Seattle proposes city worker buyouts to help close budget gap

All right. Uh, before the break, we were talking about those possible voluntary buyouts for, uh, city workers that might cost the city a little bit of money now, but could save them a lot of money in the future. Uh, for that conversation, I want to bring in Bill Wixey. We've been talking about this, uh, since earlier this morning. Too. Hey, Bill, how are you doing over there? Hey, good, good. Yeah, we we were chatting about this on Good Day Seattle today. Uh, so this right now, this initiative, if this, this is a proposal right now. But if this does happen, while it could save the city money, millions really in the long run. This, so we're looking ahead with this type of move. Maybe not right now, but ahead, this could be a good thing for the city of Seattle. Maybe I mean it's so when you talk about money, we're talking about trying to cover a 175 million dollar budget deficit. So the the idea here is that you cut 50 million a year from the budget by cutting 128 city jobs, right? So that's that's a fraction of of the deficit, and so they would be offering lump sum payments to these employees that are longer tenured, maybe you know higher paid employees. Some of the jobs are vacant right now, you know, so they could get away with that. And the idea is that they would pay them out a lump sum, like six and a half million, you know, to cover the salaries that would be required to allow these people to take early retirement or or what have you. And then 2.3 million for sick or vacation time that they've accrued. There would be no savings to the city in 27 as part of this plan, but in 28 the city would gain then eight million dollars a year in this. But again, we're talking about a 175 million dollar budget shortfall, and if you're going to make you know eight million a year starting in 28, it's it's eight million more than than you would have otherwise potentially. But that's that's where they're you know trying to to chip away at this thing. You know this is interesting to me because it almost seems merciful, if you will. So instead of hey, at the moment we're going to chop the axe down and let go a bunch of people, you may have the ability to kind of plan your exit strategy if you meet the requirements for this. Do we know yet who those employees are? And that would they be focusing this more towards folks who are kind of already headed towards retirement in this case, or what's the criteria? Do we know at this time? Yeah, I think the idea is that they would have you know you know non-essential as they describe them, and sometimes redundant employees. So if you have you know a department of six, say, and and they figure you know through their budget analysis that they can get it done with four, then maybe they're able to eliminate you know in their mind those two people from that department. They may approach those people and say, you know, hey, we'll we'll pay you out, and then you can take early retirement or you can you know take a sabbatical and maybe go find another job somewhere else. So I think that's the that's the idea here. But keep going back to that that big number and the budget deficit, and you know, so I don't live in Seattle proper, but I spend a lot of time in Seattle and talk with a lot of people who live in Seattle, and they are largely fed up with the rising cost of everything. And it's not just due to city government, but you know, property taxes are getting exponentially more expensive on top of you know the everyday things that we're all paying for. You know, no matter what county you live in in the state, whether it be gas or or groceries or you know just raising your kids, it's it's become you know a lot more expensive. You know, and in Seattle, you weren't around for this, but there was a lot of discussion about five six years ago about the payroll tax. This was the the jump start payroll tax, and this this was put through in 2021, and then there was a voter approved social housing tax that was imposed in 2025, and then there's a Seattle Shield B and O tax type that was imposed just this year. So you you look at this, and then you look at the economics underneath this, and why Seattle is in a 175 million dollar hole. Seattle has lost 30,000 downtown jobs over the last several years. 30,000, right? We have talked about the 36 percent downtown vacancy rate. You know, huge employers like Meta and Amazon have largely moved out of Seattle. A lot of them going over to Bellevue, where they have a better tax situation. So that payroll tax has really come back to bite the city of Seattle, and that is why we're looking at these huge budget deficits. And so when you punish your economic drivers as they have with Amazon, we've seen Starbucks, you know, take a lot of their headquarters out of Seattle and eliminating jobs in the city to get away from having to pay this payroll tax. This is the result of that sort of policy, and and that's. You know, it's it's not about this this buyout thing, but this is you know an effect you know down the road now several years after we started imposing these taxes on our highest economic drivers, and our economy is really struggling. So when you have all these vacant office buildings downtown. They don't know how to tax them anymore because they're not there. These are vacant buildings, so these large companies. That have moved out, they've avoided that, and who's left holding the bag? It's it's the little guy, homeowners of the city of Seattle. That's what's happening. I'll be honest. I knew that the cost of living would be high. I live in Seattle proper. I knew the cost of living would be high in Seattle. I lived in Los Angeles, so I wasn't super shocked. Until I started to learn more about the different policies here and how much tax is on everything, and I was like, oh, there's you're not going to get a state tax. I was like, that's great because there's a lot of taxes here in this in this city, and you know, you kind of feel the squeeze, especially if you're you know like me, it's only one income. You know, a lot of people are just single single income; they're not dual income in one household, and even those who are are still struggling. I'm I hear all the time from people from viewers who talk about, you know, I used to live in Seattle. I left Seattle. I moved out of Seattle because I just couldn't. Not that I didn't love it. Not that I didn't want to be in the city. It just was a matter of survival of being able to live and like not just live to survive because I truly like no one can learn themselves in survival mode, and no one should just expect any person to just be in survival mode. But you can't thrive. You can't. Who wants to live somewhere where hey, I can never go on vacation, I can never invest in my future, I can never grow my money and have my money work for me in my entire wallet? Shares just bills. People that are just downright afraid to even come into the downtown core anymore because of what's happened to it. I mean, public safety is a massive concern downtown. On top of you know the fact that these big employers would be you know taxed through the nose, you know for having a large number of employees, you know. Yeah, at the time there was a tremendous amount of debate about that policy. You know, do we want to punish the biggest economic drivers? Oh, well, Seattle's resilient. We can handle it. This is where we are. You know, and so the other day, I I went from well, you know, I went from Finney Ridge, took the bus, went to the Seahawks game, and I had never really paid super close attention. I was just looking out the window the whole way from the end of Belltown to the beginning of Pioneer Square. I mean, there was nothing. There was not a single storefront all along Third Avenue, and and and so Seattle has a real real problem. And and if folks are are not afraid, if people are afraid to come into town and spend their money, if businesses are afraid to come downtown because of the tax structure and because of public safety concerns, what are we doing? I I don't know. I know there are several meetings now with with this budget. I I just chimed in a little bit earlier in the show and and and stepped in. Just a lot of. Questions about how the city is going to move forward, but this particular these buyouts, these possible voluntary buyouts, this this seems like a little bit of mercy because they see what's coming down the pipeline and knowing that they're not going to be able to keep these folks. But yet, but but you know at the same time you know to your earlier question you know who would these layoffs or or you know early retirements entail right these payouts and that's the biggest question if you're talking about eliminate a hundred eliminating 128 jobs who exactly are we talking about because one thing I can tell you and that most people who spend time downtown will tell you is we need more cops we need a cohesive policing plan for the downtown core because a lot of those areas have gotten out of hand and when they have emphasis patrols in one area crime is deterred in the short term but then it will come back or or it's going down the road a stretch so that that's another really big problem you talk about cutting city jobs you know I really really hope we're not talking about police. I you know I'm glad you brought that point. It never even really crossed my mind because I would just think, oh no, you wouldn't do that, especially as the focus has been on public safety here in the city of Seattle for a number of weeks now, moving into months. We've been focused on public safety. I was more thinking maybe admin or along that lines, but to think that that is a possibility because it it just said city employees. It didn't give any specific area of city employment, but just city employees. Yeah. Um. So I. Yeah. So I. I think if I think if you're an older city employee and and you're making a decent salary, you have tenure. You probably have a pension. Like you could take the buyout, and and and maybe you're okay. And maybe you say you know what I I can I can take that and move on and and and no harm no foul. Um. I I'm I'm concerned that it goes down the road and then we're talking about just you know plain old layoffs. Yeah, we we shall see a lot of aspects of the budget. I know we're going to be keeping an eye on this one too. Bill Wixey in the newsroom for us. I appreciate you coming out and talk about that. But you're not going to go anywhere. You're going to keep that seat warm because on the other side we're going to talk about your Seahawks. Yeah. All right. Okay. Big game coming up on Thursday. All right. Let's check in back in with you, Bill, just a second.