|
Dear Council Members,
You have a problem. You have to figure out what to do with all that extra tax money our strong economy has been producing over the last year. The Mayor proposed spending about $70 million more for 2008 than what you endorsed
for that year when you first wrote the budget last year. Wow. That’s got to feel a little bit like winning the lottery.
O.K., we get that the Mayor did spend it all in his proposal. But remember
that rhyme: the executive proposes, the legislature disposes. Here’s another way to think about it: he is not the boss of you. So, we have some suggestions for you.
The Mayor wants to buy a $9 million dollar phone number. 311. He thinks that it should be easier for people to reach the city. But there’s already 684-CITY. There are phone books in most people’s houses. There’s a thing called the Internet.
You can find a lot of city numbers on the Internet, we’ve checked. We also tested out 684-CITY, and it works. We called it for help with something that’s not even a city issue. We said: “I want to pay my gas bill.” The nice woman who answered said, “That’s Puget Sound Energy” and immediately gave us the phone number. The whole thing took less than 10 seconds. Another number, 211, already helps people find services like food or shelter. It’s even toll-free from any payphone.
So we’re pretty sure that getting ahold of you isn’t really a big problem.
But we are certain that the skyrocketing
price of real estate is a problem. How about using that money to buy land for affordable housing?
In construction and real estate, business
is booming. Developers are forming
long lines for building permits to convert apartments to condos and put up high-rises for millionaires. All that growth — the polite word for the rising rents and displacement that mark the widening gap between rich and poor — is part of the reason you council members have this problem of extra money. It’s also part of the reason housing is so expensive.
If you invest $12.5 million in loans so that nonprofits can get some of the land before it’s all turned into condos and shopping centers, you’ll help open up hundreds of new units for homeless people to live in every year. We’re a ways behind on our goal of ending homelessness
by 2014. (We didn’t make that up; the Mayor’s Office of Housing has the numbers to prove it — let us know if you’d like us to send you a copy.) There are a lot of things we need to do to meet that goal, but this would be one big step. When New York City started a fund like this, it grew more than 10 times bigger when banks and foundations started writing their own checks. We have banks and foundations here too.
Here’s another idea. The Mayor wants to hire park rangers for downtown parks. We could totally understand if he was talking about naturalists leading bird tours at Discovery Park, but these rangers
sound more like security guards who would spend their time telling homeless people to leave. (Granted, we might be a little distrustful, but still.) Instead of spending $850,000 on that, how about spending it to make sure people’s emergency
needs are taken care of? For less than a million dollars, you could help the shelters and day centers downtown find new space when they have to move to make way for some big condo or something. You could add desperately needed hygiene services in downtown. And you could fund outreach workers so that when police make homeless campers
move on, we can at least offer them somewhere else to move to.
There are lots of other good ideas that we know you’ve already heard. A clean and sober housing program designed by and for Native Americans, using Native American traditions and values. Funds to buy baby formula for the food banks. (A measly $30,000 for the hungry babies!) Replacing gang intervention services that were eliminated a few years ago so we don’t lose more kids to violence.
The Mayor found $70 million extra to spend. Everything on the list the Seattle Human Services Coalition gave you costs $18.9 million. It’s not an unreasonable request — in fact, it’s really just common sense. We hope we solved your problem. We realize we didn’t do all the math for you, but we thought you might enjoy that challenge yourselves. If you need some more help, just give us a call here at Real Change. We’ll come right down with our calculators.
Much love,
Real Change
| 
