Tired of Your Tax Dollars Paying For Animal Cruelty?
The Seattle Aquarium wants more money for its shark tank, despite already taking millions of taxpayer dollars. The Seattle City Council Public Assets & Homelessness Committee will have to amend its Operations & Maintenance (O&M) agreement with the aquarium to provide the additional $67M loan. The aquarium has heavily lobbied both the mayor and the committee to do so. Let's all push back on this irresponsible spending.
It is recommended that you also reach out to your council member directly if they are on this committee and ask them not to approve this amendment in the Public Assets & Homelessness O&M agreement with Seattle Aquarium. Below are members of the committee:
- Chair: Andrew J. Lewis
- Vice Chair: Teresa Mosqueda
- Member: Lisa Herbold
- Member: Tammy Morales
- Member: Debora Juarez
This shark tank is already being funded by taxpayer money from the Real Estate Excise Tax (REET). 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.
As a condition of this new loan, which the city will not be responsible for, more tax payer money will be given to the aquarium if it fails to acquire enough of its own surplus revenue. The repayment of the loan will come from the aquarium's surplus revenue.
This surplus revenue is also what the aquarium will use to pay for its "conservation" initiatives supposedly derived from the new shark tank. Given how the aquarium has already mismanaged its financing of the tank, it is highly likely that not only will the city have to provide the aquarium with surplus revenue so it can pay back its loan, but the surplus amount will end up going towards this loan, expected to generate at least $11.6M in interest, rather than going towards its conservation program.
Instead of funding an ever more expensive cruel shark tank with dubious conservation benefits, Seattleites want to use 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.