Seattle is running out of money but they want to keep spending it on social programs - warm and fuzzies. From The Seattle Times:
Seattle mayor drops property-tax plan, now seeks sales tax to fight homelessness
Barely a month after announcing it, Seattle Mayor Ed Murray and entrepreneur Nick Hanauer are scrapping their plan for a $275 million homelessness property-tax levy.
Rather than ask city voters to approve the levy in August, Murray now intends to work with King County Executive Dow Constantine on a 2018 ballot measure that would use a 0.1 percent county sales-tax increase to combat homelessness, the mayor said Monday.
“We’re moving away from the property tax,” Murray said in a meeting with The Seattle Times editorial board.
The move represents an abrupt change in direction for Murray, who touted the levy in his State of the City address in late February, saying it would nearly double Seattle’s spending on homelessness in an effort to move people from the streets into housing.
Just great - hit the middle-class property owners with yet another assessment on their property. The wealthy can just suck it up but the middle-class citizens are seeing their taxes go up and up and up with no relief in sight. I hope the citizens of Seattle do not start moving to Bellingham - they are welcome here just so they do not bring their toxic 'social justice' programs with them.
I find it telling that the goal of the Mayor is to provide cheap housing for the homeless. What really needs to be done is better care of our veterans and better mental health programs. Take care of those two and you will knock out 95% of the homeless problem. I can only imagine the push-back that resulted in such a dramatic volte-face.
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