The Seattle City Council’s staff have published a budget memo detailing the issues with the predicted deficit for the General Fund. It summarizes where the deficit came from, the Mayor’s proposal to deal with it in his proposed 2023 budget, and various options for the Council to consider in building …
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Mayor’s proposed 2023-2024 City of Seattle budget
This afternoon Mayor Harrell unveiled his proposed budget for 2023 and 2024. Here are some charts diving into the budget as a whole: And here are some drilling down on the SPD budget: Some of the more notable things in Harrell’s budget: I hope you found this article valuable. If …
Continue readingCity Council budget planning memo
Every August the City Council’s budget chair distributes a memo to colleagues and staff detailing the process that the Council will be using to construct and pass the following year’s city budget. Here is the memo that Budget Chair Mosqueda sent out last month for the 2023 budget process. I …
Continue readingCity of Seattle ARPA spending quarterly update
The City of Seattle’s budget office has submitted a new quarterly report on how federal ARPA funds have been spent to-date. I hope you found this article valuable. If you did, please take a moment to make a contribution to support my ongoing work. Thanks!
Continue readingSeattle city budget woes, spelled out
Last week the City Council was updated on 2022 city spending and the latest projections for revenues and expenditures for the next few years. The news was not good. In short: inflation has driven up expenses quickly, and the economic recovery is slower than prior forecasts predicted. So revenues are …
Continue readingSPD staffing update
This week the Seattle City Council’s central staff presented a mid-year update on SPD’s staffing and budget expenditures. Their slides contain all the details, including the latest SPD 911-call response times. I hope you found this article valuable. If you did, please take a moment to make a contribution to …
Continue readingContract to manage $30M Seattle participatory budgeting program
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 …
Continue readingSeattle 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 …
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