Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan’s 2022 budget plan would add police, allocate federal aid to housing

Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan’s 2022 budget, due to unveil Monday, would add police officers and provide the lion’s share of the city’s remaining COVID-19 federal aid to affordable housing, according to a summary of the plan.

Durkan is due to deliver the final annual budget speech of her term on Monday afternoon. She turned down re-election that year.

The mayor’s proposed 2022 budget, which the city council will review and amend over the next two months, would allow police to add a network of 35 officials (35 more than the department is expected to lose), according to the one available online on Monday Summary tomorrow. The entirety of Durkan’s plan was not immediately available.

Under the plan, the average number of police officers could grow to 1,230. Seattle’s 2021 budget included funding for 1,343 civil servants, but many places are vacant.

The debate over whether to increase or decrease the size of the police force was a major point of contention during the Council’s budget deliberations last year.

The Solidarity Budget coalition, a group of nonprofit and community organizations that campaigned last year to see City Hall use police funds for other purposes, will make another push this year, officials said at a summit they met on Saturday have held.

Seattle has already spent more than $ 300 million on COVID-19 federal aid since the pandemic began, but will have an additional $ 116 million available in 2022.

While aid in 2020 and 2021 was mostly for immediate needs like homeless shelters and food aid, Durkan’s plan for next year is $ 50 million to build and purchase affordable housing. Smaller amounts would be allocated for housing, food aid and other needs, according to Monday’s summary.

The mayor’s plan would allocate $ 115 million to the Human Services Department to help tackle homelessness, the executive summary reads. That’s less than the $ 150 million budgeted for the city’s 2021 budget.

In 2022, more than 90% of the Human Services Department’s homeless funding will be managed – for the first time – by the newly formed King County’s Regional Homeless Agency.

Seattle’s economy and tax revenue recover from COVID-19. The unemployment rate, which peaked at 17% in April 2020, is now 5%, and real estate taxes, which City Hall relies on to fund infrastructure projects, have returned to pre-pandemic levels, according to Monday’s summary.

The recovery helped Durkan in its 2022 plan to allocate $ 100 million in 2021 to projects and programs that target people of color to some extent, including about $ 10 million in community-based safety programs.

The Mayor’s plan would accomplish this and address other priorities by spending Seattle’s payroll tax revenue for large corporations a little differently than the council may wish. The council that passed the tax on Durkan’s objections in 2021 put rules in place last month designed to ensure that the majority of revenue is spent on housing.

Durkan’s budget summary says her plan would meet spending targets set by the council by adding COVID-19 federal aid to income tax revenue.

The Coalition for the Solidarity Budget is calling for a 2022 plan that will cut police and prosecutor spending by 50% and allocate more than $ 600 million in affordable housing. The Seattle Human Services Coalition, which represents a number of nonprofit contractors, is calling for more than $ 16 million in additional investment.

Daniel Beekmann:
206-464-2164 or dbeekman@seattletimes.com; on Twitter: @dbeekman. Seattle Times reporter Daniel Beekman covers the Seattle city government and local politics.