The Seattle City Council backed off plans to restrict new funding for the city’s anti-displacement development program following a week of intense pushback from community organizations that feared seeing their projects derailed.
Councilmember Maritza Rivera, who initially proposed withholding new funds until certain benchmarks were met, has now scaled back what she’s asking of the Office of Planning and Community Development to a simple report on the progress of the projects funded by the city.
The short-lived, but pitched, fight over what’s known as the city’s Equitable Development Initiative exposed the tensions between a new City Council that’s pledged increased levels of scrutiny and accountability and a vocal slice of the public that still supports the programs created and funded by past City Halls.
Central to the recent fight is a grant program run by the city’s planning department intended to help organizations working against displacement in the city. The Equitable Development Initiative currently funds 56 organizations to help them plan and build community centers, housing, child care facilities and more.
Much of the funding goes toward design, planning or site acquisition, and it’s widely assumed in the city that organizations will need to come back for a second round.
Upon taking office and facing a more than $250 million budget deficit next year, Rivera quickly began asking questions about the program. Namely, why previously budgeted dollars were taking so long to be spent by the organizations they’d been granted to.
“If this trend continues, by 2026, the program will have over $90 million of unspent funds in their budget,” she said Tuesday.
Rivera has expressed dissatisfaction with the answers she’s received from the planning department, which administers the program. In turn, she initially proposed withholding the $25 million budgeted for the program this year until the $53 million that has carried over from previous years was spent first. Only then — and when a progress report was published — would the council consider releasing the 2024 dollars.
But after she introduced her proposal — attached as an amendment to a technical bill authorizing departments to spend carry-over dollars from the year before — Rivera and the council ran into a tsunami of anger.
At a news conference before the vote Tuesday in City Hall, a group of advocates for the Equitable Development Initiative laid into the City Council.
“We reject austerity budgeting that seeks to be balanced on the backs of Black and brown communities,” said Aretha Basu, political director of Puget Sound Sage. “We reject the illusion of scarcity and call on the city to find other ways to balance the budget.”
Rivera alleged the pushback was based on “misinformation,” pointing out that her proposal would only pause the allotment of new dollars, not cut those that haven’t been spent yet.
Her colleague, Councilmember Tammy Morales, disputed her characterization. While it’s true the proposal would not have cut past years’ dollars, it would have created uncertainty about whether those organizations would receive ongoing support to finish their projects, Morales argued. The organizations who apply for these dollars are not seasoned developers and, as a result, their timelines can sometimes extend for years.
“What we learned this past week is that when budget cuts are discussed, programs that support Black and brown communities are always first on the chopping block,” she said Tuesday.
Instead of her original proposal, the council instead voted, 8-1, on a request that the planning department produce a status update on each project by fall.
Morales voted against the new amendment, saying the timeline was too tight.
Underlying the fight over the Equitable Development Initiative is a larger push and pull over how the city will balance its budget in the coming years. Among the most discussed options for closing the more $250 million gap next year is to divert dollars from the city’s payroll tax on the largest companies in Seattle. Unlike the sales and business taxes, the payroll tax — known as JumpStart — has exceeded estimates.
But the payroll tax was passed to fund housing and environmental projects, including the Equitable Development Initiative, and affordable housing developers are squeamish about the city leaning too hard on that fund to fix its larger budget problems.
