Focused on transit and street upgrades, budget amendments this week will be the subject of behind-the-scenes wrangling as Budget Committee Chair Dan Strauss assembles an initial balancing package for the council to debate next week.

Seattle has a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to improve public safety outcomes by civilianizing more tasks and focusing police on major crime. That’s what mayoral candidate Katie Wilson’s public safety platform proposes, which Bryan Kirschner argues would be anti-bad guy, pro-good cop, and taxpayer-friendly.

King County Executive Shannon Braddock has proposed a series of changes to one of the county’s pre-filing youth diversion programs, currently called Restorative Community Pathways, replacing the community-led program with a county-led program with a slashed budget.

Before moving ahead with building a second Downtown Seattle light rail tunnel as planned, Sound Transit is taking a second look at putting a third line in the existing tunnel instead. Doing so would entail some major tradeoffs, which the agency intends to fully lay out in its study.

In four different races, Kirkland voters face a choice between pro-growth candidates interested in fostering additional types of housing throughout the city, and candidates looking for the city to be way less aggressive in fighting the region's affordable housing crisis.

"It's never been more important to have a movement mayor," Seattle mayoral candidate Katie Wilson told supporters Sunday. Multiple speakers portrayed Wilson as a bottom-up, people-powered coalition-builder, who stands in sharp contrast to incumbent Bruce Harrell, who they see as a top-down establishment leader lacking vision for the city.

The new transit pathway along Harrison and Mercer Streets is intended to provide another option for buses to serve South Lake Union, in line with plans for a Ballard Link light rail station in the neighborhood. But with transit advocates and officials focused on Denny Way, it's not clear when the upgrades would actually be put to use.