This is breaking news, so there’s not a lot of details, but:
McDermott's amendment passes — the council will give $135 million for Safeco renovation and $661M for affordable housing.
— David Kroman (@KromanDavid) September 5, 2018
That’s less than the $185 million that the Seattle Mariners were asking for in stadium upgrade money in exchange for signing a lease extension, but way more than the proposal by councilmember Jeanne Kohl-Welles to cut it to a mere $26 million. (Kohl-Welles’ bill failed earlier today by a 5-4 vote.) The McDermott amendment mostly eliminates use of the tax revenue stream for tourism spending and pours that into affordable housing instead, but it also slices off $50 million from the M’s stadium fund, so, yay?
There’s still a vote to come on asking the voters to decide on this whole mess [UPDATE: it was voted down too]; it doesn’t seem likely that the county council would vote for a specific funding plan and then vote to let somebody else decide the specific funding plan, but who knows? Follow David Kroman above on Twitter, he has his finger on the slow, unsteady pulse of the council.
[FURTHER UPDATE: Kroman’s article on all of yesterday’s votes and how they went down is now up at Crosscut, for anyone who wants the full scoop.]
I was listening. An amendment to cap the lodging tax at $135 million (instead of a percentage allocation) failed. An amendment to ?return lodging funds if the naming rights exceeded a set amount? failed. A requirement for a labor-neutrality position from the Mariners passed 6-2. It could be voted on by the full council on Monday the 17th but there was some warning about a courtesy week extension beyond that.
It was really hard to follow what was going on since the public agenda/website had documents for only 1 proposed amendment, as far as I could tell.
They should have just raised the 5% admissions tax to 10%, as Centurylink field is supposed to do for maintenance in 2021.
They asked for 185 but probably only needed half that.