‘This doesn’t help council relations’: Bob Kettle fires back after Mayor Wilson says council ‘walked away’ from free school meals

Free school lunches are back on the table just one day after the Seattle City Council voted 6-3 to delay them. Three council members are now proposing a new approach that would fund universal meals through the city’s general fund rather than the education property tax levy that Mayor Katie Wilson had originally earmarked for the program, The Seattle Times reported.

Seattle City Councilmember Bob Kettle fired back at Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson’s statement Thursday after she accused the council of voting to “walk away” from universal free school meals and questioned how they would fund a new proposal out of a general fund already facing a $175 million deficit.

“This doesn’t really help in terms of mayor-council relations, I’ll just be frank,” Kettle said on “The John Curley Show” on KIRO Newsradio. “But we’re looking to do the right thing, and we said that yesterday, and we’re all looking to work positively together. But obviously, when you hear a sentence that says, ‘Yesterday the council voted six-three to walk away from it.’ It’s pejorative, to be frank. But we need to look at how we do things. It’s 2026 — their stigma is a very serious issue, and we need to address that.”

Mayor Wilson to council: ‘I look forward to seeing which critical services they plan to cut’

In her statement, Wilson challenged the council to explain which critical services they plan to cut to make their numbers work.

“I look forward to seeing which critical services they plan to cut from the general fund to make their numbers work,” Wilson wrote. “I ask them to reconsider the fiscally responsible approach my office originally put forward. Feeding every student in Seattle is a goal we share, and my office is eager to work with the council to find the best path forward.”

Kettle said at the end of the day, the council has to show that Seattle can be run well.

Watch the full discussion in the video above.

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