‘No Tax on Jobs’ coalition pushing for referendum to repeal head tax

Geeky Swedes Ballard

The grandson of the founder of Dick’s Drive-in is helping spearhead a new effort to bring a referendum to the ballot that aims to overturn the city’s new head tax.

Saul Spady, who runs a Seattle ad agency, is working with the new “No Tax on Jobs” coalition to gather 17,632 signatures by June 12th to qualify the referendum for the August ballot. Spady’s sister, Jasmine Donovan, is an executive at Dick’s Drive-in who co-wrote an editorial in the Seattle Times early this month that proposed an alternative to the head tax.

In addition to Spady, the coalition lists its officers as PushPay’s James Maiocco and Phillip Lloyd, a downtown accountant. Spady told Geekwire that his goal is to first repeal the head tax, then create a ballot initiative with alternative solutions to reduce homelessness.

The No Tax on Jobs website says the petition can be signed at 2211 Elliott Ave., Suite 200., however a story in The Stranger on Friday indicated that the petition language was still be worked out.

We’ll keep you updated.

Geeky Swedes

The founders of My Ballard

22 thoughts to “‘No Tax on Jobs’ coalition pushing for referendum to repeal head tax”

  2. lets face it – if this is repealed the council swine will take it out on the citizens and force an “emergency” property tax or maybe just start confiscating property from hardworking homeowners and redistribute it to the poor unlucky homeless…

  3. But what if the voters hand you your ass? What if this repeal gets the kind of drubbing typical of a Safe Seattle candidate? Could we finally have a teachable moment?

  5. I’ll take that as a “no, I won’t learn a thing”. Reaching back 34 years, skipping over such recent object lessons as Scott Lindsay , Harvey Lever, or Catherine Weatbrook tells me someone remembers what they want to remember and learns what they want to learn.

    Don’t say nobody tried to warn you.

  9. @ Elenchos: Perhaps you’d be happier if businesses were simply taken over. You know, like your dream country: Venezuela. Danny Glover and Sean Penn can be on your team too. It’s obvious you are a relic that loves throwing bombs. But please do keep pushing your brand of communism. Refreshing stuff. I learn a lot. I learn that I do live in Bizerkley North. But change is coming. And the old guard won’t go down easy. Perhaps even after nearly 40 years of “d” in Olympia, we can hope for change there soon. But here being a democrat is “the natural order of things”. So open minded, most has fallen out by now.

  10. @Elechos Nachos — I voted for wheatbrook, but knew she wasn’t going to win based on the one public event I went to where she spoke, and my spouses interaction with her when she was door canvasing. She is no politician. If some left of center democrat, who is good at public speaking, ran against mike, he would loose. Wheatbrook got 38% of the vote. If the election was held tomorrow, I bet she comes out ahead based on Mike’s last 3 months of public office.

    People want:

    To not just feel safe, but be safe (see two public restroom rapes in ballard / hatchet wielding assailant / Murders in RV’s, enormous increase in petty crime in 5 years) — Petty crime is defined by theft of vandalism under $250. SPD does NOT include this as a category in their annual report on crime to city counsel, or on their website of data. Go to any drug store or grocery store in Ballard and they all now have a security guard. The head manager at the Fred Meyer told me that when he became a store manager 2 years ago, theft, measured in dollars, was up x12 times than it was compared to 2010, and was the highest loss of any Fred Meyer. Nearly every single person on my block has either had their car or house broken into the last few years. I’ve lived on the same street for 18 years, and in the first 14 years, the block had a few car break ins and a few stolen packages. In the last 4 years, we are 19/22 of houses for some type of property theft.

    Not to see filth in our parks – parks are there for everyone to use. Housed people, homeless folks, dads with their kids at the park ect. Tents in our parks are essentially changing a park from a public space, to a space that is for the sole use of a single person. I personally see needles and other drug paraphernalia on a weekly basis at the park I go to with my kids. This did not occur just 3 years ago.

    Real solutions to our gridlocked traffic. Not a “no comment” to the Seattle Times when the chair of the transportation committee (Mike) is asked why Seattle is so over budget on transportation improvements

    That’s about it. I’m sure 15% of Seattleites love the mike gets in his kayak to symbolically try to stop oil drilling in the arctic circle. The other 85% of people just want sidewalks on their streets, light rail to basically anywhere in district 6, not having their cars/houses broken into, and not seeing GIGANTIC SWATHS OF FILTH along every road/greenbelt. Oh, yah, having decent schools and first-responders isn’t too bad either.

  14. @Public Intellectual — 20% + 24% = 44% lived here at least a decade, many their whole lives. That leaves 56%, not 76%, for those of us who live by fact. But you go ahead and embrace your 120% universe as hard as you can.

  15. @Beautiful Mind

    Hey snark is fun but try facing facts yourself:
    The liberals here turned a gorgeous city into the world’s most expensive trailer park while vaporizing a billion dollars on junkie criminals for a decade. Now they’re trying to run off biz and jobs.

    Dx1,000,000,000= -1,000,000,000

    Solve for D, Genius

  16. @public intellectual

    Please read the entire study, front to back, including the footnotes. The percent who have lived in King County for at least 10 years is reported as 44%. However, lets parse out the data.

    *The count found 11,643 people experiencing homelessness.
    *Of the 11,643 People, a random set of 878 surveys were completed.
    *A different survey of 1104 youth (both housed and homeless) was conducted. Of the 1104 youth, 280 were homeless, and included in the general survey.

    Now this is an assumption, but I think a reasonable one, the 280 youth have a high likelihood of being either born here or living here for 10 years. Say 75% of them were. Take them out of the pool 878 surveyed.

    Assuming the same percentage of youth did not answer the question as the adults, the result is that of the adults — 71% have been here for less than 10 years. Of tally is dependent on the breakdown of how many youth either lived here for more than 10 years or their whole life. It could also be as high as 77%, if all of the respondents to the survey who choose not to answer this question lived here for less than 10 years.

    To me, what makes this a tragic steam-roller of pro-homeless data, is that it is hiding the fact that we probably have a high number of homeless youth who are from here, who we should be prioritizing in helping. Instead, the data point is presented in a way to obfuscate the point that all these adult homeless men are from elsewhere.

    Every child under 18 should be housed. Every person who received foster care and is still under 25 should be housed (The U.S. Department of Health and Human services, along with other state agencies, have identified this group as the most efficient and successful use of housing dollars to prevent homelessness. https://aspe.hhs.gov/basic-report/housing-assistance-youth-who-have-aged-out-foster-care)

    Have King County spend a few hundred million dollars on permanent low-income and transitional housing in affordable areas (not Belltown, not downtown Ballard where costs are so high) to house these kids and young adults.

    The rest of the homeless have a very very low success rate of transitioning into permanent housing. Other cities know this, which is why they give bus tickets to their homeless to reconnect with their family (read – get out of dodge and go to Seattle)

  17. Washington State had a 10-Year Plan to End Homelessness that started in 2005. Everywhere except in King County, homeless populations have decreased across the state. Why do we think this is? Is it possible that there is a work-around to providing low-income housing when developers build their fancy new apartment and condo complexes (there is).
    https://inclusionaryhousing.org/designing-a-policy/off-site-development/in-lieu-fees/
    So, what happens? More people displaced, fewer options for them. In the city with the highest concentration of jobs within the state, this should not be the case. Had our cowardly Mayors of the past 10 years not given in to developer’s desires to not have ‘low-income’ units amongst their new, brightly lit boxes, we might have gone some way to alleviating our problem. Where is all the low-income housing this fund should have provided?Where’d all the workaround money go? Probably to those same cowardly mayors. Add to that the fact that there’s zero accountability in tracking our homeless population (leading to chuckleheads coming here from out of state, like our fine, upstanding homeless Texas rapist), that instead of any kind of measurable decrease, we see an increase in those without permanent housing. Would I love to see them housed? You bet. But have they become a nuisance and an eyesore, and at this point do I just want them gone (to a jail cell, a hole in the ground, or out of state) more? Sadly, yes. I’ve lost my compassion and desire to help my less-fortunate fellow man. And that’s the fault of our leadership, not of those of us who have reached our tipping point. Our leaders have failed us and continue to fail us. They have their defenders, to be certain. But they also have a growing number of detractors. Change needs to come from the top if it is to succeed. I don’t really feel they want to succeed, but I do feel they want to keep talking about succeeding.

  18. @Homeless Fiasco

    I’m with you 100%. I’m not against spending money to support those with mental or drug issues, or just “down on their luck.” I think my main gripes with the current situation is fourfold

    1) We allow unsafe and unsanitary conditions all over the city that. Huge swaths of public spaces have trash and fecal matter spewn all over the place. This has become extreme in the past 2 years.

    2) Seattle tax-payers are on the hook for a problem that is state-wide. Many of the homeless come here from rural parts of the state.

    3) We refuse to go after the drug dealers. Seattle has one of the most abundant supplies of Meth and has the cheapest meth of any major U.S. city (see the PBS Frontline show on the opioid crisis). Downtown near the YWCA, I know who the three drug dealers are. I see about 3 drug deals go down every week. If I know, shouldn’t the cops know, and arrest them?

    4) We spend money on the effects of mental illness and drug addiction, instead of the causes. If you are an able bodied adult who is of sound mental capacity, and not a drug addict or alcoholic – you are not homeless, and you can get a job. Seattle has 3.1% unemployment rate – lowest ever. For the others, setting up a shelter bed, or allowing someone to pitch a tent on public property, then sending out social workers, and providing food for them all the while they steal to support their habit is non-nonsensical public policy.

  20. @Anyone But Mike
    Totally agree.

    Drugs are now openly dealt in front of the Ballard Library and the QFC on 24th. As you said, if you or I can see this why aren’t the cops arresting these creeps?

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