On Thursday afternoon, Mayor Bruce Harrell released a draft of his eight-year, $1.35 billion transportation levy, dubbed the “Move Seattle Levy,” which historically funds about 30% of the City’s transportation budget. The levy proposal will cost owners of the median value home–which runs about $866,000 these days–$12 extra per month on top of the $24 they pay under the expiring levy.
While the levy will raise more funds than the previous one, a nine-year $930 million levy passed by voters in 2015, it’s less than half of the $3 billion that urbanists, environmentalists, and disability advocates say it would cost to tackle the City’s safety, mobility, climate, and equity challenges.
Wow, Harrell only delivers about half of what advocates say the City needs! Anyone getting deja vu?
Now the City will kick off a month of public dialogue before it goes to the city council for amendments and a vote. With the council so aligned with the Mayor, and with the Transportation Committee led by self-appointed “Pothole King” Rob Saka, advocates may find it difficult to win amendments for more funding, particularly for projects that benefit Seattleites who walk, roll, bike, and bus around town.
Before making the draft public, advocates already voiced their concern that the conservative Mayor would write an “austerity levy” that would dig Seattle deeper into car dependency by allocating more money to street maintenance and repaving than to improvements to the City’s underwhelming walking, rolling, and transit infrastructure. Great intuition, guys. Seriously.
In his proposal, Harrell allocated the most money–about $432 million, or 31% of the total levy–to repavement and street maintenance. By comparison, transportation advocates wanted the City to dedicate about $305 million for street repaving and maintenance, according to a financial plan drafted by Seattle 350, Disability Rights WA, Seattle Subway, and other groups.
Unlike the Mayor, the advocates also suggested the largest single investment in building new sidewalks. Right now, 11,000 blocks in Seattle do not have sidewalks. At the City’s current pace, it would take more than 400 years to complete the sidewalk network, according to the Seattle Times.
Advocates proposed $696 million to build about 590 blocks of new sidewalks every year of the levy and another $200 million to repair existing sidewalks. Harrell’s draft allocates $109 million specifically to “pedestrian programs,” which includes money to build 250 blocks of new sidewalks (about 2% of Seattle’s need) and 34,000 spot repairs on existing sidewalks.
The next big-ticket item for the advocates were transit improvements. They wanted to set aside $400 million for them. Harrell’s draft allocates $121 million on transit projects, including 160 projects to improve bus reliability and adding two new east-west transit corridors to help transit riders get to the light rail.
The advocates also emphasized the importance of bike safety. Their plan allocates almost $260 million for new bike lanes, $40 million for bike lane maintenance, and $20 million for bike parking. Harrell’s plan includes $94 million to build and maintain bike lanes.
Harrell does have the transportation nerds beat on investments in bridges! He suggested $218 million for repairs and preventative improvements to Ballard Bridge, Fremont Bridge, and others. He also suggested $25 million to improve freight by repairing 20% of major truck streets and by making 32 spot improvements. By the draft’s own omission, this does not help pedestrians, cyclists, transit riders, the climate, or neighborhoods. The advocates did not suggest any money for bridge maintenance or freight improvement.
On the bright side, Harrell’s draft proposes a 150% increase in funding to Vision Zero, a program to end pedestrian death, and pays for eight projects to open streets to people.
Even though Harrell’s plan looks puny next to the plan from transit advocates, at a Thursday press conference, a reporter questioned him about asking taxpayers to vote for raising the levy while the City deals with a budget deficit. Harrell told reporters to “forget about” the deficit for a second because “one does not off-set the other.” He thinks the levy is the “right thing” for Seattle. The City is working “very feverishly” to balance the budget. Both can be true!
Another reporter asked him about his “message” to property owners who do not want to pay an extra $12 a month. Harrell said he could have asked for $2 billion or $3 billion, but he said the City had to be “sensitive” to property owners who may already struggle to keep up with the rising cost of living. The Seattle Department of Transportation commissioned a poll that found 56% of voters would support a $1.7 billion Move Seattle Levy and 64% would support a $1.2 billion levy. He said he thinks he reached the right balance, but again, it’s not a done deal.
Yes, raising a tax levy by 45% is definitely half ass when you could have raised it 322% to placate urbanists. This will of course be on top of the levy KC will be planning in the near future to pay for the gap in their general fund (see HB 2044), the pending property increase the social housing group will be proposing to pay for their program (I think they will find the CEO tax is not sustainable), the other $1B levy that KC is considering to “fight climate change” (https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/environment/king-county-weighs-whether-to-seek-1-billion-for-climate-environment) and of course for home owners that use natural gas the upcoming $70K cost to rip out all your gas appliance and rewire your home to support electrification courtesy of HB 1589. Don’t worry though we all know homeowners just have endless amounts of money for all of these worthy programs.
“Harrell said he could have asked for $2 billion or $3 billion, but he said the City had to be “sensitive” to property owners who may already struggle to keep up with the rising cost of living. “
Every Seattle homeowner has the option of adding 2 accessory dwelling units (ADUs) or (if the lot if 3,200 sf or larger) 1 detached accessory unit (DADU aka backyard cottage) – and if they don’t want to be a landlord, they can be condo-ized and sold outright. And if they don’t want to deal with building, they can ask around for who might want a starter or forever home among friends, family, and neighbors.
There’s no reason not to go big on this and other city needs when property owners stressed by property taxes have an obvious option that will also serve to create more much needed homes.
Good Lord, Hannah Dear, are you going for some left-wing version of the old Ed Anger column in the now-defunct Weekly World News? Because that’s what your articles increasingly read like.
But let’s unpack things a bit, shall we?
The Stranger’s default opinion is that Seattle is too expensive for working class people – except when it comes to pet projects that “urbanists, environmentalists, and disability advocates say…..would tackle the City’s safety, mobility, climate, and equity challenges.” Then we want to give away the farm.
Why don’t we do this:
1) Fix the potholes that are all over town. This helps everyone who uses the roads.
2) Replace the Ballard and Magnolia Bridges. This helps everyone who goes to and from Ballard and Magnolia.
3) Make sure that our century-plus drawbridges (Fremont, University, Montlake) are retrofitted and ready to stand for another century so that we can avoid another First Avenue S fiasco.
4) Repair or replace the 4th Ave S viaduct over the Union Pacific yards.
5) Repair or replace the 4th Ave S viaduct between Union and King Street Stations.
6) Restore transit security to the pre-Eyeman levels.
7) Declutter some of the more ridiculously over-programmed streets like Broadway between Yesler and Roy, or 4th Ave between Denny and Jackson.
Then we can look at some of the more precious projects that the Bright Young Things at S-DOT saw when they went on their overseas junkets.
Then
“The advocates did not suggest any money for bridge maintenance…”
All of Seattle’s transportation problems would be immediately and permanently solved if everyone else in town would just bow and scrape before the blindingly godlike brilliance of these self-appointed experts.
@2: Glad to see you boldly striding towards forced relocation of everyone who fails to agree with your vision of How To Live In Seattle. (After all, you just can’t make an omelette without breaking a few heads, right?)
@2 you and other urbanists are not living in reality if you believe SFH’s are going to be torn down and replaced in large numbers with 4/6 units. What is far more likely is some elderly person on a fixed income and those with lower paying incomes will be forced to sell to the tech bro’s you despise so much while accelerating gentrification of lower income neighborhoods. If you honestly cared about solving the housing issue. you would build along already upzoned corridors and the urban villages and stop trying to punish people who want a little space and serenity.
District13 dear, it’s already happening. When I started at City Light seventeen years ago, my residential projects were mostly single-family homes, with the occasional duplex or triplex. Last year, I returned to that work for a few months due to labor shortages and I was shocked by how almost every neighborhood – and even wealthy neighborhoods like North Admiral – were building DADU’s in the back yard and adding ADU’s in the existing house. That, or just tearing the house down and putting in three to six units. In my own neighborhood (North Beacon Hill) entire blocks are being demolished and replaced with six unit townhomes, usually with no parking, which is pushing the residential streets to the breaking point. Our block once had eight housing units on it. Now it has eighteen.
I believe all this “condoizing” of the traditional residential neighborhood will backfire on the urbanists. All it’s doing is locking in the SFR mentality, only with smaller footprints.
@6: ‘I believe all this “condoizing” of the traditional residential neighborhood will backfire on the urbanists.’
And that’s barely mentioning the actual topic of this headline post, transportation. Seattle currently has NO below-grade or above-grade, traffic-separated transport between most neighborhoods, and absolutely none within neighborhoods. There are NO plans for any within neighborhoods. Ever.
“…entire blocks are being demolished and replaced with six unit townhomes, usually with no parking, which is pushing the residential streets to the breaking point.”
Eventually, even if parking was included, the streets will reach their saturation levels, and traffic catastrophe will overtake the city grid. In large Third World cities, even the poor have to drive cars. In large First World cities, even the rich choose to ride mass transit. We can see which way the urbanists are taking Seattle.
Have urbanists ever seen a tax they didn’t want to double or even treble?
@2
The idea of ADUs has come up before. Homeowners aren’t exactly tripping over themselves to build.
Why would they?
3200 sq ft is a small yard.
ASaxman5537 dear, you should get out more. Although many of these are not being built by what we may normally think of as “homeowners”. In my experience, most of them are contractors looking to make a quick couple of hundred thousand bucks on a cheap build.
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/seattle-is-now-building-more-adus-than-single-houses/
@9
Doesn’t matter who is building them. You’re just squeezing more people into a space that is already crowded.
I’m sure the existing infrastructure will be able to handle it.
Have a ball.
@2/RezoneSeattle: Not to pop your bubble or break your rose-color glasses or bong–ADU and being a landlord in Seattle is a TERRIBLE idea.
By the time you get through complex permitting and building an ADU, a homeowner will have spent 18-24 month of their lives hassling with Seattle Permitting (who work from home and don’t answer the phone) and spent $200,000-$250,000.
Then, they may get a renter in their backyard that doesn’t pay rent who will be assigned a free lawyer from the Housing Justice Project to prevent eviction which will last 1-2 years.
So, don’t expect housing from private homeowners and Mom-and-Pops.
@3/Catalina Vel-DuRay
Insightful, smart comments as always.
SeattleLove dear, you no longer have to be a landlord with an ADU. You can just build it and sell it. They took a vacant lot across the alley from us and put up two “Single family homes” and three “Detatched Accessory Dwelling Units”. They’re all separate tax parcels. the only commonality is that SPU gives them one water service and they have to have submeter the water (which the HOA does).
Next door to that they tore down a cute little quintessential Seattle Craftsman and put up six separate houses with no parking. Again, the only commonality is the water service.
Personally, I would love to sell off our front yard and have somebody put a few houses that. It’s a huge waste of space and a pain to keep up, especially as we get older.
@4 @5: You’re misunderstanding the post. The whole point is no one has to move or knock down anything. A homeowner can add up to 2 ADUs or 1 ADU and 1 DADU without going anywhere or knocking down the existing house. (Or even downsize into a new smaller unit with lower taxes while selling the main house.)
@11: I know someone who lives in a DADU who handled all the permitting and building – the property owner’s sole hassle was hiring a lawyer to (in effect) sell them a piece of their property, the new homeowners handled the rest. It’s pretty much guaranteed homeowners could find folks more than willing to do that in exchange for a slightly submarket price.
@8: Because not every cares about yards or land. Our neighbor’s house is on a 1,500 square foot grandfathered legacy lot. They voluntarily bought their house and everyone’s fine.
@6: Based on reactions to the mayor’s draft comp plan update, I think you’d find approximate unanimity among “urbanists” that (1) the ADU rules are still too restrictive and (2) that zoning should allow at least 6 plexes everywhere and “more than that” on a lot more land. The 3-per-lot thing is not an urbanist thing, it’s a half measure that’s better than the previous rules but still not great.
@6 I have no doubt it’s happening already and I think that it’s actually great. That being said I don’t think it’s happening to the scale or velocity our dear urbanists think it should be. What I continually have trouble understanding is their almost singular focus on many of the SFH neighborhoods that are ill equipped to manage that level of density due to issues @7 mentioned and that doesn’t even get into things like water lines, sewer, power etc. They could build a lot more homes/apartments faster by focusing on areas where these things are naturally occurring due to demand rather than get up on their soapbox and complain about neighborhoods where it isn’t.
If urbanists, environmentalists, and disability advocates want another $3b to tackle the City’s safety, mobility, climate, and equity challenges there’s nothing stopping them from giving voters that option by running a ballot initiative.
Good luck with that.
@18: The median household income of owner occupied homes in Seattle is $181,584. The notion that folks might support an extra $288 dollars a year to “go big” and make a real difference on transportation & quality of life doesn’t strike me as outlandish.
Not interested in giving up my garden so I can build an ADU to offset the costs of a transportation levy that won’t adequately fund maintenance of the bridges I need to cross every day. It’s possible I am not the only one.
@21 even if they are not does anyone relieve believe $181K in Seattle goes very far? That’s not the own @19 thought it was.
@3 OMG Catalina! I remember the old Ed Anger column in the Weekly World News. To this day, I still use his expressions: “it makes the steel plate in my head hurt” and “I’m pig biting mad”. That rag was so much fun.
@21: The median household income of owners is higher than overall median household income – 2022 American Community Survey
Are there any restrictions in place to prevent DADU/ADU units from being yet another listing on Airbnb? Nearly every person I spoke to who planned or even thought of building one (most of them progressives) state they want to recoup their expenses via Airbnb. They look at me like I’ve grown a second head when I say “so you are going to rent your ADU/DADU at an affordable rate.” The last data I looked at (probably old) regarding the issue noted that 60% of the folks building them wanted to house a family member or have some extra space for guests.
In other words – I’m not seeing this rush to build them to alleviate the housing crisis. Far from it.
@25 – per the city’s 2022 ADU report, they think 12% are short term rentals – the rules:
A short-term rental (STR) is a lodging use offered to guests for fewer than
30 consecutive nights. Since 2017, Seattle has had regulations that limit the
number of units someone may operate as an STR to two units, the operator’s primary residence and a secondary unit. An ADU can be used as an STR, but if a property owner has two ADUs and lives in the main house, they
cannot use both ADUs as STRs. STR operators must obtain a license from
the City’s Finance and Administrative Services (FAS) department. Any ADUs
used as short- or long-term rentals must also register with the City’s Rental
Registration and Inspection Ordinance (RRIO) program.
STR licensing data from FAS provides a measure of how many ADUs are
used as STRs. When obtaining a license, an operator must indicate their
unit type, which lets us estimate the number of ADUs associated with STR
licenses. Exhibit 13 shows the number of active STR licenses and the share
associated with AADUs, DADUs, and “other” unit types.
You have to provide the rapid transit FIRST, and then walkability happens, not vice versa. And I am not talking just within the city limits. Everyone needs to get everywhere around Lake Washington because that’s where we’re all going every day, for work and for school. This means we must eminent domain some pretty wealthy people out of their properties to get there. That’s where the hold-up is, people.
Building multi-family properties with no parking, as Catalina Vel-DuRay in #13 reports, is just plain cruel. It’s brutal to the existing residents and the new tenants. What? Do you think cars will disappear if you make it so they can’t be used easily in this city? LMAO. No. Sure, let’s blame the city’s middle class, the lifeblood, for the poor city planning from the last century. That makes sense.
So whose genius idea is it to make the city car-inhospitable while at the same time not providing viable alternatives in the form of rapid transit for the entire town and surrounding areas where people commute to and from? Everyone wants Seattle to have the same walkability as NYC (where I’m from), and so do I. However, people seem to forget that there is NO WAY TO GET ANYWHERE in a decent amount of time without a ton of walking except a few chosen places around the city with halfway decent public RAPID transportation. So stop it with the anti-resident decisions and let us park the cars most of us still need to get around.
And I’m not talking about stupid buses. I’m talking trains that move quickly, have express routes, and a transit map that meshes over the city in a way that is actually helpful to most residents. And no, we don’t want to ride bikes in the frakking cold and rain.
@27: “Everyone wants Seattle to have the same walkability as NYC (where I’m from), and so do I. However, people seem to forget that there is NO WAY TO GET ANYWHERE in a decent amount of time without a ton of walking except a few chosen places around the city with halfway decent public RAPID transportation. So stop it with the anti-resident decisions and let us park the cars most of us still need to get around.
“And I’m not talking about stupid buses. I’m talking trains that move quickly, have express routes, and a transit map that meshes over the city in a way that is actually helpful to most residents.”
Exactly. I’m from Brooklyn, and grew up riding those subways. As you know, the express routes go directly from neighborhood center to neighborhood center, whilst the local routes stop every few blocks along the same path, providing intra-neighborhood transit. @7, I noted this latter transit does not exist in Seattle, and likely never will, at least in the lifetime of anyone reading this. So, as you implied, Seattle is heading for traffic catastrophe.
@26: You’re describing a situation where the first ADU will be permanently used for Airbnb rentals, and the second ADU, if it ever does get built, will actually be the “mother-in-law” apartment, existing only to get a current family member out of the main house. Neither ADU will add a single new permanent residence to the city’s housing stock.
@28: Yet since the city believes only 12% of ADUs are short term rentals, 88% of them have added new permanent residences to the city’s housing stock.
@29: “Yet since the city believes only 12% of ADUs…”
I give you credit for choosing the correct verb.
@30: All the hand wringing is about poor downtrodden homeowners being priced out by the extra $X per month.
@27/28 honestly I think that is all part of the urbanists vision. The know that level of transit will never happen organically so the they pivoted to working on density so that at some point the pain becomes so great there is no choice but to build it. That strategy might have merit but for those of us living in their experiment of increased mental stress and decreased quality of life it’s little comfort to think it may be better 50 years from now.
@33 That implies our city planners are rather sadistic and ideological. That’s not a good combination.