Margaret Pageler

Hold on to your wallets, Seattle. As civic leaders free from politics, we feel compelled to warn the city we love about this troublesome transportation tax of $1.5 billion. Why should you pay the largest tax in Seattle’s history when it leaves bridges, streets and sidewalks in dangerous disrepair while increasing traffic congestion? Proposition 1, the Levy to Move Seattle, is unaffordable, inequitable and ineffective. Vote “no” to reject and redo this bloated levy.

In the last 20 years, Seattle grew into one of the world’s great cities. The road back from the pandemic, however, is not the flawed path laid out in proposed Charter Amendment 29, known as Compassion Seattle. The well-intentioned motivation behind the charter amendment is to build 2,000 housing units with necessary support services in one year, while creating a legal process to remove encampments from sidewalks and parks.

Seattle spends plenty to help the homeless. Before we go and raise taxes again, the results of our spending need to be audited, outcomes quantified and evaluated, and the city needs to streamline its efforts. WE are all interested in getting the homeless into housing, but the property tax initiative recently proposed by Mayor Murray and Nick Hanauer to address homelessness would make housing even more unaffordable for many renters and for low- and middle-income homeowners.