Mayor Durkan asks for bigger levy, after complaining Seattle’s too expensive
Apr 26, 2018, 7:21 AM | Updated: 8:00 am
(AP Photo/Elaine Thompson)
It’s getting difficult keeping up with the hypocrisy coming from Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan’s office.
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It appears she played you all for fools — at least those of you who thought she cared about your struggles to afford Seattle. Durkan is readying a new education levy to pay for subsidized preschool, expanding a pre-existing program.
During a mayoral debate last October, then candidate-Durkan, pretended to care about your struggles, said this:
“We are becoming a city that is not affordable. And we’ve had this massive growth in the last five years and as a result, so many people are being displaced from Seattle … and people can’t afford to get into Seattle. And if they live here they can’t afford to stay.”
That reality hasn’t changed, yet homeowners will see their property bill rise under Durkan’s education plan.
Right now, under the education levies, the owner of a median-priced home is hit with $136 in property taxes. Under the mayor’s plan, it rises to $242. The Seattle Times says there will be some tax exemptions limited to some “low-income seniors, [and] people with disabilities and veterans with service-connected disabilities.” How generous of this administration.
I hope we can stop expecting Durkan’s administration to do anything to address the affordability of this city. They’ll say in one breath that we’re too unaffordable. In the same breath, announce some new policy that dramatically increases taxes.
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In a city they say is too expensive to live in, the Durkan administration wants to institute a pricey head tax on businesses, force employers to pay workers more than they bring into the business, tax soda, tax paper bags you get at a grocery store, wants to charge you congestion tolls to drive in Seattle, and stop developments from building too high up — which would increase supply of apartments, bringing rents down in the process.
Got it.