Three council members — Kshama Sawant, Alex Pederson, and Sara Nelson — voted against this budget decision.
Seattle police officers confer after taking part in a public roll call at Hing Hay Park in Seattle's Chinatown-International District on March 18, 2021. Last week, the Seattle City Council approved a budget proposal that eliminates 80 actively-vacant police officer positions within the Seattle Police Department in a move to save approximately $11.4 million to address the ongoing budget deficit.
SPD is down to 900 positions within the department, according to Nelson, with Mayor Bruce Harrell’s goal to add an additional 500 jobs in the near future.“Eliminating these permanent positions is a cut. And it’s unnecessary because the salaries to support those positions have already been spent. I’m fine with that, but eliminating those positions is the wrong direction, it is extremely difficult to recreate a vacant position from scratch,” Nelson said.
Seattle is facing an additional $82.3 million revenue shortage in its 2023-2024 budget, according to the city’s Revenue and Forecast Council’s, which has been added to the original $141 million general-fund deficit the city was preparing for. Infrastructure projects and programs are rumored to take the biggest hit in terms of budget cuts.
“We’re not calling for a 50% cut to SPD as the majority of council members did two years ago, so that’s an improvement,” Nelson said. “And I put forward a resolution calling for hiring bonuses to be able to recruit new officers in that past six to three, so that, I think, could be said about moving in the right direction.”
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