At Tuesday’s meeting, the city council voted again to reject Council Member Tammy Morales's amendment to restore the $20 million the previous council approved for mental health services and gun violence prevention programming for Seattle Public Schools students.
While proponents left disappointed, Council Member Cathy Moore, in what sounded more like a demand for recognition than a friendly reminder, said that she hopes the public recognizes the council went on to approve an amendment to restore $12.25 million of the promised $20 million, which the City has already collected through the JumpStart Payroll Expense Tax.
The whole dramatic ordeal, which involved several hours of meetings over the course of two weeks for a single line item, likely serves as a preview for the budget negotiations this fall. In the face of a big deficit, the council can either substantially tax corporations that bankrolled the campaigns for most of the new members, or slash funding to critical City programs for poor, marginalized communities. Based on Tuesday’s vote, advocates for anything other than increasing the budget of the Seattle Police Department (SPD) will have an uphill battle with this council, which has a history of ignoring, stifling, condescending to, and even arresting constituents who disagree with them.
The Whole Dramatic Ordeal
This fight for the school mental health funding began after a child shot and killed another child at Ingraham High School at the end of 2022. Following that shooting, students lobbied the council to reroute $9 million from the SPD budget to pay for counselors in schools. They won $4 million in JumpStart and levy funds over the 2022-2023 biennium.
In 2023, the previous, nominally more progressive council passed a small increase to the JumpStart Payroll tax to pay for $20 million worth of mental health counselors in schools. the City started raising the money at the beginning of the year. After another student was shot and killed in the Garfield High School parking lot, the students pressured the City to authorize the Department of Early Education and Learning to spend the funds. Instead of doing that, Mayor Bruce Harrell proposed a $10 million plan, which students saw as a budget cut and a broken promise in response to tragedy. Hearing that outcry, Morales brought an amendment to the midyear supplemental budget to restore the full $20 million the City already collected. The council rejected that amendment, but then Morales brought it back to full council on Tuesday. She argued that “we have fully funded SPD and now we must fully fund this mental health work.”
“Community Doesn’t Understand”
The council members who voted against the amendment last week, including Council Members Maritza Rivera, Bob Kettle, Sara Nelson, and Moore, did not change their minds this week. They maintained that the City could not spend an additional $10 million on mental health services by the end of the year because only four months remain and the budget office doesn't currently have a plan for the funds.
Rivera, who used the tragic shooting at Ingraham as the origin story of her campaign, said that it was “problematic” to promise community money that the City doesn’t think it can get to them. She accused the previous council of taking a “performative,” “symbolic vote” to signal support for students rather than “an actual vote,” saying that the “community doesn't understand the difference between a symbolic vote and an actual vote.” It is unclear why Rivera does not think the vote the previous council took was “actual.” They actually voted on an actual bill that actually hiked the tax rate on JumpStart, which actually raised actual money for actual mental health counselors in actual schools such as Ingraham and Garfield.
Nelson suspended the rules to allow Deputy Mayor Tiffany Washington to back up the naysayers. “It's not as easy as just saying we will give you this money,” Washington said, before adding her appreciation for “efforts to be frugal” coming from those members voting against the additional investment in mental health resources.
But even if the council approved the full $20 million and the City failed to spend it, the money would not disappear. The council could carry over the funds to next year or else reallocate them to fill some other hole later.
Morales’s amendment essentially aimed to save the promised funding from the Mayor’s anticipated plan to balance the looming quarter-billion-dollar budget deficit by raiding JumpStart, whose funds the previous council earmarked for affordable housing, Green New Deal initiatives, and economic development. During the exchange with Washington, Morales accused the Mayor of siphoning the mental health money to balance the budget. Washington did not like that characterization one bit. She characterized any discussion over what the City could use the rest of the promised money for as a “diversion.”
Despite Washington’s attempt to spin, Central Staff Director Ben Noble said Morales’s point was more or less true–ultimately, the Mayor will ask the council to let him use JumpStart funds to balance the deficit. He wasn’t sure how much money the Mayor would want to use, but he said probably more than the millions the council declined to spend on mental health programming.
Council Member Dan Strauss, who abstained last week, cast the decisive vote against Morales’s $20 million amendment. He and Morales cosponsored a compromise amendment to authorize an additional $2.25 million on top of the Mayor’s $10 million plan for addressing violence in schools. Washington said that the City could realistically spend an additional $2.25 million by the end of the year.
The council voted unanimously to approve the compromise amendment, leaving $7.75 million on the table.