Seattle's sitting on a half-billion-dollar budget hole, and the mayor's answer is... more taxes. Welcome to Seattle Politics and Urbanism Daily. Today we're on Wilson's budget math, Sound Transit's plan to defer stations in neighborhoods that were promised light rail years ago, and a suburban city killing its own housing program before it even got started. Every cycle it's the same. Big reform promises, then the budget drops and somehow the only things getting cut are the stuff working people actually use. All right, let's get into it. Here's Charlie Harger at MyNorthwest:
Seattle is facing a projected budget deficit of $488 million over the next three years. Mayor Katie Wilson, five months into the job and facing numbers that are $113 million worse than what her predecessor left behind, went on the Seattle Channel last week to explain how the city got here.
MyNorthwest's Harger has the numbers: Seattle's looking at a nearly $500 million deficit over three years, and that's $113 million worse than what Wilson inherited from Harrell. She brought the budget director on the Seattle Channel to explain it, which, credit where it's due, is at least not hiding. The budget director literally said, 'we're not spending beyond our means,' and then immediately described spending beyond their means. That's not a messaging issue. That's a credibility issue. The 1% property tax cap is part of this, sure, and inflation has chewed that up for years. But that still doesn't explain why the hole got $113 million deeper on the last guy's watch. And Wilson's answer is more taxes, with no real cuts. I'm not some anti-tax absolutist, but you cannot keep going back to the same well while city services stay broken. Eventually people notice. Here's Amy Sundberg at The Urbanist:
The Southend Transit Justice Coalition hosted a rally on Monday near the site of the long-planned Graham Street light rail station to demand Sound Transit not cut the infill station from a rebalanced Sound Transit 3 (ST3) plan. Well attended by local elected officials, non-profit organizations, and community members, rally members insisted that Sound Transit “build the damn trains.”
Sound Transit's rebalancing plan is headed for a board vote in two weeks, and the Southend Transit Justice Coalition spent Monday and Tuesday making it very clear they think the Graham Street and Tukwila infill stations are getting thrown under the bus — or, more precisely, left off the train. The Urbanist's Amy Sundberg was there at the rally. A $34.5 billion gap, and somehow the cuts land on Southeast Seattle and Tukwila — communities that voted yes on ST3, paid into it, and have been waiting for years. 'Indefinite deferral' is just 'no' with better PR. To be fair, $34 billion is a real number. But when the Southend keeps absorbing the pain every time Sound Transit rebalances, it's hard to pretend that's just a coincidence. These are infill stops on a line that already exists. We're not talking about building a whole new extension into the suburbs — we're talking about filling gaps in a corridor that's already running. 'Affordability' starts looking different depending on whose neighborhood gets cut. Here's James Tabafunda at Northwest Asian Weekly:
More than 120 residents, community leaders, and elected officials packed the Filipino Community Center in Seattle’s Rainier Valley on May 12 to demand that Sound Transit honor decades of promises and build two long-deferred light rail stations serving some of the region’s most diverse and transit-dependent communities.
Boeing Access Road station was approved by voters in 1996. That's thirty years of 'we'll get to it.' At some point that stops being a deferral and starts being a lie. Northwest Asian Weekly's James Tabafunda has actually been on this beat, which is worth saying because the big outlets treat Rainier Valley transit coverage like a footnote. Graham Street was in ST3, passed in 2016, supposed to open in 2031. Now Sound Transit's floating scenarios that cut it entirely to close that $34.5 billion hole. And these are the most transit-dependent communities in the region. If you're running a $34 billion agency and your cost-cutting lands hardest on the people with the fewest alternatives, that's not a budget decision. That's a values decision. Sound Transit will say the shortfall is real and the math doesn't lie. Fine. The question is who takes the hit — and so far the south end keeps getting the short straw. The Seattle Medium, with Aaron Allen:
More than 100 days into her tenure as Seattle mayor, Katie Wilson says the city’s biggest challenges, from housing affordability and youth violence to economic displacement and downtown recovery, cannot be solved through quick fixes or politics as usual.
The Seattle Medium sat down with Mayor Katie Wilson past the 100-day mark, and the framing is pretty deliberate: Black business growth, legacy homeownership, affordable housing. She's staking out what she wants her tenure to actually be about. A hundred days in and we're still hearing 'long-term investment and community partnerships.' That's not a plan. That's a press release. What's the actual policy moving? To be fair to Wilson, and credit to the Medium for getting the one-on-one, she's at least naming economic displacement directly. Her predecessors were allergic to saying that out loud. Naming it is round one. Black-owned businesses have been getting squeezed out of the Central District for twenty years. If she doesn't have a zoning tool and a capital tool attached to this, it's just another tribute to a problem that keeps getting worse. Ryan Packer, writing in The Urbanist:
The Maple Valley City Council voted Monday night to scrap a tax incentive program intended to encourage the production of affordable housing, following a cavalcade of public opposition to the proposal over the past few weeks. Despite already voting to create a Multifamily Tax Exemption(MFTE) program earlier this spring, a 5-2 vote fully repealed the program, with the council turning down a separate ordinance that had been drafted to implement it.
Maple Valley just killed its own Multifamily Tax Exemption program — voted it in earlier this spring, voted it out Monday, 5-2. Ryan Packer at The Urbanist has the play-by-play. MFTE is about as standard a housing tool as Washington cities have. It's not radical, and it's not new. So they invented a program, let the public yell at it for a few weeks, and then folded. That's not governance. That's theater. And now Maple Valley gets to say 'we tried' while building nothing. To be fair, the threshold they set wasn't toothless — 20% of units affordable to 70% AMI, with a twelve-year exemption. That's a real ask. But scrapping the whole program instead of adjusting it? That's a political choice, not a policy one. Ninety grand a year is the income ceiling for the 'affordable' units. That's not a low bar, and they still couldn't hold the line. What exactly are they replacing this with? Vibes? If Seattle Politics and Urbanism Daily helps you make sense of the city, take a moment to subscribe and leave a review wherever you're listening. It's a small thing, but it helps more people find the show.
You'll find links to every story we talked about today in the show notes, so if one caught your ear, they're there when you're ready to dig in.
That's Seattle Politics and Urbanism Daily for today. This is a Lantern Podcast.