Seattle Budget Discussions are Going on Now

BUDGET DISCUSSION: FIRST IMPRESSIONS

From SCC Insight, 10/24/2016 KEVINSCH

The Council has finished its first round of discussions on the budget. Time for some Monday-evening quarterbacking.

The discussions happened in a series of meetings last week and today. For each department, the Council’s staff led them through issues as well as a list of Council members’ proposals for modifying the budget.  Here are the memos spelling out the issues and proposals:

• Office of Economic Development
• Department of Education and Early Learning
• Office of Labor Standards
• Seattle Police Department
• Seattle Public Utilities
• Department of Neighborhoods
• Department of Construction and Inspections
• Human Services Department
• Department of Transportation
• Department of Parks and Recreation
• Everything else

As always, you can find videos of the meetings on the Seattle Channel.

Up to now, it’s been the easy part of the process: picking through the Mayor’s budget proposal, and proposing things to change or add (mostly add). Any Council member could unilaterally propose anything. But over the next week, Budget chair Tim Burgess will be playing shuttle diplomacy among the Council members to ascertain which of the proposed changes have consensus support and try to massage them into a “balancing package.” The emphasis is on balancing — all the changes made will need to still result in a balanced budget.  That will result in leaving dozens of proposals on the cutting room floor: there were tens of millions of dollars in proposals for additional spending, but far less new revenues.

Link to full post: SCC Insight