The last time the city faced major budget deficits, in 2004, things
were different in a few pretty-significant ways. First, the city didn’t
have a rainy-day reserve fund, forcing the city council to make deep
cuts in direct services [“What You Don’t Know…,” Erica C. Barnett,
April 1, 2004]. Second, the mayor wasn’t up for reelection (making it
easier for him, politically, to justify deep cuts). And third, the
national economic situation wasn’t as dire.
Those are all factors to keep in mind when considering the city’s
current budget conundrum: a $43 million hole this year ($30
million this year, plus $13 million left over from 2008), plus an
estimated $41 million in 2010.
Sitting at the head of a broad wooden conference table in City
Hall’s Norm Rice conference room, sipping from a mug emblazoned with
the image of a $100 bill, city finance director Dwight Dively outlined
the situation. Nationally, he said, the economy is doing worse than
anybody predicted: “It’s the worst recession since the Great
Depression.”
That means deep cuts in Seattle city government—if not now,
then next year. Although the city may be able to fill its 2009 gap with
a combination of departmental budget cuts (between 1.5 and 3 percent)
and money from the city’s rainy-day reserve fund, which contains about
$30 million, 2010 is another story. Dively said, “In 2010, we will see
much more significant cuts,” especially if the shortfall turns
out to be bigger than anticipated. Left unspoken was the fact that
Mayor Greg Nickels would undoubtedly prefer to postpone deeper, more
painful cuts until he’s safely reelected; the mayor, who faces
three challengers, is up for a third term in November.
Mayoral priorities can also be seen in the way the real-estate
excise tax (REET) is being allocated. REET—the tax collected
every time a piece of real estate changes hands—pays for major
capital projects; it’s expected to drop by about a third. But because
the city has already started construction or put bids out on things
like fire-station upgrades (a major Nickels priority), the most likely
targets for cuts will be maintenance and improvements at city
parks, which Dively said could be cut “by about half.”
The temptation to play Monday-morning quarterback—speculating
that the city should have anticipated the shortfall and beefed up its
reserves in advance—is understandable; recessions are cyclical,
so why couldn’t the city see this one coming? “Forecasts,” Dively said,
“assume that financial markets work. In this case, the financial
markets broke down.
“If you could have told us what was going to happen to the national
economy [two years ago], then we could’ve done a better job with our
forecasts.” 
SP&R / ARC has just laid down the ‘we’re bad with budgets so you users should make up the difference’ law with the drop-in preschools at the urban community centers: at any program not currently sustainable, aka making a profit, instead of bringing $2 to drop-in (sit there for 1-3 hours with my wee one and enjoy the social group and enjoy activities set out and cleaned up by one lone facilitator/supervisor), I’ll have to pay $8 per session AND buy a $40 punch card in advance from now on. WTF. This starts next week: 2 days notice, and QUADRUPLE the rates with no public hearing, no warning??
I’d be less irate if I thought that extra $6 would actually be going to the facilitator, or gawd forbid, to fix SPARC’s bad management skills… Yet I’m sure in 12 months my $6 won’t be enough. At that price, by the way, I could go enjoy the 12-room fully staffed, ginormous SEACTR Children’s Museum instead, but I’d rather stay on the hill in my hood and reduce traffic, silly me. To put the craziness of this price/value issue in perspective: For the price of two of these ‘new deal’ SPARC punch cards, I could get into DISNEYLAND and HAVE $30.oo CHANGE leftover.
Meanwhile the “wear em out”/MightyMites program, which serves the same community (it’s a few hundred feet away from the preschool room at MCC) virtually the same population and provides a similar drop-in, not drop-off, service is turning a profit {ahem; is ‘sustainable’) because it has no staff overhead. I’ve suggested to the manager there that he combine the fiscal books of the 2 programs and split the budget between the two.
Are any other parents experiencing this quadruple price increase?? I notice ARC doesn’t even list the preschool at MCC on their website’s map; as if they’ve already cut the one central-city program (the rest are in NG, Ballard, Magnolia, and the other ‘burbs hoods’: nothing in the CD, nothing to encourage diverse *ahem* scuse me; urban babies getting the prior-to-school training and socializing they need)
SEE: http://cedarrivergroup.com/projects/KCAA…