Tag: universal school meals

City Council, education

Burien Council Fires Controversial City Manager; Mayor and Council Say They’ve Found Money for Universal School Meals After All
Burien City Manager Adolfo Bailon

1. Burien City Manager Adolfo Bailon was fired by the Burien City Council earlier this week on a 4-1 vote, with Councilmember Kevin Schilling absent. His last day will be August 27.

The firing followed a council vote more than three months ago to put Bailon on paid leave while an outside consultant, Kathleen Haggard (of the Haggard-Ganson law firm) conducted an investigation into his conduct as city manager. The council has discussed this investigation in executive session, but has not made any of the details public; PubliCola has requested a copy of the investigation report.

A short list of issues that have come up during Bailon’s tenure as city manager would take up many paragraphs, but they include: Shooting down efforts to stand up a homeless shelter on land owned by the city, threatening to sue a church that hosted an encampment; turning down $1 million in shelter funding from King County; berating council members over their views on homelessness, filing a complaint against one of those councilmembers over his tweets, demanding the removal of Burien’s police chief, and spending much of his time calling 911 on unsheltered people in the park outside his office.

Although the resolution passed this week cites the investigation findings, Bailon was officially fired without cause, allowing him to collect six months’ pay as severance, in addition to receiving his full salary during his nearly four-month leave. During this time, the city of Burien has also been paying interim city manager Bob Larson to serve in Bailon’s stead.

We’ve asked the city for Bailon’s exact salary. According to the Washington Citizens’ Commission on Salaries for Elected Officials, Bailon made $224,664 in 2024, up from $215,000 when he was hired in 2022. Extrapolating from that two-year cost of living adjustment, Bailon’s. current salary is a little under $235,000, meaning he’ll receive around $117,000 in severance pay.

During the meeting, Schilling went on a brief tirade after Mayor Sarah Moore opened up public comment on Bailon’s firing, which the council had just officially announced (although Schilling telegraphed that it was happening earlier, before the council went into executive session.) Opening public comment at 10pm, when “no one’s here,” was a “charade” and “ludicrous,” Schilling said. “This is pretty crazy, Mayor,” Schilling said.

PubliCola is supported entirely by readers like you.
CLICK BELOW to become a one-time or monthly contributor.

Support PubliCola

 

Then, referring to the one person who remained in council chambers and wanted to speak, Schilling said, “The only member of the public who’s here is Quinten [Thompson], and Quinton’s here because he gets driven home after the council meeting.” Thompson, who frequently attends Burien council meetings, uses a wheelchair and gets around via Access van.

Schilling complained that all the comments would be in favor of removing Bailon, then left. Alex Andrade, the one vote in Bailon’s favor, called a point of order to tell a speaker that it was “improper” for him call the behavior that got Bailon fired “abusive.”

Former city councilmember Cydney Moore, speaking during public comment, said it was “incredibly disrespectful and dismssive the way that the current, present audience member was referenced by somebody on council as though their presence is not absolutely intentional and not just passive because they are waiting for a ride. That’s a member of our community who is very active and should be treated with … respect.”

2. After a public outcry, the Seattle City Council has backed down on a proposal to trade universal school meals for low-income grocery vouchers during the upcoming school year, announcing earlier this week that they have reached a deal with Mayor Katie Wilson to provide both immediate universal meals and the vouchers by using “underspend” from an unspecified city department.

The council faced backlash from supporters of universal school meals when they voted 6-3 for an amendment to the spending plan for the Families, Education, Preschool and Promise Levy, sponsored by Councilmembers Joy Hollingsworth and Dionne Foster, that delayed funding for universal meals until the 2027-2028 school year. The amendment took $3 million that would have funded universal school meals starting this year and redistributed it across all six years of the levy to provide $500,000 for food subsidies for up to 5,000 low-income families, or about $100 per family per year.

The new spending plan keeps the food vouchers, which supporters say will provide meals for low-income kids on weekends and over holidays during the school year. Funding for school meals would come from the levy beginning in the 2027-2028 school year under the plan announced this week. The proposal doesn’t address what the city will do if a state tax on income above $1 million is overturned by voters in November or subsequently by a court challenge; instead, it assumes the tax will begin funding school meals statewide in 2029.

 

City Council, education

Council’s School Meals Plan Will Require Cuts to Other Services (Reposted)
Council President Joy Hollingsworth speaking outside council chambers earlier this year.

By Erica C. Barnett

Editor’s note: This post, originally part of today’s Morning Fizz, has been reposted as a separate piece in order to expand today’s other Fizz item, about Police Chief Shon Barnes’ absences from Seattle.

I was out of town for a couple days last week, so I was a few hours late to the news that three Seattle City Council members—Joy Hollingsworth, Dionne Foster, and Dan Strauss—announced they had found a win-win solution to the problem created by a Hollingsworth-Foster amendment repurposing funds that were supposed to pay for universal school meals in the upcoming school year. The amendment, which took $3 million out of universal meals by delaying that program a year, will pay for $500,000 in annual grocery vouchers for up to 5,000 poor families each year, according to the sponsors.

The council’s big fix: Keep the vouchers, and fund universal school meals—at an annual cost of $3 million—out of the city’s general fund, starting with this year’s supplemental budget.

By the time I read about the proposal, there were already a number of stories and social media posts describing the amendment as a solution that gave everybody what they wanted—the FEPP levy could still fund food vouchers for the poorest kids, while the council would use existing money to make universal school meals happen in time for the upcoming school year. “Seattle City Council proposes plan to fund free meals for all school kids,” went a typical headline.

I found the tone of the coverage perplexing. It was as if people forgot that the term “general fund” means “entire discretionary budget for the year” and that the mayor and council are currently facing a budget hole of at least $175 million. Any time the council or mayor add a new obligation into the budget, they have to cut funding in another part of the budget to make it balance. This isn’t deep budget lore; it’s basic math.

Mayor Katie Wilson was less than impressed with the proposal, noting in a statement that she looked forward to “seeing which critical services they plan to cut from the general fund to make their numbers work.”

Proponents of the amendment delaying universal school meals by a year, which passed 6-3 last week, said they wanted to wait to see what happens with the statewide tax on income above $1 million a year, which is supposed to fund universal school meals statewide. That tax is up for a referendum vote in November and could still face challenges in court. If the tax fails, the city will still have to come up with a long-term funding plan to pay for universal school meals in future years.

City Council, Mayor Wilson, Poverty

Universal School Meals Delayed In Favor of Grocery Vouchers for Low-Income Families

By Erica C. Barnett

After weeks of debate that revealed widespread public opposition to a plan to delay funding for universal school meals, a city council committee approved the change today. The proposal, part of the spending plan for the Families, Education, Preschool and Promise levy,  delays funding for a new universal free school breakfast and lunch program for at least a year to fund a grocery voucher for low-income families to buy meals during school breaks and weeds, using $3 million from the first year of the school meal plan to fund $3 million in food vouchers over six years.

According to a memo on the amendment, which was sponsored by Council President Joy Hollingsworth and Councilmember Dionne Foster, the $500,000 annual program will serve “up to 5,000 families annually.” At that level, the program would be able to provide $100 a year to each family.

The idea behind the substitution, according to its sponsors, was twofold. First, the city doesn’t know yet if voters will uphold the millionaires’ tax in November; that tax is supposed to fund universal school meals statewide starting in 2029, in November. Because the money for universal meals may not materialize, it’s risky to fund it locally on a short-term basis.

The second argument, and the subject of the greatest public outcry, was that the poorest students should get priority over those whose parents can afford to pay for meals at school—that is, those who qualify through an annual income verification and application process. Universal school meals might provide food for all children, but the poorest kids are going hungry at home, too, proponents argued, so that need should take priority—at least until we know whether state funding for universal school meals is secure.

“Equity does not mean providing the exact same investment for every student regardless of need,” Hollingsworth, said. “It means directing resources where barriers remain the greatest, and that was my goal with this amendment.”

Both Hollingsworth and Foster complained from the dais about the way their proposal has been portrayed by opponents and members of the media, zeroing in on the term “means testing.”

“‘Means testing—I don’t know where that came from,” Hollingsworth said. “That was not something we ever put out.”

Foster echoed Hollingsworth’s criticism, saying, “It has been very difficult to have these conversations and to listen to some of the narrative out there.” Fresh Bucks, an unrelated voucher program that helps low-income people buy produce at farmers’ markets, is also targeted at low-income people, but no one describes that program as means-tested, Foster said. “And I wonder why that is.”

Means-testing is a term that means, simply, requiring people to prove their income is lower than a specified threshold in order to qualify for benefits. Put another way, it is what happens when the government sets income thresholds that define “need,” and makes people prove that they lack the means, or income, to fulfill that need themselves.

To qualify for reduced-price or free school meals in Seattle, a single parent with one kid has to make less than $39,000 in gross (not take-home) income a year, or $757 a week—approximately Seattle’s minimum wage. For a two-parent family with two kids, that goes up to $59,000, or a total gross income of $1,114 a week. About 50 Seattle schools offer free lunches to all kids because more than 40 percent of parents have qualified for the program. But anyone who makes more than the cutoff is ineligible for help—and to as many public commenters pointed out, there are plenty of people who make more than the bare minimum who struggle to pay their monthly bills in Seattle.

PubliCola is supported entirely by readers like you.
CLICK BELOW to become a one-time or monthly contributor.

Support PubliCola

Although Hollingsworth suggested there would be little to no administrative burden for low-income parents to apply for and get accepted into the new low-income food voucher program, Rob Saka disagreed. Saka spent years in and out of foster care and was raised by a single dad who worked hourly warehouse jobs. From age 9 to 18, Saka said, he only went to the doctor a handful of times and never went to the dentist, because his dad’s hourly warehouse jobs didn’t provide health insurance.

“We qualified for free and reduced lunch, which means we would have also likely qualified for Medicaid,” Saka said. “But I never went to the dentist, and only went to the doctor a handful of times in nine years, because of the severe, significant, nontrivial, and substantial administrative paperwork burden imposed on people that need these valuable resources.”

In a statement, Wilson said, “While I am disappointed with the decision to delay universal meals for a full school year, I respect the Council’s process and know we share a commitment to addressing food insecurity. I am proud that the amendment passed by Council commits the City to universal school meals in 2027. That means up to 6,800 students who currently fall through the cracks will have access to free breakfast and lunch, families will save roughly $1,200 a year, and there is a path to end the stigma around food insecurity in our schools.”

The Hollingsworth-Foster amendment pushes universal school lunches off until 2027. But it also, importantly, still assumes that the millionaires’ tax will be implemented in the future and will start paying for the program in 2029. If voters reject the millionaires’ tax, or a court overturns it, it’s unclear what will happen next year, which would have been Year 2 of Wilson’s universal school lunch program. If the statewide tax tax fails, the current plan would fund universal school meals for just one year, unless the city decided to make universal meals a local funding priority in the future.

Had the universal meals program passed, kids would have been able to get breakfast and lunch at school every day without having to demonstrate that they truly “need” it, at a cost of a few million dollars a year. That’s real money, but it also pales in comparison to what the city spends on other priorities, including $80 million in salary increases for police this year alone.