Taxes
For far too long, Seattle’s leadership has solely considered taxation as a way to meet the city’s needs. Today, almost every candidate is talking about which taxes they will use to fix Seattle’s issues. The already heavy tax burden is putting a strain on our low income, middle income, and elderly neighbors as it erodes affordability and drives up the cost of living for everyone in Seattle. While the politicians are busy thinking up new ways to tax us, Seattle city government is wasting tens of millions of dollars.
- Seattle City Light - $34 million over budget
- Pronto Bike Share - $5 million
- Neglected to Collect Developers Fees - $3.4 Million
- Seawall $71 Million Over Budget
- Tunnel $223 Million Over Budget
- Homeless Spending $62 million, 300% more than Boston with worse results
- City Council took out a $29 million bond and will pay $27 million in interest. This is on top of the $290 million affordable housing levy.
Solutions:
- Reduce taxes and operate our government efficiently.
- I will develop a team of auditors, process improvement engineers (Lean Six Sigma), and technologists to identify areas where we can improve our processes and integrate technology to track data, measure results, and become more efficient. We need to eliminate wasteful spending and demand that we receive the full value from vendors in return for the tax money spent.
- Publish all budgets and contracts online for public inspection and evaluation. Having 675,000 eyes is better than a few at City Hall.
- Work with front-line City of Seattle of employees to identify better processes, eliminate waste, and become a more efficient city.
- Only when I am confident that the city is running efficiently and not wasting money, would I ever consider raising taxes. This is only after it is proved there was an absolute need for more revenue that couldn’t be raised through better efficiencies.
- Any tax proposal coming from me would come with a detailed plan beforehand on why we need to raise taxes and a detailed plan on how it will be used.
- I expect the public to give me feedback on how to improve the plan.
- End the practice of “End of Year Spending Surges” to “Use up Contract Money.”
- Create a contractor efficiency grading system to identify which contractors best use the city funding and prioritize those contractors for future funding.
