Everyone one of the yes votes will be getting voted out, except Mosquedo and Sawant, but only because Mosquedo actually represents her district in an important way and Sawant's district is a bubble.

@2:

Care to put money on that prediction?

I'm looking forward to how homelessness will now disappear from our streets in the next two years. I mean this was all they needed right? $75 million dollars and poof all of our problems are solved!!

It's like Jesus only more expensive.

@4 if you knew anything about the plan you would know that it will take $75 million/year over the next 15 years. The $400 million/year figure suggested by the chamber of commerce's study would end the homelessness crisis in 4-5 years.

It is clear that any attempts to raise money by taxing the wealthy will cause this city to explode and end all life here as we know it. Everyone will die and the sky will fall because of this. When a city council raises money for a moral cause by taxing those who steal the most wealth from the economy, newbornbabies begin to die en masse and teen girls are repeatedly violated by horny demonic phantoms. And then the demons REMOVE PARKING SPACES DOWNTOWN.

When rich people are forced to share the world always ends in a shattering cataclysm. Can't you see how sacred @1,2 & 4 are?

@5 We've been hearing that our taxes would end homelessness for roughly 15 years now.

@8 Literally none has ever claimed that our taxes would perfectly end social problems like homelessness. Did our taxes for the Defense Department end war?

Conversely are you claiming that ending ALL social spending make our problems go away?

This is all you cretinous shit bags ever have is logical fallacy after logical fallacy.

I like Harrell's statement. Only in Seattle is a $250 per head tax considered conservative. Even if it passes who is going to carry the stinky EHT turd around. It was not well thought out or thought through. Go back and do it again with people who have the proper expertise.

I happen to work in human service agency in King County.I witness the tremendous waste of financial resources on a regular basis .
I support building low income housing and more supportive housing for homeless mentally ill .
What I don't support is just another tax with no accountability . Where the money is absorbed by administrative costs , and never reaches hard working front line direct service workers and the homeless people they support.
There needs to be more transparency on every dollar raised through taxation. A openly published pie chart would help. So that tax payers can see clearly where their property taxes, and now this head tax is earmarked for.
I don't believe for one moment that the majority of opponents to this new tax are against housing homeless people. The problem is there are are more than 8000 people living in cars, sleeping rough on Seattle streets. And the homeless in Seattle population is growing. Therefore, I would support a head tax if the Seattle Council can show me and other tax payers where every $$$ will be spent.

This is not a tax on the rich, it's a tax on the middle class. Big companies will either move away, slow down new hires, or most likely just recover the costs by paying less to new hires and giving smaller raises, bonuses, whatever. The middle class always gets the squeeze. Why the fuck would anyone think this taxes the wealthy?

@13 nobody ever thought this was taxing the wealthy - it's about taxing corporations (not the same thing at all).

I've lived in other metropolitan areas that had employee head taxes and the local economies were doing just fine. Maybe salaries were capped at a lower rate, but that helped to keep local inflation in check.

Besides, one thing I've learned since living in Washington for the past 20 years is that Washingtonians love to whine,, bitch, and moan about taxes even though their tax burdens are lower than residents of many other states.

First off it will be cheaper if you conduct a survey and immediately disregard anyone with a drug problem or who refuses assistance. If you choose to be on the street then you get to help yourself or be removed from the city. Off the homeless I've met, very few are on the streets due to the so called housing crisis. Help the people forced out by abuse and other uncontrollable problems. People who want to steal for their next fix, anti society types etc can move along.

First - all these chosen "victim" Companies already pay a pretty hefty GROSS REVENUE B&O tax - both State and City. Anybody that thinks Starbucks, Amazon and the other "chosen" don't already pay a massive amount in taxes is purely a fool. It's more than presumptuous of Sawant to just state "they can afford it". She has no idea and she doesn't care - it's what SHE wants. Second - not sure if anybody is aware or even cares, but more than half - more in the range of 75% of these homeless are imports. They are not from Washington State much less Seattle. They are coming here from all over the Country because of the freebies and Seattle's accepting "vibe". There is a great deal of irresponsible behavior here by this Clown Car of a Council. And lastly - the lack of State Income tax so many whine about? First, it's Unconstitutional by our own State Law. Second, we already pay some of the highest taxes in the Nation for property tax, sales tax, gas tax, Business & Occupation tax both City and State, that idiotic Pop and sugar tax, utilities taxes... we pay and we pay and we pay. Last time the City dared a company to leave - Immunex packed up and left town. Don't mistake Bezos for a whimp either... He makes the decisions for Amazon - Sawant does not.

@16 That is the called the gross receipts tax and it varies by business type.

Amazon is a retail business and as of 2016 the retail sales tax rate is 0.00215%.

On one million dollars of gross retail sales that's less than $2,200. I'd hardly call that burdensome or "hefty."

"...not sure if anybody is aware or even cares, but more than half - more in the range of 75% of these homeless are imports..."

Utter nonsense. Care to provide a cite? No of course not.

I can. The 2017 Point-in-time count of homelessness statistics say the following:

"During the Count Us In Survey, seventy-seven percent (77%) of respondents reported living in King County at the time they most recently lost their housing. Twenty percent (20%) of survey respondents reported being born or growing up in King County, and 24% reported having lived in King County for a decade or longer."
http://allhomekc.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/2017-King-PIT-Count-Comprehensive-Report-FINAL-DRAFT-5.31.17.pdf

So, 77% come from King County.

@9 You wrote “Literally none has ever claimed that our taxes would perfectly end social problems like homelessness.”

You must be forgetting about our 2005 “10 Year Plan to End Homelesness”:

https://www.kingcounty.gov/~/media/health/MHSA/documents/Housing_First_Evaluation_August_2010.ashx?la=en

This tax would add yet another expensive fragment to our extensive non-system for not getting the homeless housed. I hope Mayor Durkan vetoes it If the full Council passes it.

Here is one of the reports the city commissioned and ignored:

https://static1.squarespace.com/static/53206c76e4b0da7cd7fb97f6/t/57f39220cd0f68202b3705ba/1475580452747/Seattle+BPA+Final+Report+8.15.16.pdf

Among the recommendations:

— Put all of our spending into one accountable system. Measure results in numbers of persons permanently housed (not in shelters, camps, or vehicles);
— Stop trying to create affordable housing as a cure for homelessness. The homeless have deeper problems;
— Ignore what self-described “homeless advocates” want. (All they want is more money and no accounting of it.)

Remember all the people who said Durkan wasn't the Chamber of Commerce candidate? Where are they now?

@20: I hope Mayor Durkan vetoes this turd with a bevy of Union tradeswomen around her.

@21: Absolutely.

Durkan totally will. Big photo op. TradesWOMEN. So union. Much authentic. Very worker.

If anyone is ashamed, you totally won't see it in their faces.

@18 you did read it did you. You did a google search and posted something that sounded pithy. That was a program goal. Not a promise.

That wasn’t even a tax proposal. It was a study for a program based on a successful pilot program. Based on the Housing first approach. One that was never fully implemented or funded.

It was the Housing First idea that it was describing. Which was a fuckton more than a tax. And, golly, you know providing houses for homeless people would, you know, end homelessness, right? There was a fuck ton more to it than just a tax.

Jesus Christ.

17 - Wrong - First, this is 2018 so quoting 2016 is disingenuous at best when the numbers are easily available. Second, Amazon is quite a bit more than merely retail based - ever heard of AWS? Yup - the highest percentage gross revenue B&O the State charges is levied against AWS and their Cloud services. Ironically Amazon's only profitable pipe. Third - The tax in question, and just one of many on businesses in tax-regressive Washington State is called the Washington State B&O tax and is based on GROSS REVENUE without your meaningless "receipts" word and paid on a quarterly basis regardless of earned positive or negative profit numbers. Amazon's rate is a mixed rate up to .471 of a percent plus another .268 of a percent for Seattle. That is A BUTT LOAD OF MONEY. Let's lay out a couple of real numbers shall we - Amazon grossed 178 billion in 2017. Amazon, like it or not pays somewhere in the range of a mixed low of .378 to a potential high of .609 of one percent of that gross to Washington State and the City. I am math deficient as I don't have a calculator handy but a quick scribble on paper indicates in the range of 200 to 220 million dollars. Ain't no thing I guess? And that is not including the sales tax Amazon paid on their own acquisitions and Use Tax. Probably another $50 million there, easy. A quick check on the internet to see what Amazon's net profit margin was for 2017 - it appears to be 1.17%. Sure, it's still a lot of money but if we want Amazon to be a local engine providing many thousands of jobs and State and Local dollars - it might be best if we don't actually slaughter one of our golden geese on the alter of a virtue signaling - costs them nothing - City Council.

Next - if that wasn't the most disingenuous argument I have EVER seen - you should actually be ashamed of yourself. A mere 24% of the homeless population, by your own numbers are actual residents of King County for 10 years or more - NOT SEATTLE - cause that wouldn't fit your agenda. We are talking Seattle bearing the burden, not King County.. but even granting Seattle IS in King County and a homeless person living on the County line doesn't become any less important - the overwhelming percentage of homeless CURRENTLY living in Seattle City Limits is from elsewhere and recently at that....Here is a mere example of those "residents reported losing their home in King County" - a man drove up from California and his wreck parked under the Underpass that yes, he was living in, was towed - he "lost" his home in King County. I really despise the false number, word spinning, deceptive bs - it makes both sides look pretty danged bad. If the truth is not good enough to get what you want - telling a falsehood or farking with the numbers is not the way to go.

@23: Hey, I’m no sexist. For the veto ceremony, Mayor Durkan can have some male Iron workers present, too.

Especially if CM Sawant shows up to protest the veto. ;-)

I can't wait to see you commies eat shit on Monday.

If this were some eastern european country, all the citizens of seattle would band together in a mob and just walk around the city streets beating the shit out of the homeless people with farm implements until they moved-on to somewhere else. If you read between the lines of some of these comments, we're not too far off from that. I'm glad this isn't eastern europe.

@28: If you read between the lines of your comment, you see someone making an absurd extrapolation in an attempt to be profound.

@ 29

Bingo on 28... I had to read it twice to make sure I wasn’t missing a subtle nuance, any message of worth in fact... I wasn’t... total gibberish crap...

You know, seeing the latest volcano news from Hawaii, made me ponder whether maybe the head tax is really in the interest of a far greater good. We in Washington live in the shadow of five still active volcanoes. None of them is extinct. They all belched out something in historical times and can come rumbling back to life at any time. Getting businesses and people out of this region might inadvertently be a huge public service. We live on the razor's edge. As a geologist in my former van pool once told us, we could become America's Pompeii.

There's's not a hint of irony or sarcasm in this. It's simply meant to remind newcomers and oldtimers alike that this is one of the most geologically dangerous areas in the US, with the duel threats of a cyclical 7.5 or greater earthquake (whose cycle has come around again) and another of the state's volcanoes experiencing an explosive eruption, ala Mt. Saint Helens, only much closer to Seattle this time.

Maybe our unchecked explosive population growth is just fueling a human tragedy of epic proportions in the not too far off future. Something like the head tax, that checks that growth and also gets people out of the region and harm's way, could one day be praised as having saved countless lives

After all, what's any of this going to be worth anyway if it's buried under pyroclastic flow or reduced to baseball sized rubble by an earthquake of bibilical proportions?.

Good though, 31, but you know how it works. With the southwest drying up, the Colorado no longer able to keep Phoenix, LA etc. in water, even if the growth sags for a bit now, they're coming right back pretty soon. No small but catastrophic risk can ever compete with present suffering.

@31: I share your concerns and have made similar comments in other blogs.
Seriously, folks. The Cascadia Fault extends from Northern California, USA to Northern
Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada. We're 320 years overdue for The Big One,
a.k.a. a 9.0 earthquake. Add an eruption from one or more of the following volcanoes, Mount Rainier, Mount Baker, and / or Mount St. Helens and we can all kiss or asses goodbye.

@34: Sorry--I thought I had indented properly.

@34: Well then, I suggest you start getting prepared.