The Seattle City Council voted to approve the 2023-2024 budget, a whopping $7.4 billion dollars. The vote was six to three.
The multi-billion dollar budget covers a wide range of issues, from affordable housing to public safety. A major driver for the council is the economic uncertainty expected over the next two years and high inflation.
Half a billion dollars over the next two years will be put toward affordable housing. It is the largest investment in housing services Seattle has ever seen.
The council's budget also includes $4 million dollars for youth mental health with a quarter of that going directly to Ingraham High School, after a student was killed in a shooting early this month. Students asked for funding for providers within the school and community-led mental health programming. Read more
A man accused of killing a 19-year-old woman in Marysville in 1998 was arrested Monday, bringing closure to a 24-year-old cold case.
Jennifer Brinkman was found dead in her bedroom on March 21, 1998. Her father and his then-girlfriend had returned from a preplanned vacation in California to find her after she was struck in the neck with an ax, police said.
Investigators found the ax at the scene, and they sent it to the Washington State Patrol crime lab, which found DNA on the weapon. However, investigators couldn’t find a match for the DNA until recently.
Parabon NanoLabs, which offers genetic genealogy services, processed the DNA in 2020.
Based on the results, police got a search warrant for the suspect’s DNA, which he gave voluntarily. The suspect’s DNA was a match to that found at the crime scene. Read more
On Tuesday, King County filed a motion in King County Superior Court, asking a judge to award the county $219.90 per day for every day the Department of Social and Health Services (DSHS) fails to transport defendant Alexander Jay to Western State Psychiatric Hospital for court-ordered treatment.
Jay, age 40, was charged with assaulting a nurse in a Seattle light rail station and another woman at a bus stop in March.
In the motion, the county said it is incurring “unnecessary costs” by housing a seriously mentally ill defendant that DSHS has the legal obligation to care for - and that the “County should be compensated for its losses.”
Officials at DSHS said they have been hit with a “perfect storm” of events that have caused so many people to be left waiting in jails. Read more
There were 182 flights canceled and over 400 delayed flights at Sea-Tac on Tuesday, according to FlightAware, which tracks flights daily for major airports across the world.
Lowland snow in Seattle and surrounding areas fell Tuesday morning as several weather systems moved throughout the region. Snow levels are expected to hover between 400 and 800 feet throughout the week.
A spokesperson for Alaska Airlines said flight operations will be impacted throughout the week. The airline said it has "proactively thinned our schedule" to get ahead of the winter conditions.
Alaska Airlines said additional cancellations are possible as officials assess the weather's impact on operations. Customers are advised to visit Alaska Airlines' website or use the app to make flight adjustments. Read more
King County is home to the largest food bank delivery service in the nation, and it's made possible by a popular food delivery app.
The program, called United Way Home Grocery Delivery, provides free weekly and biweekly groceries to community members in need. The program uses DoorDash drivers to deliver food bank groceries to King County residents unable to get to the nearest food bank.
In August 2022 the program reached a major milestone, surpassing 400,000 deliveries.
DoorDash partnered with the United Way of King County in July 2020. However, the national program called "Project Dash" started nationwide in 2018.
“We recognized that there were people who normally would go to food banks that had either lost their transportation because they lost their jobs, or they were really worried about getting sick, and in some cases getting sick and dying,” said United Way King County CEO Gordon McHenry Jr. about the decision to partner with DoorDash. Read more
RELATED: Western Washington Forecast
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