1. Earlier this year, Mayor Bruce Harrell asked the King County Regional Homelessness Authority to come up with potential budget cuts of 2 to 5 percent in response to a $230 million projected city budget deficit next year; the city, which pays for more than half the KCRHA’s budget, contributed $109 million to the homelessness agency’s budget last year.
Although the KCRHA provided the city with a list of potential cuts earlier this year, the agency is asking its implementation and governing boards to approve a budget proposal that would include a $25 million “stabilization” increase as well as $2.3 million for two new programs: A new tiny house village and a new “overflow” shelter that could serve between 30 and 50 people a night when other shelters are full. About half this request would come from the city; the rest would come from King County, the KCRHA’s other primary funder.
Last month, city officials announced that they would be taking over homelessness prevention and outreach contracts previously administered by the KCRHA, a move some homeless advocates called an abandonment of the regional approach to homelessness embodied in the KCRHA. Those programs totaled almost $12 million. Accounting for this transfer, the KCRHA is asking the city for $112 million.
Without those funds, KCRHA staff told the agency’s implementation board last week, the agency would be unable to pay for commitments like inflationary pay increases, and would have to cut a number of existing programs that face a “funding cliff” next year. “Based on information obtained from potentially-affected agencies in the summer of 2023,” an agency budget memo says, “KCRHA estimates a likely loss of as many as 300 shelter beds and the inability to prevent homelessness for over 265 additional households.”
Programs that could be cut or eliminated if the city fails to fund them include the Benu Community House, a men’s shelter in the Central District that specializes in serving Black men; staffing and services at several Low Income Housing Institute-run tiny house villages; and several projects funded with short-term federal COVID funds since 2021, including 169 shelter beds, two outreach agencies, and a day center.
During last week’s implementation board meeting, board member Simha Reddy called the budget outlook “really sobering” and “a little bit scary. … We need to ask for a significant increase in funds just to hold steady in terms of services mentioned, at a time when our primary funders are facing difficult, difficult budgets. And I’m really, really worried that they will not be able to meet these kind of stabilization requests that we have.”
The board will vote on the budget proposal in April; historically, the board has adopted the proposed budget without making alterations.
PubliCola is supported entirely by readers like you.
CLICK BELOW to become a one-time or monthly contributor.
2. When challenged about gender discrimination and parity in the Seattle Police Department, Mayor Bruce Harrell and Police Chief Adrian Diaz frequently mention that there are many women in leadership at SPD—recently telling PubliCola, for instance, that “half of the department’s command staff are women.” When the mayor’s spokesman made that comment, the number was actually five out of 13, including just one sworn officer, assistant chief Lesley Cordner.
Now that Cordner, a 35-year veteran of the department, is retiring—and leaving SPD’s command staff with no sworn women—how did Diaz choose to thank her? By sending out an all-staff email misspelling her name. “Please take a moment to watch this heartfelt and congratulatory video, as we celebrate and honor the career of Assistant Chief, Leslie Cordner,” Diaz wrote. About ten minutes later, he sent a second email identical to the first, but with Cordner’s name corrected.
Last year, Cordner reportedly left SPD’s Before the Badge program, where she was one of the program leaders, because of one of the instructors’ views on what he called the LGBTQ “lifestyle,” including his opposition to same-sex marriage. Before the Badge is SPD’s marquee program designed to prepare new recruits to work with diverse communities in Seattle.