The Sound Transit board just made it official: full Ballard is design-only, and the construction money is still unfunded. And the same day, the city council put a clock on Mayor Wilson. This is Seattle Politics and Urbanism Daily. I'm Cassidy, Devin's here, and today the week’s open questions stopped being questions. The ST3 vote happened, the drug ordinance passed, and August 1 is now on the calendar for the homelessness agency. We've got receipts on all of it, and I want to know where South King ends up in this whole 'affordable plan' language now that the board's actually signed the thing. And one more: Wilson wants to double the Seattle transit measure the same day ST3 formalizes its construction gap. Ryan Packer at The Urbanist has the numbers, and we're going to ask the awkward part — who was that math written for? From Sound Transit:
The new plan will keep light rail projects moving by building projects that are ready for construction and advancing projects already in the planning process. The updated system plan incorporates cost savings from across the agency, including new revenue sources and financial policies to set the agency on a sustainable path going forward.
The Sound Transit board voted today, and the updated ST3 system plan is now official policy. Not a scenario. Not a financing conversation. Everett to Tacoma Dome gets built. West Seattle and Ballard Link go to Seattle Center. Full Ballard gets design funding, and construction funding for full Ballard is still not identified. So the headline says 'Ballard' and the fine print says 'design-only.' That's not a Ballard line, that's a Ballard drawing. And somebody needs to show me where South King's growth nodes show up in this so-called 'affordable plan' — because Everett to Tacoma Dome made the cut and full Ballard didn't. That's a choice. Back on June 1, Strauss was asking what lever was left after the board voted. Now we know: design funding is the lever, and it's a short one. It keeps the project alive on paper without putting a dollar into steel in the ground. Dow Constantine called this a 'realism and optimism' moment. Realism for who? Because the people who voted yes on ST3 in 2016 thinking they were getting a Ballard line are getting a PDF. From Ryan Packer at The Urbanist:
Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson unveiled a proposal to renew Seattle's expiring transit funding measure on Tuesday, charting a path to increased frequencies on buses in every corner of the city via additional investment in King County Metro. The current 0.15% sales tax rate approved by voters in 2020 as the Seattle Transit Measure(STM) would be doubled to 0.3%, the maximum amount a city can charge via a transportation benefit district under state law.
Ryan Packer at The Urbanist has the numbers here: Mayor Wilson wants to double the Seattle Transit Measure from 0.15% to 0.3% sales tax, the state ceiling for a transportation benefit district. That takes Metro from roughly 176,000 supplemental service hours a year to 280,000. That's a real jump. And it's also the same day the Sound Transit board made Ballard construction unfunded. So the city is maxing out its own legal sales-tax ceiling to patch the gap Sound Transit just made official policy. I want to know whether South Park and Rainier Valley routes are in that 280,000 hours, or if 'every corner of the city' is doing the same work that 'affordable plan' did in the ST3 vote. That's the MHA question in a different hat, too. We've been circling what the actual affordability toolkit looks like at the city level, and now you've got a bus-frequency levy doubling sitting next to whatever happens with development fees. Wilson's transit measure is either a workaround for the ST3 hole or a coincidence of timing, and I don't think it's a coincidence. The city hasn't been able to buy this much Metro service since 2018, and Packer says that plainly. Eight years of running below that threshold, and the response is a ballot measure that still has to pass. If voters say no in a recession year, the ST3 gap and the bus gap land on the same riders at the same time. KUOW writes:
The Seattle City Council voted 6-3 Tuesday to make drug use and possession a gross misdemeanor under city law, ending a period of uncertainty about who is responsible for enforcing those minor crimes. The vote allows the city attorney to prosecute drug cases, but also encourages a “public health approach” to addiction, which would emphasize pre-trial and pre-arrest diversion and treatment programs. The bill doesn't contain any new funding for drug treatment.
The Seattle City Council voted 6-3 Tuesday to make drug possession and public use a gross misdemeanor under city law. That's KUOW's vote count. The ordinance encourages a 'public health approach' with diversion and treatment, but it puts in zero new funding for either. Zero new treatment dollars. They passed a criminal enforcement tool and left the behavioral health infrastructure exactly where it was, which, per the DCHS audit Amy Sundberg reported Monday, is already running on oversight nobody fully trusts. So now you've got a gross misdemeanor charge and nowhere to divert people to. And the Fourteenth Avenue co-response and Medicaid diversion funding thread is still unresolved — the federal Medicaid threat is still live — so this 'public health approach' language is pointing at a system that may not have the money to catch whoever gets diverted to it. Six to three. That's not a squeaker. And the council that just voted to criminalize public use is the same council that handed Mayor Wilson an August 1 deadline on the homelessness agency. Two simultaneous bets on the same underlying crisis — and neither one has new money attached to it. The Olympian writes:
Community concerns about Jones' placement stem from allegations during her time at Rainier View Elementary School, where she served as principal for 13 years. She was removed from that position in April 2024, following allegations that she created a "toxic" and "unsafe" environment for students and staff. Allegations included that Jones implemented harsh discipline policies that fell disproportionately on Black and brown students, discriminated against English-language learners and on the basis of religion, and violated students' individual education plans.
The Olympian got the documents SPS is using to justify keeping Anitra Jones at Adams Elementary. She started May 18, over sustained community objection, and Shuldiner has not moved. That's the specific test case for what his 'whatever it takes' accountability language actually means in practice. And note what The Olympian points out: prior SPS administrations folded on school closures, the Highly Capable program, pandemic reopening — Shuldiner is not folding here. That's either genuine institutional spine or a really bad hill to pick. The accountability thread on Shuldiner now has a named school, a named principal, a start date on record, and a community that showed up loud enough to get scolded at a board meeting. That's a documented counterexample to the transparency framing, not a hypothetical one. Frank Lenzi, writing in MyNorthwest:
The Seattle City Council voted unanimously Tuesday to approve a resolution charting next steps for the troubled King County Regional Homelessness Authority (KCRHA). The KCRHA resolution, sponsored by Seattle Councilmembers Alexis Mercedes Rinck and Dionne Foster, gives the Seattle Mayor’s Office until August 1 to recommend whether to restructure, dissolve, or continue the embattled homelessness agency.
The open-ended accountability loop on King County's homelessness authority just got a date attached to it: August 1, per a unanimous council vote yesterday, sponsored by Rinck and Foster. Mayor Wilson has until then to recommend restructure, dissolve, or continue — those are the three options on the table, now in writing. And this lands the same week the council passed the drug ordinance. So the city is running criminal enforcement on public use with one hand, and with the other it's still figuring out whether the agency that's supposed to catch those people even survives past summer. That's not a plan. That's two bets placed at once. Rinck said, 'now is not a time for knee-jerk reactions' — and since Rivera and Dembowski had already called for dissolution back in April, this resolution also slows that push down. August 1 is a deadline, sure, but it's also a delay. Who absorbs the cost of that two-month window? Not Rinck. Not the council calendar. The Amy Sundberg audit thread from Monday already flagged the DCHS oversight gaps, and now the city is layering a drug ordinance on top of behavioral health infrastructure that nobody's fully signed off on yet. If Seattle Politics and Urbanism Daily helps you stay on top of the city, take a moment to subscribe or leave a review wherever you're listening. It really helps other people find the show.
You'll find links to every story we talked about today in the show notes, so if something stuck with you, it's easy to go read more.
That's Seattle Politics and Urbanism Daily for today. This is a Lantern Podcast.