D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser wants to make good on her pledge to grow the Metropolitan Police Department while also dramatically increasing spending on affordable housing and homeless services, addressing two key issues that have risen to the top of many residents’ minds.

On Wednesday Bowser unveiled her proposed budget for the 2023 fiscal year, presenting a $19 billion spending plan flush with federal funds that tackles a number of persistent challenges in the city. The local portion of her proposal, roughly $10.7 billion, represents an almost 14% increase from the current fiscal year’s budget, reflecting the reality that as the city attempts to emerge from the pandemic, its finances have recovered strongly.

Speaking to the D.C. Council, Bowser said she wants to use some of this largesse to address the inequitable impacts of the pandemic, as well as settle some of the nerves that residents feel as they city continues to grow more expensive.

“One thing that is clear: the impacts of the pandemic are far-reaching and complex. We have seen our public safety ecosystem turned upside down. We are experiencing new challenges around housing and homelessness,” she said.

Increase the police force

Bowser is proposing that the Metropolitan Police Department spend $30 million to grow to 4,000 officers from the current 3,500 over the next nine years. This investment comes as D.C. remains mired a multi-year spike in homicides, and as polls of local residents has shown them giving her low marks in addressing public safety. City officials say the money — which would be used to keep existing officers and bring in new ones — would reverse what they say was a two-year lull in hiring, though it is only expected to amount to 30 new officers a year.

Speaking to the press after presenting her budget, Bowser said she didn’t want the force to fall far below 3,500 officers.

“We think that can be dangerous. What we don’t want is to wait until somebody calls 911 and it’s, you know, double the time for the police to get there. That’s too late. It’s too late to be investing in police, and D.C. residents deserve more. They deserve to have their 911 call answered immediately,” she said.

MPD would see a 5% increase in its overall budget, and funding would be maintained for many existing violence prevention programs. Bowser’s budget would also allocate $251 million to build a new annex of the D.C. Jail, eventually allowing the city to empty and close the Central Detention Facility, the jail’s oldest and most troubled wing. Such a new annex had been proposed by a jails and justice task force last year, and recent inspections of the CDF have highlighted persistent and troubling conditions that have prompted the transfer of 400 residents to a federal facility. The new annex would house fewer residents than CDF does, part of a broader plan to incarcerate fewer people.

Affordable housing

To build more affordable housing, Bowser is proposing a one-year investment of $500 million into the Housing Production Trust Fund, which could create 2,700 housing units. It’s a significant increase from the last big investment made in mid-2021, when she directed $400 million to be spent over two years. City officials say they have ramped up their capacity to spend money from the fund, and that there is already $398 million worth of projects that could be immediately funded should the council sign off on Bowser’s half-a-billion-dollar proposal.

Bowser is also proposing $329 million to repair or replace public housing units, largely for seniors; $31 million for new permanent supportive housing vouchers, seemingly above the $26 million that advocates requested; $120 million over two years for rental assistance; the creation of a new $10 million Black Homeownership Fund to keep longtime D.C. residents in their homes; and the lowering of the cap on property tax increases for seniors from 5% a year to 2%.

Other funding priorities

In other areas, Bowser is proposing a three-year pay increase for nurse assistant and home health aides; money to renovate and improve homeless shelters; an already-announced 5.87% increase in per-pupil school funding; $6.4 million to expand the summer jobs program and funding to increase wages for residents in job training programs; more slots in summer camps and recreation programs; money for “quick-build” traffic-calming measures and longer-term streetscape improvements; and a tripling of the number of traffic cameras, amounting to 170 new speed and red-light cameras.

In terms of brick-and-mortar changes, Bowser’s budget would fund the creation of a new 1,000-student high school in Ward 3 (half the seats would be set aside for students citywide), as well as push for a new middle school in the Shaw neighborhood. It would also build new bridges connecting Kingman and Heritage Islands to both sides of the Anacostia River, and construct a $60 million indoor track and athletic facility on the RFK campus. (This would not preclude a possible new football stadium, she said.)

Bowser’s budget now goes to the council, which has until May 24 to scour it and propose changes. And like every year before this one, lawmakers and advocates who either seemed initially pleased or withheld judgement will certainly find provisions they object to once more detailed agency budgets are released later this week.

Homeless advocates, for one, say they are already concerned that certain types of housing vouchers may not have been funded, while others are warning that Bowser’s $500 million investment in affordable housing will depend on how much housing for low-income residents is ultimately built. And advocates of criminal justice reform are already pushing back on an increase in MPD’s budget, saying that spending on police already vastly outpaces funding for violence interruption efforts.

“We are asking the wrong question when ask whether 4,000, or 3,750, or 3,500 police officers is the ‘right’ number of police officers. The question we need to be asking is what investments we need to make in order for all of those numbers to be far more than what we need to be safe,” tweeted Eduardo Ferrer, the policy director at the Georgetown Juvenile Justice Initiative.

Bowser also laid out an objection of her own: any new taxes. Last year the council raised taxes on wealthy households, which the mayor also opposed. When asked about the possibility this year, she said there is more then enough money in the budget to pay for city programs and services. “I see absolutely no reason to raise taxes,” she said.

She also warned that unless office workers come back in force, the city’s good financial fortunes could turn in the future — making budgets in years to come less generous than those lawmakers are now considering.

“Because of our careful management, we’re in pretty good shape. But there are some things we have to be concerned about: our commercial property revenues have dipped,” she said, referring to a 14.3% commercial vacancy rate due to increased telework.

“We have to fill the spaces that are vacant,” she said of buildings in downtown D.C. “In some cases we have to change the [use of] spaces.”