c/seattle · by velma@sh.itjust.works · 10d

Mayor Katie Wilson's statement on the City Council's decision to fund school meals with general fund

https://bsky.app/profile/mayor.seattle.gov/post/3mrdvg2a46t2y

Shout out to @specialseaweed@sh.itjust.works for updating the other post on this topic!

Transcript:

"Now Council is proposing to pull this funding from our general fund, which is already facing a $175 million deficit. I look forward to seeing which critical services they plan to cut from the general fund to make their numbers work."

29 points · 3 comments · view on lemmy.world

3 Comments

specialseaweed@sh.itjust.works · 15 pts · 10d (1 reply)

I think this is a reasonable thing to think and they might be right that the budgeting gets nastier after this, but I can't see how anyone could put this on the mayor.

$1.3b voter approved levy in 2025 (https://www.seattle.gov/education/fepp-levy).
Wilson proposes using $3.5m of levy for school lunches for all kids (a rounding error worth of money)
Hollingsworth (via anonymous leakers, real classy) complains that the mayor didn't work with council on the proposal
Even Rob Saka is smart enough to get out of the way and vote for the mayor's proposal
Hollingsworth, who is setting up to run against Wilson for mayor, builds council support to kill Wilson's proposal
Hollingsworth creates totally new food proposal out of nowhere, doesn't consult the mayor's office
Hollingsworth goes and gets a founding member of the Black Panthers in Seattle to support her new proposal (which absolutely reeks of political backscratching)
Hollingsworth and Dionne Foster take photo smiling big right after killing Wilson's proposal
Hollingsworth and Foster get a shit storm of criticism, their responses are borderline nonsensical
Hollingsworth puts Wilson's proposal to a vote the next day, but now it takes money from the general fund (a pot of money already spoken for and in deficit)

Back to that post that person wrote about how maybe this will negatively affect the relationship between mayor and council going forward. Yea, probably. If I'm the mayor I think that the council president is gunning for my job and will take food out of the mouths of kids and fuck up the budget in order to deny me a win and the reason I would think that is because the council president is gunning for my job and tried to take food out of the mouths of kids and fucked up the budget in order to deny me a win.

My instincts as mayor would not be friendly. The mayor didn't take the gigantic L here, the council did. Maybe it's the council (Hollingsworth, Foster, Strauss) that should be eating some crow and tryin to fix their fuck up?

velma@sh.itjust.works · 12 pts · 10d

My instincts as mayor would not be friendly. The mayor didn’t take the gigantic L here, the council did. Maybe it’s the council (Hollingsworth, Foster, Strauss) that should be eating some crow and tryin to fix their fuck up?

They should absolutely be eating crow and fixing their fuck up. Willing to punish children and bog down the process by forcing means testing while simultaneously pretending like they're not pushing means testing? GTFOuttta here with that bullshit!

I don't care if rich kids get free lunch, too. Feed children.

I'm really happy that there were enough people who saw through that argument and reached out. Pressure works!

specialseaweed@sh.itjust.works · 6 pts · 10d

https://www.theburnerseattle.com/post/one-day-later-the-city-council-coughs-up-seattle-kids-lunch-money

Hannah Krieg with a good article about all this as well. Rinck continues to be a rock star.