As part of his proposed budget for 2026, Mayor Bruce Harrell has taken a novel strategy to help balance a deeply imbalanced ledger: assuming departments will underspend next year.

The assumption is not baseless; departments have underspent their budgets in recent years. And he is trying to plug a roughly $150 million budget deficit.

But the decision to write that into the equation for balancing the budget is not typical practice, staff for the Seattle City Council said, and risks squeezing the city’s flexibility in the event of a more dramatic economic downturn. More broadly, members of the council voiced concern that a recent trend of underspending, as well as the decision to build that into the budget, signaled an undermining of their power of the purse.

“This is a notable departure f

See Full Page