36.5%
downtown CBD vacancy, Q1 2026
Up from 33% a year ago. Roughly 5× the pre-pandemic level. Cushman & Wakefield Q1 2026
We got this, Seattle.
SeaFor tracks what Seattle City Hall spends, what it passes, and what the city gets for it. Sourced data, committee-level legislation tracking, and plain-English analysis, so residents can follow the decisions that shape the city.
Spending is up. Results are not. Someone should keep score.
Public information, pragmatic lens, every claim sourced.
§ 00 · Why SeaFor exists
Seattle spends more than ever.
Few people can see what it buys.
The decisions that shape public safety, homelessness, housing, and taxes get made in Council committees, budget amendments, and fiscal notes. Most residents never see them until the results show up on the street.
Local coverage tends to focus on final votes and press releases. The committee amendments, the spending that hasn't gone out the door, and the outcomes years later get far less attention. Civic groups and business associations track pieces of it, mostly in silos.
SeaFor puts it in one place: the numbers, the legislation, and the coverage, sourced and written for people with day jobs.
Not
a press-release rewrite. We go to the fiscal notes, agendas, and budget documents.
Not
a rebrand of an existing org with a fresh logo and the same instincts.
Is
a public source on what City Hall does and what it gets for the money, built to outlast any single news cycle.
§ 01 · State of the city
This isn't a slump.
It's a structural problem.
The trend lines are hard to ignore. Seattle ranks near the bottom of major U.S. cities on the metrics that drive its economy and last on per-capita homelessness. Many of these trends trace back to state and local policy choices, and those choices compound.
$3.7B
value lost from top towers since 2022
King County Assessor · 2022–2025
−13,000
downtown jobs lost in 2025
Amazon is moving 10,000 jobs to Bellevue. Worker foot traffic in March 2026 sat at 60% of March 2019, and fell another 6% year over year.
Downtown Seattle Association · 2026
67%
of Seattle businesses report more strain than during COVID
The Intentionalist · January 2026 (n=136)
Tax Foundation 2026
45/50
Chief Executive 2026
47/50
Was, in 2014
6/50
A decade ago, top 10 in the country. Now bottom 5. That's not bad luck. That's policy: gross-receipts B&O tax, new capital gains tax, expanded UI for striking workers, the highest combined sales tax of any large U.S. city.
−19.2%
new Seattle business licenses, April 2026 vs. April 2025
2,221 new licenses in the first 110 days of 2026. Down 12.4% from 2025 and down 40% from 2019. The pipeline is drying up.
Spending vs. outcomes
How much did it cost to get these results?
Despite skyrocketing investments in affordable housing, homelessness and overdoses continue to climb.
$52.5M → $349.5M
annual Seattle affordable-housing spend, 2016 → 2026 proposed
Seattle Budget Office
9,294 → 16,868
Point-in-Time count, 2014 → 2024
King County Regional Homelessness Authority & predecessor agencies (PIT counts)
3,571
Seattle EMS opioid overdose responses, 2025
Peaked 2019–2023, dipped in 2024 with widespread Narcan distribution, rising again. King County Overdose Dashboard
The numbers are the starting point. → What we track
§ 02 · The work
Two workstreams. One public platform.
Accountability reporting and committee-level legislation tracking. Here's how it departs from what's being done now.
-
01
Accountability reporting
Policy gets a pass when nobody's keeping score. Someone has to follow the dollar and track the results so residents can judge for themselves.
Status quoCoverage leans on announcements and reaction. The fiscal note, the unspent balance, and the outcome three years later rarely make the story.
SeaForOriginal analysis, curated coverage, and policy explainers from a pragmatic lens. Every number sourced and linked.
This is what accountability looks like
- Business climate. How Seattle's taxes and regulations affect businesses staying, leaving, or never opening here.
- Contracting readouts. Following the dollar from ordinance to service-provider contract to policy outcome.
- Public safety. Crime rates, staffing math, response times, alternate-response, what's working and what's not.
- Homelessness response. Recovery First vs. Harm Reduction, addiction treatment, per-bed costs, service provider performance, and what changes real lives.
- Permitting & housing. Time-to-permit benchmarks vs. peer cities, inspection delays, what to fix first.
-
02
A weekly legislation tracker
The real decisions happen in committee. We track legislation from committee to final Council vote so the public knows what's happening in real time on public safety, homelessness, housing, taxes, and addiction.
Status quoCoverage repeats press release talking points and focuses on Full Council passage, missing the committee votes where bills actually change. Mostly lobbyists and activists follow it closely.
SeaForCommittee-first coverage. Hot-topic legislation, down to the amendment: who's sponsoring it and what it does, then who voted for it. Take Mayor Wilson's bill to expand tiny home villages: amended by Council to require 24/7 security and sober living options. What goes in doesn't come out the same.
- Weekly committee digest. What got introduced, amended in committee, and moved to final vote, in plain English.
- Amendment receipts. The text, the sponsor, the vote count, and what changed from the original.
- The Brief. A 5-minute weekly readout on what moved at City Hall and what's coming next week.
§ 03 · Flagship product preview
The Firehose. What happened in committee, before the final vote.
Cameras, addiction treatment, new taxes: the big calls get shaped in committee, weeks before anyone notices. The Firehose is a bill tracker and weekly readout on what happened in committee, what changed, and what it means, before the final vote, not after the consequences sink in.
A weekly readout · 4 minutes, fully sourced
The Firehose · Vol. 01 · No. 14 · Sample
What Council did this week. What it means.
-
Introduced
Progressive Revenue · CB 122XXX
Mayor's budget package would implement a municipal capital gains tax and dial up JumpStart. No reduction in spending proposed.
Committee hearing · TBDPlaceholder example. Final dispatch ships with the Firehose launch.
-
In Committee
SPD staffing & alternative response · CB 121ABC
Chair's package would fund 120 net new SPD hires and 10 more CARE responders for behavioral health calls. In committee this week. The fiscal note pencils. Likely vote count doesn't, yet.
Committee hearing · Tue 9:30amPlaceholder example. Final dispatch ships with the Firehose launch.
-
Passed
Permitting reform · CB 121XYZ
Seattle's broken permitting system adds risk and slows construction, driving up housing costs and inhibiting economic growth. Plus, it's a real hassle. Comprehensive reform is long overdue but staff resist changing their workflow, so it has to be legislated, one fix at a time.
Yes 9 No 0 -
Spin vs. Reality
“Historic investment in affordable housing”
The 2026 budget includes an additional $349 million for affordable housing, an all-time high. That's on top of $160 million already in the budget that has yet to be spent. Both are true; only one fits in a tweet.
Bills, committees, amendments, final votes. You can't track everything so the Firehose does it for you. Policy, votes, accountability.
§ 04 · Coverage
The coverage.
And the context.
Seattle has few outlets focused 100% on City Hall. The Seattle Times sits behind a paywall, local broadcast has its moments, and much of the rest is opinion presented as fact.
SeaFor aggregates coverage of current hot topics, spotlighting thorough reporting from a range of perspectives. We also publish original commentary that separates opinion from fact. Pointed, readable, and sourced.
What we publish
Original commentary, aggregated receipts
Policy briefs, explainers, and the goings-on at City Hall from the moderate-pragmatic lane. Plus a curated round-up of the journalism and posts that actually moved the conversation, with a sentence on why each lands.
- Curated reading list · every dispatch
- Original columns · 1–2 a week
- Receipts threads, sourced and shareable
Coming soon
What we check
Spin vs. reality
Press releases dressed as news. Hot takes with zero math. When a claim doesn't match the budget documents or the data, we put the two side by side and link the receipts.
- Claim vs. the record · ongoing
- Take of the week, with the actual facts
- Sources cited so you can check them yourself
Coming soon
“Show the receipts. Every number sourced, every claim checkable.”
Editorial mandate
§ 05 · Contact
Tips, corrections,
and questions.
i.
Spot an error?
Tell us. We correct the record and note the fix.
ii.
Know something we should track?
Bills, budget lines, contracts, or a committee nobody's watching. Send it our way.
§ 06 · FAQ
The blunt FAQ.
Where do your numbers come from?
Public records first: Council agendas and legislation, fiscal notes, the City Budget Office, King County dashboards, and published research. Every chart and claim on this site links to its source so you can check it yourself.
How is SeaFor different from other coverage?
Speed and depth. Agentic AI watches every Council packet, amendment, and fiscal note the moment it posts. Within hours, not weeks, we package the receipts (fiscal notes, prior votes, comparable cities) into plain-English briefs. The agents bring the speed. Humans bring the judgment, the sourcing, and the editing.
Do you have a point of view?
Yes, and we say so. We look at City Hall through a pragmatic, results-focused lens: what was promised, what it cost, and what changed. We keep opinion labeled as opinion and facts sourced as facts.
What if I disagree with you on a specific issue?
Good. We focus on outcomes on the issues that affect real lives: public safety, homelessness, addiction recovery, housing, and economic development. Disagreement on individual issues is welcome and makes the conversation better. If you think policymakers should be accountable for the results of their votes and investments, we’re on the same page.
Found an error?
Tell us. We fix mistakes quickly and note the correction.