My proposed budget for 2025

Dear fellow King County employee,

Today I unveiled my proposed 2025 budget and sent it to the King County Council for consideration. The budget prioritizes key investments in housing, health, safety, transportation, climate action, and the environment, and demonstrates again our commitment to making King County a welcoming community where every person can thrive.

This 2025 budget reflects King County’s determination to create innovative solutions to our most pressing challenges. We’ve balanced the budget, making careful cuts while strategically investing in key areas to deliver essential services for our residents. However, without new revenue sources, future budgets will require significant cuts — an estimated $150 million in 2026-2027. Those cuts would directly, negatively impact the people of King County. We must work together, across all levels of government and with our community partners, to ensure we can continue meeting the needs of our region in the years ahead.

Some of the 2025 budget highlights include:

• Developing affordable housing: $56 million to support affordable housing projects within a half mile of a transit station, increasing access to opportunities and building more connected, inclusive, resilient communities.
• Increasing transit services: $33.2 million to add 168,500 hours of bus service, along with investments in mobility services like Access Paratransit, Metro Flex, Community Van, and DART.
• Expanding Metro’s Safety, Security, and Fare Enforcement Initiative: $4.7 million to support safety and security on and around transit, ensuring equitable and safe services for customers and employees, and connecting people in crisis with resources and services.
• Maintaining critical services to confront gun violence: $7.9 million to maintain the Regional Peacekeepers Collective’s work in providing intervention, prevention, and restoration services for those impacted by gun violence.
• Restoring fish passage: $9 million to continue King County’s work to remove barriers and restore habitat for salmon, including replacing culverts. Nearly 3 miles of habitat will open in 2025, along with planning and design for another 66 miles of habitat.
• Conserving critical open space: $82 million through the Conservation Futures and Parks levies to permanently preserve up to 3,600 acres of open space across King County.
• Continuing health care services: A proposal to levy an 8.5 cent tax utilizing a modified county hospital property tax authority, announced on Sept. 19, is included in the 2025 budget. This would generate $74.6 million to fund King County’s public health hospital, including operations, capital, and maintenance at Harborview Medical Center, and continued care for the approximately 80,000 clients of King County Public Health clinics.

The proposed 2025 budget has been transmitted to the King County Council for further consideration and approval, which is anticipated in November. You can read the press release here and learn more on the King County website.

Thank you for everything you do for King County and the people we serve, and I look forward to working with you to implement the initiatives I announced today.

Sincerely,

Dow Constantine (he/him/his)
King County Executive

The King County Wastewater Treatment Division secured a $498.3 million loan package from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to complete 14 infrastructure projects that will help improve water quality, while saving millions in interest costs.

King County’s Wastewater Treatment Division secured a nearly $500 million loan package under a new master agreement from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to complete 14 critical infrastructure upgrades that will better protect water quality in the Puget Sound region for decades.

The capital projects will build on other enhancements King County has made in recent years that have made the regional wastewater treatment system safer, more reliable, and more resilient to climate impacts.

"The Biden administration is once again demonstrating its strong commitment to protecting the natural environment throughout the country, including one of the nation’s premier waterbodies, the Puget Sound,” said Executive Constantine. “Earning a half-billion-dollar commitment for clean-water infrastructure reflects King County’s reputation as a trusted fiscal and environmental steward, producing the best results for each public dollar we invest for people, salmon, and orcas.”

King County received the first installment of funding, a $194 million loan package funded by the Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act. This initial loan will save King County ratepayers $19.8 million in interest fees. The extended repayment period also lowers the county’s annual debt payments.

The $498.3 million commitment, the largest amount ever for the regional wastewater system, will support infrastructure projects across King County, including seismic upgrades at two regional wastewater treatment plants, improvements to the recycled water system, and upgrades to miles of conveyance and sewer pipes, among others. Here are a few of the 14 projects:

• Eastside Interceptor Section 8 Rehabilitation repairs one of the largest conveyance pipes in the system in Bellevue that is nearing the end of its service life.
• Lake Hills and Northwest Lake Sammamish Interceptor Upgrade installs 4.5 miles of sewer pipe serving Redmond and Bellevue.
• Sammamish Plateau Diversion adds capacity to treat wastewater flow from East Lake Sammamish area.
• West Point Treatment Plant Primary Raw Sewage Pump Replacement replaces the original raw sewage pump system and makes seismic upgrades to the pump building at the plant, located in the Magnolia neighborhood of Seattle.
• South Treatment Plant Influent Pump Station Seismic Upgrades protects the Renton-based plant from large seismic events.

“Puget Sound is a national treasure, and King County has a responsibility to protect and improve water quality for people, salmon and orcas,” said Kamuron Gurol, King County Wastewater Treatment Division Director. “We need and appreciate this package from our federal partners so that our ratepayers aren’t left alone to shoulder the burden of these clean-water investments.”

The King County Wastewater Treatment Division will invest $10 billion over the next decade to reduce sources of pollution in local waterways, maintain and repair aging assets, and build new infrastructure to prepare for climate change.

This marks the third time the Wastewater Treatment Division has earned a federal loan for major infrastructure projects. The EPA considers how soon construction can begin, the borrower’s ability to repay the loan, and the project’s overall benefit to the community in its application review.

King County was the first loan recipient under the federal act when the EPA issued a $134.5 million loan in 2018 to help fund construction of the Georgetown Wet Weather Treatment Station. In 2021, King County closed on a $96.8 million loan to help design and construct the Ship Canal Water Quality Project, which is a partnership with Seattle Public Utilities.

This has been the most productive five-year period for improvements since the regional treatment system was built in the 1960s. The Wastewater Treatment Division has advanced dozens of capital projects, including seismic upgrades, replacing aging pumps and pipes, and building a 24,000-square-foot structure at West Point Treatment Plant that will house 80,000 pounds of high-voltage batteries, providing operators with a more reliable power supply.

King County is launching a new initiative, Re+, to return valuable materials to the economy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions created by the region’s waste system. Re+ aims to recover nearly 70% of materials that are currently being sent to the landfill that could avoid becoming waste in the first place by being reused, recycled, or composted.

King County Executive Dow Constantine today launched Re+, an initiative to reinvent the region’s waste system to significantly cut greenhouse gas emissions and transition to a sustainable circular economy.

While King County has achieved one of the highest recycling rates in the country, nearly 70% of the materials currently brought to the regional landfill could be reused, recycled, or composted, rather than buried as waste that generates potent greenhouse gas emissions. Re+ will mobilize the public, private, and nonprofit sectors to extend producer responsibility, make it more convenient to recycle, reduce food waste, and invest in new technologies that recover valuable materials.

Re+ will advance a goal in King County’s 2020 Strategic Climate Action Plan to cut countywide greenhouse gas emissions in half by the end of the decade.

"Re+ is our commitment to reinventing the waste system to dramatically reduce carbon emissions and transition to a more sustainable economy,” said Executive Constantine. “The people and businesses of King County want to contribute to climate solutions. With these systemic changes, we will make it easier and less expensive for everyone to make sustainable choices.”

Re+ includes the following actions:

• Forming partnerships and supporting state legislation that gets companies to take greater responsibility for the design, reuse, and recycling of their own products and packaging.
• Expanding curbside food and yard waste collection and working with businesses to prevent highly recyclable and compostable materials – food, paper, yard waste, and cardboard – from going to the landfill and producing more emissions.
• Investing in new technologies that recover valuable materials from garbage and get them back into the economy.
• Providing support to local businesses so they can keep their food waste out of the landfill and get edible food to those who need it.
• Offering inclusive, equitable grants and technical assistance to small businesses, communities, and nonprofits that are creating innovative zero-waste and recycling strategies.
• Partnering with cities and state legislators to make recycling and composting practices more consistent.

Producing, packaging, shipping, and disposing of products all contribute to greenhouse gas emissions, but some of the best opportunities for improvement are in food waste, which accounts for about one-third of materials that currently end up at the Cedar Hills Regional Landfill in Maple Valley.

Businesses and households in King County in 2019 threw out enough edible food to feed everyone in Kirkland – about 92,000 people – for an entire year. Food production requires large amounts of resources – particularly water and energy – while creating significant greenhouse gas emissions. If food is not eaten and ends up at the landfill, its decay can create methane, a potent greenhouse gas.

By enacting new policies, supporting state legislation, coordinating with cities, and partnering with businesses, King County can reduce the amount of waste currently generated, decrease the demand for virgin materials and the energy required for manufacturing, and make recycling and composting more convenient.