The past month has brought calls for dramatic reductions to police departments budgets, including here in Seattle. In order to make sense of those demands, it’s important for us to understand how police departments request and spend their budgets. Here is a deep dive of the SPD budget, with a historical perspective, breakdowns from a number of different angles, a look at Mayor Durkan’s proposed 2020 cuts (as well as her early thoughts on next year’s budget), and some of the principles behinds calls to “defund the police.”
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Council extends special budget session through end of July
The Council’s special budget session to re-balance the city’s 2020 budget was originally supposed to finish up on July 8, with final approval of the budget on July 20. But with the delay in the Mayor delivering her proposed re-balanced budget, the schedule has been pushed out two weeks.
Continue readingHow much of SPD’s budget did the Mayor propose to cut?
It sounds like a straightforward question: in Mayor Durkan’s proposed “rebalancing” budget released yesterday, how much of SPD’s 2020 budget would be cut? But the devil is in the details.
Continue readingMayor publishes revised 2020 budget proposal
This afternoon, the Mayor’s Office released its proposed “rebalanced” 2020 city budget, accounting for the expected revenue shortfall as well as hefty expenses for responding to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Continue readingMayor’s proposed budget revision delayed
According to a spokesperson, the Mayor’s Office will not be transmitting its proposed revision to the 2020 budget to the City Council today as was originally expected.
Continue readingMosqueda announces plan and schedule for revising city budget, “inquest” into SPD budget
This morning Council member Teresa Mosqueda, who chairs the Budget Committee, announced the plan and schedule for the Council’s deliberations on a revised 2020 city budget.
Continue readingGrim news on the city budget as revenue projections fall short
This afternoon Mayor Durkan and City Budget Director Ben Noble briefed the press on the city’s new projections for how the COVID-19 shutdown is affecting city revenues. This comes on the eve of a presentation to the City Council tomorrow morning on the same information as the Council begins considering a new $500 million payroll tax. Under their most likely scenario, revenues will fall around $210 million below budget. But in a more pessimistic outcome, the shortfall could increase to almost $300 million. Let’s dive into the details.
Continue readingSpat over LEAD budget appears to be sorted out
Over the past month an ongoing disagreement over the budget for the LEAD program flared up again, as Erica Barnett has been reporting for the last several weeks, but as of late last week it seems to be getting resolved.
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Bagshaw unveils budget balancing package
This morning Budget Chair Sally Bagshaw published her initial balancing package, incorporating a portfolio of self-balancing changes to the Mayor’s proposed budget based on last week’s proposals by Council members that received consensus support. Last’s night’s election results show that Initiative 976 will likely pass; it will blow a $35 million hole in the city budget that will need to get addressed in the next three weeks, making the initial balancing package very much a work in progress. That said, anything that didn’t make it in at this point is very unlikely to find its way in later as the …
Continue reading2020 city revenues update delivers little good news
With the “Form B” budget discussions now complete, Council member Sally Bagshaw, the budget chair, is hard at work assembling her initial “balancing package” of changes to the Mayor’s proposed budget. Her job is to cram as many of the Council’s wish-list items in, to match whatever additional revenues she can scrape together. The final piece of the puzzle is an updated projection from the City Budget Office on 2019 and 2020 revenues, which was delivered at the end of the week. Usually it delivers at least a few million dollars of extra revenues to spend; this year, not so …
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