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