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Mayor Katie Wilson rolled out her first proposed city budget on Sept. 22, 2026, at the Seattle Central Library downtown, presenting a $9.1 billion two-year spending plan that adds dozens of police officers, eliminates 128 city jobs, and asks for no new taxes to get there, according to KUOW and the West Seattle Blog.
The gap she says she closed
Wilson’s office says the budget is balanced through 2030 without new “major sources of progressive revenue,” a phrase Wilson herself used at the rollout, per the West Seattle Blog. The starting point was a projected 2027 shortfall in the range of $175 million, a figure reported by both The Urbanist and MyNorthwest ahead of and around the rollout. “We were facing a structural deficit,” Wilson told The Urbanist in the days before the release, describing a pattern in which Seattle has leaned on the Jumpstart payroll tax to close annual gaps.
Not everyone on the council is satisfied that the gap is actually closed. Council President Sara Nelson’s colleague, budget committee chair Dan Strauss, pushed back on the mayor’s framing at the rollout, per KUOW: “You can’t fix a problem that’s taken 10 years to create in one budget cycle.” KUOW also reported council criticism tied to a separate $25 million deficit figure — a reminder that “balanced” and “no lingering gap” are not the same claim, and the two numbers ($175 million historical, $25 million now in dispute) are being cited by different people for different purposes.
What grows
Public safety is the biggest single increase. The Seattle Police Department’s 2027 proposed budget totals $556 million, which the mayor’s office says supports hiring 66 additional officers, according to the West Seattle Blog’s review of the city’s budget summary document and confirmed by KUOW and KOMO. The Fire Department would add five firefighter positions while cutting $7.1 million from its overtime budget, per the West Seattle Blog.
The CARE department — Seattle’s alternative crisis-response teams, which send trained responders instead of armed officers to some 911 calls — gets a $1.6 million increase under the proposal, the West Seattle Blog reported from the budget documents. A Teen Late Night pilot program at the High Point Community Center in West Seattle, previously funded on a temporary basis, would get $300,000 to continue permanently, according to the same city budget summary.
KUOW additionally reported roughly $57 million directed toward food banks, nutrition programs and universal school meals, alongside smaller line items — about $2 million for public restrooms in parks and roughly $3 million for youth programs.
What gets cut
The budget eliminates 128 full-time city positions, but the mayor’s office emphasizes that only 15 of those jobs are currently filled, according to the West Seattle Blog and MyNorthwest. KUOW reported the cuts are concentrated in construction permitting, civilian police-department staff, IT and the Department of Neighborhoods, with the deepest reductions falling on public utilities, transportation, and the city’s economic forecasting office. The city also faces unspecified deferred-maintenance costs that Wilson’s office is choosing not to fund this cycle, per the West Seattle Blog.
No new taxes — for now
Every outlet that covered the rollout led with the same detail: no new broad-based tax is in this proposal. MyNorthwest reported a local capital gains tax remains “under consideration” for a future cycle, but it isn’t in this budget. That puts the entire balancing act on existing revenue, reprioritized spending, and the eliminated positions — a bet that Seattle’s economy and existing tax base can absorb two years of city government without another round of cuts, which is exactly the premise Strauss and other council members are questioning.
What happens next
The proposal now goes to the Seattle City Council, which holds its own hearings, budget “balancing package” votes, and amendments over roughly two months. KUOW reported the council is expected to adopt a final budget by early December 2026. For a county where Amazon’s and Microsoft’s headcount decisions, Sound Transit’s construction bills, and the region’s homelessness response all eventually show up as line items in this document, the next two months of council amendments — not the Sept. 22 rollout — will decide what King County’s largest city actually spends money on in 2027.
