Seattle is facing a projected budget deficit of $488 million over the next three years. Mayor Katie Wilson, five months into the job and facing numbers that are $113 million worse than what her predecessor left behind, went on the Seattle Channel last week to explain how the city got here.
She brought Budget Director Aly Pennucci. She asked for the cameras. To her credit, she didn’t have to do this publicly. Then moderator Brian Callanan asked a simple question: “Does it mean the city is spending beyond its means?”
Pennucci’s answer was remarkable. “I don’t think it’s spending beyond the means,” she said. “We’re delivering services that people need, and the costs of those services are more than our property taxes, our sales taxes, all the fees that support the city.” She blamed the state’s 1% cap on annual property tax increases. “Inflation has significantly outpaced 1%,” she said. “So that makes it hard to sort of keep up.”…