(bright music) (uptempo engaging music) - Welcome to "The Newsfeed."

I'm Paris Jackson.

We now know how Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell wants to close the city's roughly $250 million budget deficit next year.

Today, we'll look at a specific city tax you may not be familiar with, but his proposal plans to tap to keep city programs intact, while also boosting funding for public safety, housing and public health.

Let's get to my conversation with Cascade PBS Reporter Josh Cohen, who follows city politics extensively to break down the mayor's budget proposal of more than $8 billion.

Welcome, Josh.

Thank you for joining us today on "The Newsfeed."

- Thanks so much for having me.

- For those who may not know, what is the JumpStart tax that Mayor Harrell is proposing to use to close the city's budget hole?

- The JumpStart tax, it was created by the city council in 2020.

It's a tax on large businesses, companies like Amazon or Expedia.

When it was created, it was meant really to help the city weather the pandemic and sort of the economic fallout from that.

But also, the city council set these spending categories for it, things like affordable housing, climate initiatives, community development, and small business economic revitalization.

These program areas that they really wanted to make progress on in Seattle.

- A group of leaders and advocates are against the redirection of this JumpStart money.

Why?

- Every year the JumpStart has existed, it has raised more money than it was projected to raise.

It's often been used by city leaders to backfill the budget deficit.

And once again, Mayor Harrell is proposing to do that.

He wants to use more than $300 million of it to shore up the general fund deficit and pay for some other programs and staffing.

Housing service providers, homelessness advocates, folks in labor, they say that we have this pool of money and we should be using it for those priority areas.

Like, we have an affordable housing crisis.

We have a homelessness crisis, we have a climate crisis, and the tax has raised more money than initially projected, but they say instead of using that to balance the budget, we should just be spending to make progress on all of those key areas.

- And this budget proposal allocates more money toward public safety and other social services.

- Yeah.

And, you know, this money comes from a lot of sources, not just JumpStart, but we see in the budget Harrell's priorities.

He's investing more in Seattle Police Department, in fire, in the care department, in other areas around the city.

- Now, there are some jobs he's proposing to eliminate.

- He is mostly proposing to make cuts on sort of inward-facing city jobs.

This is stuff like the IT department and human resources.

In total, he's proposed cutting 159 positions in multiple departments.

About half of them are currently vacant, so we're looking at 76 or so city workers that could get laid off as part of this budget process.

- So, what's next in this process?

- The budget is now in the hands of the city council.

They're having budget hearings and then the city council starts sort of shuffling things around and making changes for their own priorities.

But by state law, the city budget has to be balanced.

And so anything the city council proposes that will cost more money, they have to make a cut elsewhere.

So we're gonna see a lot of changes over the next two months as the city council debates and hashes out and changes things up.

- We appreciate you for taking the time to speak with us, Josh.

- It's a pleasure.

(light engaging music) - It's Hispanic Heritage Month and King County has plenty of festivities to celebrate.

The annual Mexam Festival wraps up next week and a Dia De Muertos family concert's set for Saturday, October 19th at Benaroya Hall, showcasing vibrant Mexican music and composers.

Artist Fulgencio Lazo's solo show of new paintings and sculptures is running at ArtX Contemporary now through November 16th.

(uptempo music) I'm Paris Jackson.

Thank you for watching "The Newsfeed," your destination for nonprofit Northwest news.

Go to cascadepbs.org.

Now to "PBS NewsHour."

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