D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) proposed a $19 billion budget on Wednesday that included increasing funding for some of her top priorities, including boosting the police force’s budget by 5 percent and spending another half-billion dollars to spur the construction of new housing developments in the city.
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Bowser’s budget, funded by rising local revenue from the city’s tax base as well as federal funds meant to help cities weather the pandemic and its aftermath, includes new spending on a wide variety of programs, from a $10 million program to increase Black homeownership, to funds to help deter youth from violence by helping them with rent and savings accounts, to a new high school in Ward 3.
The mayor presented her plan to the D.C. Council on Wednesday. The council will next conduct weeks of hearings before proposing its own modifications and eventually voting in May on the final budget for fiscal 2023, which begins Oct. 1.
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“One thing that is clear and has become even clearer since last year is that the impacts of the pandemic are far-reaching and complex. … We are experiencing new challenges around housing and homelessness. We are experiencing a rise in reckless driving. And we know that our students have suffered greatly,” Bowser said to the council. “This budget acknowledges the very real anxieties that District residents feel when they’re concerned about the affordability of the city and how long they will be able to afford to live here.”
One of the largest expenditures in Bowser’s proposal is a one-time $500 million injection into the Housing Production Trust Fund, which provides grants to developers to help them include subsidized units for low-income residents in new housing complexes. Bowser has spent $1 billion on the program already in her two terms as mayor. Her previous largest one-time addition to the fund, $400 million last year that was meant to last two years, has already been almost entirely spent, said John Falcicchio, deputy mayor for planning and economic development.
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Falcicchio said that developers have submitted applications to the program requesting another $398 million in grants from the fund, and the city plans to request more proposals this summer, so the $500 million could be quickly put to use. He said the funds could lead to about 2,700 new affordable housing units.
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The mayor also urged the council to approve her request for a $515 million police budget, an increase of about $27 million above the higher police spending that she requested and secured last year. Bowser has long been an advocate for increasing spending on policing, while some on the council have pushed to spend at least slightly less on traditional police and more on alternatives like violence interrupters and mental health first responders.
As the June mayoral primary approaches, Bowser has focused on cracking down on crime as a top theme of her campaign. A recent Washington Post poll found that crime is the top concern among city voters. The two council members running against Bowser in the Democratic primary, Trayon White Sr. (Ward 8) and Robert C. White Jr. (At Large), have each favored alternative responses over increasing police funding.
The mayor said her goal is to eventually increase the size of the city’s police force, from 3,580 at the start of the current fiscal year to 4,000. A top city official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss Bowser’s budget before she proposed it, said it would take nine years, under Bowser’s current rate of funding, to eventually reach 4,000 officers.
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Bowser asked the council to grow the workforce at many other city agencies as well, including adding at least 40 more firefighters; creating 100 full-time positions in the Department of Transportation for crossing guards and traffic controllers to address recent crashes in which children have been hit by cars; and hiring 110 more seasonal leaf collection workers after the city failed to pick up leaves on time this year. The budget would specifically create 11 positions for a crew focused on clearing leaves and snow from the city’s bike lanes — including the 10 miles of new protected bike lanes that Bowser budgeted for building this year.
The budget, which includes both a one-year spending plan and a five-year plan, includes funding to build a new jail next to the troubled D.C. jail, which would eventually replace the Correctional Detention Facility, one of the jail’s two complexes. But the city official said construction would not begin on the new facility until at least 2026. The planned facility, he said, would include room for 500 to 900 fewer inmates than the existing one, reflecting the city’s goal of seeing fewer residents incarcerated.
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The plan also includes long-term funding to eventually construct an indoor track and gymnastics facility at the sprawling RFK Stadium where Bowser also aspires to someday house a new Washington Commanders stadium; a new thousand-student high school on the campus formerly owned by Georgetown Day School; and to build a new middle school on the site of the former Banneker High School.
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Bowser did not propose any new taxes to fund the budget, relying instead on the growth in local revenue from existing taxes and on federal funding, including hundreds of millions of dollars that D.C. expects to receive from the infrastructure bill recently passed by Congress.
Bowser said in her budget presentation that the city’s unemployment rate, which jumped from 5 percent to 11 percent early in the pandemic, is back down to 5.8 percent. Apartment vacancies, which also spiked during the pandemic, have partially recovered, but commercial vacancy rates have only gotten worse, rising from 11 percent before the pandemic to 14 percent now. Consumer spending, however, has risen more than 7 percent.
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Bowser did not propose repealing a tax increase on wealthy residents that the council added to last year’s budget over her objections. That tax was used in part to fund a large increase in the number of vouchers available to homeless residents to secure housing, and Bowser proposed a further increase in that program in this budget: $31 million in fiscal 2023 and additional funding in the future to provide permanent housing to 500 adults, 260 families and 10 youths with disabilities that mean they need long-term support.
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The budget does include spending that will eventually make money for the city: more than $9 million to nearly triple the number of traffic cameras installed in the city. About 170 of the cameras will look for drivers speeding and running red lights, the city official said; about 20 more will look for cars illegally using bus lanes, and some will look for motorists failing to stop at stop signs.
The proposal by the mayor on Wednesday did not come with the full budget, which runs hundreds of pages long. The city’s chief financial officer delayed publication of the entire budget, but Bowser said the detailed accounting of each agency’s proposed spending would be available by Friday, when she will next meet with the council about the budget.
Council members asked the mayor their initial questions about the budget on Wednesday morning. Most praised the mayor’s suggestions for spending on their top priorities and in their wards, while some suggested ideas they would like to see in the final version, such as expanding paid leave benefits for city employees.