Budget gives Seattle libraries a break, raise parking fines by $4

The Seattle City Council will minimize cuts to library hours, but raise parking fines in the 2010 budget.

The council is scheduled to approve the budget Monday, keeping 12 libraries open seven days a week. Mayor Greg Nickels had proposed keeping only six libraries open every day.

The council also won't spend as much of the rainy-day fund as Nickels had proposed. Nickels recommended using $25.4 million of the $30 million in that fund, as a way to cope with inadequate revenues. The council calls for taking $20 million from that account.

"That means that we do not have to worry quite so much about what's going to happen in the next year," said Councilmember Jean Godden, chair of the council's budget committee.

The 2010 budget is Nickels' last and includes hundreds of layoffs and two-week furloughs for city employees. The city faced a $72 million budget shortfall this year.

At a news conference Monday at the Seattle Public Library main branch, council members put a positive spin on it.

They dropped change into a giant piggy bank to symbolize the money they saved and played up their work to keep some programs and increase library hours.

Councilmember Richard McIver said Monday he wished the council could have put more money toward housing and feeding the city's poor.

"This is a very, very tough budget year. ... Every time we added something we had to cut something," he said, adding: "We just hope that everybody in the library's not hungry."

The council made a big priority of saving library hours. Members ended up restoring about $860,000 of $1.4 million in cuts proposed by the mayor. Most library branches will be open just five days a week. Currently, most are open six or seven days a week.

Godden said determined lobbying from library advocates made a difference. One booster tracked down Godden in the YMCA locker room before work and lobbied her while she was "half-dressed," Godden said.

"At the very last moment," Godden said, the council got concerned about leaving only $5 million in the emergency fund and asked departments to cut discretionary spending, such as travel and training. That yielded $2.6 million in savings.

The council decided to use parking tickets as a revenue booster. It restored two parking-enforcement officers the mayor proposed cutting and added seven more. The mayor proposed increasing parking fines by $2, and the council doubled it, increasing them by $4.

The council saved just under $900,000 by combining the city Office of Policy and Management with the mayor's office. The office formed when Nickels became mayor, and it housed advisers on homelessness, parks and education, among other things, said Alex Fryer, spokesman for the mayor's office.

"It was a good office, and I would think that the new mayor would want to have some version of that at his disposal as well," Fryer said.

Mayor-elect Mike McGinn said he doesn't need a separate policy shop. "We have the opportunity to fulfill the positions that were in that office," he said.

McGinn is more focused on the transition. "The mayor and the council have developed a budget for the coming year," he said. "This is their budget."

Emily Heffter: 206-464-8246 or eheffter@seattletimes.com