information from King County

The Community Investment Budget Committee reached this milestone after months of meeting online due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Members had to build trust, create structure, establish values, and immerse themselves in King County’s Equity and Social Justice strategies.

The result of those meetings is a plan of how to allocate $10 million in capital project funds to five urban unincorporated areas (East Federal Way, East Renton, Fairwood, North Highline-White Center and Skyway-West Hill), as well as more than $1.3 million in marijuana tax revenue to the Skyway and White Center neighborhoods.

“Participatory budgeting,” where community decides how to spend part of a government’s budget, is one of the few of its kind in the country and a first for Washington. King County Local Services is working with the Participatory Budgeting Project to help guide its process.

The steering committee, whose 21 members were selected by King County in June, based these allocation decisions on the values it set in order to help create racial equity in the unincorporated areas while acknowledging King County’s position that racism itself is a public health crisis.

Here’s how the Community Investment Budget Committee (members voted to officially add “Budget” to the group’s name over the summer) chose to allocate the capital project funding:

·East Federal Way.................... $1.96 million, or 20 percent

·East Renton........................... $301,000, or 3 percent

·Fairwood................................ $720,000, or 7 percent

·North Highline-White Center..... $3.1 million, or 31 percent

·Skyway-West Hill.................... $3.9 million, or 39 percent

The committee also voted on how to allocate more than $1.3 million in marijuana retail tax revenue to Skyway-West Hill and White Center-North Highline, the two areas with the most retail marijuana-related businesses in unincorporated King County.

The committee decided that Skyway-West Hill will receive $810,000 and White Center will receive $540,000. This money will be used on programs, services, community events, and community improvements.

The committee is now working on how to identify the projects, programs, and services this funding could support, as well as details of how the public will decide on how the money is ultimately spent.