"So, no. This can’t be 'The People’s Budget.'"

You are so right, Hannah—none of Sawant's sham budgets ever passed. This one did.

“not only a clear erasure of Council Member Kshama Sawant, but it's deeply untrue”

Good, fuck Sawant and her Trump supporting ass.

Considering the people voted for this council and knew what they were getting I'd argue this is the people's budget and what Hannah is complaining about is the activists budget getting round filed. It's worth stating again that none of the affordable housing projects identified by the previous council have had their funding cut. The argument is over the excess revenue the tax has generated (notice there is zero talk of returning that). Taxpayers in this city have had to adjust for inflation as well (as one example my homeowners insurance just went up another 30% this year after getting a 25% increase last year) but I guess we're just supposed to suck it up and continue to pay through the nose so we can maintain our progressive utopia.

"...more than $300 million from JumpStart, depriving Seattle of potentially thousands of new affordable units..."

Math is hard.

"The City of Seattle celebrates the resounding approval of an unprecedented $970 million Seattle Housing Levy by voters on November 7, 2023. [...] The levy will support the development of more than 3,100 new affordable housing homes..." (https://housing.seattle.gov/mayor-bruce-harrell-celebrates-voters-historic-passage-of-970-million-housing-levy/)

So, $300M would finance about a thousand such homes, not "thousands." (One word, "potentially," does a whole lot of heavy lifting in that sentence! Why not just have the JumpStart money "potentially" finance a billion luxury dwellings? Each with a pony!)

@2: "...a clear erasure of Council Member Kshama Sawant,"

From the place which magically forgot her very existence -- once she started openly stumping for Trump, as you noted. (The Stranger has always been at war with George Orwell.)

If anyone knows "turning a blind eye" to people it's Morales. She is a dismal council member when it comes to tending to her district.

And I suppose I would be upset about "affordable housing" if I thought the city gave anything but milquetoast approval to it while they focus on condoizing all of the single-family neighborhoods with ADU and DADU's, many of which will be losing propositions for the saps who buy them.

@5: True radicals know: never let a good crisis go to waste. The Stranger has always hated Seattle's SFH neighborhoods, and they want this "housing crisis" (which I solved quite easily, via the simple expedient of moving elsewhere) to persist as a method of cramming those hated neighborhoods with people, car traffic, and associated other resultant problems.

Want more housing, but without creating similar transportation problems? Raise the height limits on First and Capitol Hills to 30-40 stories.

@2 - agreed. If this budget results in "erasing" Sawant, it's a good deal no matter what else it does. Hopefully her boy Fat Donald will deport her early. I hear he doesn't like commie immigrants.

And if you want to look at who "fucked over" renters, look no further than the Scarfed Menace and her gang of idiots who made renting affordable housing untenable in the City. We've lost thousands of rental units already due to the crazy-ass laws they enacted. That trend is not stopping. It still makes financial sense to offer rental housing at the high end, but you are out of your fucking mind if you rent cheap apartments now.

Tammy Morales' policies (and budgets) did disproportionate harm to communities of color and the city's most vulnerable residents.

Furthermore, Tammy Morales' policies caused the supply of rental housing to shrink and the cost of rent to increase. Her war on mom-and-pop landlords caused them to sell their affordable units in large numbers. In 2022 alone, Seattle lost over 10,000 affordable rentals

Tammy is like a slow agonizing poison that starts by deluding feeble-minded people and writers at The Stranger.

Catalina Vel-DuRay always has the best comments.

The Stranger should give them a weekly column. Readership would skyrocket.

@9: Agreed! Catalina always comes in with reasoned, well-thought-out responses.

A very resonable budget, the people have spoken and they want less wasted $ thrown at social services and more accountability and public safety. The ghost of sawant lives on in TS...