Money for the one-time bonuses only exists thanks to City Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda's JumpStart tax and the voter-approved Best Starts for Kids levy.
Jesse Franz
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800 Maynard Ave S, Suite 200, Seattle, WA 98134
800 Maynard Ave S, Suite 200, Seattle, WA 98134
You might want to learn the difference between bonuses paid as incentives to hire candidates, and bonuses paid to existing workers. Those tend to be very different amounts.
"...the price at $10,000 for new hires and $25,000 for lateral hires. Respectively, that’s over 12 times and 31 times more than the average bonus payment the City and County will offer to childcare workers."
But the total amount available for those bonuses was only $100,000. Even if the $1M from savings (note: not new money) goes to these hiring bonuses, it could pay to a maximum of only 100 new hires, or 40 lateral hires. Those numbers are below the number of new hires the city wants for SPD, and far below the number of already-employed child-care workers who would be paid with the 7+ times as much money which has been allocated to them.
"Money from the Best Starts for Kids levy and the JumpStart Payroll Expense Tax will pay for the program..."
So much for the JumpStart money being allocated for housing the homeless. Now it's been revealed as just another taxpayer-supplied slush fund, which the sponsor (Mosqueda) taps to reward her constituencies for their loyalty to her. (This is one reason Seattle's citizens lined up to sign referendum petitions for the EHT, the JumpStart tax's predecessor.)
"The council’s most left-wing members– Councilmembers Teresa Mosqueda, Tammy Morales, and Kshama Sawant–all voted against the measures."
Nice to know the Stranger's amen corner is down to a mere third of the Council. Enjoy it while it lasts, as only one of those three was recently re-elected. (And the two of them up for re-election next year are not out buying loyalty with taxpayer funds.)
False argument tactics (e.g. cops vs kids), again.
Comparing child care workers to police doesn't really make sense outside of feeding into TS overall anti public safety narrative. The Seattle City Charter mandates the city provide for public safety, there is no such provision regarding child care. SPD are also city employees whereas the child care workers are all employed by private entities. Even if the city wanted to they can not move funds from the police budget to pay for other things including child care worker bonuses. Having paid child care costs myself that amounted to a second mortgage I won't dispute the need for more affordable options however using that for yet another attack on the police is flimsy and lazy. FWIW the school districts all have version of child care programs but they are very limited and only available to families with needs (e.g. learning disabilities etc). It seems it would be more logical to scale up those types of programs as affordable options with a dedicated funding source rather than piss and moan about the police but that's just me.
The problem isn’t just how much a starting salary is for the police, it’s also local reputation for work environment- which will take years to repair.
Affordability for many classes of service economy jobs has been a problem for decades in CA, and is now a problem in Northwest urban areas. The South Bay Area has been unaffordable for decades for teachers, social workers, firemen.,,,,
if only a "wealthy few" and those receiving free preschool can afford childcare, doesn't it make more sense to...idk...give the money to the parents and not the childcare providers who could apparently just raise their rates and the wealthy few and the city will just absorb the cost?
wouldn't it make more sense to hand out $800 to all the families who can't afford childcare and just have the providers raise their rates since only the wealthy are paying for it? i mean...