Council Briefing 6/1/26

Good afternoon, colleagues.

Today is June 1st.

The council briefing meeting will come to order.

The time is 2.02 p.m.

Clerk, will you please call the roll?

Council member Saka.

Here.

Council member Strauss.

Here.

Council member Foster.

Here.

Council member Juarez.

Council member Kettle.

Here.

Council member Lynn.

Here.

Council member Rink.

Present.

Council member Rivera.

Present.

Council President Hollingsworth.

Here.

A present.

Awesome, thank you.

And Council Member Juarez is excused until she gets here.

If there's no objections, the minutes of May 18th, 2026 will be adopted.

Hearing no objection, the minutes are adopted.

And then also two colleagues, I'm gonna amend the agenda.

If there's no objections, I'm gonna move the proclamations to be at the front of the meeting, and then we'll do the presentations right after, because I know that some people had a hard stop and wanna make sure everyone gets a chance.

to sign the proclamations awesome no objections we're going to go ahead and move the proclamations before the presentation on affordability thank you so we'll jump right into the president's report we have 18 items on the consent calendar we have no executive sessions for today and then we have two proclamations for discussion and so the first proclamation will begin with council member Rivera recognizing June 2026 as Gun Violence Awareness Month.

Councilmember Rivera, please lead the discussion on the proclamation for any additional feedback before I request signatures.

Thank you, Council President, and good afternoon, colleagues.

I'm so honored to be bringing this proclamation forward.

It will be signed by Mayor Katie Wilson as well, and it's to highlight Gun Violence Awareness Month.

As you all know this topic is deeply important to me and personal to me and my family and I know it is incredibly important to all of you as well.

We all want Seattle to be a safe and thriving city for all our communities.

I hope this proclamation is to bring this awareness for the month and I'm just so pleased to be bringing it forward and I'm glad that the Mayor also I know this is a topic that's important to her as well.

So pleased to have her signing on as well.

Later on in my report, I'll talk about the gun violence symposium that's going to happen this month as well.

But for now, I'll just leave it at the proclamation and hope that you'll join me in support by signing on.

Awesome.

Thank you, council member Rivera.

Are there any comments about the gun violence awareness proclamation for June, 2026?

Councilmember Strauss.

Council President, just taking a moment to, I believe Councilmember Juarez is walking in the door right now, so I have nothing further to say.

Thank you.

Awesome.

For the record, Councilmember Juarez is here.

Thank you.

Great job, Councilmember Strauss.

Okay.

If there's no other further comments, will the clerk please call the roll to find out who wants to affix their signature to the proclamation?

Councilmember Saka?

Aye.

Councilmember Strauss?

Aye.

Councilmember Foster?

Yes.

Councilmember Juarez?

Aye.

Councilmember Kettle?

Aye.

Councilmember Lynn?

Yes.

Councilmember Rink?

Yes.

Yes.

Thank you.

Councilmember Rivera?

Council President Hollingsworth.

Yes.

Signatures will be fixed to the proclamation.

Thank you so much.

Good job, Council Member Rivera, for all your work on that.

We're gonna move on to our second proclamation.

Colleagues, I have a proclamation recognizing June 6th as Ammar Ashawn Murphy Payne Day.

I'll share some comments about this.

It's truly fitting that this Proclamation is coinciding with Gun Violence Awareness Proclamation Month as he was unfortunately killed at Garfield High School campus two years ago.

And to this day, obviously it's one of the hardest days for anyone, especially for his family.

And he was truly a light in Garfield and the District 3 community.

This proclamation honors his legacy.

in his life.

And tomorrow, after the presentation of the proclamation, because we'll be joined here with his family, inviting folks downstairs, we'll be doing a celebration of his life at the Birth at Night Landis Room.

And that's starting, it'll be during council meetings, but the family and community will be downstairs.

So I'm looking forward to that as well, to celebrating his life with his father and his mom and, all his uncles and cousins and everyone who's going to be here and then some students from Garfield as well and everyone has been invited so they that will be tomorrow so colleagues would love your support on this as well so any other final comments I'll open the floor Councilmember Kettle followed by Councilmember Rivera

Council President, I just wanted to thank you for bringing this forward and I'm reminded of being with you that day when we went into community with the pastor, with the community groups that were there coming together.

in support of the family, but also for Amara Murphy Payne.

So I just wanted to thank you and to reflect on that day, because it brings home why we're doing this and tied to the month and what we need to do related to gun violence.

So thank you very much.

Thank you, Council Member Kettle, and then all your work and support.

And it was great having you there as well.

And I know the community really appreciated that.

Council Member Rivera.

Thank you, Council President.

I, too, want to thank you for bringing this forward and for honoring Amar.

It is a tragedy, of course, and my heart goes out to the Murphy Payne family.

And I remember being with you at the walkout with the students and Amar's family, I think, last year.

And it is really I am so appreciative of you for bringing forward the proclamation and the family tomorrow.

Thank you.

Awesome.

Thank you, Councilmember Rivera.

And I know a bunch of everyone has been involved in different ways when gun violence hits our community and our people and neighborhoods, showing up, being there when the incident happens, consoling family members, connecting community to resources.

All of us have played an equal part in that.

Unfortunately, I hate to say that, that we have played a part in consoling folks when they pass away with gun violence, especially our kids and our babies.

And just wanna thank each and every one of you, cause you've all played a different role in showing up, you know, in our own ways to help combat this.

So really appreciate everyone's partnership on this.

If there's no further comments, clerk, will you please call the roll to find out who wants to fix their signature to the proclamation?

Thank you.

Council Member Saka?

Aye.

Council Member Strauss?

Aye.

Council Member Foster?

Yes.

Council Member Juarez?

Aye.

Council Member Kettle?

Aye.

Council Member Lynn?

Yes.

Council Member Rink?

Yes.

Council Member Rivera?

Aye.

and Council President Hollingsworth.

Yes.

Nine signatures will be fixed.

Awesome.

Thank you colleagues.

And just a reminder that will be presented tomorrow again at top of the meeting to the family.

And then we're gonna move everyone transition to downstairs where they will start their celebration.

So thank you colleagues for that.

Now I'm gonna invite our central staff to the table.

We're gonna now move into our presentation on affordability in Seattle.

And so I'm grateful that we have Cal and Tom on central staff.

Also wanna give a shout out and thank Council Member Strauss for his partnership on this meeting as well with affordability, him being our budget chair, so understanding the health and finance of our city.

And this is the less wonky version of what you would probably see in one of Council Member Strauss' committee for public consumption, but also too for council members as well.

We have heard about affordability and city revenues and I know that from some Seattleites, we have heard about the increasing pressures that they feel from just cost of living in Seattle.

And so this presentation is for us to look at what the city levers that we have, what we control, how we are potentially adding to some of those affordabilities, what is in our control as a city.

Really appreciate Tom and Cal for taking this on and doing this presentation.

Colleagues, we have, how many slides do we have?

I can't remember, like 10?

About 10.

Okay, we have 10 slides.

So colleagues, if we could hold our questions to the end would be super, so we can kind of go through it and then we can circle back with questions.

Sounds good.

All right, awesome.

Thank you, colleagues.

All right, Cal and Tom, off to you.

Council members, thank you.

Calvin Chow with Council Central Staff and Tom Mikesell as well.

I just wanted to give a few additional contextual comments.

Obviously, we prepared this in response to Council President's request.

And we know that the Council has- that Seattle voters have approved a number of levies lately and will be considering the library levy this summer.

We know that later on this week, The Council will get its first discussion of the Mayor's Seattle Transit Measure sales tax proposal.

We know that King County down the road is considering a 0.1% sales tax as well for roads.

So there are a number of revenue proposals out there, and this is an opportunity to not look at the future, but to look at today and to look at what the sales tax and what the property tax look like on bills today and in the context of affordability.

And that's really what Tom has spent a lot of time putting a presentation in front for you.

I think our intent here is to have a little bit of a baseline context that you can refer to when you consider these other proposals down the road, have some general broader context so it's not just looking at the incremental changes when a revenue comes to you, but remembering that this all fits into the broader concept of affordability.

So with that, I'm going to turn it over to Tom to kind of lead the presentation, and thank you very much.

Thanks, Cal.

Good afternoon, Council President, members of the City Council.

Just to continue on with Cal's entree, we're going to be talking about affordability in the context of city revenues.

And, you know, I had an outline slide, but in general, I'm going to give you a high-level economic context.

and then look at our property taxes and our sales taxes in terms of the amounts that residents pay.

And then kind of conclude with some of the affordability programs that are built into those taxes.

So next few slides are just gonna cover the economic context.

So when you hear affordability, it's got two variables.

There's both the cost of something and then what you have in terms of resources to pay those costs.

So it's both the price and the income levels.

So one thing that affects everything is inflation.

And that's been a hot topic for a number of years, unfortunately.

Since the Great Recession, or prior to, after the Great Recession and before the pandemic, the inflation rate was generally low in the 2% to 3% range.

However, since the pandemic, the inflation has trended much higher than that.

And in fact, the latest year-over-year reading in April was for the Seattle area, price index was 4.9%, which is historically high.

and then when you kind of dial into some more detail about what that's meaning for the prices that people are paying for some essential items, you can see comparison of the April price index from 2019 to the April reading for 2026 for food, which was 40% higher or 5.7% on average annually, housing, a 39% increase or 5.6% annually.

Transportation, 46%, 6.5% increase on an annual basis.

And then tuition fees and childcare, which is a 3% annual increase.

And so those are all, again, historically high annual averages, and they've been building for a number of years since the pandemic.

So that's kind of where we are with regards to these kind of economic fundamentals.

reasons for those, so there are many fold.

There are, of course, the tariffs that were instituted last year at the federal level have increased taxes on imports.

Those can be, of course, passed through.

One of the ways that the importers can deal with those prices are to pass them through to consumers.

There are, of course, supply constraints with regards to housing, not enough housing, therefore, and the demand for that housing is high, which keeps the prices high.

And then, most recently, the war in the Middle East has elevated gas prices, and that continues to be a sticking point for the extent of that we're continuing.

So all of these are, of course, national trends outside of local policy control, but they, of course, impact the prices that we all pay.

And then taxes and fees are both a function of those price increases and then added to those price increases.

So then when you kind of think about...

So these are kind of the conversation about, well, prices are high.

What are the incomes that are available to pay those prices?

What do those look like?

And so this graph here basically breaks down for 2024 the distribution of incomes in the Seattle area.

And this is just taken from the American Community Survey tables from the United States Census Bureau.

So as you can see from this display, there's an abundance of high-income households in Seattle.

About 30% of households in Seattle have an income of higher than $200,000 per year.

And so in terms of affordability, what can be affordable for those households is distinctly different than what may be affordable to folks who have incomes on the left side of this scale, particularly from incomes 59,000 and below.

This is sort of a depiction of what you've heard about the K-shaped economy.

So there are, it's kind of a divergence in the economic situation where as opposed to what, you know, you're probably familiar from your statistics class in school, the normal distribution where you have kind of a hump in the middle and kind of the tails on the edges are thinner.

So kind of you have a very robust middle.

That's not the case with our income distribution.

It's skewed to the higher income.

levels.

And then since I've been talking about incomes and median incomes, which I'll touch on a little bit later, I just wanted to give some information about comparative incomes with regards to the state and with regards to the Seattle area, because these are the kind of the metrics that are used for determining for different assistance programs that are available in the state and the city.

And so as you can see, as households get larger, generally the median incomes go higher for both the state and the area median income or Seattle median income.

And then in general, or in all cases, the Seattle area median income is higher than the state median income.

So now I'm going to dig into some of our city taxes in the kind of context of what those bills are for typical households.

So this chart kind of draws on some information from the King County Assessor that shows the 2026 annual.

So this is the total full year tax bill for property taxes for both a median assessed value home on the left.

So this is kind of like the middle home of all owned property.

and then the average rental, which is about, on a monthly basis, $2,098.

I got that off the web to generate this graph.

But again, these are both full-year annual amounts.

And as you can see, for the median house, the annual tax bill across all the jurisdictions, so city, state, county, special districts, is $8,254 in 2026. The city share of that is about 35% or $2,871, the little box on the orange.

And then when you look to the right side, the tax bill for the average rental, it's about $3,121, and the city share being a little over $1,000 a year.

So again, these are just kind of middle of the pack averages, median values.

but it just gives you a sense of what the typical bill is for either a owned property or a rented property.

So since I showed you that graph showing the distribution, particularly with the skewed to higher income households, I just wanted to kind of put that rental housing burden in some context.

And this is information that I took from the Housing and Urban Development website that shows kind of the level of cost burden for households at different income levels.

And so I've drawn two lines here showing cost burden, which is the housing cost is 30% or more of your income, or in the red above it at 50%, what denotes severely cost burden.

So this means that your rental payment is 50% of your annual income.

And as you can see, there's a very significant portion, over 70% of households that are below $35,000 in income are in that severely cost burdened category.

and most renter households with incomes below $75,000 are at a minimum cost burdened, if not also severely cost burdened.

So again, this gives a kind of a context of how that rental property tax bill hits along the spectrum.

Similar information for the retail sales tax, one of our other major revenue sources here at the city.

This is just for a kind of a median income household, which is 123,000.

It doesn't tell you how many people are in the household.

It's just the middle taxpayer.

And it shows that the estimated sales tax bill is about $2,414.

of which the city's share is about $286.

The largest share is from the state, with about $1,500, or a little shy of that, in terms of their annual cut of the sales tax bill.

Somewhat similarly, so this is information I pulled from a group called the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.

They do this kind of regular analysis of taxes for all the 50 states and how their different tax structures relate to the income of the folks that pay those taxes.

This is specifically the sales tax, and it's a Washington chart, but you can generally, you know, generally it's gonna be consistent as you go down to kind of the Seattle level.

And it shows that as you get a higher income, the amount of sales taxes you pay per year declines as a percent of that income.

And so just to kind of look at the ends of the chart for a household, with less than $33,500 of annual income, the sales tax is about four and a half percent.

So your total sales tax payment is about four and a half percent of your annual income.

When you're at the $878,000 and above, it declines to less than half a percent.

So this is the effective tax rate in tax policy terms.

and also it generally shows, I'm sure you've heard the concept that sales taxes are a regressive tax.

This is essentially what that means, is that you have the nominal tax rate of, say, our total sales tax is 10.55%, including all the jurisdictions, but then when you kind of break that down in terms of what people buy and how that is as a percentage of the income, it's essentially, it's a higher percentage of the income the lower you get in income, in the income brackets.

Essentially, the effective tax rate on the household income below $33,000 is nine times that the household at $878,000 and above.

And so I just want to wrap up with just some of the relief programs that are currently available, given this information I've shared.

One, for property taxes, there are exemptions for seniors and people with disabilities.

They all have an income basis that's applied as well.

Assistance for widows, widowers, or veterans.

And then there are deferrals that are based on income, age, or disabled status.

Kind of the difference is the programs on the top are more kind of grants, don't need to be paid back.

The deferral program, on the other hand, is something where it's just deferred until the property is sold or the resident dies.

And then for sales taxes, there aren't any specific relief programs.

However, the way that the tax is structured provides some kind of built-in relief.

Things like rent, mortgage payments, food for at-home consumption, bought at the grocery store, prescription drugs, utilities.

None of those things are included in the sales tax base.

So at least for those essential items, households aren't paying sales tax on those purchases.

So as promised, brief presentation.

Just covered some real high-level pieces of data and happy to help with any questions.

Awesome.

Thank you, Tom.

And I know that I will...

I apologize to Council Member Strauss.

I didn't turn to you for any opening comments that you would like, so I will go to you first if that's...

I don't want to put you on the spot, though, and I apologize.

Okay, never mind.

I appreciate you, Council President and Tom and Calvin.

I really appreciate this presentation today.

It explains with data the experience that I've had here in our city with everything is getting more expensive and everyone is more burdened by cost.

I was wondering if we could tick back to just slide one Just in a layperson's conversation here, CPI is just generally inflation.

Is there a better way to understand CPI?

It's just generally.

Pardon, I didn't have my sound on.

It's essentially just increases in prices.

And so this is kind of the consumer price index.

So the price is paid by you and me as we go to retail stores to buy things.

So it's just a measure of year over year, month over month, and how those prices have changed.

It is the prices.

So you can consider it the cost of inflation.

You can look at it as, here's why this thing costs differently than it did in the past.

And so all the index terms, it's the ratio that matters, not the number itself.

Thank you.

That's very helpful.

And I would assume that these annual averages also apply to the goods that government is buying on behalf of our residents.

Is that a fair- I know that's not the scope of your presentation today, but- Yeah, there would be a different number for different categories of spending, you know, blended with- it's all the same area.

They do them by metropolitan area.

So I believe it's Seattle, Tacoma, Bremerton, sort of larger SMA, but yeah.

I just can't miss an opportunity to say that when we are only allowed to increase our property tax income by 1% plus new construction, this demonstrates to us why and how every one of our dollars does not go as far next year as it did last year.

demonstrating how much cost of living has increased here in our city.

If you could move to slide three, and I'll keep it brief, Council President.

This is really important data for us to reckon with.

Because this is not the data of the city that I grew up in.

And it's okay for things to not stay the same.

Change is the only constant that we have in the world.

But when the change is where so many people are making so much more than everyone else, that's where we have strife and striation and problems.

Do you have, and I should have asked you this before we came to committee, do you have the same data for, say, 2004?

I mean, not off the top of your head and not right here for committee, but...

I imagine, yes, I could find that.

I think it would be interesting for us to go back and look at how the last 20 years has shaped our city because, and I'm sorry, I'm going to keep bringing it back to our budget conversation, but between 2010 and 2019, Seattle was the fastest growing city in the nation, which is how we started using one-time funds to provide the funding for ongoing programs in our city.

We've had a growing population.

We've had growing and changing needs.

We, as you just heard, are not able to use every dollar this year as far next year as we did this year.

And we have to be able to address our growing population, our growing needs.

and then also we need to reckon with the fact that we were using one-time funds for ongoing programs.

But it would be interesting for me to know what the change has been for income levels over 20 years because I think, colleagues, it will paint the picture a little bit more clearly on whom we need to serve the most in our city because this was not necessarily the city that I grew up in.

and that's again, it's okay and we have to protect the people who have not necessarily changed with the changing city because it's not okay for us just to push them out.

For slide number four, I know that this is Can you just provide a little bit more context?

Is this just median income and that's it?

So when we're talking 80% median income, 70% median income, that's just dropping down from here.

Is that correct?

Yeah, that's correct.

This is just basically showing how the median incomes compare the measures for the state versus local.

And then as you increase the size of household, and then as you indicated, the percentages would be of these values.

and largely that's used for determining eligibility for assistance programs and that type of thing.

So it can depend on your household size.

Oftentimes they are pegged to the state and our residents are maybe not able to take advantage of them if we aren't able to use area median.

and I'll just take this moment to highlight something that I've talked to many of you about, which is that when we are talking about housing, using affordable housing dollars, that sometimes we need to be I'll say it in another way.

We have spent a lot of money providing one bedroom units that when we use these median income metrics, these one bedroom units are not far enough different from market rate costs of apartments that I believe is making a meaningful enough difference in our rental market at this time.

We've spent a decade catching up to where we were in that high growth period that displaced a lot of people.

and we've done a lot of really good work but as I've talked to Council Member Foster and others that there's, I have seen many different conversations about housing dollars all nipping around the edges and it seems like we just need to have like one large conversation because of how much things have changed rather than doing things piecemeal.

But I use this slide just to demonstrate that even when we're talking about 80% area median income, it's not enough for housing.

But I'll switch using the same narrative there on slide six.

which is when we provide relief programs, sometimes 80% median income isn't enough.

So council president and I have been working on some important fixes to the utility discount program where in the past and up until now, the utility discount program has only been available to people who are about 52% area median income.

because we've been using the state median income to determine eligibility.

Last time I checked, the state has a very different median income than the city of Seattle, right?

And this presentation demonstrates that.

And so I'll just end my comments here to say this slide right here is precisely why Council President and I have been taking up this important work and why we need to do more to help all of our neighbors who are severely cost burdened or even just minimally cost burdened because in my short life, living here in this city, I've been in this position and if I've been there, then so many other people have been there and we need to do as much as we can to serve those people who are severely or just baseline cost burdened.

Thank you, Council President.

Thank you Councilmember Strauss for walking us through that.

And are there any, I know it's a lot to digest when Councilmember Strauss and I were working on this presentation with central staff, we talked about how this could be broken up into four different committee and doing a deeper dive into stuff, but wanting to get everyone just an overview of kind of setting the table of where we're at.

I will pause here to see if there's any more questions.

before I had mine.

Okay, Councilmember Foster, followed by Councilmember Kettle.

Thank you so much, Council President.

And I think I'm gonna have more of a comment first than a question, just following up on Councilmember Strauss's lead in there, particularly around AMI.

I just can't bypass the opportunity to talk about something that I think is incredibly important, which is actually just how good of a job these measures do at understanding whether or not someone can afford to live the city that they live in, right?

Because AMI, and I know that we all know this, but I need to say it out loud, AMI is not a measure of whether or not you can afford the cost of goods.

It's simply where you sit relative to the rest of the income in your area, right?

And so when we think about AMI, just because somebody is at 50, 60, 100% AMI, that does not necessarily mean that they are able to afford the cost of goods.

And I think sometimes they get used as interchangeable.

But colleagues, I will just say a resource that I really like and I appreciate and I used it when I was teaching, at the University of Washington is the self-sufficiency standard that the University of Washington has, which is a measure that's designed to help us understand how much an individual would need to make, not just based on their family size, but understanding actually the composition of their family.

Because the cost of living is significantly higher if you are a parent with an infant and you are paying for childcare.

It's still a two-family, one-parent, one-child household.

than if you have a parent and a 15-year-old who has aged out of childcare.

And those costs really matter when it comes into understanding what families are paying for.

So I just want to take this as an opportunity to lift up that resource and also to highlight, you know, in this AMI conversation, it's worthwhile to note that there are still programs that use the federal poverty level or 200% of the federal poverty level to qualify people for programs.

And that is completely out of date.

And when we talk about the CPI, that's a program that's based on the price, I got it, price of groceries in the 60s and has not been updated at its foundational level since then.

It's just been adjusted with inflation over time.

So it's really important, I think, to talk about how good of a job the tools that we have to even qualify people for programs are at qualifying folks for programs.

Okay, that's my lead-in.

Now, thank you so much for this fantastic presentation.

I really appreciate it, and I appreciate you, Council President and Councilmember Strauss, for doing the work to bring us here.

Can I ask you, just central staff, on following up on those opening remarks, to talk about where some of the city's constraints come in when it comes to providing for subsidized programs for folks.

And in particular, I want to ask if you can sort of mention or speak briefly to the porn-infirmed language that's in the state statute and how that, well, now I'm answering my own question, how that constrains our ability to deliver programs, informs, excuse me, informs.

Yeah, so not knowing exactly what you're looking to hear, I mean, in general, there is a constitution provision in the state that allows us to spend public dollars in support of the poor and infirm.

And I can't remember the exact terminology, but it's along those lines.

Otherwise, other spending would be considered a gift to public funds if the public entity does not get a service back or a value back.

So we can provide support to income qualified people.

I think it's a good one for follow-up as we have this conversation about affordability because where I've experienced it in the past and not in this recent run as a council member but in the past is that language being interpreted perhaps too narrowly to allow us to provide for programs that provide subsidy for people who need subsidy given the high cost of living in our area.

And with all of these things, they are subject to legal interpretation.

And so it becomes a bit of case law.

It becomes a bit of how much people are willing to take risk.

And that can change over time as well.

Thank you.

And then I want to take us to slide eight, please.

And I just think this one's worth looking at just a second time.

And I know that oftentimes in the public there's a phrase used around our upside down tax code.

And, you know, I think this is just an excellent example of that when we're talking about the percentage of income and how this hits from sales tax and its regressivity.

So I just wanted to kind of revisit that for that highlight.

And then I don't have the slide number here, but you were, there's a slide, oh, slide five.

Thank you.

So one thing I'm curious about is we often, when we're talking about potential new taxes that we are bringing forward, the tendency is to talk about them.

I've noticed this just at council or in the public, and we provide a price tag based on the average median household.

What would it take, I suppose, for us to be able to understand better how any of the actions council is considering might impact a lower than median average household.

That's a great question.

I've spent a lot of time trying to answer that question, as a matter of fact, and the challenge is This data is not, particularly for renters, but even for owned houses, is not provided by the King County Assessor in that format.

So there's not like the quintiles that we're kind of used to with regards to income, where it breaks down those values.

because it doesn't really track that way.

For example, the rental value here is something that I estimated using rent and using capitalization rate information and sales data from CoStar.

So even that is something that I had to synthesize myself.

All that to say, a number could be come up with, but it's going to be a heavily synthesized number that staff generates using kind of a set of assumptions and not a real perfect kind of clean assessment.

Like the median value is the median value, is the median value all day long.

But when we start creating a reality that puts these values in the context of a distribution, there's a lot more art behind it.

I got to the point where I was uncomfortable doing that.

I think another way of saying the same thing is that we don't have, we know we can find out what this bill is for the value of your house, but we don't necessarily know the income distribution of the people who are in those.

So it is a shot in the dark.

How do we articulate that?

If you are living on a fixed income in a wealthier, in a high valued house, then you are going to be affected more than the reverse.

We don't have great data on it.

We can probably come up with some assumptions to figure out some illustrative examples of it.

And that could be something that could be done for any of the proposals that come forward.

But it's not gonna be based on data that's collected.

It's gonna be based on inference and some staff judgment.

Yeah, thank you.

I want to just thank you both.

That's really helpful.

And this is my last question, Council President.

And actually, you don't need to respond to this.

It's just a statement, and then we'll follow up, which is to say, I do believe there's two issues here, one that each of you raised, right?

So the latter issue being your household value is not always the same as your income, right?

I shouldn't say it's not always.

is not the greatest predictor of that, right?

You could have bought your house 35 years ago, you can be living in a home with fixed income, and you can have a higher than median value assessed home.

So that's, I think, the second issue.

The first one that I was intending to raise was more a question of, In the same way that we produce numbers where we say this levy will have X dollar impact on a median assessed value home, I would love to be able to understand the impact of those levies on homes with a lower assessed value.

And I think that's the separate question of you get into quintiles and there's some art there.

But I think as we're seeking to do a better job talking about affordability and tax impacts, it would be worthwhile to continue that conversation.

Thank you so much.

I really appreciate you both.

Thank you, Council President.

Thank you, Council Member Foster.

Great questions.

Council Member Kettle followed by Council Member Lynn.

Thank you, Council President.

Thank you, Mr. Chao, Mr. Mike Self, for being here and for your presentation.

It's interesting to go through with different types of contexts.

I note, in terms of affordability, you mentioned inflation.

I remember being a boy in the days of the 70s with high inflation, stagflation, Paul Volcker coming in.

And these are issues that we've dealt with before.

And so we do have something to lean on there.

Tariffs.

quite clear on that and extremely frustrating, although with the Supreme Court decision, hopefully things will settle out.

But the cost of that is huge, particularly for a maritime city that we are in a maritime region.

It's extremely unfortunate and bad policy.

You mentioned the basic economics, the supply and demand pieces.

I think that's really important to understand.

You mentioned Operation Epic Fury.

the war in Iran and its impact.

And that is huge, going, sliding back to, kind of circling back to inflation itself.

I would add, you don't really have it in here, but I would add, Another impact on affordability is the combination of property taxes, sales taxes, the levies, the bonds, and all the above, and the increases that we've been doing, particularly since some of them have been major increases, that they themselves have an impact on affordability.

Would you characterize it that way?

Is this something?

Particularly when you look at it from a collective.

Each one individually can say, yes, it makes sense, but how often do we step back and take the collective and and assess from that perspective.

The library levy is our last of this renewals that are going to the voters for this cycle.

And as part of the renewals, there has been interest in expanding the services provided from them.

So some of those levies have grown more than just a pure renewal.

And that is part of, or is either in line with or part of the cost changes that we see.

By the way, that goes to, and thank you Council Member Foster for your points, AMI points, constraints.

I always say constraints and restraints because it's either external or internal.

And then house poor.

And this kind of goes to that point because I know so many people, you know, they may live in an affluent-ish area and they may have a home, but God knows when.

And they acquired it in the circumstances.

But if you try to get your house painted, or you try to change that roof, fix that roof, a new roof, it's prohibitive, and that just cascades.

And so those are really important pieces.

And I should say, in addition to being a child of the 70s, I also came into this job being a stay-at-home dad, which also gives me great insight.

Like pre-pandemic, going to get a half gallon of milk at like $2.69 or whatever, Now you're at 449, 450, it varies, but you're in that.

All those little pieces really hurt the people in our city.

More broadly though, I think of affordability in three pockets.

I don't know if this makes sense.

Affordability for residents, affordability for businesses, and affordability for city government.

I'm not sure if that makes sense.

A lot of this has spoken to the residents.

Can you speak a bit to the business side of this and then maybe city government in terms of revenue and spending deficits and our fiscal situation?

There's a lot there.

I think we, knowing your interest in the business economy side of things as well, I mean, in large part, they're going to have to cover those costs one way or the other, and largely that's expected to be through pass-through to the prices that other people do to purchase those things.

It can be a little hard to, describe that in a very illustrative way because an average business is a lot harder to explain.

I think that may be one where if there are some specific either industries or characteristics of a business that resonate with people, that people can relate to, that is something that we could potentially identify what the impact would be on an illustrative business.

It is hard to do these sort of What's a median business is not, in my mind, a particularly meaningful construct, but I think that, you know, we do...

If you could go back to the rental piece, for instance, you know...

No, the rental...

The property tax bill.

Yeah.

So, I mean, just as an example, renters do not pay property tax directly.

That is going to figure into their bills.

That's going to be on the landowner to pay and figure out how to either recoup those costs or absorb those costs as part of their business.

So I think, you know, in some ways, different people will experience it differently.

You have corporations and businesses that do have to pay taxes and then do have to figure out how they're going to figure out that line up on their bill.

and oftentimes we can also see that impact on the prices that they charge people for their services.

Thank you.

I do think we should have this focus.

I mean, I look at it at three buckets.

The residents, and that's really important.

But I think we cannot forget the business side and the city government piece.

And for businesses, for example, I swear to God, I believe I am talking to all the same people Deputy Mayor Surratt's talking to, because I'm constantly having these conversations saying, oh, I talked to Deputy Mayor.

And then I'm sure the Deputy Mayor's hearing from people, oh, I just spoke to Councilmember Kettle, because obviously I represent District 7. And in these conversations, I have, you know, for example, there's a businessman who was in a financial services world, let's just say generally, and he's like, hey, you know, this is hard.

And you know what I did, Bob?

I moved my business on the other side of 520. Guess what?

I saved $26,000 in the arbitrage between paying Bellevue taxes and Seattle taxes.

And so now he's in Bellevue.

and that's pretty stark.

I know somebody else in the legal field.

He's like, hey, I want to come into Seattle, bring the business into Seattle.

But he can't because of the instability and the uncertainty.

And as anybody knows in the business world, uncertainty and instability is not a good combination.

And so he's holding back.

And so I worry about the varying types of quiet quitting or opportunity loss, opportunity costs, and those factors with business.

And, you know, I represent downtown, the commercial real estate world.

You know, it's massive down here.

And, you know, trust me, I've had a lot of conversations in that area too.

So, you know, my understanding is there's been like a $15 billion decline in the commercial buildings downtown, which is helping in some...

That's why that one person on the legal side is interested, because of the depressed commercial.

but what is the more macro impact of having a $15 billion decline in the evaluation?

How does that impact the property tax burden?

Because obviously shifting to area number three, affordability with city government, you have to make it up somewhere, right?

Could you go to the first slide for a moment?

Maybe the...

Well, the first one will work.

I think one concept here that I think is important is that we are a local government.

We have control over very specific revenue tasks, but a lot of the things that are driving these costs are not under our control.

And we can't, that is affecting everyone.

That is part of the fabric of what we're all dealing with.

I, like you, remember a time when, federal policy change to address things.

And the issue, of course, is that we don't control monetary policy in the City of Seattle.

We don't have those types of tools available to us.

So there is a limitation to what we can respond to.

In my experience, when I've seen sort of high inflation, it's typically been spikes.

I haven't really seen a long period, a six-year period of continued compounded inflation is not something that I'm used to.

And I think that is putting a particular pressure on all of us, on government services particularly, because we have to pay in that same market as everyone else.

and as Councilmember Strauss noted, a lot of our revenues are capped.

Property tax is capped at 1% growth.

Just because the valuation of the property goes up or goes down does not affect us in Washington State in terms of the amount of revenue we collect.

We can only collect 1% plus the value of new properties.

So that is behind inflation.

At these rates for six years, that's a much different proposal than if it was even just one higher number and then a more reasonable inflation over time.

All of which I think is to say is, you know, your points are well taken.

I think the The issue is how much of this is a lever that this council can control.

It really comes down to the revenue sources that we put in front.

It comes down to, on our case, some of the spending options that we have and sort of the knock-on effect of how does that affect private decisions about where people decide to locate, how that drives the broader economy.

but we don't directly determine those things.

We make those decisions.

We set the table for other people to make their own decisions.

I understand.

Thank you.

And it highlights that Olympia is not getting the job done.

We're living with the legacy of Tin Iman, and are we making those hard steps to fix our Constitution or fix our laws to address that?

Because you're right.

And because of that, For every action, there's a reaction.

That's why we've gone heavy on levies, which now we're about to basically hit the ceiling on that.

And so that is something that we can control in terms of the various levies that we've had.

Along with sales tax, we did public safety sales tax last year.

I like to look into that in terms of how we're spending that, by the way.

We have the transit piece coming up soon and bonds as well.

And so those are within our bailiwick as the saying goes.

And so I think it's really important for us to look at this in terms of our budget revenue spending and how we are impacting it as well.

And colleagues, I was just closed by saying thank you, Council President, is that we really should be looking at affordability first for the residents.

That's understood.

But we should also be mindful and say it out loud in terms of affordability for businesses.

And lastly, what is the true affordability of our city government?

We cannot be, by law we can't, but this goes to the spending versus revenue.

There's a lot of focus on revenue, but we also have to look at the spending piece because because of that first one, residents, all these households have to do their budget, and we're gonna have to make hard choices ourselves, and I just think framing that way, affordability for residents, businesses, and city government, and the impacts of such is important.

Thank you, Council President.

Thank you, Council Member Kettle, Council Member Lynn, followed by Council Member Juarez and Council Member Rivera.

Thank you.

Just looking at slide three, and kind of going back to Councilmember Strauss's point, how much this has changed probably in the past 10, 20, 30 years.

But also I'd just be very curious to see how this compares to other cities, maybe of similar size.

I suspect we are a bit of an outlier here.

Certainly think in terms of when we talk about inflation and high demand, I think that growing high income number there driving up the demand for housing and other costs is a significant portion of that inflationary pressure, which is not only impacting other residents, but also You know, we see this inflationary pressure from big business that is maybe impacting some of our small businesses that are struggling to compete to offer those same wages or, you know, the high cost of housing is impacting our smaller businesses.

And going to stay on the side I guess for a moment, I also just wanted to distinguish that there are very different income charts for homeowners versus renters.

Office of Housing has highlighted that and how that this high end is really skewing our area median income in a way that is leading to weird results in some of our programs in terms of how we're determining rents and so on for our affordable housing.

And so kind of the discussion earlier, we have a state definition, but are there ways that we could to distinguish between homeowners and renters, or what would it do if we took out some of the high-end earners from our income chart?

And then just going back to slide five, as you pointed out, it is not easy to talk about tax impact, property tax impact on renters.

That's really a difficult exercise to do, but I just want to point out a couple things.

We do have a number of apartments, rental properties that don't pay property taxes either because they're affordable housing or some of our multi-family tax exemption programs, MFTE, are exempt from property taxes.

and then also just recognizing that You know, homeowners, low-income homeowners, seniors can get a tax deduction, but our low-income senior renters cannot get that similar tax relief.

And I'm not quite sure how to address that because they aren't directly taxed, but if there's any creative ways to provide our low-income senior renters similar relief, I don't know.

Just a couple points.

A lot of the property tax deferral programs are, you know, the tax is deferred.

It will still be on the bill at some point when the property changes hands in the future, so it isn't necessarily, you know, forgiveness or assistance in a traditional way that we have with, say, the UDP, the utility program.

I did want to just highlight something that I thought was interesting.

It is hard to understand what a median rental is, but in this context, this property, if it was rented to an average person, a $3,100 property tax bill is six weeks of rent of coming into that property.

So I know that's not necessarily how any one person actually experienced it, but just as in terms of context, that's what that table is saying.

Thank you, and then I guess just moving on to slide six, as we all know, that cost burden just as we think about our tax structure and who can bear the burden of any additional costs, it's clearly our highest income households who are most equipped to handle any additional cost burden, whatever that is, whether it's our taxes, other inflationary costs.

And so given our upside down tax code, just any creative ways that we can shift it to those who have the ability who really are not struggling with high taxes or costs in the same way that the rest of our residents are.

Thank you, more of a comment than question there.

Awesome, thank you, Council Member Lynn.

We have Council Member Juarez followed by Council Member Rivera.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Hey, Calvin, thank you for pulling this all together for us.

And I just want to kind of focus on the elephant in the room.

I know that we, I'm going to use Councilman Kettles, I'm laughing, we're back to old English with Ballywick.

But, Calvin, you said something that I've been around long enough to know what I'm hearing, what's in our control and what's not in our control.

And we put together, my understanding of the purpose of today is to go over affordability, which is important, obviously, in these four areas of food.

housing, transportation, and childcare.

Those are the basics.

That's what local government is elected to do, essential governmental services, essential governmental functions.

And again, no offense to you, Council Member Lynn, but when I hear creative ways, I hear progressive tax.

And not a bad word, but I just want to be upfront, is that if I'm hearing that wrong, then please correct me.

The City of Seattle has what we call legacy levies, and we have four of them and there's probably more.

We have the recent library levy, we have the transportation levy that's coming up with Councilmember Saka, we have the housing levy, we just had the FEP levy that the voters agreed upon.

and then we have some other ones that are coming up, the democracy vouchers, but that's not up until 2035. So there's four taxes right there, or levies, that are put on our homeowners and our renters.

And then the City of Seattle itself, Councilmatic, that's what we have control over.

That's when we decide the nine members make a decision about a tax.

and you've been around, so have I, when we did the sweetened beverage tax in 2017, when we did the jumpstart tax in 2020. Social housing, as you know, went to the voters.

The B&O tax, as you know, went to the voters.

And then we pass via the budget the public safety tax.

So right there we've counted up 7, 8, 9, 10, 11. And then we have the county taxes, which is fine.

Again, we're looking at best starts for kids.

We have the veterans service and human services levy that comes up.

We have the crisis care one that comes up.

Safe and stable communities, public safety.

And then of course we have the pending millionaire tax that's now being challenged.

So I'm not doing this to humiliate or act like I'm the smartest person in the room, I think what people want to hear is how many city taxes that we are in control of.

We have our legacy levies that come up and get passed and we get it.

Those, I think, address the standard food, housing, transportation, childcare.

and then we have the other taxes that we've been creative, if you will, beverage, jumpstart, other taxes.

So I guess my point is I appreciate the pie chart, but I think what we're feeling and what I'm hearing, and we're all adults and we all can agree to disagree, is some tax exhaustion, at least for 2026. and I'm not sure where this lands us but I think we have to be fair and speak in plain terms for the public watching and certainly I just want to be straightforward to that.

I am mindful of the taxes that come from this member, this nine member when we decide to do something that affects people's lives.

And I'm also mindful when we vote to put something on the ballot if it passes or not.

and it isn't just passed to homeowners.

And I don't think it's fair to say that some of us, because we're homeowners, and I am a homeowner and I was a renter, that we can keep affording all these taxes, especially for elders that want to age in place in home, even though there's some state breaks there for more low-income elders.

and it gets passed on to renters.

And I think we should be honest that we have to have, as Councilman Rockettle was saying, I mean, we can have our political ideology, but at the end of the day, people have to have jobs so they could pay their rent and their mortgage.

They want to be safe.

They want their kids to be able to go to school without fentanyl and gunshot.

They want to be able to have childcare so they can go to work.

They want to have transportation and a rich transportation spine that's affordable that they can get there.

And so my concern, and I'll be gone in November, and you guys won't have to hear from me.

Well, I won't leave Seattle.

I'm not dead, but I won't be up here, is I think we have to be mindful that our business community and some of our biggest civic partners We can't have everybody be, I don't know if you guys remember, I'm sure Mr. Kettle does.

I think we're the oldest ones here.

You know, the last one out of Seattle turned the lights off.

I remember that, I don't know if you remember that saying.

I just think we have to be honest about what the business economic community landscape looks like for the city of Seattle before we start talking about progressive or creative taxes more that come from this body elect.

I'm a proponent for, okay, put it on the ballot and let the voters decide if indeed they want to be taxed for X.

I'm not so big on the ivory tower nine members saying, I think this is what's best for you and then having it blow up or have the money that it's supposed to go to not go there.

And we've seen that.

Where we're passing this as a nine-member council and we want it to go to X and then slowly but surely it starts peeling away.

Well, maybe we can put 10% over here and 20% over here and another 30 over here.

And then the original reason that we passed the tax as a nine-member board, elected board, doesn't go to the intended to the intended purpose.

So I do appreciate, as you know, I'm not quite as big as a wonk as you, but I do appreciate the pie chart and the lining up the basics about the increases in the food, housing, transportation, and tuition, and we are mindful of the global and national things that are happening to our economy.

We know that the stock market is not the only indicator of our economic conditions, and I don't see it getting any better in the next 18 months.

I could be wrong, but I don't see that happening.

and so with that, Council President, I want to thank you for putting the affordability piece in conversation to be candid front and center so we can talk about those things.

And again, I don't mean to ruin the party here, but I just wanted to just let people know that we have a lot of City of Seattle levies, we have a lot of City of Seattle taxes that the voters pass, and we have a lot of City of Seattle taxes that this nine member elected board passed.

Councilmember, thank you for that.

I think the one thing that you really did highlight is that we are only talking today about property tax and sales tax, and there are any number of other city taxes, other government taxes as well, but city taxes that people have to pay.

and that should be part of your consideration as you think about these things going forward.

Ultimately, property tax has been largely stable because even though we do have people moving in and out, the property itself is largely, we've been an attractive enough area so far that that sort of property tax base has continued to be there.

Some of our other taxes hit different B&O tax or other taxes and governments or other entities might have different options within the region to relocate and not pay those taxes.

So there are definitely the potential to change what decisions are in front of people based on what our tax structure looks like.

It is hard to kind of do a global sort of tax assessment.

Oftentimes what happens, I think, is the proposal comes forward and we, for instance, the Seattle Transit measure, which is a sales tax proposal, will be discussed this week and you will get the Mayor's presentation on it.

Oftentimes we will look at the increment, what's changed in the proposal.

I think our intent here was to try to give you some global context background to kind of put that in a broader perspective.

I'm not saying it necessarily does that the best way, but hopefully that is information that you can use as you look at these other proposals that come forth and think about them collectively.

Well, I want to thank you, Kelvin, because you and your team and Tom and everyone, I mean, they put together my cheat sheet that I've been using and adding to of all the taxes.

And again, I don't say that like I'm against a progressive tax.

I'm just saying the whole landscape needs to be looked at and the burden.

And the other side, which we haven't touched on and, you know, and I think the worst way to find out when you tax and we see where the money's going is to find out it's not going there and read about it, that there's an audit and there's fraud and mismanagement and mishandling.

That's the worst way to find out.

We do have a city auditor.

The city auditor is placed in the legislative branch, but I don't think that they're truly independent.

We don't have like a third party auditor out there like King County to say, and I don't want to name any tax because then everyone's going to say, oh, Council Member Horowitz is against this tax.

But to say, okay, we passed this tax in 2021 and this is what it was for.

Now let's look at whether or not we raised all this money.

Here's a pie chart.

Did it go to what we said it would go to?

We never have those kind of blunt conversations until we get audited or there's something bad happens.

So I just want to, you know, as I've said before, I just kind of want to put a marker down there and kind of keep our North Star about what our job is.

I don't think all taxes are good and I don't think all taxes are bad, but I think if we make a decision to tax, whatever that is, that whatever we intend to use it for should be used for that and also people should be held accountable and we should also see what the deliverable is. and I have my own issues about particular groups that are here, at least that I've looked at for the last decade, that make millions of dollars from this body and taxes and I still don't know quite frankly what they have completely delivered and I'll just leave it at that.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Council Member Juarez.

Council Member Rivera and then I think we're going back.

Council Member Lynn, is that a new hand?

Yeah, okay, awesome.

Council Member Juarez, or excuse me, Council Member Rivera.

Thank you, Council President.

Thank you, Calvin and Tom for being here.

Council President, thank you for this is a really important presentation.

And also I wanna say plus one to all of my colleague, Council Member Juarez comment.

I think I'm just gonna be underscoring some of the comments that you said, but I wholeheartedly agree with all the things that she mentioned.

What I was gonna say, many of the points she did hit but I do want to underscore the need to look at the full landscape not just property and sales is the point of this presentation but the full landscape before we make decisions and then also looking at where the spending is going and are we getting the outcomes that we want for our city that is, you know, where this money is going.

Those things are really important.

And I'll just say by way of example, when we did the FEP levy, I really dug into, I wanted to see where the money was going, how well it was working, so that we would have a good basis by which we were making decisions about a future families and FEP levy.

Same with the library's levy.

Now, Calvin, thank you for pointing out, and it's true that all our levies, instead of increasing just by the inflationary piece, we've put more into the levies.

And I think that an important aspect is the fact that now we've reached pretty much our levy cap.

And then it is now hampering our ability to do other things.

because we're hitting that levy cap.

And I don't think just looking to Olympia and saying increase our levy cap is what we only should be looking at because that just means we would be increasing property taxes even more.

And we know that property taxes have a huge impact on our renters.

So I think we do need to look at where the money is going as well as how much we are asking of our residents because affordability is a huge issue and we are seeing sadly not just in our city but across the country that it's ever more becoming the haves on one end and the have-nots and that is a really, it is a sad state for our country and our city.

So I really just wanted to underscore that I would like to see all of the levies that are under control because it's true there's some things are not in our control but others are how much we put in a levy is under our control.

What we decided to do for the library levy, that was very much under our control.

Knowing that we had other things that we needed to fund, we made a decision about the library levy, which got us ever closer to our levy cap.

And now we're in a situation where we have other needs and how are we gonna pay for those needs?

That is under our control.

We cannot blame the state for that.

or any other entity, that we are making those decisions about the levies that we put on the ballot and how much those levies are.

Those are our decisions to make.

We can't blame others for that.

And whether or not we're looking in a deep dive way as to what that money is going and whether we're getting our outcomes, whether we are really helping people, which is the ultimate goal of all this revenue, that is within our control, how well we're looking at that and whether we are doing things like supporting audits to help inform the decisions that we make because people are in need and we are trying to collectively meet folks' needs in our city and that is really important.

So again, I just plus one to all of Council Member Horace's comments and because I know we're running out of time, Council President, I'll just thank you again for this really important presentation and I want to follow up with both Calvin and Tom to get, I'd like to see all of the taxes and the levies that we have sent to our, that our residents spend money on because it bears mentioning whatever state taxes or county taxes there are, that they're paying for, that should be on here too, because that is equally important to any city taxes that we are making decisions about.

They pay all those other taxes, and that needs to be part of this conversation as well.

So thank you very much, Council President.

I looked at a continuation of this conversation.

Yep.

Thank you, council member and Rivera and just a heads up colleagues.

Um, you know, we, there could be so many more slides to this presentation and, um, and I'm, I'm glad that council member war has pointed out all the, um, levies that there are the transportation, the library, the family education, the Seattle Parks District tax, the housing levy, democracy voucher tax, the sweetened beverage, all these things continue to add up on folks.

And so that piece that you see there, that is just the property taxes.

Some of the taxes that I had said are not property taxes,

Council member, the levies are all in there, so all of those are property taxes.

But not the sweetened beverage tax.

That's something else.

That's where most of, and also it changes patterns.

A lot of people in South Seattle go to Renton to buy groceries because of the cost of things.

I've seen it.

I know a bunch of people that do that because the cost of things are a lot different at different stores or places or things because of some of the taxes that we have created here in Seattle.

But the property taxes are the green on this slide.

And I thought it was important, what I hear from council members, from Council Member Juarez and from Council Member Rivera is like, hey, we want to zoom into the green piece and see how much that we are sending to voters and folks.

But I think it's also important that when you hear, you know, we sent to voters, you know, a housing levy tax that was $1 billion, how does that break down for everyone?

Because when people hear $1 billion, it's a lot of money, but also want it to be broken down individually and how much people are paying, because I think it's also, for people to consume as well to how much they're paying.

I believe Councilmember Lin and then we'll close it out and I'll look at Councilmember Sokka to see if he has any comments or questions.

Councilmember Lin.

Thank you, just wanted to follow up on sort of the creative and progressive revenue idea.

And I do think there's how we tax, how much we tax, who benefits from those programs.

So for example, the housing levy, that's a property tax, and then who benefits is primarily low income folks.

And are we measuring, is there a real benefit to it?

I will say, at least in my opinion, you could have a revenue-neutral tax, one that taxes higher-income folks but then reduces the taxes for low-income folks.

And that would be a great thing, in my opinion, if we had a revenue-neutral approach, but it helped to correct our upside-down tax code.

And just finally, you know, as we send stuff to voters that it is an important check, but it's also doesn't sort of relieve us of the responsibility to try to get this right because the voters only get sort of an up and down vote.

They don't get to sort of like say, you know, we want this piece, not this piece.

And we also know that it is more likely that our high income residents are the ones that are voting.

And so we have to take that into account as well.

So thank you.

Thank you, Council.

Thank you, Council Member Lynn.

And also to colleagues, I want to highlight that there are people, you know, our city is very expensive.

let's name the elephant in the room.

It's very expensive compared to other cities.

I have lost friends who have moved to either Detroit, Atlanta, Bentonville, Arkansas, where the headquarters of Walmart is, North Carolina, Atlanta, Texas.

They have left Seattle, not because they wanted to, but because of how unaffordable the city is and their dollars will go longer as they're raising their kids and their families and they can buy a house for a couple hundred thousand dollars and have these things that are really important to them.

And so there's also wanna highlight there's also a hidden tax, too, when we don't get the outcomes that we want.

So if we have a transportation levy, and thank you Council Member Saka for running the transportation levy, and if we do not have clean bike lanes and you pop your bike, because there's not cleaning of the bike lane and you have to repair your wheel, that's a hidden tax on you.

Or if it's a library tax or library levy and that library might not offer some of the things that you need or, you know, that's a tax on you because you're paying into that and you want certain services and outcomes or the parks levy and your park might not be clean and we're paying into the parks district.

That's a hidden tax on you because now you're paying extra money to go to the gym to exercise because your park is inaccessible for you to exercise.

So like these are different things where when I'm talking to people and they're like, hey, I'm paying all these taxes.

people you know it's the affordability piece but it's also the outcome what people are not getting because there are a lot of wealthy people that said Joy if I saw positive outcomes I would be more willing to pay even more because I could see positive outcomes but that's not what we're saying right now we're not getting some so the first part is this property tax piece the sales tax piece and then we have the outcome piece that could be a whole nother meeting on the impact as well so Are those old hands, Councilmember Lynn, Councilmember Rivera?

New hands for me.

That's an old hand for Councilmember Lynn.

Okay, awesome.

And then Councilmember Rivera, and then we'll wrap up.

Councilmember Rivera.

Thank you, Council President.

I did want to say about the sales tax piece.

I mean, you just said it as well, but, you know, folks, low income folks are paying sales tax for things other than food like clothing and if you are a parent you know you have to buy shoes for your kids I swear every few months their feet grow and I'm not trying to be cheeky here like it's expensive and clothing and all of those things do get taxed and I will say that in terms of you know Olympia just passed a millionaire's tax it was not used to offset some of the taxes that our low-income folks are paying, oftentimes, I mean, new things are getting funded with that type of a tax.

So, you know, I'd love to see some tax relief for our low-income folks when we do things like a millionaire's tax.

So all of that is true.

And to your point, Council Member about our Council President about the services piece, you know, if folks aren't seeing where, you know, if folks aren't seeing improvements to services or services, then it makes it difficult for everybody involved because we want a city that's going to provide its, we have chartered responsibilities that we need to provide.

And if we are not providing those in a robust manner, if people don't feel safe, if people don't feel like they can access their parks, if people don't feel like, you know, they have access to all the things, all the services that that money's supposed to go to, then it has an impact on whether they stay in the city or some people don't have a choice to leave the city.

And so that means that our folks that don't have a choice to leave the city are stuck and feeling like they're not getting the services that they need.

And that's not good for our city.

It's not good for the health of our city.

So all of that needs to be taken into account as well.

Thank you, Council President.

Thank you, Council Member Rivera.

And then we'll have Council Member Foster and then we'll wrap up.

Council Member Foster.

Thank you so much, Council President.

I really appreciate that.

I just wanted to comment and quickly say I'm really looking forward to, I know today's conversation was focused around affordability and we took a look at our taxes and that impact, but I also want to uplift and say I'm looking forward to as we continue to work on the comprehensive plan and other items that are going to be coming through.

the Housing Committee to make sure that we are taking other actions that I think will have a positive impact on one of the most expensive things in our city, which is housing.

including working to get abundant housing around the city, which we know for some of the cities that you've mentioned that folks have moved to, we know when we have seen cities increase their housing supply relative to the market and that we start to see rents and cost of living stabilize and come down in some places.

So I know we're talking about things that the city has control of and obviously our zoning, our planning and our approach to supporting and incentivizing housing is also part of that.

So I'm really looking forward to that conversation.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Foster.

You are absolutely right.

And Thank you, I don't know if there's any closing comments, Tom and Cal, just really grateful of the time and attention you put to this.

Colleagues, we could do a bunch of series of this, but thought the first one should just be about taxes, retail and property taxes and the levies, just because of, ever since I've been here, every year we've voted on a levy.

every year and some of those legacy levies.

And I think it's important just to have that context and that table setting.

So thank you all for making it very palatable for folks as well.

Thanks guys.

Thank you.

So colleagues, I know that we're hour and a half in, is there anyone who wants to talk about your committees or anything pressing that's important possibly that you wanna bring forth?

Council member Saka.

Thank you, Madam Council President.

And also just use this as a brief, you know, to comment on the very lively and rich discussion that we just had as well.

But just worth noting, we are colleagues, we are having our very first meeting of the select committee on the Seattle Transportation Benefit District this Thursday, where we'll hear the executive proposal on a potential renewal.

of the Seattle Transit Measure, otherwise more formally known as, I know there's a lot of sticklers for formality, so the Seattle Transportation Benefit District renewal there.

And so that's coming up on this Thursday.

And just to add on my own two cents from the cheap seats, I agree with a lot, well, Everything I just heard from you all, colleagues, there's at least something that I found very important and moving and agreed substantially with it.

and this is also, again, a good segue to the conversation we're gonna have on Thursday on an executive proposal that's gonna impact sales tax.

And all these new sources of revenue and whether it's a property tax, sales tax, other sort of tax initiative, They all have a compounding impact.

When we're talking potential property taxes, it impacts homeowners and renters alike.

Yes, there's absolutely limitations on...

There's a ton of limitations imposed by state law and the system of our upside-down tax code.

We're living through that right now, so our tools are fairly limited.

all of which impacts affordability.

talked about how that relates to outcomes and accountability as well.

But I'll emphasize the need has grown significantly as well.

And a lot of it in recent years is because of the current federal administration.

But the needs have grown greatly.

And our responsibility to protect some of our city's most vulnerable population has grown exponentially as well.

But all that said, again, friendly reminder, colleagues, our first select committee will, on the proposed renewal of the Seattle Transportation Benefit District, will be on Thursday.

Thank you.

Thank you Councilmember Saka for that.

As long as you only do two cents.

If it's more, we cannot afford it.

So you can't throw in billions, but just two cents.

Go ahead.

Can I just say, Council President, I appreciate the friendly banter there, but more importantly, I do appreciate you for bringing this topic forward for us to all collectively discuss, debate, and because it does impact really everything that we do, including some near-term policy decisions.

So I just want to say thank you for your leadership.

Thank you, Councilmember Sokka, and thank you.

Looking forward to the Seattle benefit district.

Sorry, the benefit district.

Councilmember Rivera followed by Councilmember Rink.

Thank you, Council President.

I have two quick things, and I'll invite you colleagues to follow up with me after.

I know we're short on time, but on either thing.

One, I want to start with the Families Levy Implementation and Evaluation Plan.

I want to thank you all for your patience as we were working through the I&E Plan.

We will be repurposing our Library's Education Neighborhood Committee meetings into select committees.

committee meetings to go through the I&E plan.

I want to thank you, Council President, for working with me to make sure that happened.

I wanted to be sure that, colleagues, you all had an opportunity to weigh in, not just the committee members, so I thought it was important to do a select committee.

We're going to have next week on June 10th the first committee meeting on this.

It will be a deal presentation and the mayor's presentation on their proposal, and then we'll keep going with a June 30th issue ID, a July 8th discussion of amendments and possible vote, July 22nd final vote in select committee, and then July 28th full council vote.

That should give us plenty of time to get through the I&E plan, including any amendments you may have.

I want to encourage you to please let me know or tell central staff to release confidentiality and let me know what you are contemplating so that we're getting this I&E plan through committee as efficiently and transparently as possible.

And I wanna thank central staff, both Jasmine and Tracy for all their work on the I&E plan.

I also know colleagues that the department reached out to you as they were developing the INE plan and you met with the department and central staff.

So hopefully that means that you are aware already of the things that are in the plan and that some of your things were thought of as the plan was coming together.

So more on that.

But again, if you have questions, please reach out to me.

And then, as you know, I'm so pleased to be hosting the Gun Violence Intervention Symposium in partnership with Council President next week on the 8th.

It will be led by the National Network for Safe Communities, the group started by David Kennedy, who's been working on this issue for decades.

so we can learn about gun violence reduction efforts that have been significantly successful in other cities like Baltimore and Philadelphia.

I know I've mentioned this at other full council meetings we've had.

I've been working with council president and the mayor's office to explore additional strategies in reducing gun violence here in our city.

And of course, I've been keeping our public safety chair kettle in these conversations as well.

As you know, in addition to our police department, the city invests in gun violence prevention and intervention programs and police-based approaches to address this issue.

So we are now interested in looking as an additive piece at focused deterrence, which is an additional evidence-based strategy to help in these efforts.

This symposium will be an opportunity to learn about this approach.

And as you've often heard me say, when we work together, we have better outcomes.

which is why I've been working with the mayor's office and HSD to ensure the community groups have also been invited.

It's an approach the city would take in partnership with all our law enforcement agencies and also including the prosecutor's office, the city attorney, SPD, Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms Agency working together to explore this particular effort.

Colleagues, you'll be receiving some legal advice relate today related to the symposium.

I encourage you to reach out to me or my office with any questions as my office has done the organizing of the symposium.

And I look forward to working with you all, the council president and the mayor's office to continue the conversations after the symposium and to continue to explore ways that we're going to address gun violence in our city and hear more about next steps from our partners.

Thank you, Council President.

Thank you, Councilmember Rivera.

Councilmember Rink.

Thank you, Council President.

I'll be brief, but first and foremost, happy Pride.

It was great seeing everybody at the flag raising ceremony earlier today.

I wanted to provide a very brief update since the Human Services Labor and Economic Development Committee meeting will meet again actually this Friday.

We're meeting to discuss BIA legislation.

as well as receive a briefing from the Human Services Department and Seattle King County Public Health on approaches to substance use disorder.

But I really wanted to flag that we'll be receiving an update from KCRHA regarding the corrective action plan recently submitted to the mayor's office and King County exec in response to the forensic evaluation.

That corrective action plan has now been distributed to all council offices from my staff, so everyone should have access to it.

But I just wanted to highlight that for anyone who wanted to attend committee on Friday, KCRHA will be at the table for that discussion.

Thank you, Council President.

Awesome.

Thank you, Council Member Rank for all your work on that.

And then our colleagues, is there any...

Council Member Rivera, is your hand up?

No, mine is.

Yours is up.

Okay, Council Member Juarez.

Thank you.

Who did you meet with this weekend?

We all want to hear.

I want to thank Council Member Ring for doing such a really good job on staying on top of this corrective action plan and the King County stuff and Council Member Foster.

These young women, they're making it work.

And God bless them.

So they've been going through the material, talking to us, letting us know what's going on.

That corrective action plan is like 150 pages and then some.

So God bless you.

Good luck.

Don't die.

Love it.

And I also want to thank Councilmember Rink for bringing forward and updating the BIA.

So that was great.

That was a great presentation.

I know it sounds nerdy.

There's only two north of the Ship Canal, maybe three.

We've been working on Northgate and Lake City Way.

We're going to continue to, you know, pluck away at that.

But I want to thank Councilmember Rink for her leadership in that area.

It is so important, those BIAs and getting them updated, having the new PowerPoint was wonderful and going into the neighborhood.

So thank you, Councilmember Rink, for your leadership in that way.

Again, you and Council Member Foster are doing a great job on the housing piece.

Good job.

Thank you.

Done.

Boom.

Awesome.

Thank you, Council Member Juarez.

I know that the next, the last six months of you being with us is going to be such a treat.

Okay, I'm going to just say that.

So I'm ready for it all.

Colleagues, I believe we hit the end of our meeting.

and want to thank you all for your engagement on the affordability meeting.

Again, it was a quick overview of just certain things.

And I know that we'll be back here with more as we're working with central staff, just to understand doing a deeper dive.

So really appreciate all your attention and hard work during this process.

So it is 3.38 PM colleagues.

We are adjourned.

Thank you so much.