Tag: Maritza Rivera

City Council, Taxes

Business Tax Will Be on November Ballot, Despite Council Objections Over Spending “Buckets”

By Erica C. Barnett

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.

City Council, Development, Equity, housing

Maritza Rivera Said She Never Intended to Gut the Equitable Development Initiative. Records Tell a Different Story.

 

Records also show that Rivera, who blamed the city’s planning director for delaying a meeting “for months,” was chiefly responsible for the delays.

By Erica C. Barnett

In late May, City Councilmember Maritza Rivera proposed freezing 2024 funds intended for the Office of Planning and Community Development’s Equitable Development Initiative, the city’s largest anti-displacement program, prompting outrage from community-based organizations and residents across the city.

She backed down after thousands of people flooded council members’ inboxes with objections to her proposal, which would have frozen about $24 million in 2024 funding for EDI projects unless OPCD spent all the funds that were currently available for the program, around $53.5 million, by September. Because it can take many years to spend capital funds, the measure would have effectively halted all projects planned for 2024 as well as future projects, putting a halt to the program.

EDI provides partial funding, such as startup capital costs, to community groups and nonprofits doing projects that benefit low-income people and communities of color, largely in Southeast Seattle. Freezing the 2024 funds would have opened up a path for the council to spend these targeted dollars closing the general-fund budget, at the expense of dozens of projects lined up to get EDI funds this year.

Rivera insisted at the time that she wasn’t trying to kill the initiative, and said she never intended to vote against the budget “carryforward” ordinance that would have preserved funding for projects that are already under contract.

But documents obtained through a records request show that Rivera was scoffing at EDI well before she began raising questions publicly, and that as late as May 15, she was suggesting that she might vote to kill the $53.5 million in projects as well, telling OPCD director Rico Quirindongo in an email, “At $50.5 million dollars and given the $250 million budget deficit, I need to have information that will give me confidence in voting for the proposed carryforward and in general, by which to show my constituents the accountability we are giving to OPCD’s programs.”

Even earlier, in March—shortly after OPCD did a lengthy presentation on EDI— Rivera texted Councilmember Cathy Moore, saying, “I could not disagree more that EDI has addressed housing displacement across the city and for low income families.”

In May, Rivera defended her proposal after three hours of public comment against it, accusing her colleague Tammy Morales of spreading “disinformation” and confusing people into believing that her bill would cut funding for projects that were already funded.

A review of thousands of emails that poured in opposing Rivera’s proposal, however, suggests the opposite—community groups, including many that have received EDI funds, understood exactly what her bill would do.

For instance, Wa Na Wari, the Black arts and culture organization, noted in their email that their plans to purchase a permanent home include future EDI funding that would be at risk under Rivera’s proposal. The director of the Church Council of Greater Seattle wrote, “It is imperative to the flourishing of our city that you do not pass any amendment which would freeze funding for the Equitable Development Initiative.” And even a mass email, which referred to the more than 50 organizations whose EDI funding was secured prior to 2024, noted that the proposal would harm ongoing and upcoming projects by halting the program.

Rivera also mischaracterized her attempts to get information from OPCD about the program. During a May council meeting,  for example, Rivera complained that she had repeatedly sought meetings with OPCD, but the department had “consistently rescheduled and delayed.”

But emails and scheduling records only show one instance in which OPCD rescheduled a meeting, moving a one-hour sit-down with Rivera from Friday, May 17 to Monday, May 20 so that Mayor Bruce Harrell’s chief operating officer, Marco Lowe, could be there. (OPCD met with Rivera a second time later that week.) “As a consequence” of this schedule change, Rivera told a council central staffer on May 15, she was pulling EDI program out of “carryforward” legislation for a separate vote, setting up her proposal to freeze funding for the program.

Ironically, the May meeting would have happened a month earlier if Rivera herself had not rescheduled it, after Quirindongo said he had COVID and would need to meet virtually instead of at Rivera’s office.  “I think we should reschedule and give you time to recover,” Rivera wrote. “Feel better soon.”

Quirindongo did meet briefly with Rivera on May 8, but only after Rivera moved the meeting at least twice, according to scheduling records, prompting his assistant to ask Rivera’s legislative aide, “Are you able to clarify about the delay in this meeting getting scheduled? You had said she would be available today, then Monday morning, but now not until midday Wednesday, and I’d like to better understand if there are special steps we need to take in the future to get on her calendar if we have time-sensitive requests.”

Despite being chiefly responsible for putting off the meeting with OPCD, Rivera sent multiple emails to Quirindongo excoriating him for delaying their meeting “for over two months.” Quirindongo responded that, in the case of the May meeting that OPCD bumped from Friday to the following Monday, Lowe was invited to help answer some of Rivera’s questions—including a list she sent Thursday night, just hours before the meeting was scheduled.

Rivera responded, “I have always been clear on the request. Not sure where the disconnect is on OPCD’s end. Looking forward to the set of briefings occurring before next Tuesday,” which was the deadline for council members to amend the budget legislation. Rivera didn’t introduce her amendment to freeze EDI funding until three days after the deadline, filing it late in the afternoon on May 24, the Friday before the long Memorial Day weekend.

City Council, education, Equity, Transportation

Spending Money Earmarked for Student Mental Health Will Require Action from Skeptical Council; Saka Abruptly Cuts Off Presentation on Transportation Equity

1. Seattle City Councilmembers, many of them still focused on undoing the legacy of the previous, more progressive council, turned their attention this week to an increase in the JumpStart payroll tax passed in the final days of budget deliberations last year.

The 0.1 percent increase, sponsored by former councilmember Kshama Sawant (with current council members Sara Nelson and Dan Strauss voting “no”), is supposed to flow into the city’s Department of Education and Early Learning to “expand educational supports at Seattle Public Schools, prioritizing mental health services including, but not limited to, school-based mental health counselors and culturally specific and responsive programming from community-based organizations.”

That won’t happen, however, without followup legislation expanding the possible uses of the JumpStart tax to include mental health supports for students—and until then, money will keep accruing, unspent.

The council and Mayor Bruce Harrell have already signaled that they plan to amend JumpStart, which is supposed to pay for affordable housing, Equitable Development Initiative projects, and Green New Deal investments, to free up money to solve a general-fund deficit of around $260 million. (The deficit has grown, among other reasons, because of a recently adopted contract with the city’s police guild giving officers retroactive raises of 24 percent).

During a budget committee meeting this week, Strauss said the council did no outreach to the school district before passing the increase for mental health programming, and new Councilmember Maritza Rivera expressed skepticism about the city taking on “a newer line of business” that they had no expertise in. The council previously added $4 million, over two years, for mental health services in schools, with $250,000 of that earmarked for Ingraham High School, the site of a 2022 shooting.

Rivera, whose kids go to Ingraham, said she had “no idea how the money was implemented, how well it’s working. It’s a new line of business, [and] there are no mental health experts at the department or at the city. There’s [Seattle-King County] Public Health, but I’m not sure how plugged-in Public Health was to that [decision], so definitely a lot of questions here.”

Yesterday’s shooting at Garfield High School will make it harder, politically, for council members obsessed with undoing Sawant’s legacy to allow the school mental-health funding (which was prompted by the Ingraham shootingl) to lapse, but anything’s possible; if the city doesn’t allocate the money this year, via the regular midyear budget process, it would go back into the JumpStart fund and be allocated among the current spending categories.

Employers have been paying the increased tax—which is based on the pay of the highest-paid employees at the city’s largest companies—since the beginning of the year.

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2. During a meeting of the council’s special transportation levy committee this week, committee chair Rob Saka abruptly cut off a presentation from the Seattle Department of Transportation about a proposed task force that will, if the levy passes in November, be charged with creating policies to guide levy spending on sidewalks, bridges, and street paving, with a focus on equity and financial sustainability.

SDOT director Greg Spotts had just given a brief overview of the levy and was handing the mic off to SDOT’s transportation equity program manager, Annya Pintak, to talk about efforts to integrate the city’s race and social justice goals into the levy.

That’s when Saka jumped in, telling Spotts, “I’m gonna cut you off here for just a moment. I feel like we have a good baseline on that. And so, you know, you were invited here today with the specific purpose and intent [of] talking about the task force. So I encourage you to direct your comments and narrow them to the task force, and I believe slide 14 is… where that starts.”

A third presenter, levy program manager Megan Shepherd, jumped past Pintak’s presentation to her own slides, leaving Pintak—the only person of color at the presenters’ table—sitting silently (and awkwardly) at the table for the rest of the presentation.

Whatever Saka’s reason for rushing SDOT along, nixing the equity section of the department’s presentation didn’t save much time; the whole agenda item took up roughly 15 minutes of an almost two-and-a-half-hour meeting that began and ended with lengthy remarks by Saka.

City Council, Development, Equity

Council Imposes New Reporting Requirements on Community-Led Development Projects

“Please don’t characterize us as misinformed. We are very informed about the work that needs to happen with our projects.”

By Erica C. Barnett

Supporters of the city’s Equitable Development Initiative, which helps fund organizations by and for communities of color, held a press conference at City Hall on Tuesday morning to oppose a budget amendment from Councilmember Maritza Rivera that will require the city’s Office of Planning and Development to create a detailed report on all EDI-funded projects by September 24.  This report, according to the new amendment, must include a “status update” on all EDI projects, and include, “where knowable, potential future funding requests for the identified projects.”

The council passed the amendment 8-1 this afternoon, with Councilmember Tammy Morales voting no.

At the press conference before the vote, Morales said the council was subjecting the EDI program to a greater level of scrutiny than other city-funded projects, and requiring first-time developers and small community nonprofits to complete large capital projects faster than private-market developers.

“We are staring down the barrel of an austerity budget,” Morales added. “And what we learned this past week is that when budget cuts are discussed, programs that support Black and brown communities are always first on the chopping block, and that’s not going to stand.”

As we’ve reported, the amendment the council adopted Tuesday was a significant downgrade from a proposal that could have yanked funding for existing and new EDI projects, from Interim Community Development’s ongoing renovation of Chinatown/International District community hub Bush Gardens to a child care center at El Centro de la Raza’s Four Amigos affordable housing development in Columbia City.

Originally, Rivera proposed placing a freeze on all of this year’s EDI funding—around $25 million—unless the city spent all of the funds previously allocated to projects funded by EDI, but still unspent, by September 24—more than $53 million. As the leaders of many organizations that are currently building EDI-funded projects have pointed out, this would have been an essentially impossible feat, given that the initiative funds dozens of multi-year projects that are in various stages of development.

If the programs failed to meet this goal, according to the text of Rivera’s original amendment, “the $25.3 million appropriation will lapse at year-end and become part of the 2025 beginning fund balance” and “could be reallocated in the 2025 budget.”

Explaining the need for a new reporting requirement, Rivera said she was concerned that the Office of Planning and Community Development, where EDI is housed, “has not shown an appropriate level of accountability or transparency regarding the EDI program and its ability to track and complete these important projects in community.”

In addition, Rivera suggested, the city is sitting on funding it needs to get out the door right away. “OPCD has spent, on average, only 25 percent of EDI’s total budget every year for the last five years,” Rivera said, holding up a chart suggesting that if this trend continues, the program will have $90 million in unspent funds by 2026.

Development projects have been delayed across the board since the beginning of 2020 due to supply-chain issues, higher construction, materials, and labor costs, and other factors that are not limited to community-based developers.

Community groups, including some who helped develop the EDI program, have spent the week and a half since Rivera put her original amendment online trying to explain to her how it would impact them. Rivera has responded by accusing unnamed forces of running a “disinformation” campaign that had “misinformed” community groups into thinking their funding was at risk.

Rivera’s colleague Bob Kettle backed her up on Tuesday. “At no time were the carryforward dollars or this year’s budget at risk, but the emails and the communication [council members received] had that point front and center,” Kettle said. “So where does this miscommunication or disinformation originate from or how does it get pushed? I don’t know. Some may say this is politics, but I think it contributes to the lack of civility and the ability to have a full public discourse.”

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Karen Toering, representing the EDI-funded Black and Tan Hall in Hillman City, said the council members were incorrect when they said community groups didn’t understand Rivera’s original legislation. “Please don’t characterize us as misinformed, because we are very informed about the work that needs to happen with our projects,” Toering said. Instead of imposing additional reporting requirements, she added, “What you could do is build more capacity for EDI to do the work that you’re asking them to do.”

Representatives from groups that have completed, or are in the process of developing, capital projects that received funding from the eight-year-old program said EDI is being subject to far more scrutiny than other items that carry forward in the city’s budget from year to year, such as funding for police positions that SPD acknowledges it can’t fill but for which funding carries over into the following year’s budget every year.

“The city continues to allocate $41.3 million to the Seattle Police Department for police positions that have not and cannot be filled,” Puget Sound SAGE director Aretha Basu said at Tuesday’s press conference. “And this money is allowed to carry over year after year after year. So explain to me how our communities and our programs are getting nickeled and dimed while the police department’s budget grows in the midst of such a massive budget deficit. How is that equity?”

Historically, funding for SPD’s “ghost” positions has been used to pay for other SPD priorities, such as a (recently scuttled) acoustic gunshot surveillance system and overtime for officers to provide traffic control at events. In 2022, the council eliminated 80 of these vacant positions (out of 240 at the time), a move now-Council President Sara Nelson claimed would discourage people from applying for jobs as police.

As community advocates, including Toering, pointed out on Tuesday, the city has already effectively frozen EDI funding this year. When Mayor Bruce Harrell imposed a partial hiring freeze in January, he also directed city departments to hold off on issuing requests for proposals (part of the application process for city funds) for projects above $1 million, including those funded through EDI.

At the time, mayoral spokesman Jamie Housen told PubliCola the mayor’s office was “seeking to review these in context of all projects and programs and to provide a complete understanding of upcoming financial commitments – this does not mean these dollars will not go out the door.”

Nearly five months later, the city’s planning department has not received the go-ahead to spend the money. We have asked the mayor’s office for more information about the status of this year’s $24 million in EDI funding and will update this post when we hear back.

City Council, Equity

Rivera Backs Off on Amendment That Threatened Dozens of Anti-Displacement Programs

By Erica C. Barnett

In a late-afternoon announcement Friday, Seattle City Councilmember Maritza Rivera announced she is pulling a proposed budget proviso that threatened the future of dozens of projects funded by the city’s Equitable Development Initiative, the city’s largest anti-displacement program. Rivera’s new amendment “requests that the Office of Planning and Community Development submit a status report for the Equitable Development Initiative (EDI) grant program in the 2024 Adopted Budget.”

On Tuesday, advocates for EDI-funded programs filled council chambers to capacity as they waited to testify against Rivera’s proposal. EDI funds help community groups that have not previously developed projects with funding for site acquisition, capacity building, and other costs; since 2016, when the program started, EDI has funded mixed-use housing developments, supported arts organizations, and helped small businesses expand and stay in their communities.

Although Rivera claimed her proviso—a freeze on funding until a later council vote—wouldn’t defund any current EDI projects, that would almost certainly be its impact. In addition to requiring a report from OPCD, Rivera’s original amendment would have required OPCD to spend all the money allocated to the program in previous years, a total of $53.5 million, by September 24—a virtually impossible task, given that capital projects take years, not weeks or months. If any of the funds remained unspent, this year’s funding, more than $25 million, would be absorbed back into the city’s budget.

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Specifically, Rivera’s original amendment “impose[d] a proviso1 on $25.3 million allocated for the Equitable Development Initiative (EDI) program in the 2024 Adopted Budget. … Council would consider lifting the proviso via ordinance after the Office of Planning and Community Development (OPCD) accomplishes the following: (1) expends the proposed 2023 carryforward amount of $53.5 million; and (2) provides a status update report to the City Council on the existing list of projects.” The “transmittal of legislation to lift the proviso,” the original proposal continues, “should occur no later than September 24, when the Council anticipates transmittal of the Executive’s proposed 2024 Year-End Supplemental Budget Ordinance.”

If the conditions aren’t met in time, Rivera’s original proposal says, “the $25.3 million appropriation will lapse at year-end and become part of the 2025 beginning fund balance.”

Rivera, who has never acknowledged that her proposal amounted to anything more than a request for information, has said the people who opposed her original amendment were victims of “disinformation” from unspecified sources. In her statement today, she continued to insist that her proposal would not have put EDI programs at any risk. “As I said earlier this week, the ongoing projects were never at risk, but I understand that stakeholders needed a strong message of support for the EDI program. I look forward to continued engagement with community,” Rivera said.

City Council, Development, Equity

Blaming Blowback on “Disinformation,” Rivera Postpones Vote on Future of Equitable Development Initiative for One Week
Dian Ferguson, director of the Central Area Senior Center, was one of more than 150 people who testified on Tuesday.

By Erica C. Barnett

On Tuesday, the Seattle City Council voted to postpone a vote on Councilmember Maritza Rivera’s last-minute amendment to freeze 2024 funding for the city’s largest anti-displacement program, the seven-year-old Equitable Development Initiative, until next week, ostensibly so that Rivera can “correct disinformation that was irresponsibly given to community about the proposed amendment.”

“I am deeply disappointed that the objective of this amendment has been grossly mischaracterized,” Rivera said, describing her proposal as a mere request for a “status report” from the city’s Office of Planning and Community Development on projects funded by the initiative, which helps pay (among other things) for early-stage development costs and technical assistance for projects proposed by community groups that have limited development experience.

Although Rivera claimed her proviso—a freeze on funding until a later council vote—wouldn’t defund any current EDI projects, she failed to acknowledge the most impactful element of the legislation: In addition to requesting a report on current projects, Rivera’s amendment would require OPCD to spend all the money allocated to the program in previous years, a total of $53.5 million, by September 24.

If that doesn’t happen, according to the text of Rivera’s amendment (below) and the staff analysis attached to the proposal, the council could not hold a vote to lift the proviso and the money for the EDI projects would go back into the general fund, where it could be used to close an estimated $250 million budget deficit.

Because capital projects take years, not months, the effect of the amendment would be to cripple projects that are already underway. “Development projects take time, and if you’re not an experienced developer, it takes longer,” Councilmember Tammy Morales, a longtime EDI supporter, said. “But that doesn’t mean that we withhold funding from your program, so that you can’t continue to execute on your program. It means that we make sure you get what you need to do it right.”

Rivera’s proposal went up online the Friday afternoon before the long Memorial Day weekend, giving representatives from the dozens of community groups that would be impacted by the loss of funding just three days to mobilize against the proposal. On Tuesday, they turned out in numbers, spilling out of council chambers and into the Bertha Knight Landes room on the first floor of City Hall while they waited to speak.

Supporters of EDI, many of them from organizations that participate in the program, made up a large majority of those who testified (the remainder were mostly gig workers who came to ask the council not to cut their wages, a decision the council also decided to punt to a later date.) Speakers described how the program had enabled their organizations to buy property for a future mixed-use development (Quynh Pham, Friends of Little Saigon), make progress toward reopening a legendary International District institution (Karen Akada Sakata, Bush Garden), and renovate a building that serves as an important community gathering space in the Central District (Dian Ferguson, Central Area Senior Center.)

“I actually see the amendment close to being redlining, and we don’t need to go back to times when things were redlined,” Ferguson said. With the help of an EDI grant, she said, her organization “has helped African American communities, BIPOC communities, young people. What we are trying to avoid is displacement.”

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During public comment, Rivera rarely looked up from her computer, even when local elected officials—four members of the Duwamish Tribal Council, including Chairwoman Cecile Hanson—spoke against the proposal.

In a statement after the meeting, Rivera claimed the hundreds of people who wrote emails and testified simply didn’t understand her legislation.  proposal “The amendment does not cut the Equitable Development Initiative (EDI) program.does not cut the Equitable Development Initiative (EDI) program,” Rivera said. “I am deeply disappointed that the objective of this amendment has been grossly mischaracterized.”

Morales, whose Southeast Seattle district includes the majority of the projects that receive EDI funding, tried to shoot down the delay. “Frankly, if you want to propose legislation that rolls back commitments made to black and brown communities, at least have the courage to stand by your legislation and vote on it, or acknowledge that you made a mistake and withdraw it,” Morales said.

Noting that it can take six or more years for even experienced developers to put together funding to buy a site and build a project, Morales added that she was not surprised that many EDI projects take years. ” Development projects take time, and if you’re not an experienced developer, it takes longer. But that doesn’t mean that we withhold funding from your program so that you can’t continue to execute on your program. It means that we make sure you get what you need to do it right.

Rivera said she plans to reintroduce her amendment at next Monday’s full city council meeting.