District 7 Councilmember Bob Kettle told colleagues Wednesday he will vote against Seattle's entire midyear budget package unless $250,000 in unspent surveillance camera funds stays earmarked for cameras, not community violence prevention.

That puts a $94.5 million spending plan at risk. The package includes $80.2 million in retroactive police wages, universal school lunches for the upcoming school year and $500,000 for sexual assault victim support services.

Kettle, who chairs the Public Safety Committee and represents Queen Anne, Magnolia, Belltown and Pioneer Square, made the declaration at the Aug. 5 budget committee meeting after Council President Joy Hollingsworth proposed redirecting the $250,000 to fund community violence interruptors from the group We Deliver Care through the end of 2026.

"I am confident how the NYU report is going to come out, and then the mayor should push forward on the CCTV cameras, and SPD can obligate those funds here in this calendar year," Kettle said, according to PubliCola.

He called Mayor Katie Wilson's pause on Real-Time Crime Center camera expansion "unconscionable," saying the council had already built in privacy safeguards when it approved the system.

Kettle said he supports violence interruption programs "110 percent" but would oppose the entire supplemental if a penny of 2026 camera funding went elsewhere.

The money at stake.

The $250,000 comes from nine surveillance-related SPD positions sitting vacant while the NYU Policing Project finishes a privacy and security audit. City budget director Aly Pennuci told the committee those funds may be needed for a "significant request" for additional SPD spending, noting the department appears to have overspent its budget again this year. Councilmember Maritza Rivera said she was satisfied with Pennuci's explanation.

Wilson's office said on Aug. 3 that both the NYU audit and a separate University of Pennsylvania evaluation would produce results in September. "Different people and different communities experience the cameras differently," Wilson told KOMO that same day. "It's important to base a decision on more than feelings."

What else is in the budget package

The midyear supplemental funds universal school lunches using $3.6 million in JumpStart Payroll Expense Tax revenue paired with a $5 million cut to the city's contribution to Northgate Commons, a mixed-use Seattle Housing Authority project near the Northgate light rail station. That drops the city's share from $20 million to $15 million.

Other items include $3 million for the King County Department of Public Defense, $2.5 million for Seattle Chinese Garden improvements and a $500,000 transfer from SPD to the Human Services Department for sexual assault victim support. A separate proposed amendment would shift $685,000 from parks graffiti abatement and camera expansion toward mobile substance use treatment and outreach positions in North Rainier and North Beacon Hill.

The net impact on the General Fund is roughly $500,000 because $92 million had already been set aside in reserves for labor contracts, according to Capitol Hill Seattle. Seattle still faces a projected $175 million deficit next year and a structural gap of nearly $488 million over three years.

SPD locks down former chief's calendar

Separately, SPD placed former Chief Shon Barnes' calendar in "lockdown" on Aug. 3, one week after a reporter first requested it. The department said that because Barnes resigned on July 30, his schedule can now only be accessed through a formal public disclosure request, a process that routinely takes months.

The version SPD did release begins abruptly on March 29 and was color-coded and altered to remove Barnes' original plans for the last week of July and first week of August, the period when he returned to Seattle to respond to the Bite of Seattle mass shooting at Seattle Center on July 26.

A full council vote on the midyear supplemental has not been scheduled.