Seattle's been making big promises for years — today we’re checking which ones are actually getting kept. This is Seattle Politics and Urbanism Daily — I’m Cassidy, Devin’s here — and today’s show is basically two versions of the same thing: institutions getting asked to explain themselves. Sound Transit punting on Ballard, KCRHA getting hauled in for a corrective action report — yeah, accountability Thursday is my kind of Thursday. Alright, let’s get into it. Ryan Packer, writing in The Urbanist:
Set to be discussed at a board committee meeting tomorrow, Somers' plan would keep Sound Transit focused on building the light rail "spine" to Everett Station and Tacoma Dome, but defer or delay other key projects from the 2016 voter-approved ST3 plan. West Seattle Link, a project touted as "shovel-ready" after receiving federal approval last year, would advance but a planned line between South Kirkland and Issaquah would be pushed to 2050 – nine years later than the previous target.
Sound Transit board chair Dave Somers has a plan to cover the agency’s massive revenue shortfall — and the short version is, Everett and Tacoma keep moving, Ballard’s northernmost stations get shoved back to whenever the money shows up, and Graham Street infill is back in question. Graham Street has been "almost happening" since before some of these board members were in office. That’s a majority-minority corridor getting deprioritized again so the agency can protect its suburban spine. The Urbanist flagged it, and they’re right to flag it hard. To be fair, Somers’ proposal is better than the three options the board got at the March retreat — at least it gives actual completion dates, painful as they are. West Seattle Link still moves forward. But "better than three bad options" is a pretty low bar. Voters approved ST3 in 2016. Ballard was the crown jewel — highest ridership, most transformative. You don’t just lop off the top three stations and call it a plan. That’s not a delay, that’s a different project. This one's from Capitol Hill Seattle:
Tuesday, the council approved a motion to “strengthen oversight” of the King County Regional Homelessness Authority and “establish a structured, fact-based process to evaluate its future.” The motion follows release of an audit showing the regional authority has a $44.7 million spending hole with millions unaccounted for.
King County Council voted Tuesday to demand a corrective actions report from the Regional Homelessness Authority by August 1st — after an audit found a negative cash position of forty-four point seven million dollars. Capitol Hill Seattle has been on this one. Forty-four million in the hole, millions unaccounted for, and the response is a motion asking for a report. A report! People are sleeping outside tonight, and the council’s remedy is more paperwork due in three months. To be fair, the whole pitch when KCHRA launched was that consolidating homelessness services under one regional authority would finally cut through the coordination mess. This year’s budget is two hundred and five million dollars. The audit says spending kept outpacing funding inflows — that’s a structural problem, not a rounding error. Consolidated bureaucracy with no real accountability mechanism baked in — and everybody’s shocked. The barn door line practically writes itself, Cassidy. Got thoughts on today’s stories, a tip we should follow, or a correction we need to make? Send us a note at seattledailyfix at lantern podcasts dot com. We’d love to hear from you.
You’ll find links to every story we talked about today in the show notes, so if one caught your ear, you can dig into the original reporting there.
That’s Seattle Politics and Urbanism Daily for this Thursday, May 7th. This is a Lantern Podcast.