It’s that time of year again and Seattle’s City Hall is furiously punching calculator buttons — in case you haven’t guessed it yet, we’re talking city budget season.
Mayor Bruce Harrell introduced a proposal for the 2025-26 city budget on Tuesday, Sept. 24 that aims to account for a $250 million deficit while working towards the One Seattle ideal.
The overall budget accounts for $8.3 billion in total, but of course, that will be divvied up between several buckets. So, let’s crunch some numbers and talk about what’s new.
The new stuff
With any city budget comes the announcement of new initiatives. For Seattle, our changes and new projects include (among a vast number of other things):
- $334 million for affordable housing — a 32% increase from 2023
- $26.5 million for the CARE Department — a 30% increase from 2023
- $5.7 million to establish a new Opioid Recovery and Care Access (ORCA) Center
- $350,000 to expand the Trees for Neighborhoods program + find siting for an eventual One Seattle Tree Nursery
- Funding for an environmental review to add ~500 housing units (including ownership, rental, and transitional types) to the Fort Lawton site, while adding 20 more acres to Discovery Park
Resolving the deficit
With all of the new projects, the city also still had to resolve its $250 million deficit. To do so, it proposed to eliminate 159 city jobs — half of which are still vacant from a pre-existing hiring freeze. Most of these will come from non-public facing roles like IT and human resources.
Add your public comment
The proposed budget will now go through several rounds of hearings and public comment sessions where locals can add their two cents.
Residents may also write in to their council members at any stage of the process to voice opinions.
