To fund housing for people that want free rent, just require City of Seattle workers must be in the office 5 days a week. 10-15% of employees will quit. That's 1,400-2,100 people

The average City of Seattle worker makes $100,000.00/year.

So, that would save $140M-$210M and people could have free apartments again.

The "good governance" Council raids the coffers because they can't figure out how to live within their means. Do they believe in anything at all?

@2: While the Stranger always tries hard to obscure this, it was a previous Council, beloved by the Stranger, which authorized "raiding the JumpStart tax." The Stranger's last remaining darling on the Council has since tried to prevent the Mayor from doing the same thing, and failed:

"However, the council allowed the revenue to balance the budget as the City clawed its way out of the COVID-19 crisis over the past few years. JumpStart’s prime sponsor, former Council Member Teresa Mosqueda, set 2025 for the City to finally fully respect the JumpStart spend plan."

It's absolutely OK if a Council the Stranger likes does it. It's capital treason if a Council or Mayor the Stranger hates does it. (And on and on and on it goes, one backflip after another after another...)

Why was Rich Smith fired?

They are not “raiding” the jump start tax. The amount anticipated for affordable housing when the tax was passed is FULLY funded. The fact that is not mentioned is the tax has brought is waaaayyyy more revenue than expected. Its completely acceptable to take the overage and apply it to the deficit rather than raise more taxes. That is the definition of good governance.

@5 or they could have reduced spending, say for example by actually negotiating with SPOG instead of just giving away the key to the store. Whether revenue exceed expectations or not that funding stream had a dedicated purpose it wasn't just a slush fund.

@6 the purpose is fully funded. Nothing was lost. I don’t see anyone complaining that the capital gains tax goes into the general reserves once the threshold for school funding is reached. As noted as well the city has a deficit so instead of slashing jobs/services they took a revenue stream that over performed and is composed of progressive revenue and used that. Progressives should be applauding but nothing short of more taxes will appease you which by the way would have been either a property tax (regressive) or raising the jumpstart tax more (job losse) Gov is about making hard decisions and regardless of what you, Hannah and the rest of the progs in this city think this was a good decision.

ps if you think the last coucil would have done anything different you’re fooling yourself.

I’d like to see a couple of folks from The Stranger run for office rather than just sit on the sideline bitching about things.
I wonder how they’d fare when they were required to work with people who dare to have different opinions and beliefs

@7 it's not "fully funded" the breakdown is by percentage of revenue not dollars. There was no "threshold" to exceed. The City chose to divert a dedicated funding stream to pay for whatever they wanted instead of actually making the "hard decisions" you talk about.

@9 They had built a forecast of what the tax would collect and then funded projects based on that forecast. Those project are fully funded so there are no cuts. What you and TS are bitching about is the overage to fund new projects. The city chose to take the overage and fund service/jobs today than use it for new projects. That's called making decisions and budgeting. The easy way out is to raise taxes and/or cut jobs and again if you think the previous council led by Mosqueda and Gonzales would do anything different you are not being realistic.

@8: “I wonder how they’d fare when they were required to work with people who dare to have different opinions and beliefs.”

Um, after ten years of scant and dubious accomplishments, they’d wind up in Michigan, campaigning for Trump?

@10 I don't know how to make this more clear: the muni code sections regarding the payroll tax specify the percentages of revenue from said tax to be spent on particular issues. The dollar amount of revenue is irrelevant, there are no "overages" by law even if their forecast was inaccurate. You're taking the mayor's attempted political justification for raiding the funds and elevating it in your mind to fact, but that's just not what the law says.

And I'm very confident the former Council would not have given the cops a massive raise without requiring any new accountability measures.