HERE’S THE OBVIOUS news: Mayor Paul Schell has the wrong priorities. His proposal to shrink the city’s homeless budget by .2 percent from last year in favor of paving potholes was insulting.
Something else that isn’t shocking to us is that Council Members Margaret Pageler, Jan Drago, Richard Conlin, Heidi Wills, Richard McIver, and Jim Compton also have screwy priorities. The thick-skulled six voted against their colleague Peter Steinbrueck’s attempt to shore up the mayor’s budget. He wanted to put $12 million into housing the homeless. But the council approved a much less charitable 2001 budget.
Why isn’t the city coughing up a decent amount of money for poor people? For one thing, and this isn’t surprising, Steinbrueck’s colleagues didn’t pull their heads out of their asses long enough to realize that they’re supposed to represent Seattle’s poor people as well as the millionaires. Some blame should also be placed on the looming tax-cap Initiative 722. Thanks to stingy voters, the initiative (which is now in court) hindered the city’s budgeting process, making it difficult to confidently tap Seattle’s multimillion-dollar cash surplus. But heartless politicians and penny-pinching voters are not the whole story. Our biggest disappointment this budget season is with the council’s leading homeless advocate, Steinbrueck. He wasn’t crafty enough to compel his colleagues to take their heads out of their asses.
Instead, what he put on the table was his altruism and a galactic dollar figure. “The City of Seattle is enjoying an unprecedented economic boom, but people are being left behind,” said Steinbrueck in the introduction to his “Homeless Strategic Response” paper. That was a reasonable starting point. His plan included $2.7 million for shelters, $300,000 for “public awareness of homelessness,” and a whopping $8 million for transitional housing. (It also incorporated council colleague Judy Nicastro’s $1 million proposal for rental assistance.)
As we’ve said before [“Keeping It Real,” Allie Holly-Gottlieb, Nov 2 ], Steinbrueck deserves props for battling on behalf of a neglected population, something lesser council members don’t bother with. As Seattle’s favorite son, the smart and articulate Steinbrueck is better positioned than his liberal cohorts to bring the progressive agenda to the big kids’ table.
Unfortunately, Steinbrueck got only $2.7 million rather than the $12 million package he requested. This breaks down to $500,000 for shelters in 2001 and the same amount in 2002, as well as $750,000 for transitional housing next year and $965,000 the following year. This wasn’t even close to what he had asked for.
“I think we’ve prevailed,” says Steinbrueck. “It’s not the $12 million,” he concedes, explaining that he got less because he had to compete with an ear-shattering call for transportation funding.
Steinbrueck and his supporters insist that his plan was successful because it “raised the bar” on how much money Seattle should talk about when solving or allaying homelessness. In a sense, they’re right. His proposal elevated the initial bid for negotiating human-services and housing money. However, this “start-high” philosophy didn’t end up paying off very well. Sure, a couple million is a lot of new money for people who need it. But it’s about a 70 percent drop from what Steinbrueck wanted. Even counting the $750,000 that Nicastro scored for renters, the grand total is still $8.5 million less than Steinbrueck had proposed. In short, he upped the mayor’s inadequate budget by a measly three percent.
More telling, of all the items that were tacked on to the mayor’s affordable housing and human-services allocations, the only ones singled out and put on hold–because of I-722–were a couple of Steinbrueck’s additions. Lucky for Steinbrueck, for now, the city has won an injunction against the life-sucking initiative.
By comparison, Council Members Richard Conlin, Heidi Wills, and Judy Nicastro all emerged victorious from budget negotiations. Conlin took a mere 30 percent cut for his open-spaces bid, and Wills got $1 million for sidewalks, not to mention scrapping with Budget Chair Drago to get $850,000 in transportation fixes at the last minute. Meanwhile, Nicastro bumped up the mayor’s call for rental assistance by 250 percent.
But here’s the biggest problem we have with how Steinbrueck handled the budget this year: Basically, he came to school without doing his homework. His colleagues weren’t impressed with a plan that was short on specifics. His failure jeopardized the credibility of future funding. This disservice is going to make it difficult for Steinbrueck to come to the table next year.
“I appreciated what Peter was doing,” says Council Member Nick Licata. “But I didn’t see where the five votes were. I figured that maybe Peter knew something I didn’t.”
This means that Steinbrueck’s multimillion-dollar setback doesn’t just raise questions about strategy. It has practical consequences. He asked for $12 million presumably because there is a critical need for $12 million. So, what about the bulk of the money, which he didn’t get? Surely, the people “dying on the streets” (Steinbrueck’s words) will miss it.
Even more portentous, activists seem satisfied. Last week, one low-income housing advocate sent Steinbrueck flowers. It’s unclear why.