By the point you learn this, many Seattle Metropolis Council members can have already taken their oath of workplace in a non-public ceremony that permits lawmakers to imagine duty on the stroke of midnight Jan. 1.
There’s cause for Seattleites to be optimistic concerning the metropolis’s new management. The nine-member council now consists of two veterans (Bob Kettle and Rob Saka), a former King County Superior Court docket choose (Cathy Moore), a former metropolis arts supervisor (Maritza Rivera), and a meals entry specialist at Northwest Harvest (Pleasure Hollingsworth).
Among the many most urgent challenges within the subsequent few years will probably be closing a yawning funds hole, the product of City Hall overspending. Basic Fund bills are anticipated to outpace income to the tune of $221 million in 2025 and a further $207 million in 2026.
Resetting the council’s relationship with the myriad service suppliers who obtain taxpayer funds can be a great place to begin.
Nearly half of the town’s Basic Fund of about $1.6 billion goes to public security — police and hearth. About 14%, or $235 million, is spent on schooling and human providers, based on an evaluation by the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce.
As a part of its funds course of, the council decides what applications to fund and at what degree. The manager department beneath Mayor Bruce Harrell oversees contracts and displays efficiency.
Anybody who has attended or watched council briefings on metropolis applications is aware of there’s a number of thanking. Council members thank one another, thank their employees, thank service suppliers, thank neighborhood members.
Courtesy is sorely wanted in our civic life, however all this politeness takes up oxygen when the main target must be: Are you doing what we paid you to do? Are you able to present definable progress?
Lots of the metropolis’s contracts ask service suppliers to offer examples and anecdotes about such applications as jail diversion, homeless providers and youth violence prevention. That’s all high-quality and good, however precise information is best: What’s the recidivism charge for program contributors? What’s the price per individual in housing? Did you meet your said targets?
The coziness between contractors and the Metropolis Council is exemplified by the method surrounding the Seattle Housing Levy, the $970 million measure permitted by voters in November.
Earlier than it went to the poll, a 20-member advisory group convened to assist the Workplace of Housing draft the proposal. It included members who belonged to housing teams that might profit from the levy.
Many of those identical people actively campaigned for the Housing Levy, which handed by virtually 70%.
Earlier this month, the Metropolis Council named 5 representatives of organizations that obtain or compete for levy funding to the newly fashioned 13-member Levy Oversight Committee, which is tasked with monitoring progress and reporting again to the mayor and council.
That apparent battle of curiosity was baked into the levy’s legislation, unanimously handed by the council. It expressly allowed Oversight Committee members to be drawn from entities that obtain levy {dollars}.
Massive image: The identical group of people that helped draft the Housing Levy and campaigned for its passage belong to organizations that obtain funding from it. Additionally they serve on the committee overseeing its efficiency.
This isn’t to counsel that these people are something aside from upstanding residents, however for the sake of appearances and good authorities, how about we get a few building consultants and some retired accountants on the Oversight Committee as a substitute?
For all its pretensions, Seattle continues to be a small city. As council members get used to their new Metropolis Corridor places of work and face the truth that they are going to be consistently buttonholed by constituents on the grocery retailer and in every single place else, they should rethink how their predecessors interacted with these paid to do the general public’s enterprise.
Seattle faces a number of robust decisions forward. Piece of recommendation for the brand new council: scrutinize extra and thank much less.
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