King County veterans used to have to wait six months to receive mental health care treatment through the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. But thanks to a modest property tax that funds an innovative county program in partnership with the VA, that wait time has been cut down to a single week.
The Veterans, Seniors and Human Services Levy funds housing, employment and support services for veterans and people who are elderly or homeless.
The levy also funds a broad range of other services, including assistance for gender-based violence survivors, a 24-hour multilingual domestic violence hotline known as DV Hopeline, education and employment training for people with disabilities, and legal counsel for immigrant and refugee children.
RELATED Seattle Times editorial board endorsements: Aug. 1, 2023, primary
These measures help foster the health of community members, but the levy is also essential in working to create community. For instance, Indian American Community Services uses levy funding to take elderly community members to senior centers, where they connect with other members of the community. They are even able to use levy funding to serve culturally relevant food.
In addition, IACS provides informal support groups led by mental health counselors from the community, who can address taboos around accessing counseling or grandchildren who may be coming out as LGBTQ in a culturally relevant manner. Levy funding makes all this possible.
Today, IACS is part of six different senior centers in Snoqualmie, Sammamish, Issaquah, Kent, Bellevue, Redmond and Bothell.
The levy has served more than 27,000 veterans, service members and their families. Every year, 28,000 seniors in the county use levy-funded senior centers.
On the Aug. 1 ballot, Proposition 1 asks voters to approve the levy for six more years with a 10-cent property tax for every $1,000 of assessed property value, or about $83 per year for a median-priced King County home. The levy is expected to raise about $564 million over its term.
The council rejected an earlier 12-cent proposal, which would have raised more than $677 million, because of concerns that tax weary voters would reject the whole levy.
Opposition to the proposal seems nonexistent with no one authoring an argument against the levy to publish in the official voter’s pamphlet.
Voters approved the levy in 2005 and renewed it in 2011 and 2017, for good reason. The results have consistently enhanced the lives of the people it is intended to serve.
Voters should say yes to Proposition 1.