Mayor Harrell’s Proposed 2025-2026 Budget for the Seattle Animal Shelter
- seattleanimalwatch
- Oct 14
- 4 min read
On September 23, 2025, Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell proposed an approximately $8.9 billion 2026 budget prioritizing housing affordability, public safety, and addressing homelessness. It includes investments in areas like food access and support for immigrant and refugee communities. The budget includes no layoffs, a full fiscal reserve fund, and significant investments in affordable housing and community safety services.
So what about the Seattle Animal Shelter (SAS)? SAS is the government division that oversees animal welfare and humane law enforcement in the city. It is part of the Department of Finance and Administrative Services (FAS). How did it fare?
Read below and decide. The City Council will now debate the proposed budget, provide amendments, and approve it by the end of November. There should be public hearings in October and November.
We’ve split this into three sections:
Operating Budget
Capital Improvement Budget
How Does the City of Seattle Budget for Animal Services?
OPERATING BUDGET
Slightly Increased Budget
The 2026 proposed budget increases SAS’s expenditures to $8.194 million dollars. This is an increase of approximately $186,000, or 2.3 percent, from the endorsed budget of 2026. It is unclear whether this is sufficient growth for the increasing population of Seattle. In early September 2025, inflation was at 2.9 percent.
Note: The City of Seattle has a biennium budget, or one that covers two years at a time. The Endorsed Budget is the basis for a Proposed Budget for the second year of the biennium. It is reviewed, amended and adopted in the fall of the first year of the biennium.
More Staff
A temporary Animal Shelter Veterinary Assistant position will now become permanent. (The City hired a Term-Limited Temporary (TLT) position in 2023 and was set to expire with no option to extend.) The position is funded through the Animal Shelter's base budget, and no additional funding is needed.
The budget extends the “sunset” or end date for two full-time SAS employees, specifically the Behaviorist position and the Foster Care Coordinator. The Animal Shelter Donation Fund is responsible for the continued funding of the positions.
The full-time positions increase from 45 to 46.
Shelter Revenues Identified
Donations and adoption fees were the two largest revenue sources identified in 2024 and 2025. There is no proposed 2026 appropriation for donations at this time and proposed adoption fee appropriations have dropped from $225,000 in the endorsed Budget to $180,000 in the 2026 proposed budget. This is despite adoption fees increasing in 2025.
CAPITAL BUDGET
Planning for a New Shelter
According to the proposed budget, FAS will use the existing Capitol Improvement (CIP) budget to move forward with planning and design for a new Seattle Animal Shelter (SAS). Specifically, it will use $950,000 from the existing CIP budget for the Animal Shelter to complete programming and predesign work with consultants and engineers to plan for a new animal shelter facility. The work will include stakeholder collaboration and site masterplan options analysis.
According to the proposed budget (and many concerns cited over the years by staff and volunteers), the current SAS facility is too small for the Shelter’s operations and has significant maintenance and repair needs. A much larger, updated facility is needed to serve current and future animal populations and meet industry standards to reduce animal stress, provide humane space needs, ensure staff efficiency and improve veterinary services.
To meet current and future needs, the facility is recommended to be approximately 50,000 sq ft (sitting on a 42,000 sq ft footprint) with an additional 43,000 sq ft of outdoor space. The current building is 12,000 sq ft with only 8,000 sq ft of outdoor space – far short of industry standards.
How Does the City of Seattle Budget for Animal Services?
SAS revenues do not cover its expenses. The General Fund covers the deficit. How does Seattle budget for animal services in this case?
We reached out to FAS for help with this question and share this response from FAS Communications Officer Melissa Mixon:
"The closing of the gap between expenses and revenues is planned at the level of the entire General Fund (GF), rather than at the level of any individual department or agency. Public services that cannot or should not recover the cost of their delivery (such as animal services or policing) are often budgeted in the GF so that their costs are supported by the City’s general-purpose revenues. The legislative action of appropriating each year’s budget is the only legislation that is regularly adopted to make this happen.
The City budgets expenditures and revenues independently from each other and both are updated annually. Substantial revenue changes in the SAS budget tend to be made when license or permit fees are revised, such as the fee increases proposed in 2024 for the 2025 budget. Budgeted expenditures are updated from a variety of cost drivers, including citywide annual wage increases and inflationary pressures on nonlabor spending. Proposals from FAS for changes to either expenditures or revenues are submitted to the City Budget Office (CBO) each spring as part of the annual budget process. CBO considers the feasibility of any proposed changes as part of their broader task of balancing the GF for the Mayor’s Proposed Budget every fall.
SAS revenues are monitored year-round, but their projections are updated twice per year as part of the GF revenue forecasts that the Office of Economic and Revenue Forecasts (OERF) publish. Fluctuations in SAS revenues are one component of the “Licenses, Permits, Interest Income, and Other” line of these OERF reports, which rolls up to the overall GF revenue outlook. SAS is a relatively small portion of the total GF, so normal fluctuations in SAS revenues don’t require significant rebalancing of the GF.
Outside of the regular annual budget development cycle, FAS can request mid-year revisions to the budget via supplemental budget legislation. These mid-year changes are usually time-sensitive actions in response to emergent needs. There are generally two main packages of supplemental budget legislation considered by the City Council each year - one in the summer and the other in the fall."
Sources:
City of Seattle Proposed 2026 Budget https://www.seattle.gov/documents/Departments/FinanceDepartment/2026proposedbudget/FAS.pdf
2026-2031 Proposed Capital Improvement Program https://www.seattle.gov/documents/Departments/FinanceDepartment/2631poposedcip/FAS_cip.pdf
Email Communication with City of Seattle Finance and Administrative Services, September 18, 2025
