In April, the City of Seattle announced that it had selected the Participatory Budgeting Project (PBP) to manage the city’s $30 million participatory budgeting program, pending completion of a contract. Last Friday the contract with PBP was finally signed. PBP will be paid $2.75 million to run the program. PBP …
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Seattle Human Services Department “financial improvement plan”
For several years Seattle’s Human Services Department, which has one of the largest budgets in the city’s government, has had chronic issues with financial management. Last year the department began a “Financial Improvement PLan to address these issues. Below are the slides due to be presented by HSD to the …
Continue readingMayor’s Office launches “transparency portal” for city’s federal COVID relief funds spending
When is a “dashboard” not a “dashboard”? Apparently when it’s a “transparency portal.” Mayor Harrell has launched such a thing to elucidate how the city is spending nearly $300 million of COVID relief funding from the federal government. The spending is broken up into five broad categories: housing and homelessness; …
Continue readingSound Transit 2021 Annual Report and Transit Development Plan 2022-2027
Sound Transit has published its draft 2021 Annual Report, and its Transit Development Plan for 2022 through 2027. The report details the substantial drop-off in ridership in both 2020 and 2021. While Link light-rail ridership is starting to pick up again, other ST services continued to drop off last year …
Continue readingSeattle Metropolitan Parks District “cycle 2” plan
Seattle’s voter-approved Metropolitan Parks District levies taxes to directly supplement the city’s parks system budget. Currently on the table is a proposal to roughly double the levy amount for “cycle 2,” the next six years. Next week the nine City Council members, who collectively comprise the Parks District board, will …
Continue readingSPD Recruitment and Retention Plan
This morning Mayor Harrell unveiled a new recruitment and retention plan to address the dramatic drop in SPD officers over the past two years. The plan centers on four key themes: Make hiring easier, faster and more efficient; Attract top recruits with competitive compensation; Recruit candidates committed to the community; …
Continue readingState economic forecast update
The Washington State Economic and Revenue Forecast Council has issued its forecast update for June. This is a detailed report of national and state economic forecast indicators, with predictions for the next few years. Given everything that is in play at the moment — war in Ukraine, the ongoing COVID …
Continue readingSeattle Public Schools proposed 2022-2023 budget
Tonight the Seattle School Board is scheduled to vote on approving the school district budget for the next academic year. The proposed budget includes $1.64 billion in expenses, while spending down about $287 million of the accumulated fund balance. You can find more detail about the budget development process here. …
Continue readingState rainy day funds
According to research by the Pew Charitable Trusts, Washington is the only state with a negative “rainy day fund.” This is in contrast to the nationwide trend leading to record amounts accumulated in states’ rainy day funds. The state does have other reserves it can draw on in times of …
Continue readingKing County Regional Homeless Authority Proposed 2023 Budget
Last week the Governing Committee of the King County Regional Homeless Authority approved a proposed 2023 budget for the organization of $227,403,776, an increase of more than $66 million over the 2022 budget. Here is the presentation to the Governing Committee on the proposed budget. It contains a significant amount …
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