Welp, six years have elapsed since the last time King County overwhelmingly passed the Veterans, Seniors and Human Services Levy (VSHS). Now they want us to renew it, and we absolutely should.
The VSHS is the backbone of the county’s human services funding. Failing to renew it would snap the spine of programs that keep tens of thousands of seniors sheltered and fed, thousands of veterans housed and financially stable, thousands of domestic violence and sexual assault victims connected to helpful hotlines, thousands of immigrants hooked up with legal specialists, and lots of social workers employed.
This version of the levy proposes pay increases to help recruit and retain those workers and doubles investments in senior centers, but the rate remains identical to 2017, so the owner of the median-valued home will only pay about $17 more per year in property taxes for this levy than they did for its last iteration.
If you want the eye-glazing specifics, the tax rate will remain at $0.10 per $1,000 of assessed home value based on the prior year, which works out to about $83.75 per year for the median home in King County, which clocked in at $694,000 in 2022.
The County estimates the levy will raise $564.7 million over the course of another six years to fund capital costs (buildings) and operational costs (employees, etc.) for the programs.
Think all that money winds up between a couple mattresses in Dow Constantine’s basement? Think again. The county maintains a dashboard that shows where your tax dollars go. That dashboard also includes progress reports and audits, so you can see how many seniors got their houses fixed, how many vets reported finding jobs, how many affordable houses this money helped build, and how much the levy helped reduce veteran homelessness (the County pegs that reduction at 40%).
Feeling a little property tax fatigued? Good! Funnel all that anger into weekly emails to your state representatives, demanding that they pass an income tax. Until then, check this webpage to see if you qualify for property tax relief.
The bottom line is that the VSHS provides basic-shit-that-everybody-likes funding, and voters have renewed it every six years since it first passed in 2005. Let’s keep the trend going. Vote approved.