Seattle Forward

Round 1 Budget Proposals

Budget deliberations have kicked into high gear here at City Hall. The first deadline for proposals to secure a baseline support of three councilmembers comes this Wednesday. After a couple more rounds of discussion over the next three weeks, the proposals that receive majority support will be put together in a balanced budget package.

Earlier I wrote about what I liked in the Mayor’s budget. Here are some additional proposals I’m excited to advance for further consideration by the Council:

Our Creative Culture

As our city grows, we must act with urgency to stabilize families, artists, and small businesses because without them we lose one of the very things that has made us such a special city. We must invest in the culture of Seattle that has given us our unique identity and strength.

Seattle is the entertainment and cultural center of the Pacific Northwest. Creativity is in the water and in our blood. From musicians, to painters, to dancers, to writers and filmmakers, and many more—artists have given us voice and spirit. To make sure we don’t lose this valuable distinction in a skyrocketing economy, I am proposing to increase arts and culture spending.

Specifically, we should increase the allocation of the city’s existing admissions tax revenue dedicated to the arts from the 75% it is today to 80% in 2016, 90% in 2017, and 100% in 2018. This increase means millions of additional dollars dedicated to supporting artists and arts organizations all over the city, including more arts education in our public schools.

More on Housing Recommendations

The City Council has begun consideration of the 65 recommendations from the Housing Affordability and Livability Agenda Advisory Committee (HALA). We will spend 18 to 24 months learning about, discussing, and considering these recommendations. They involve a wide range of topics with varying degrees of legal and policy complexity.

I’m certain that as we listen to people across the city we will learn new things that may better inform our positions before we have to make final decisions. There will be many opportunities for public engagement and comment throughout this process, including public hearings in the new City Council districts.

Real Need

As the HALA committee clearly established in their report, the need for an increased supply of affordable housing has never been greater. In support of this statement, the HALA committee observed:

• More than 2,800 people are homeless on a typical night in Seattle.
• More than 45,000 households in our city—one in six households—are spending more than 50% of their incomes on housing. (Spending more than 30% is considered burdensome.)
• Middle income families are struggling to keep pace with the increasing costs of housing.
• Uncounted others have already left the city in search of affordability, a trek that usually results in much longer commute times and increased environmental harm.

Single Family Areas

While the list of recommendations from HALA is long, one specific policy has received the most attention and criticism from neighborhoods across Seattle. It’s the recommendation that single-family zoning be relaxed in all areas of the city to allow for new duplexes, triplexes and stacked flats, a policy some believe will lead to speculators buying up homes, tearing them down, and replacing them with more expensive multi-family structures. We should take a step back from any policy that leads to that kind of speculation, disruption, and the widespread loss of existing, more affordable housing.

However, in certain areas of the city—Urban Villages, near major transit stations, along major transportation corridors with frequent transit service—we should allow more multi-family housing. This change would affect about 6% of our current single family zoned areas.

Biggest Impact on Affordable Housing

Lost in the initial reaction to the HALA recommendations is the reality that a few key proposals will produce the biggest benefit. These include what’s called Mandatory Inclusionary Housing, a requirement that every new multi-family project set aside a certain percentage of units as affordable, and the Commercial Linkage Fee, which would require new commercial development to help fund production and preservation of affordable housing.

The recommendation to relax some of the restrictions on backyard cottages and accessory dwelling units to provide more affordable options in our neighborhoods is estimated to create some 2,500 units over 10 years. These units can be affordable and provide alternative housing choices for family members, friends, and new neighbors.

Modifying and strengthening the Multi-Family Tax Exemption to include existing structures that are remodeled and providing new capital investment to build more affordable housing are also promising ideas.

Move the Needle

These key policy recommendations represent a striking and positive shift in affordable housing policy for the city. If implemented correctly, these new policies will create thousands of affordable housing units at a variety of income levels.

Our focus should be on these policies that will provide the most significant number of affordable units. We should not get distracted by other recommendations that will create massive opposition and threaten to derail this entire worthy effort.

Seattle's Advanced Industries

Source: The Brookings Institution

The Brookings Institution has produced an interesting report about “the Advanced Industries Sector,” the 50 industries that spend higher amounts in research and development and focus on STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) jobs. It categorizes these into three broader categories: manufacturing, services, and energy. On a global level, the report concludes the United States is falling behind in these areas.

The Seattle metropolitan area — with our combination of aerospace, maritime, manufacturing, tech, and research clusters — has the second largest concentration of advanced industry jobs in the country. Moreover, Seattle is one of only 14 major metro areas that are strong in the manufacturing and service categories — 16% of the region’s workers are employed in the advanced industries, well above the 9% national average. Aerospace and software publishing jobs account for half of this local figure.

Our Tax System: The Worst in the Country

The special session of the Washington State legislature will end today with no resolution to our state’s budget dilemma. Yet another special 30-day session will begin immediately.

What a mess.

The facts about the need for a complete top-to-bottom overhaul of our tax structure are very clear and persuasive.  Yet our Republican and Democratic legislators live in opposing realities about the current state budget; no conclusion to this impasse is in sight. Further, the solutions being offered dance around the core issue: an unjust and increasingly inadequate tax system, from top to bottom.

Local economist Dick Conway appeared before my City Council committee last week and presented a report with sobering findings: Washington’s tax system is the worst in the country. He grades the state an F in the categories of fairness (ranked 51^st out of 51 states and DC), adequacy (50^th), stability (47^th), and transparency (50^th).

April City Inside/Out: Council Edition

This month I joined Councilmembers Godden and Harrell for Brian Callanan's City Inside/Out Seattle Channel Show. We talked about minimum wage enforcement, filling the Council vacancy, encampments, and other topics. You can watch below:

Good News: Lower Property Tax Rate in 2015

Seattle property owners may notice some good news in their recently received 2015 tax rate: overall, it is $9.27 per $1,000 of assessed value, a 10% decrease from the 2014 rate. And if you look only at the City’s portion of the tax bill, the rate dropped 14%.

This is good news for property owners right? Yes, with some caveats.

Let me take a step back and explain briefly how property tax is calculated.

Academics Unite Behind Investments in Early Childhood Education

Last month, leading academics in the field of early childhood education released a statement summarizing the benefits of increased investment in this arena. Hundreds of professors and researchers from across the country have joined the sixty-one founding signatories to show a strong consensus in the academic community on the positive effects of quality early learning. The letter opens as follows:

As policymakers debate investing in quality early childhood education programs, they should note the widespread agreement among researchers about the value of such programs. An extensive body of research in education, developmental psychology, neuroscience, medicine and economics shows that quality early childhood education programs produce better education, health, economic and social outcomes for children, families, and the nation. As researchers, we urge policymakers to make decisions based on the full body of scientific knowledge about early education and child development.

You can read the full statement and see a list of all the signers here: https://sites.google.com/site/ececonsensusletter/.

Looking Upstream

The following article was sent out in my City View Newsletter, which you can sign up to receive here.

President Obama announced a new initiative today—Invest in US—to raise awareness about the value of early learning. The president made the announcement at a White House Summit on Early Learning that Mayor Murray, King County Executive Dow Constantine and I are attending. 

The Summit includes a variety of national experts discussing the critical importance of child development in the first five years of life. What I’ve heard so far has reinforced my belief that we can overcome poverty and close the opportunity gap for our children of color. I make this point in a piece published earlier today by The Stranger. We know what to do. We must continue to build the political will to do it.

A Strong and Sensible Step for Affordable Housing

This week the City Council took another strong and sensible step toward creating more affordable housing in Seattle. The Council passed a Resolution that should lead to a significant increase in resources for affordable housing.

Rents are increasing rapidly. Our skyline is speckled with cranes constructing new office space and market-rate housing to meet the demands of an improving economy which, in turn, spur demand for services. The lower wage workers who provide these services need a place they can afford to call home. The closer they can live to their jobs, the less air pollution and traffic congestion for everyone and the more time they can spend with their families.

We have debated affordable housing policies ever since I joined the Council in 2008. We have implemented incentive zoning policies to encourage affordable housing in South Lake Union, downtown, and elsewhere. But such policies are limited to areas being “up-zoned” to greater heights. We clearly need to do more.