A new levy to expand services for veterans, seniors, and people experiencing homelessness is likely headed for your November ballot, but homelessness advocates say the current proposal does not go far enough to raise much-needed cash.
The measure in question renews the county’s Veterans and Human Services Levy, a property tax that funds housing, street outreach, and health and family programs. The levy expires this year and basically everyone (except the Seattle Times Editorial Board) agrees the county should renew and expand it to help address the region’s homelessness crisis. But they can’t agree on exactly how high the tax should go.
It comes down to two cents. Some, including County Executive Dow Constantine, say 12 cents per one thousand dollars of assessed valuation, triple its current size. (Constantine’s proposal would also add senior services to the levy, which previously focused on veterans and housing and funnel more cash in the first year to housing for the homeless.) But a King County Council supports a tax of 10 cents, arguing voters won’t back a larger tax increase.
The county council is a weird place. Meetings never seem to start on time, members take long and frequent recesses during which no one knows what the hell they’re doing, and, somehow, there are still Republicans holding elected office.
Naturally, the process for approving a levy is byzantine, too, involving votes not just in the county council and its committees but also approval by something called the Regional Policy Committee. The RPC is made up of elected officials from across the region, including four two Seattle City Council members, but some members’ votes are weighted more than others. The group has to review county levies before the county council can send them to the voters.
In this case, the RPC rebuffed Constantine and backed a levy of 10 cents instead of 12. They then sent that 10 cent levy to the county council, which is how we got to yesterday’s meeting. There, a few county council members made a last-ditch effort to increase the levy.
If you’re wondering why there’s so much debate over just two cents, you’re not alone.
“To be stuck on 10 cents versus 12 cents—I don’t see how that makes a bit of difference in a voter’s mind. It’s a large increase either way,” Council Member Claudia Balducci said, encouraging her colleagues to “be brave” and support the larger levy.
Balducci has a point. The difference for many taxpayers between a 10 and 12 cent levy will be small. But the difference for service providers and their clients would be big.
Taxing property at 12 cents instead of 10 cents could cost the owner of a $450,000 home 75 cents more a month (or $9 a year). But that would translate to about $10 million more a year in funding for services, including housing for people experiencing homelessness, according to Constantine’s office. (The county will offer rebates on the tax to low-income seniors and people with disabilities and is advocating for the state legislature to allow cities and counties to exempt low-income households from property tax levies like this.)
Alison Eisinger, executive director of the Seattle/King County Coalition on Homelessness, told The Stranger the 12 cent level is “starting to get real about what our community needs.”
The latest one-night count found 11,643 people experiencing homelessness across King County, nearly half of whom were unsheltered. “In my world,” Eisinger said, “I’m not going to rest until we get people inside in housing and we need every bit that we can get to house people.”
Along with rising homelessness, the county is still digging its way out of cuts to human services during the recession, say Eisinger and other service providers.
“The time has come…to stop thinking about doing more with less,” Enrique Gonzalez, community advocate at the Public Defender Association, told the county council yesterday. “We just need more.”
Council Member Jeanne Kohl-Welles said her office had been inundated with calls and emails for the larger levy, but “I have not received one asking for 10 cents as the rate—not one.”
Still, other council members—including Democrats like Dave Upthegrove and Rod Dembowski—made fiscal responsibility arguments.
“We’re not doing this in a vacuum,” said Upthegrove, citing property taxes included in Sound Transit 3 and the recent education funding deal approved in the state legislature. Upthegrove said a recent county levy, Best Starts for Kids, “went down in flames” in his district.
And the majority of the council agreed, voting in favor of a 10 cent levy. Now, since the council made some changes to how exactly the levy dollars will be spent, the measure will go back to the RPC for approval. In coming weeks, the council will vote again on whether to send it to the November ballot.
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