctance to allow significantly more housing in Seattle’s traditional single-family neighborhoods as part of the plan.
After killing an early draft of the plan that would have allowed significantly more density, Harrell released a plan last year that fell far short of the changes necessary to create enough housing for new and current residents—including renters—to live in Seattle affordably. After intense criticism of that proposal—the city’s Planning Commission said it upheld exclusionary policies rooted in redlining and failed to provide the housing Seattle needs—the mayor came back with a new plan that allowed slightly more housing, though still less than the proposal most members of the current city council said they supported when they ran for election in 2023.
The council’s proposed amendments are a mixed bag. Several proposals would collectively shrink the size of the proposed “neighborhood centers”—areas within 800 feet of certain frequent transit stops where 3-to-6-story apartments would be allowed—by hundreds of acres, in a blatant retreat to old single-family zoning patterns that benefit people who already own property and don’t want renters living in “their” neighborhoods.
Others would impose new restrictions on any new development that requires removing trees, including one that would give the city free rein to force builders to redo projects if even one tree, of any size, was threatened.
Still others would provide new incentives for developers to build dense housing, serving as a counterpoint to other councilmembers’ proposals to shrink the areas of the city where people who can’t afford to buy a house in Seattle are allowed to live.
Breaking the substantive amendments down into broad categories, we have:
Expanded Neighborhood Centers
On balance, the proposed amendments that make it easier to build housing—including everything from density bonuses for affordability to expanded and brand-new neighborhood centers—outweigh NIMBY proposals to restrict housing, although some of the proposals are probably nonstarters—or negotiation starters—in their current forms.
Harrell’s final comprehensive plan proposal included 3o neighborhood centers—down from 48 in an early draft, but more than the 24 included in an early version of the plan. Since then, though, there’s been intense pressure on the council to further reduce the number of neighborhood centers in the plan, coming primarily from incumbent homeowners in neighborhoods like Wedgwood, Madrona, and Maple Leaf.
Although several council members did end up proposing amendments that would scale down the size of neighborhood centers, in some cases dramatically, the amendments to add new areas of potential density outweigh those proposals, meaning that if every proposed change to the neighborhood centers was adopted, the amount of land in designated neighborhood centers would increase significantly.
Council members who proposed new or expanded neighborhood centers included Dan Strauss (who proposed a new East Ballard neighborhood center and called for expanding the boundaries of five others, including in Magnolia), Bob Kettle (who proposed a new North Queen Anne/Nickerson Neighborhood Center) and Alexis Mercedes Rinck, who’s proposing eight new neighborhood centers, one in each council district.
“Seattle needs more housing,” Rinck said. “Seattle also needs full and thriving communities, and we’ve heard an overwhelming call from constituents to achieve these goals with more housing, especially in high-opportunity neighborhoods which haven’t seen proportional growth.”
Build This, Not That
Other proposed amendments would add density bonuses and incentives for different types of housing, such as stacked flats and affordable apartments.
Kettle, for instance, proposed getting rid of an “amenity area” requirement for new housing in neighborhood residential zones, freeing up more land for housing.
Under the current proposal, 20 percent of the space around new apartment buildings in the city’s traditional single-family areas would be reserved for open space, typically a yard, for residents to “recreate on site”—as if what apartment dwellers in cities really want is a tiny lawn where they can all hang out together.
An amendment from Sara Nelson would retain a requirement that residential buildings, including new apartments in all parts of the city, be exempt from environmental review under the State Environmental Policy Act (SEPA); that exemption is otherwise set to expire next month, making housing harder to build.
Other amendments, from Hollingsworth, Nelson, Kettle, and Rinck, would provide bonus density for developers who agree to build specific types of housing, including social housing, accessory dwelling units, and low-income or affordable housing. Several proposals would create incentives for developers to build stacked flats—apartments spread out across a single story of a building—including density bonuses for retaining trees and amendments that would allow stacked flats to be denser than other types of apartments in neighborhood residential (former single-family) zones.
Rob Saka also has an amendment that would give a density bonus for one- or two-story “cottage” apartments surrounding a large common area, a style that resembles single-family housing more than the three-to-six-story apartments that will be allowed in the new neighborhood residential zones under the current plan.
Strauss proposed an amendment that would increase the maximum height in these areas from six to seven or eight stories immediately next to a major transit stop, and Rinck proposed changing the definition of “major transit stop” to include high-frequency buses.
15-Minute City
Several amendments would reduce or remove mandatory parking requirements. The most ambitious, from Rinck, would “remove parking requirements citywide for all land uses in all zones,” a phrase that brings joy to my car-hating little heart. (Yes, I own a car. No, I don’t think the city should socially engineer car culture, as it currently does.)
Builders wouldn’t be barred from including parking in their developments, but they wouldn’t be forced to do so, as they are in many places under the city’s current code.
Another amendment from Rinck, essentially a backup if her first parking proposal fails would reduce parking mandates to comply with a statewide parking reform bill that requires cities to eliminate some of their parking mandates by 2028. Another proposal, from Strauss, would establish parking maximums in the city’s regional centers—the densest areas, including downtown, Capitol Hill, and Strauss’ home turf of Ballard. In a concession to the tree-preservation lobby, Rinck’s amendments also include one that would eliminate parking mandates for developments that preserve trees.
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A proposal to allow corner stores in neighborhoods could also see some meaningful changes.
In the past, we’ve dunked on Harrell’s proposal to allow corner stores in neighborhoods, because it would only allow new stores and restaurants on literal corner lots, with restrictions that don’t apply to other businesses in the city, such as a mandatory 10pm closing time. Several amendments attempt to remedy those issues. The amendments range from extremely modest (a Nelson amendment that would remove the literal-corner requirement but retain restrictions on business type, size, and closing hours) to ambitious, by Seattle standards (a Rinck proposal that would remove the corner requirement, allow businesses to be open past 10pm, and add bars to the list of businesses that are legal in neighborhoods.
Three amendments, from Rinck, Strauss, and Nelson, would make it easier to open stores and restaurants in residential neighborhoods where they’re currently banned. As we’ve reported, Harrell’s comp plan proposal would allow corner stores in neighborhoods, but only on literal corners, with additional restrictions such as mandatory 10pm closures and a stipulation that they can include restaurants, but not bars.
The amendments range from modest (amendments from Strauss and Nelson to allow stores throughout residential zones, not just on corners) to ambitious (a Rinck proposal that would allow restaurants and bars throughout these areas, eliminate a requirement that businesses be closed from 10pm to 6am, and ditch a 2,500-square-foot size restriction included in the mayor’s proposal). Allowing bars in neighborhoods, a policy that works fine in big cities across the country, may be a bridge too far for censorious Seattle, but a compromise between these proposals could be a first step toward creating more 15-minute neighborhoods in Seattle.
Homeowners vs. Renters
Of course, it wouldn’t be a zoning update without some NIMBY poison pills. Although no one, including newly appointed District 5 Councilmember Debora Juarez, has proposed reviving former D5 councilmember Cathy Moore’s quixotic effort to remove an entire neighborhood center from Maple Leaf, several councilmembers have proposed reducing the amount of land in their districts where people who rent apartments can live.
Maritza Rivera, who has frequently claimed that the city did insufficient outreach to single-family neighborhoods before allowing apartments near frequent transit stops, has three amendments to shrink neighborhood centers in Bryant, Ravenna, and Wedgwood. Her proposal to scale back the Wedgwood center is the most radical of the three, in that it would reduce the size of the center by about 40 percent, limiting apartments to 35th Ave. NE, already a busy arterial, and prohibiting them in the adjacent blocks. (In contrast, one of Rinck’s amendments would expand the Wedgwood neighborhood center to the south; expect strong objections from Rivera to that one).
“Based on months of feedback from community members who live in and near the proposed neighborhood centers, my amendments modify the boundaries of the neighborhood centers in the D4, including Wedgwood, Bryant and Ravenna, to reflect resident concerns…. around the ability of local neighborhood streets to handle increased growth and the infrastructure,” Rivera said.
A Rivera amendment for Ravenna traces a similar line to carve single-family houses in a designated historic district (itself a way for older neighborhoods to oppose density) out of the proposed neighborhood center around Third Place Books, leaving the commercial area but ensuring that there would be no apartments in the neighborhood surrounding the commercial center.
Separately, Rivera proposed an amendment that would give the city the HOA-like authority to dictate what kind of external siding would be allowed on buildings within designated national or local historic districts, based on factors like the “historic character” of an area; this extraordinary new power would also apply to historic districts that might be designated in the future, including those proposed by house owners who oppose new development in their neighborhoods.
Joy Hollingsworth wants to cut the Madrona Neighborhood Center by about seven blocks, concentrating new housing into a smaller area that already includes parks, schools, and other areas where housing can’t be built.
Joy Hollingsworth has proposed shrinking down another controversial neighborhood center in Madrona, whose homeowning residents showed up en masse to oppose the zoning change in their neighborhood. Hollingsworth’s amendment would shrink the Madrona center by nearly 40 percent, slicing off big chunks of current single-family areas on the east and west sides of the proposed center and concentrating any new housing around an existing commercial stretch that includes an elementary school, library, and playfield where housing can’t be built.
Finally, it wouldn’t be a conversation about housing in 2025 without hand-wringing over trees—not planting or maintaining trees in public spaces, which are actions the city could take at any time, or encouraging property owners to plant new trees themselves, but preserving trees that already exist, generally at the expense of new development.
In addition to the tree preservation incentives I mentioned earlier, there’s an amendment from Strauss to “recognize the importance of the natural environment and native species, including trees, bees, salmon, orca, and herons,” plus several from Rivera to make it harder to develop housing if trees are on site.
The most extreme proposal from Rivera—and the one that made Rinck confirm with council staff that the amendment really would do what it appeared to do—would allow the city to require developers to come up with a completely new alternative plan if it turned out their housing proposal would require the removal of any tree, no matter its size, age, or viability.
It’s easy to see how this could grind development in traditional single-family areas to a halt. If someone planted a sapling on a property slated for development, or if there was already unremarkable small tree on site, the city could stop the project and require the developer to start from scratch.
Housing is already tremendously expensive to build in Seattle, and construction permits are declining as developers pull out of the city. Empowering unelected city staffers to force full project redesigns around every existing tree would exacerbate the housing crisis, adding costs to projects that are already financed while reducing the amount of housing that could be built in every project with a tree on site. And forget about expanding the city’s tree canopy—who would plant a new tree on a property they may want to sell in the future, knowing it would instantly reduce their property value?
Call it the “Fuck Trump” effect. That, at least, was the most common explanation I heard on Tuesday night for the progressive rout that had left-leaning candidates destroying centrist and conservative incumbents. After two successive backlash elections in which centrists and a Republican (City Attorney Ann Davison) won election after election, voters are fed up with the status quo.
This is part of a national trend—plenty of social media pundits, along with The Nation, have declared Katie Wilson “Seattle’s answer to Zohran Mamdani”—but it’s also a specific response to local politicians who have prioritized police over human services, surveillance over safety, and trees over housing.
From City Attorney Ann Davison (losing to challenger Erika Evans 37 to 51 percent) to City Councilmember Sara Nelson (losing to progressive challenger Dionne Foster 39 to 54 percent) to Mayor Bruce Harrell (losing to labor organizer and transit activist Katie Wilson 45 to 46 percent), progressives ran the table on Tuesday night.
At Harrell’s outdoor party on the back patio of Bluwater Bistro in Leschi, there was no TV or obvious group of campaign staff monitoring the night’s results, and the crowd was visibly unbothered as they mingled over a buffet that included kebabs, whole Dungeness crabs, and a white sheet cake. Harrell spoke for just a few minutes, emphasizing the need to “tell the story” of the city’s success. “I don’t take a lot of shots” against opponents, Harrell said. (Earlier in the day, the mayor sent out an email blast that harshly criticized Wilson for appearing on a controversial Youtuber’s show, suggesting she had poor judgment).
“We talk about public safety—we know we’re creating a safer Seattle. We’re talking about transportation. We … talk about climate change. We know we’re going to save our planet, our water and our air. We’re talking about housing affordability,” Harrell said.
During a brief interview after his speech, Harrell told PubliCola he thought the progress his administration has made in the past few months just isn’t well known by voters yet; he cited work on the city’s comprehensive plan (which was delayed a year), the city’s Real Time Crime Center and CCTV cameras, and progress on housing construction.
Across town on Beacon Hill, at Wilson’s election-night party at El Centro de la Raza, the mood was joyous. Wilson, a community activist and co-founder and general secretary of the Transit Riders Union who has never held elected office, told supporters, “By the time all the ballots are counted, our numbers are going to go up. We are very much in this race. And we are going to build the biggest ground game Seattle has ever seen.”
“Bruce Harrell is doing a bad job,” Wilson said over cheers. “We’re going to fix that in November.”
“We knew we had momentum, but you never know until you know,” Wilson told PubliCola. “The numbers are pretty freaking great.”
Volunteer Austin Schey, who moved to Seattle just a year ago and spent a month knocking on doors and tabling for Wilson, said he was impressed with Wilson’s focusing on housing and affordability.
“I see Katie as someone that actually cares about people, So many of our politicians are wealthy homeowners out of touch with what people actually need. She’s not a wealthy person. She’s worked odd jobs. She knows how the system works and she knows what people need.”
Over on Capitol Hill, a joint party for incumbent Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck (defeating several challengers with 75 percent), Evans, and Foster was still going strong well past 10 pm, as jubilant supporters hung out at Stoup Brewing to celebrate victories for three progressive women of color. (Earlier in the evening, a conga line briefly formed).
Rinck told PubliCola she was looking forward to working with new colleagues to focus on issues like affordability and fighting federal funding cuts (her colleagues Nelson and Maritza Rivera endorsed her opponent Ray Rogers, who ended election night with less than 5 percent), and added that a progressive city attorney would be less likely to focus on priorities that harm people, like banishment zones for drug use and sex work, and more likely to file proactive lawsuits against the Trump Administration. Overall, Rinck said, “I’m in the clouds right now.”
Foster told PubliCola that many voters she spoke to specifically cited Nelson’s emphasis on policies they didn’t support, like rolling back gig worker minimum wages and weakening city ethics rules, as reasons they were voting against her.
Her campaign talked to people “who were frustrated about the comprehensive plan not getting delivered on time” and wondered “what’s going on with council members leaving City Hill early,” before the end of their terms. (Tammy Morales and Cathy Moore were both elected in 2023 and left early in their terms.) “Or, why are we arresting protesters—what is going on?”
Evans said the thing she heard most frequently from voters was that they never see Ann Davison out in the community, talking to people about what their priorities are. “Community organizations don’t hear from her,” Evans said. “She’s not asking them, hey, what are the things you care about, as opposed to just like her putting forth her own pet policies.”
In other local races, Eddie Lin, a land use attorney at the city, was leading Adonis Ducksworth, a longtime SDOT outreach staffer and onetime transportation advisor to Harrell, 46 to 31. In the county executive race, County Councilmember Girmay Zahilay led fellow Councilmember Claudia Balducci 4o to 30. And funding for democracy vouchers, Seattle’s public campaign finance program, was winning 56 to 44.
Tonight’s results likely represent the high-water mark for centrist candidates; later results tend to benefit progressive candidates, so the margin of victory for progressive candidates will likely rise.
As one of my Seattle Nice podcast co-hosts put it Tuesday, it was a “bloodbath” for Seattle’s centrist incumbents—a backlash to the backlash.
Over objections from some council members that the proposal was “rushed” or that it funds the wrong things, the Seattle City Council voted to place a tax increase for the city’s highest-grossing businesses on the November ballot. If it passes, the “Seattle Shield” proposal would direct new revenues toward housing, homelessness, food security, and other spending areas that are typically vulnerable during budget deficits and at risk of losing federal funding under the Trump Administration.
The proposal, which Counclmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck and Mayor Bruce Harrell rolled out in June, would raise the business and occupation tax exemption from $100,000 to $2 million in gross revenues, exempting most Seattle businesses from the tax, while increasing the tax rate for revenues above $2 million, netting about $90 million a year.
Amendments passed last week, including two from Councilmember Maritza Rivera exempting Children’s Hospital and Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center from the tax, reduced that total to about $81 million a year. Other amendments expanded the potential uses of the new tax to include substance use treatment, business workforce development and storefront repair, and—the broadest spending category—”transportation.”
An amendment from Bob Kettle would make the tax exemption up to $2 million a year permanent (otherwise, the exemption would revert back to $100,000) and reduce the higher tax on large businesses to make it revenue neutral, meaning it would only pay for the tax break for smaller businesses. The city estimates that in 2026, the tax breaks will cost around $61 million.
Councilmember Bob Kettle, who ultimately joined the unanimous vote to move the proposal to the November ballot, said he would much prefer that the council not stipulate how the increased tax revenues would be spent, instead sending a ballot measure to voters that asked them to approve an all-purpose tax that could be used for any need the mayor or council identifies in the future.
Comparing the ballot measure to the council-approved JumpStart payroll tax, which was originally earmarked for housing, Green New Deal priorities, and small business assistance, Kettle said the council only fixed that “problem” last year, when it formally eliminated all spending restrictions on the tax.
“I’m generally opposed to the use of categories or buckets, as some may say. I believe they were a mistake in the payroll expense tax, since over the years, conditions change, but the legislation remains the same,” Kettle said. “I also believe that categories, or buckets, in this B&O legislation was a mistake, in the sense that buckets begets buckets”—a reference to the expansion of the spending categories. “You know, our focus should be on the deficit. … And I think our focus should be for a clean bill to ensure that we are fiscally responsible, that meets the needs of our city.”
It is, of course, unknown whether voters would support a so-called “clean bill” that did not specify any purpose for a tax increase they were being asked to approve. But in general, every local ballot measure calling for a tax increase has had some purpose, whether it’s the transportation levy, the housing levy, the preschool and Seattle Promise levy, the tax we pay to fund emergency medical services, or any other voter-approved tax increase in local taxes.
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A levy “to fix the general fund deficit” would not only be a hard sell to many voters (who wouldn’t know whether new taxes would fund police hiring bonuses or food banks), it would incorporate the assumption that the city will continue going into each budget year with a deficit for the duration of the levy—not exactly “fiscally responsible” financial planning.
Rivera, too, appeared generally dissatisfied with the proposal, saying the six-week process to approve it was “rushed” and that she would also have preferred to send it to voters as a general tax increase to address the current deficit.
“Rather than single out items, this money should have just gone to the general fund and then when the mayor was putting together the budget that he sends us, he could have then considered this funding along with all the other funding,” Rivera said. “That would have been the good governance way to do this. But that is not how this moved forward.”
As I reported last month, Rivera was the first council member to publicly propose asking voters to approve a tax increase for undefined “general fund” purposes, arguing that the city can’t predict what needs will emerge in the future. Rivera has also suggested the city could take dedicated funds from the city’s housing levy and using them to backfill the general fund in the short term, paying back the loaned dollars later and foregoing some potential housing. Editor’s note: This story originally said Bob Kettle backed Rivera’s idea of using housing levy dollars to backfill the general fund; his office said this isn’t the case, so we’ve corrected the story to reflect that.
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“What was once a quiet refuge could soon be overshadowed by development. Someone’s living room window will be mere feet away from what was once a community space. All for what? So that some corporate entity can replace the existing million dollar home with SEVEN million dollar homes. Lining the pockets of capitalism.”
By Erica C. Barnett 
