Obviously people should be biking or scootering to work, so RPZ fees aren't a big deal.

That and the continual drag on the city budget that is Ghost Cops. We should really get rid of those.

obviously we should all be scooting to work when it's pouring rain and 37 degrees out. OBVIOUSLY

"...Fire the 1,300 city employees that ped Mayor Ed Murray hired."

Jesus. This fucking idiot again. Yes the 'ol Dori Monson dog whistle (pun intended) about a mayor from six years ago that passed a diversity hire effort. Man. The racists still can't get over that one.

BTW. The SPD has cost the ten times that in the last ten years you fucking delusional trolling twart. But when the Justice Department enacts a consent decree and forces the city into a massive settlement over Khama Savant, let me know.

Parking fees? Yeah, sure, it isn't progressive, but we really should be discouraging parking, so I have no trouble with raising the fees. It is like gas taxes. They aren't progressive, but are a really good idea.

Car tabs are a little bit different. You penalize people, no matter how much they drive.

The other fees are bad, and nothing new. The state does that all of the time. We really need an income tax.

You know things are getting really desperate at The Stranger when they’re claiming fees on cars should be reduced and it should be cheaper for people to drive in Seattle. There must be some catastrophically bad internal polling for their preferred council candidates and issues for next year’s election if stuff like this is getting written.

Scale is important in this discussion. ~$4M for these three revenue items for 2023 is about .0002 of the total $7B budget, and two of these items raise fees on car owners, a policy area that aligns with authors of this publication. On the other hand, doubling the high income earner tax during the biggest tech slowdown we have seen in 20 years could create more incentive for those employers to finally leave Seattle (honestly, with work from home forever, what’s keeping them here?). And such an employer exodus would result in less tax revenue collected next year and all the multiplying effects of those companies leaving. Less revenue = less services or raising revenue somewhere else. It tracks.

The Stranger: "We can no longer subsidize parking. If a car is in your possession, then you must start paying the real cost of owning it. And a big part of this is sunk in the wasted space and time we call parking." https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2021/07/07/58848303/slog-pm-seattle-wisely-threatens-to-double-charges-for-parking-near-big-events-delta-variant-surges-in-missouri-the-dumb-vaccine-lottery-re

Also the Stranger: Modest* increases in the cost of street parking permits are "regressive fee increases that would suck millions from everyday Seattleites during an ongoing cost-of-living crisis."

*The fee increase works out to four cents a day over the term of a residential parking permit.

@6 no we don’t. The city needs to better prioritize its spending. Even accounting for inflation revenue has grown much faster than population.

@5-@9: The Stranger’s writers have never taken any of CM Sawant’s defeats well, and they make no exception here. Even when the policy is explicitly what they have themselves always advocated, if it’s a defeat for her, then the Stranger will rage hatefully about it.

Their fanatically unquestioning loyalty to her has long actively damaged the policies and causes they claim to support, but they just refuse to see this.

I was hired under Nickels. Does that mean I can keep my job?

Also, if I had the money I’d be building parking garages all over town, because all these dopey city policies are not going to stop people from driving. No city government can change 125 years of marketing.

@11 -- it goes back for decades, way beyond Sawant. There's always some shiny object that The Stranger falls for and loses its mind over. The Stranger endorsed a Tim Eyman initiative in 2002 that would have defunded light rail and stopped it from being constructed. It gave Eyman months of glowing coverage in the run up and aftermath of the election. Why? Because of the monorail.

The monorail was cool and hip and edgy for The Stranger in a way that Sound Transit and light rail never was, largely because the monorail was built on a foundation of bullshit that never stood a chance if it was exposed to reality. Did The Stranger ever dig into that pile of bullshit and question anything related to the monorail? No. But Sound Transit supporters did, which meant that ST became the enemy and had to be destroyed at all costs, regardless of wherher that made any sense or aligned with The Stranger's stated positions on a variety of issues. Sound familiar? And, of course, the monorail eventually became the biggest boondoggle in the history of the city, while Sound Transit has been a massive success.

For The Stranger, Sawant is the new monorail.

I'm glad they charge the general public more fees.... the taxpayers can now get a taste of what business owner's have had to deal with!

Eventually, the taxpayers will come to the conclusion the City Counsel are "spend thrifts"..... Maybe, just maybe the taxpayer will say... you know we can do without all these social enabling programs.... which "sound great" but accomplish little....

That would be a good start to the budget process....rid yourself of ineffective, costly ... .low contribution programs, employees and projects.