Seattle and King County taxpayers deserve a more thoughtful distribution of proposed sales tax for roads
Under the current proposal, Seattle would receive less funding, and its share would be distributed among other cities including very wealthy cities. See more in this PDF.
A proposed spending plan for a 0.1% sales tax across King County would artificially limit the share of the funding that the City of Seattle would receive, distributing Seattle's share to other cities including some of the wealthiest suburban cities in the nation.
Ryan Packer at the The Urbanist has reported extensively on this sales tax measure, which has yet to make it into the Seattle Times despite a County Council vote scheduled for Friday on the King County Transportation District funding resolutions. Eight members of the Seattle City Council signed onto a letter by Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck this week urging their county colleagues to remove the cap on Seattle's share of the passthrough dollars that every city would receive. The letter calls out the inequitable distribution of dollars under the current plan, which would see small and wealthy Eastside cities get a disproportionate amount of funding. The letter states that "the proposal to cap that funding and restrict how it can be spent is not acceptable nor equitable. We ask that King County Council consider removing the binding cap that solely impacts City of Seattle."
UPDATE: The Seattle Streets Alliance has an action alert people can use to "tell King County Council not to tax Seattle for Suburban roads."
The majority of the funds collected from the sales tax would go to maintaining and repaving the county-maintained roads and bridges in unincorporated areas. These roads are often some of the worst roadways in our region, and they desperately need both maintenance and safety improvements. The proposal does mention using a safe systems approach and implementing a traffic safety action plan. It is not clear from my reading how binding safety is as part of the funding measure. The County Council should ensure that all significant road paving projects will be complete streets so we do not invest a bunch of money just to recreate the same safety issues that exist today.
An unacceptable guideline among people who ride bikes in King County is to try to avoid any street with two city names in it (like "Preston-Fall City Road") because it is dangerous. Some of these are state routes while others are King County roads. Regardless of how they get around, everyone in King County deserves to be safe traveling on King County roads.
Seattle and other cities with a larger tax base should subsidize roads in more rural parts of King County. The county's road network benefits everyone in the region. Cities are typically in control of their own road infrastructure, so a countywide tax that only funds project in unincorporated areas may not be fair to cities with a lot of roads to fund and relatively few residents to pay for it all. It may not make sense to ask the residents of, for example, Carnation to fund all the costs for the road network through Carnation (state highway excluded). The county proposal would provide "passthrough" dollars that send a portion of the new sales tax to cities to help them with their road investments.
The problem is that the current leading proposal gives a minimum amount for each city regardless of size, resulting in over-payments to smaller and often very wealthy cities. To cover these higher costs to small and medium cities, the proposal would cap Seattle's share and redistribute the rest. The result is that Seattle would lose out on about $3 million every year, and those dollars would instead be distributed inequitably across smaller cities regardless of funding ability or need. Carnation, for example, would receive less of Seattle's money than Clyde Hill. This makes no sense. Seattle taxpayers would be sending Clyde Hill, which has a median annual household income of more than $250,000, five extra dollars per Clyde Hill resident every year (see the spending breakdown in this PDF).
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https://www.seattlebikeblog.com/2026/06/10/seattle-and-king-county-taxpayers-deserve-a-more-thoughtful-distribution-of-proposed-sales-tax-for-roads/
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