Seattle weighs $9.3 million budget cut, loss of 20 jobs

By Susan Gilmore
Seattle Times staff reporter

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The often-acrimonious relations between the mayor and council members were set aside in the negotiations to balance the budget.

"It's a first for this administration," said Council President Jan Drago, who was involved in the budget paring along with council members Richard McIver, Tom Rasmussen and Richard Conlin. "There was a mutual peace offering."

Rather than major program cuts, the mayor and council sliced money throughout the city and eliminated 20 jobs.

"We went through the budget line by line and set priorities," Nickels said yesterday. "Everything was on the table."

Budget surgery was prompted by a state Supreme Court ruling in November that the city imposed an illegal tax four years ago when it started charging utility ratepayers for streetlights. Assuming King County Superior Court allows the city to spread refunds over a similar four-year period, that means a $6 million deficit this year. Another $4.2 million will pay for the streetlight program this year, leading to a $10.2 million deficit. It was reduced to $9.3 million with unanticipated revenue.

The budget cuts must still go to the full City Council for approval, expected later this month.

"We went through the budget and scrubbed it," said McIver, council budget chairman. "It went so well it scares us all."

Spared the budget knife were school crossing-guard positions, which had been frozen by Nickels, and neighborhood matching funds, also frozen by the mayor. Nickels said once the cuts are approved by the council, he will order crossing-guard vacancies filled.

No police officers or firefighters were cut, and library-system jobs also were spared.

One of the major savings was in the Law Department, where city officials expect to save about $450,000 by converting the least-serious crime of driving without a license into an infraction. City Attorney Tom Carr said that one crime represents 30 percent of the department's caseload.
 
Today, if someone is issued a ticket for driving with a suspended license but doesn't appear for a court hearing, a warrant is issued and the driver is jailed. Under the proposed change, drivers would receive a ticket but would not be booked into jail or prosecuted on a criminal charge. Unpaid tickets would be sent to a collection agency.

"We wanted to take the cases out of the criminal-justice system," Carr said.

By changing the offense to an infraction, the Law Department expects to save $232,000 a year in jail costs and $219,000 in public-defender costs, since the drivers wouldn't be entitled to a public defender to contest an infraction.

Based on 2002 numbers, about 2,000 projected criminal cases would be replaced by infractions. The result would be about 765 fewer jail bookings a year and about 625 fewer cases for public defenders.

Other city budget cuts include:

• Saving $400,000 by eliminating money for a safety study of the East Police Precinct.

• Saving $730,000 by having 40 pretrial inmates housed in Yakima. Seattle now pays for 155 beds in the Yakima jail whether or not the beds are filled. Last year only about 85 to 90 beds were filled each night.

By city ordinance, inmates must be housed in a King County jail in the weeks before they go to trial. The proposal would change that ordinance and let them be taken to Yakima, which could result in sizable budget savings.

• Saving $289,000 by directly contracting for public defenders, rather than going through King County. That won't happen until next year, but it will reduce the city's overhead payments of 24 percent to the 14 percent now paid by King County.

• Cuts of $1.5 million throughout the Parks Department, including reductions in maintenance work, the loss of a tree-maintenance specialist to deal with Dutch elm disease, and less money for exhibit improvements at the Seattle Aquarium.

Susan Gilmore: 206-464-2054 or sgilmore@seattletimes.com

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