The C is for Crank
City Budget Booby Traps
Mayor Mike McGinn's proposed 2012 city budget includes fewer painful cuts than previous budgets, but that doesn't mean it will sail past the city council, which is just getting its first full look at the proposal this week. (The mayor proposes the budget every year in September, and the council approves its own amended version in sometime before Thanksgiving in November). Here are what I see as potential point of conflict and question marks.
Potential conflicts:
• Police staffing. McGinn's budget proposes holding staffing essentially neutral, replacing officers who are lost through attrition but not increasing the number of officers overall. This would actually represent a boost over the last two years, when SPD neither recruited nor hired new officers.
McGinn justifies keeping hiring at "maintenance" levels by noting that the department has met many of the goals in the city's Neighborhood Policing Plan---which called for 30 new officers a year starting in 2008---including 911 response times, the amount of time officers spend on "proactive patrol," and the city's lowest crime rate in decades.
But some community activists and council members may push back on the mayor's proposal, which will effectively mean five years without implementing a key component of the neighborhood policing plan (those 30 new officers). And even hiring for positions lost through attrition takes time---officers must be recruited and trained before they can go on patrol, a process that takes months. (In his office after his budget speech yesterday, McGinn acknowledged that "there may be some lag time," but couldn't say how much). That "lag time" could leave SPD with an officer shortfall at a time when certain types of crimes, including "lifestyle" crimes like street drug use and graffiti, are going up.
• Transit planning . McGinn wants the council to give him $1.5 million to study "high-capacity transit" on the city's west side, which even he acknowledges is code for rail to Ballard and West Seattle. That proposal didn't fly with the council in 2010, when he proposed putting a city-only transit measure on the ballot; it didn't fly when he proposed asking voters for $10 million to simply study rail feasibility on the Westside corridor; and it doesn't seem much more likely to fly with the council now.
The only factor in McGinn's favor? A million and a half dollars is a pittance compared to the $1.5 billion to $2 billion McGinn's original plan would cost.
• Investing the Sunny Jim's insurance settlement. Originally, the city planned to spend $1 million ot received in an insurance settlement when the Sunny Jim's peanut butter plant, which sat on city-owned property, burned down last year, converting the former Fire Station 39 in Lake City into a permanent homeless shelter. However, some city council members balked at the proposal after neighborhood residents complained that they'd been left out of the process, and McGinn now says that money would be better spent fixing up roofs on six city-owned buildings.
Because it's a budget item, allocating the money to Fire Station 39 would require the support of seven members of the city council. However, supporters have indicated they were close to securing that support, and note that a private religious group, the United Gospel Mission, had offered to pick up the $300,000 annual operating cost at no expense to the city.
• The Office of Housing-Office of Economic Development merger. Though billed as a cost-saving budget item, McGinn's proposed merger of the Offices of Housing and Economic Development would only save the city an estimated $338,000 a year---hardly enough to justify eliminating an entire department (OH) and its director (Rick Hooper).
Instead, McGinn will have to sell the council on his vision that, as he put it yesterday, "housing and economic development are overlapping issues" and that merging the two departments will allow the city to create "efficiencies" and put more money into direct services like low-income rental housing assistance. So far, council members have been skeptical; as Sally Clark put it to PubliCola last week , “I’m kind of predisposed to not like the consolidation, honestly, because I do feel like Seattle has done an outstanding job making housing a top priority".
• Setting aside $1.95 million for the city's emergency "rainy day fund." at a time when, as council president Richard Conlin noted week, "It's [still] raining." The council seems pretty evenly divided on whether 2012 or 2013 is the year to start setting emergency money aside, and plans to debate the issue as part of budget negotiations leading up to November.
• Cuts to community centers. The council and mayor came up with a plan to cut services and hours at some community centers and extend them at others earlier this year, with the goal of serving the greatest possible number of people. But which people? McGinn says the cuts "took race and social justice issues into consideration" when deciding where to focus cuts ("we worked to have the most hours in the places where there was the greatest need"), but that may be cold comfort to a senior citizen whose water aerobics program is cut in favor of a youth basketball program simply because basketball is more popular.
• Revisiting parking rates. This isn't technically part of the budget, but it will come up next year when McGinn proposes changes to parking meter rates in neighborhoods where both revenues and parking utilization have fallen shy of predictions.
Last year, after a huge public outcry, the council opted to lower rates more than the mayor initially proposed in several neighborhoods, to raise them less than McGinn proposed in others, and to lower rates in some areas where he proposed keeping them the same.
However, as McGinn noted yesterday, the new rates didn't lead to the results the city wanted---one to two empty parking spaces per block, ideally combined with increased revenues. Instead, revenues went up where rates went up and down where rates went down---contradicting predictions that drivers would avoid downtown Seattle once rates went up to $4.00 an hour. Meanwhile, drivers have failed to fill up parking spaces in areas where the city lowered rates---indicating that price isn't the main factor people consider when deciding whether to pay to park.
It's unclear, however, whether the council will agree to swallow its pride and revisit parking rates this year.
• Heavy cuts to management. McGinn's budget relies heavily on cuts to management positions, in keeping with his campaign promise to focus personnel cuts on senior staffers and strategic advisors. Of a net reduction of 1.1 percent of the city's total workforce, 17 percent is coming from senior staffers. Some council staffers have expressed concern that by cutting so many senior-level staff, the city will be losing valuable institutional knowledge.
Potential conflicts:
• Police staffing. McGinn's budget proposes holding staffing essentially neutral, replacing officers who are lost through attrition but not increasing the number of officers overall. This would actually represent a boost over the last two years, when SPD neither recruited nor hired new officers.
McGinn justifies keeping hiring at "maintenance" levels by noting that the department has met many of the goals in the city's Neighborhood Policing Plan---which called for 30 new officers a year starting in 2008---including 911 response times, the amount of time officers spend on "proactive patrol," and the city's lowest crime rate in decades.
But some community activists and council members may push back on the mayor's proposal, which will effectively mean five years without implementing a key component of the neighborhood policing plan (those 30 new officers). And even hiring for positions lost through attrition takes time---officers must be recruited and trained before they can go on patrol, a process that takes months. (In his office after his budget speech yesterday, McGinn acknowledged that "there may be some lag time," but couldn't say how much). That "lag time" could leave SPD with an officer shortfall at a time when certain types of crimes, including "lifestyle" crimes like street drug use and graffiti, are going up.
• Transit planning . McGinn wants the council to give him $1.5 million to study "high-capacity transit" on the city's west side, which even he acknowledges is code for rail to Ballard and West Seattle. That proposal didn't fly with the council in 2010, when he proposed putting a city-only transit measure on the ballot; it didn't fly when he proposed asking voters for $10 million to simply study rail feasibility on the Westside corridor; and it doesn't seem much more likely to fly with the council now.
The only factor in McGinn's favor? A million and a half dollars is a pittance compared to the $1.5 billion to $2 billion McGinn's original plan would cost.
• Investing the Sunny Jim's insurance settlement. Originally, the city planned to spend $1 million ot received in an insurance settlement when the Sunny Jim's peanut butter plant, which sat on city-owned property, burned down last year, converting the former Fire Station 39 in Lake City into a permanent homeless shelter. However, some city council members balked at the proposal after neighborhood residents complained that they'd been left out of the process, and McGinn now says that money would be better spent fixing up roofs on six city-owned buildings.
Because it's a budget item, allocating the money to Fire Station 39 would require the support of seven members of the city council. However, supporters have indicated they were close to securing that support, and note that a private religious group, the United Gospel Mission, had offered to pick up the $300,000 annual operating cost at no expense to the city.
• The Office of Housing-Office of Economic Development merger. Though billed as a cost-saving budget item, McGinn's proposed merger of the Offices of Housing and Economic Development would only save the city an estimated $338,000 a year---hardly enough to justify eliminating an entire department (OH) and its director (Rick Hooper).
Instead, McGinn will have to sell the council on his vision that, as he put it yesterday, "housing and economic development are overlapping issues" and that merging the two departments will allow the city to create "efficiencies" and put more money into direct services like low-income rental housing assistance. So far, council members have been skeptical; as Sally Clark put it to PubliCola last week , “I’m kind of predisposed to not like the consolidation, honestly, because I do feel like Seattle has done an outstanding job making housing a top priority".
• Setting aside $1.95 million for the city's emergency "rainy day fund." at a time when, as council president Richard Conlin noted week, "It's [still] raining." The council seems pretty evenly divided on whether 2012 or 2013 is the year to start setting emergency money aside, and plans to debate the issue as part of budget negotiations leading up to November.
• Cuts to community centers. The council and mayor came up with a plan to cut services and hours at some community centers and extend them at others earlier this year, with the goal of serving the greatest possible number of people. But which people? McGinn says the cuts "took race and social justice issues into consideration" when deciding where to focus cuts ("we worked to have the most hours in the places where there was the greatest need"), but that may be cold comfort to a senior citizen whose water aerobics program is cut in favor of a youth basketball program simply because basketball is more popular.
• Revisiting parking rates. This isn't technically part of the budget, but it will come up next year when McGinn proposes changes to parking meter rates in neighborhoods where both revenues and parking utilization have fallen shy of predictions.
Last year, after a huge public outcry, the council opted to lower rates more than the mayor initially proposed in several neighborhoods, to raise them less than McGinn proposed in others, and to lower rates in some areas where he proposed keeping them the same.
However, as McGinn noted yesterday, the new rates didn't lead to the results the city wanted---one to two empty parking spaces per block, ideally combined with increased revenues. Instead, revenues went up where rates went up and down where rates went down---contradicting predictions that drivers would avoid downtown Seattle once rates went up to $4.00 an hour. Meanwhile, drivers have failed to fill up parking spaces in areas where the city lowered rates---indicating that price isn't the main factor people consider when deciding whether to pay to park.
It's unclear, however, whether the council will agree to swallow its pride and revisit parking rates this year.
• Heavy cuts to management. McGinn's budget relies heavily on cuts to management positions, in keeping with his campaign promise to focus personnel cuts on senior staffers and strategic advisors. Of a net reduction of 1.1 percent of the city's total workforce, 17 percent is coming from senior staffers. Some council staffers have expressed concern that by cutting so many senior-level staff, the city will be losing valuable institutional knowledge.
