‘Potentially refreshing’: KIRO hosts surprised by Seattle’s pledge to look beyond taxes in economic revival

Seattle’s new economic development director, Beto Yarce, recently said the city may need to look beyond taxes as it seeks to revive the local economy.

While city officials are exploring options other than expanding the JumpStart payroll tax, KIRO hosts Angela Poe Russell and Ursula Reutin found the pledge to be refreshing to hear, as Seattle looks to build with Bellevue, finding that it is not a competition between the two.

“I was going to say that didn’t seem to mesh with what I believe the mayor initially said, but this is actually potentially refreshing,” Ursula said on “The Gee and Ursula Show” on KIRO Newsradio. “I get it to say we’re not in competition with Bellevue, but you need to be worried if Seattle right now is sitting at a downtown vacancy rate of 36% and Bellevue is not.

“It’s easy to say, ‘We’re going to cooperate, this is a regional approach, and we all benefit,’ but the small downtown businesses, the little restaurants that were counting on buildings being more full, or at least coming back after the pandemic, are not seeing that,” Ursula continued. “We talked about how awesome it’s been during the World Cup, but Pacific Place and all these other buildings that used to be thriving are no longer thriving. Restaurants that used to have built-in business because there were office workers are not seeing that.”

Recent report highlights Seattle’s job losses against Bellevue’s gains

A recent report found that downtown Seattle has lost roughly 30,000 jobs since 2020, while Bellevue has seen significant job growth during that same time. Angela noted that Seattle seems to be listening, and the tone of the current administration is changing.

“What’s interesting to me is we had former Mayor Bruce Harrell, and he definitely changed the tone and tenor. It just seemed like it was difficult to translate,” Angela said. “Here’s the deal: As bad as the JumpStart tax was, in terms of businesses not wanting to pay it, look at what it paid for. It’s got us out of a huge budget deficit when we were right out of the pandemic. I’m sure they would argue it saved our bacon, but do we need to go back and tax again? As a resident, I’m like, no.

“I like the awareness of him saying I’m not going to treat this like a competition, and at the same time saying we need to market what we have to offer,” Angela continued. “We do have great stuff to offer.”

Watch the full discussion in the video above.

Listen to Gee and Ursula on “The Gee and Ursula Show” weekday mornings from 9 am to 12 pm on KIRO Newsradio.