Totally agree with this characterization. Everything is immensely well funded and completely unimpressive for a city with this kind of budget. Whether it is massive utility bills or shocking costs for bike lanes in the millions per mile, it seems they simply can’t manage funds responsibly and yet complain that they are owed more in taxes from “the rich”.

Even the city’s vaccination efforts have been focused on “systemic racism” and “equity”. Apparently their vaccine list prioritizes zipcodes with higher representation of races they deem disadvantaged. Many people sat in the Seattle queue with no notifications coming their way before finally finding out about this insanity and seeking vaccinations through other means.

The sewage treatment plant you reference is also not even doing its job. Every year it leaks millions of gallons of raw untreated sewage into the Puget Sound (example https://www.king5.com/article/news/3-million-gallons-of-sewa...). For a city so focused on the environment they only seem to pay lip service to it, as both water bodies and parks (from drug addicted vagrants) are polluted.

The internet service here is fine and the costs are less enraging than city utility bills. Personally I don’t want a public run alternative to kill the acceptable service I get now. At worst I would be worried that Seattle would censor the content accessible via a public internet service given the city leadership’s politics.