Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell promised Seattleites that he would fix the city's houseless crisis, fix our crumbling infrastructure, and address the climate crises. Instead, he may soon approve a city budget that dedicates taxpayer money to funding an unnecessary, excessive, and unwanted new shark tank at the Seattle Aquarium.  

The Seattle Aquarium's new shark tank is part of the larger waterfront overhaul congesting downtown. In addition to using taxpayer money, the aquarium will likely capture sharks and possibly sting rays from the South Pacific if they can’t find ones from other facilities which have bred them. Sharks and sting rays are complex and intelligent beings who will die young in a tiny tank. There are so many ways to learn about wild animals without displaying them at an aquarium; we would be thrilled to see a non-live attraction such as state-of–the-art technology, an immersive theater, holograms, animatronics, computer-generated imaging, etc... instead of a shark tank.

In light of the global climate and water crisis AND in line with Seattle's stated policy of "efficient use of limited energy, water and material resources" this project does not do any of this.  It will use huge amounts of energy and water; pumping in water from Puget Sound heating and filtering it, and then cooling and filtering the water to return to Puget Sound. Tell Mayor Harrell that he is in direct violation of his climate change policy promises if he approves such a resource-intensive project!

This shark tank is being funded by taxpayer money from the Real Estate Excise Tax (REET), a tax program funded by the sale of real property; this means YOU fund this program. Typically, the Real Estate Excise Tax is used to fund critical infrastructure projects that benefit the locals who pay for them, like funding street safety initiatives, West Seattle Bridge repairs, and cleaning up and making more accessible city parks. City Council claims that since the funds are a loan, it will be payed back with interest and no one will be the wiser. BUT WE WANT CHANGE NOW! Seattle must use all resources at its disposal to fix its infrastructure problems immediately, not wait until there is enough REET funding accrued again.

Finally, the aquarium has clearly mismanaged its project budget which started at $113 million and now it’s at $160 million. Instead of funding an ever more expensive shark tank, Seattleites want to loan out our money to fund efficient and economically-just projects for our houseless person crisis; open drug usage on public streets and in public parks; crumbling transportation infrastructure; and lack of green spaces in low income communities, putting Seattle at odds with its new Environmental Justice Initiative.

Tell the mayor to drop the REET funds going towards the Seattle Aquarium Expansion Project in the approved budget to be submitted to City Council on September 27th. We cannot afford to wait to fund critical infrastructure in this city!