Tag: FEPP Levy

City Council, education, Mayor Wilson

Council Proposal Would Delay Universal School Lunch Program, Fund Means-Tested Food Vouchers Instead
Hanan Sherka, a youth and community organizing coordinator at the food-justice nonprofit FEEST. Seattle Channel screenshot

By Erica C. Barnett

When I spoke to Mayor Katie Wilson on Tuesday, one of the key accomplishments she name-checked was her proposal to provide universal free meals for all students at Seattle Public Schools, which she announced—alongside SPS superintendent Ben Shuldiner—two months ago. Part of Wilson’s Families, Education, Preschool, and Promise (FEPP) levy implementation plan, the program would cost about $3 million a year and would eliminate the stigma of the current free-meal program while establishing food as a basic right for Seattle schoolchildren. (Voters passed the FEPP levy last year.)

Later that same day, City Council President Joy Hollingsworth threw this achievement into question, proposing an amendment (co-sponsored by Councilmember Dionne Foster) that would eliminate funding for free school breakfasts and lunches for at least the first year of the levy to fund a new, means-tested vouchers for low-income kids to get meals during holiday breaks during the school year and on weekends. That program would cost $500,000 year, funded by spreading the $3 million one-year cost for universal meals over the six-year levy term.

Like Wilson’s original plan, Hollingsworth’s proposal assumes the statewide millionaire’s tax will pay for universal school meals after the 2027-2028 school year.

In a statement to PubliCola, Wilson said, “I included universal school meals as a core priority in the FEPP Levy Implementation and Evaluation Plan because no child should be expected to learn while hungry. This is a basic human need that reflects a core value of the people in this city. K-12 education is free and universal and the basic nutrition you need to be ready to learn should be free and universal too.

“We estimate that families will save roughly $1,200 per year through this program,” Wilson continued. “Students and families at schools that don’t currently offer universal school meals are counting on us to deliver this for them this school year.”

At a FEPP Committee meeting on Wednesday, Hollingsworth said her amendment was a matter of racial justice for Southeast Seattle, where food insecurity is highest in the city and where there is only one food bank that receives state and federal funding for emergency food assistance.

“I wanted to put this out here for conversation, for us to have a really, really intentional conversation about equity,” Hollingsworth said.

Foster, likewise, argued that feeding the poorest kids should take priority over providing meals to all kids, including those who wouldn’t qualify for free or reduced-price meals under the current means-tested program.

“I am so committed to making sure that our kids, our babies, our students aren’t going hungry in our city, and I think what we are trying to put forward in this amendment is a question and conversation about what is the right way to approach that,” Foster added.

“It’s not about the concept of gutting universal free school lunch. It’s about, we have low-income kids, kids who are qualified for free and reduced lunch … who are also going hungry during school breaks, during week during weekends.”

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Public commenters who spoke to the amendment were overwhelmingly opposed to the tradeoff Hollingsworth and Foster are proposing, arguing that requiring parents to prove they’re poor enough to qualify for food vouchers would perpetuate the stigma that surrounds poverty. The voucher proposal, several noted, would exclude kids whose families are just above the income cutoff—less than $60,000 for a family of four—and those who don’t fill out the paperwork to prove they qualify.

“Even if all students who qualify were to apply and use the program, a family of four or two adults are working full time, making just minimum wage would not qualify for free or reduced lunch,” said Hanan Sherka, a youth and community organizing coordinator at the food-justice nonprofit FEEST. Quoting a student at Chief Sealth High School, Sherka continued, “‘Need is defined very narrowly, and universal school lunch would unburden many families who don’t qualify, but are still struggling financially in the current economic climate.'”

Lilliane Ballesteros, the executive director of Latino Community Fund of Washington State, told the council that means-tested programs create barriers to participation, and “we see that when barriers are set up, families suffer. When families face administrative barriers, they do not access the food and resources they need, and students do not thrive.”

Wednesday’s meeting was the first opportunity for councilmembers to explain their proposed changes to Wilson’s proposed implementation plan; the 11 council amendments just became public late Tuesday afternoon.

Rob Saka was the only councilmember to sound a note of alarm about the food-voucher proposal. Saka said that while what Hollingsworth and Foster are ” trying to do here is is expand the pie … I’m just concerned about the potential delay [to universal meals], and what that portends for affordability, what that portends for stigma, social stigma for students, [and] what that portends for the long-term educational readiness of our future workforce.”

Business, City Council, education, Elections, Mayor Harrell

Head of Downtown Business Group Lobbied for Digital Kiosk Company; Education Levy Will Help Backfill City’s Budget Deficit

1. Under an agreement signed earlier this month, the Downtown Seattle Association will get to keep the revenues, estimated at a little over $1 million a year, from 30 digital ad kiosks that a company called IKE Smart City will soon install on downtown sidewalks. Because the agreement itself is private (the city will get no money from the deal, unless revenues exceed expectations), it’s hard to say whether the business group got a good deal or if IKE will walk away with the lion’s share of the profits.

What is clear is that the relationship between IKE and the Downtown Seattle Association is unusually close: The DSA’s board chair, Pacific Public Affairs principal Sung Yang, is a registered lobbyist for IKE. According to Yang’s filing with the city in April, he was hired by IKE, along with former deputy mayor Hyeok Kim, to lobby the city on “legislation related to Digital Kiosks.”

James Sido, the DSA’s communications director, told PubliCola that Yang “didn’t represent IKE in negotiation on DSA’s agreement with IKE. We conferred directly with Clay Collett, senior development director at Orange Barrel Media (the creators and operators of IKE kiosks).” However, it appears that Yang lobbied the city on IKE’s behalf while serving as board chair of the DSA. That puts Yang on two sides of the three-way deal, serving as a representative for the digital billboard company and the business group that will receive a share of the revenues from the billboards.

2. The city council voted to put a $1.3 billion Families, Education, Preschool, and Promise (FEPP) levy on the ballot earlier this month. If passes, the levy will increase next year from 36.5 cents per $1,000 of assessed home value to an average of 61 cents per $1,000 over the next six years, starting at 72 cents per $1,000 in 2026. That translates to a price tag of $656 a year for the median homeowner in Seattle, up from $248 under the previous, $619 million levy.

In a press release, Mayor Bruce Harrell described the levy as  “transformative,” saying it would  “make Seattle one of the best cities in the nation to start and raise a family, supporting our children from cradle, to classroom, into college and beyond toward successful careers.”

But the levy also includes significant spending—nearly $50 million a year—on programs the city was already paying for out of its general-fund budget, placing services the city has previously treated as fundamental at the mercy of voters. Generally speaking, levies are supposed to be—and are invariably sold as—additive; while the city budget pays for essential services, like fire, police, and a functioning road system, voters decide whether to tax themselves to pay for things like library expansions, sidewalks, and preschool programs.

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This year’s levy will shift funding for almost 30 programs that are currently being funded by the general fund, the JumpStart payroll tax, and the sweetened beverage tax over to the levy, amounting to a total of nearly $300 million over six years. Here are some of the existing programs for which funding will shift to the education levy to help Harrell and the council close a funding gap that’s currently estimated at $250 million over the next two years, along with their current funding sources (all numbers are six-year totals):

  • Increased Mental Health Staffing Supports (JumpStart): $42.1 million
  • Supporting Youth for Success grants, which provide preemployment skill building and mentorship (General Fund): $26 million
  • Youth and Young Adult Behavioral Health (General Fund): $12.7 million
  • Nurse Family Partnership (General Fund): $18.8 million
  • Online therapy for people between 13 and 24 (JumpStart): $24..7 million
  • Developmental Bridge, which provides services to young children with developmental delays (Sweetened Beverage Tax): $4 million
  • In-person mental health care for middle and high school students who aren’t served by school-based health centers (JumpStart): $16.7 million

A spokeswoman for Mayor Harrell, Callie Craighead, said Harrell alluded to the need to use levy dollars to fund existing programs in his levy announcement, when he said the levy would “align existing City investments in programs serving the three initiative goals through levy investments to ensure a stable funding source for years to come, maximize program coordination, and drive positive outcomes for Seattle youth.”

“The City’s latest revenue projections show an uncertain economic outlook and a reduction in multiple funding sources … that would impact important upstream investments for Seattle youth and families. Our levy renewal proposal ensures that these priorities have dedicated, consistent funding for the next six years,” Craighead said.

Already, she added, state budget reductions have forced the city’s Department of Education and Early Learning to use the current levy to fund preschool slots for the 2025 to 2026 school year. “This shows the cascading impact of reductions that we are looking to avoid by having stable funding through the levy.” It also suggests the high-level spending plan Harrell rolled out when he proposed the levy may not be what it ends up funding, and that the city could look to the levy to solve its budget problems in the future.

City Council, education

Spending on City’s New Payroll System Tops $32 Million; Saka Spouts Off About Tech Workers, COVID School Closures

1. The city of Seattle has increased its spending on its troubled new payroll software system, Workday, from $14 million to more than $32 million.

The cost increases have been catalogued in a series of 18 change orders to the city’s contract with Deloitte, the consulting firm that’s been implementing and troubleshooting the new system since last year. Each change order includes a catalog of outstanding issues with Workday, which launched last year after numerous delays.

As soon as the new system was in place, city employees began reporting missing or inaccurate pay, deferred compensation that came out of their paychecks but never showed up in their bank accounts, and disappearing vacation days, among many other problems that have ranged from annoying (managers not being able to hand off payroll approval duties when they take time off) to nerve-wracking (paychecks that showed up hundreds or thousands of dollars short) to harmless but potentially costly (some workers got vacation time they didn’t qualify for—and took it.)

A spokesman for the city’s HR department, Antorris Williams, said change orders are common for large projects, and that all the changes “were approved by the Mayor’s Office and did not require” approval from the city council through a formal budget action. Last year’s city budget estimated that implementing Workday would cost up to $50 million over the life of the contract, which is ongoing.

PubliCola has reached out to the city numerous times about issues with Workday. Every time, we’ve been told that whatever specific crisis we were calling about had been resolved or would be fixed soon. We don’t envy the city HR employees who have to put out fires caused by complex new software that may not have been ready for prime time. But the kind of problems Deloitte was reporting as recently as late February—when the most recent $2.1 million change order was signed—suggest that worrying problems persist.

The tables in Deloitte’s most recent contract update, for example, show dozens of issues that have arisen recently or remain unaddressed. These include employees getting shorted on vacation time; people being improperly told they’re ineligible for family leave; incorrect deductions for union dues and social security; and all manner of big and small nuisances that appear to require one-off changes to the complex system.

Last year, the city converted five “emergency” positions that were created to implement Workday from temporary to permanent. The new positions added $1.5 million in annual city spending. According to the most recent city budget, the permanent employees will provide ” ongoing operations and maintenance support post-implementation.”

2. During a meeting of the city’s Families, Education, Preschool and Promise Levy committee on Thursday, Councilmember Rob Saka, a former Big Tech attorney, was talking about the need to for more opportunities for local Black and brown kids when he made this comment about Seattle’s tech industry:

“Many of those workers aren’t from the city of Seattle. Many of them don’t look like me, to be more blunt. … And you know, there’s a lot of reliance on H1B visas and everything. We need to empower more people with the opportunity to have these jobs, more people locally. So that’s why we need more people from the Central District, more people from the South End, more people from High Point, and we do that by investing in digital skilling initiatives.” Saka’s comment, which suggested that Asian immigrants are taking jobs that should go to people from Seattle, was an extraordinarily poor choice of words, at best, in the current anti-immigrant national climate.

Earlier in the meeting, Saka criticized Seattle for keeping schools and preschools closed during COVID for longer than other parts of the state. After opining that kids who don’t attend preschool are too often watched or babysit at home by Mom or Grandma—nd half the time being babysit by a TV, the soap operas,” Saka said his own kids’ preschool “stayed open the whole time,” allowing him and his wife to “work remotely without [the] distraction of two year olds and three year olds primarily having meltdowns everywhere.”

Seattle, Saka continued, had erred by keeping schools closed too long, and had to be forced by then-Gov. Jay Inslee to reopen at least part-time in April 2021. In 2021, when “schools across the state were opening up left and right, it took an order of the the governor the state of Washington to order schools to open up in Seattle,” Saka said. “So COVID, apparently, was worse in the city of Seattle than other parts of the state, other parts of the country. Not true, by the way. And what kind of impact does it have on people’s mental health? Not good!”

The committee’s other members did not remark on Saka’s comments about immigration and school closures during COVID.