UUC at the November 6 Seattle City Council Budget Hearing

The Seattle City Council’s early December deadline for adopting a final budget for 2026 looms. That means budget hearings. Last year’s 2025 budget crisis resulted in programs cuts and raiding the Jump Start payroll tax fund passed to support affordable housing, climate justice, and equitable economic development funding to underserved communities. The proposed 2026 budget reverses some, but by no mean all, of those cuts, in the face of insufficient revenue to meet needs.

At the Social Justice Revival in October, your Social Justice Steering Committee heard interest from UUC members in having our congregation participate in advocacy at the city council level for Budgets as a Moral Document. On behalf of UUC’s Social Justice Steering Committee, Rev. Victoria, accompanied by current SJSC member Catherine Ruha and past member Debbie Maranville, attended the City Council’s November 6 budget hearing at 5 p.m. Their aim: support faith leaders speaking in favor of the Church Council of Greater Seattle’s vision of the budget as a moral document, a vision rooted in the obligation, foundational to so many faiths, to care for the pressing needs of all members of the community, especially the poor, choosing care and support over surveillance and punishment.

Speakers represented a range of community groups, including Share/Wheel and Tent City 4. In addition to focusing heavily on Seattle’s perennial housing crisis, speakers advocated for community needs around mental health care and other social services. A particular criticism of the proposed budget was that it authorizes additional money to expand expensive mass surveillance tools currently being operated by the city (and in some cases shared with ICE): closed circuit TV cameras, Automatic License Plate Readers (ALPR’s) and more.

In this challenging time, it is easy to focus on how to respond to our federal government, especially given the recent federal shutdown and pending federal budget cutbacks to social needs funding. However, what happens on the local level will take on increasing weight. As UUC considers the call for Social Justice Now! we will have an opportunity to consider whether and how we might also “Think Globally [Nationally], Act Locally”.