Harrell administration adds a modest $100 million in investments to draft 2024 transportation levy proposal

At a press con­fer­ence this morn­ing on the shores of Lake Union, Seat­tle May­or Bruce Har­rell unveiled a revised draft of his admin­is­tra­tion’s pro­pos­al for renew­ing the city’s almost decade-old trans­porta­tion levy, which mod­est­ly increas­es the size of the propo­si­tion from $1.35 bil­lion to $1.45 bil­lion. Flanked by advo­cates, city staff, and busi­ness lead­ers, Har­rell pitched the pro­pos­al as essen­tial and respon­sive to the pub­lic input the city has col­lect­ed since the pub­li­ca­tion of the pre­vi­ous draft on April 4th.

“Over the last month, we’ve received feed­back from thou­sands of Seat­tle res­i­dents who want a trans­porta­tion sys­tem that is safe, con­nect­ed, and well main­tained – this pro­pos­al will help get us there,” said May­or Har­rell. “With a focus on the essen­tial needs of our city and its res­i­dents, this levy pro­pos­al will deliv­er projects and improve­ments to keep peo­ple mov­ing and to keep peo­ple safe. No mat­ter your pre­ferred method of trans­porta­tion, these invest­ments are designed to make trips safer, more reli­able, and bet­ter con­nect­ed, so every Seat­tleite can get where they need to go.”

NPI attend­ed the press con­fer­ence and record­ed it in its entire­ty. Watch below:

The may­or’s office pro­vid­ed a sum­ma­ry of what’s in the pro­pos­al. We’ve repro­duced this below in col­umn for­mat so it’s eas­i­er to see what has been added.

“After a month of con­sul­ta­tion with the pub­lic, May­or Har­rell has made the Trans­porta­tion Levy pro­pos­al even bet­ter with addi­tion­al invest­ments in walk­ing, bik­ing and tran­sit,” said Seat­tle Depart­ment of Trans­porta­tion (SDOT) Direc­tor Greg Spotts. “The revised pro­pos­al would give SDOT 17% more pur­chas­ing pow­er to main­tain our mod­ern­ize our streets than the cur­rent Levy to Move Seattle.”

That may be… but the admin­is­tra­tion also passed up an oppor­tu­ni­ty to go bigger.

Seat­tle is a city with an elec­torate that under­stands the need for bold action — a city where peo­ple believe in pool­ing their resources to get things done. It’s also a place that faces a lot of mobil­i­ty prob­lems as well as crum­bling roads and aging infra­struc­ture. Throw in cli­mate impacts, and the road ahead looks even more challenging.

The city’s neigh­bor­hoods could real­ly ben­e­fit from the inclu­sion of a few hun­dred mil­lion dol­lars in addi­tion­al invest­ments in this levy, beyond what Har­rell added.

For exam­ple, it’s prob­a­ble that dur­ing the time peri­od this levy is in force, Sound Tran­sit will begin con­struc­tion on light rail to Bal­lard and West Seat­tle. It would be worth adding resources to mit­i­gate con­struc­tion impacts and ensure main­te­nance work and com­ple­men­tary infra­struc­ture improve­ments are done at the same time, so streets won’t have to be ripped up again after they’ve been rebuilt.

The levy won’t be final­ized until the Coun­cil trans­mits it to vot­ers, so there’s an oppor­tu­ni­ty to add in more invest­ments in the com­ing weeks. The new Coun­cil has so far been more inter­est­ed in revis­it­ing the deci­sions of the past than work­ing to secure the future. With this levy, they have a chance to piv­ot. And they should take it.