With budget around the corner, Mayor releases Gun Violence Plan, ends SPD hiring bonuses and addiction treatment.

Mayor Wilson released her Gun Violence Plan Tuesday, Sept. 15th (the same day as the vote on Councilmember Rivera’s resolution for a new gun violence reduction strategy). While it leans heavily on prevention, listing youth programs; mental health services for teens and young adults; and integrating community violence interrupters directly into 911 dispatch, the second bullet point reads, “Increases bicycle patrols for visibility and faster response time while the Seattle Police Department continues to expand.”

That’ll be a stretch. SPD is still down hundreds of officers since seven of nine Councilmembers pledged to defund the police in 2020. Even more perplexingly, however, the Wilson administration put a freeze on officer hiring bonuses on August 26. That’s downright reckless.

The hiring bonuses were first implemented in 2024so that Seattle could compete against regional jurisdictions for a limited pool of recruits and they were key in reversing the negative SPD hiring trend. And now look: Renton just poached a lateral hire from SPD with a $40,000 bonus after they ended (Seattle’s was $50k). In other words, those bonuses were working and it’s never time to scrimp on public safety – deficit or no deficit.

The same can be said for addiction treatment and sober housing because addiction fuels chronic homelessness, crime, and – you guessed it – gun violence.

Last fall, Council unanimously imposed a proviso on  $2.85M in public safety sales tax revenue to fund recovery-based services in 2026 and ongoing, $500K of which  expands and makes permanent a pilot that gets people into on-demand rehab.

A proviso means the money cannot be spent on anything else and lifting it requires a supermajority Council vote. That seems to be the Mayor's plan. Page three of a  presentation to the Finance Committee lists $2.1M of that funding as a source for her Shelter Expansion and providers were just told that money’s only available through the end of 2026.

The bottom line is that if it’s not working, we should do something different. And if it is working, we should keep doing it.