CITY OF SEATTLE
RESOLUTION __________________
title
A RESOLUTION relating to the City's annual budget process; updating modified biennial budgeting processes; establishing guidelines for mid-year budget changes; establishing data sharing and reporting requirements; and superseding Resolutions 28885 and 31954.
body
WHEREAS, chapter 35.32A of the Revised Code of Washington (RCW) provides the framework for adoption of The City of Seattle's annual budget, further guided by Resolution 28885, adopted in 1994; and
WHEREAS, Resolution 28885 established a modified biennial budget process beginning in 1995; and
WHEREAS, since 1995, every two years the Council and Mayor have adopted a budget for the following year and endorsed a budget for the year following; and
WHEREAS, appropriations have always been adopted on an annual basis under chapter 35.32A RCW; and
WHEREAS; the City process to develop and approve the annual budget in the second year of the modified biennial budget process are similar to the first year of the biennium; and
WHEREAS, in 2020, the City Council and Mayor adopted Resolution 31954, suspending the modified biennial budget process for the 2020-2021 biennium; and
WHEREAS, via Resolution 31954, the Council requested that the City Budget Office (CBO) and the Department of Finance and Administration Services (FAS), in consultation with Council Central Staff, evaluate and report on both the near- and long-term solutions that allow for sufficient and transparent budget planning; and
WHEREAS, the City's supplemental and carryforward budget processes have broadly utilized RCW 35.32A.060, which allows appropriating funds mid-year to meet the needs of the city "for which insufficient or no appropriations have been made due to causes which could not reasonably have been foreseen at the time of the making of the budget"; and
WHEREAS, this broad application of the state budget act has resulted in increasingly time-intensive supplemental and carryforward budget proce...
Click here for full text