Harger: Seattle closed a $175 million hole. Then the council added $50 million

Pam Jacob has run Pam’s Kitchen for 20 years, the last 11 in Wallingford. When money ran short, she put it on her credit cards. When those were tapped out, she refinanced her house more than once. Jacob told “The Gee and Ursula Show” on KIRO Newsradio, “If we don’t pay the mortgage on our house, we have nothing.” Pam’s Kitchen closes Nov. 29.

Small businesses don’t get to skip a payment and call it found money. City Hall has a workaround. It’s called JumpStart.

Seattle opened this budget with a $175 million hole in its general fund, the account that pays for police, fire, parks, and the basics. Mayor Katie Wilson closed most of it with cuts. Then Budget Chair Dan Strauss released the council’s changes, adding more than $50 million in council priorities for next year alone. Much of the money to cover it comes from JumpStart. The budget committee votes Nov. 13.

Seattle’s JumpStart tax was built for housing

The council passed JumpStart in 2020, a payroll tax on the city’s biggest employers. The pitch was affordable housing. By 2022, some of it was filling holes in the general fund. That was supposed to be temporary. Two years later, the council made it permanent.

Strauss’s package goes further. It pulls about $23 million in JumpStart money into the general fund next year, from a rosier forecast and a single tax payment that won’t come again. That money might not be there next year. The spending will.

It also skips deposits into the JumpStart reserve, the cushion for a year when the tax comes in short. The cushion drops to the bare minimum. A family that skips its savings deposit to cover the bills is spending its cushion early.

Seattle firefighters get overtime back, and the pension fund pays

Eight councilmembers bring Strauss their priorities, and every one has people behind it. He said his package balances the budget through 2030 without touching the city’s emergency funds.

Some of what he added is essential. Wilson’s budget cut enough fire department overtime to put 13 fewer firefighters on duty each day. Strauss put it back. Good.

To help pay for it, the package shrinks the city’s payment into the firefighters’ pension fund. No retiree’s check gets smaller, but money set aside for future pensions is now covering this year’s bills. That’s the part of this package that worries me most. Seattle doesn’t have the money for this, so it’s pulling it from pension money.

Ballard murals in a $175 million deficit year

Then come the nice-to-haves: $500,000 for murals in Ballard’s Brewery District, $3 million for arts programming, and a community garden lease. None of them sounds crazy on its own.

Most are labeled one-time. Seattle’s heard that before. By Wilson’s own count, every Seattle budget since 2020 has opened with a deficit and closed it with one-time money and temporary fixes.

Seattle City Hall needs to level with voters

The money isn’t there.

The council can start saying it Nov. 13, when any member can pull an item from the package. Keep the firefighter overtime. Make the reserve deposit. Send the murals back for a year when the money’s real. And set a date for the general fund to stop leaning on JumpStart.

Pam Jacob ran out of credit cards. JumpStart has a limit too, and sooner or later somebody at City Hall is going to have to tell Seattle.

Charlie Harger is the host of “Seattle’s Morning News” on KIRO Newsradio. You can read more of his stories and commentaries here. Follow Charlie on X and email him here.

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