This afternoon, the City Council approved three additions to the Mayor’s proposed renewal of the Seattle Library Levy, then advanced it out of committee. It’s now scheduled for final approval on Monday, which would place it on the August 6th ballot.
Continue reading Council adds to Library Levy, then votes it out of committee
In a pair of meetings this week, the Council discussed issues and possible amendments related to the Mayor’s proposal for renewing the Seattle Library Levy.
Continue reading Council debates amendments to Library Levy proposal
Seattle politics is pretty toxic at the moment; it seems everyone is angry about something, especially when it comes to the homelessness crisis and bike lanes.
That said, there are some important conversations happening right now that we all need to be well-informed to participate in. Here are some things you should be reading.
Last week, Mayor Durkan announced her proposal for a renewal of the 2012 Seattle Library Levy, which expires at the end of this year. Durkan is proposing a levy of $213.3 million over seven years, an increase from the $123 million raised by its predecessor.
Let’s dig into the numbers.
Continue reading Running the numbers on the proposed Library Levy renewal
This afternoon, the City Council voted to approve the long-debated Waterfront Local Improvement District (LID), along with companion legislation that approves an operations and management agreement for the resulting Waterfront Park and a “protest waiver” agreement with the owners of a majority of the property interests in the LID assessment area.
This morning, the City Council voted to move out of committee the legislation establishing a Waterfront Local Improvement District (aka LID).
This afternoon the City Council got a briefing on the waterfront LID agreement that the city negotiated with property-holders in the proposed LID assessment area, as well as other updates on the Waterfront Park project. Here are some key new learnings beyond my writeup last week.
Continue reading More details on the Waterfront LID Agreement
Today the Washington State Supreme Court denied a request by the City of Seattle to hear its appeal of a legal challenge to the city’s income tax ordinance, instead redirecting it to the Court of Appeals for further proceedings.
Continue reading State Supreme Court declines to hear income tax case, sends it to Court of Appeals
In June of 2017 the City Council passed a sales tax on sweetened beverages, to take effect on January 1, 2018. Now, with some initial data in hand, the Mayor and City Council are deciding how to spend the tax revenues over the next two years. But things haven’t turned out the way the experts predicted, raising questions about whether the “soda tax” was such a good idea in the first place. It equally raises questions about the motives of the city officials charting the tax’s future.
There was a lot happening today. New department directors, new protections for domestic workers, support for dairy workers, discussion of the proposed Waterfront LID, and what SPD is doing about recent “shots fired” incidents in the Central District.
