Seattle Council Approves 2021 Budget, Including Some Police Cuts

SEATTLE — The Seattle City Council on Monday approved the 2021 budget, wrapping up nearly two months of deliberations and alterations to Mayor Jenny Durkan's September budget proposal.

A central focus of the debate was the level of funding allotted for the Seattle Police Department, following months of protests calling for cutting the $407 million budget in half and redirecting funds to community programs and civilian public safety initiatives.

In the end, the cuts to SPD amounted to an estimated 20 percent cut, including money moved by transferring some functions outside the police department.

The final budget package included a last-minute amendment that cut an additional $2 million from the police budget, shrinking the funds earmarked for hiring new officers. The amendment followed an updated forecast delivered to the council that projected 114 departures from the department in 2021. Unlike a hiring freeze, under the council's amendment, the department would have the funds to hire the same number of replacements but not grow the total number of officers on the force.

Councilmember Kshama Sawant supported the amendment but decried the budget as falling far short of community demands.

"Every reduction in the bloated police budget reflects a real, tangible victory for the movement that is, actually, very rare," Sawant said. "We absolutely should celebrate winning this $2 million and understand that it was because of our mobilizing and organizing that we're winning anything."

Sawant cast the sole vote against the overall budget, writing in a statement that it "deeply fails working people and marginalized communities, including working-class and poor communities of color." The councilmember said the real cuts to the police department amounted to just $31 million, or an 8.2 percent reduction, when "not counting the mechanisms like moving the costs of parking enforcement out of the police department, which do not honestly represent actual cuts."

Sawant also pointed to millions cut elsewhere in the budget, including funding for affordable housing programs and transportation services.

The budget does include a series of new investments, including for a new homeless response team, called HOPE, to replace the city's former navigation team with a civilian strategy, and more funding for sheltering people experiencing homelessness in hotels.

Council President Lorena Gonzalez championed the final budget as a crucial step toward standing up new emergency response systems.

"Many cities discussed divesting, and many efforts have collapsed under the weight of the effort," Gonzalez said. "We here in Seattle are one of the few cities in America that is still in active pursuit of reforming our public safety model, achieving divestment from our militarized police department and reinvesting those dollars in BIPOC communities and a civilian-led public safety system."

Mayor Durkan welcomed the budget in a statement shared Monday evening, following months of public clashes with the council.

"As the City Council now recognizes, this required a thoughtful and deliberate approach and could not be done by simply cutting to any particular number or percentage," Durkan wrote. "I believe we are laying the groundwork to make systemic and lasting changes to policing. We have rightly put forward a plan that seeks to ensure SPD has enough officers to meet 911 response and investigative needs throughout the city, while acknowledging and addressing the disproportionate impacts policing has had on communities of color, particularly Black communities."

Durkan said she intended to sign the budget into law sometime next week.