The SPR budget, and the off-leash share of it.
Seattle Parks & Recreation's (SPR) reported budget grew from $168M (2018, operating only) to $507M proposed (2026, all funds). About half the apparent jump is a 2019 reporting shift, not real growth. The publicly disclosed off-leash area (OLA) line went from $100K to $129K through 2024, after which SPR no longer breaks the OLA share out from the combined OLA + P-Patch line; a public records request (PRR) for the missing split has been filed and is awaiting response. These charts put both series on one page with the methodology caveats intact.
Finding 01SPR total budget vs. OLA-related spending, 2016–2026.
Bar = SPR total ($M). Lines = the OLA-related series. Solid orange markers show the OLA-only figures SPR has publicly disclosed; the dashed orange line is the combined OLA + P-Patch “Maintaining Parks & Facilities” BSL, which overstates OLA-only. A log axis lets the OLA series remain legible alongside the SPR total; a linear version would render the OLA line as a flat sliver on the baseline.
SPR's total budget rose from $168M (2018) to $507M (2026 proposed, all funds). Every OLA-related series on the same chart sits 2–3 orders of magnitude below it. The disclosed OLA-only markers sit at $100K in Cycle 1 and $126K–$129K in Cycle 2 years 1–2. The dashed combined line rises partly because P-Patch funding has grown; the OLA-only portion of that combined line is not published for 2019–2022 or 2025–2026. A one-time $3.46M Cycle 2 capital appropriation is booked in 2024–2025.
Finding 02OLA-related spending as a share of SPR total.
Same series, expressed as a share of SPR's total budget and scaled in basis points (1 bp = 0.01%). Solid bars use the publicly disclosed OLA-only figures; dashed-outline bars use the combined OLA + P-Patch BSL for years SPR has not disclosed the split. A reference line marks the 2016 disclosed peak of 6.4 bp (0.064%).
The tallest disclosed OLA-only bar is 2016 at 6.4 bp (0.064% of SPR spending); by 2018 it was 6.0 bp. Dashed-outline bars for 2025–2026 reach roughly 36–54 bp because they include P-Patch community gardens and, in 2024–2025, one-time Cycle 2 OLA capital; the OLA-only slice inside those bars is smaller and not published. SPR's 2016 People, Dogs and Parks survey found that about 25% of Seattle residents use OLAs; proportional spending would be 2,500 bp, which would render the actual bars as a flat baseline at this scale.
Finding 03Off-leash space per dog, peer cities.
Few major U.S. or Canadian cities publish a dog-park-specific operating line, which makes a dollars-per-dog peer comparison impossible without public records requests to each parks department. What every city does publish is OLA acreage. Divided by an estimated dog population (city population × 0.30 dogs/person, AVMA-derived), that yields square feet of dedicated off-leash space per dog.
A Seattle dog has about 5.5 sq ft of legal off-leash space at the cross-city 0.30 dogs/resident rate — roughly the footprint of a doormat. (The 5.4 sq ft figure used elsewhere on the site comes from the more granular AVMA-by-household derivation for Seattle — 364,627 households × 0.455 × 1.5 = ~248,900 dogs; the difference is the same calculation rounded against two equivalent denominators.) Portland sits at ~19 sq ft, San Francisco at ~20, Vancouver BC at ~37. Austin's fenced-comparable figure (~11 sq ft) is about twice Seattle's. Because peer cities use wider definitions of off-leash space than Seattle does, these bars likely understate the gap rather than overstate it. Per-OLA acreage detail for each Seattle site is in Part II — Access.
Finding 04Dedicated facilities: playgrounds vs. OLAs.
A different scaling: the count of dedicated facilities per user. Seattle has 157 playgrounds (Trust for Public Land [TPL] 2025 ParkScore, includes joint-use schoolyards) for roughly 115,000 residents under 18. It has 14 fenced OLAs for at least 150,000 dogs (Seattle Humane / Cascade PBS conservative floor; SPR's 2023 Expansion Study cites estimates up to 400,000).
At the 150,000 dog floor, Seattle has one dedicated off-leash area per ~10,700 dogs and one playground per ~733 kids — a ratio roughly 14.6× higher for dogs. Using the higher 400,000 estimate from SPR's 2023 Expansion Study, the ratio widens to about 39×. Per-OLA acreage and site sizes are charted in Part II — Access; the full opening-year sequence is in Part I — The Gap.
Finding 05Cycle 1 vs. Cycle 2, and the $3.46M capital line.
The Seattle Park District runs in six-year cycles. Cycle 1 (2015–2020) funded OLA operations at a publicly stated $100,000/year (about $600K over six years) with no new OLA construction. Cycle 2 (2023–2028) adds a one-time $3.46M capital appropriation for West Seattle Stadium and Othello construction plus Ravenna Park design, alongside roughly $129K/year OLA-only operating (the 2024 disclosed figure, assumed flat).
Put in context, the $3.46M Cycle 2 OLA capital is comparable in scale to individual non-OLA line items in SPR's 2026 CIP: the Gas Works Park priority project ($1.8M), city restroom improvements ($2.0M), or the Green Lake Community Center + Evans Pool planning line ($2.7M). SPR's 2026 combined CIP across all capital projects is $87.7M; the OLA capital is about 4% of that total. Ravenna Park has design funds only — its construction is unfunded and would require a future appropriation (Parkways).
AppendixThe raw budget table
The full year-by-year data is in data/budget-detail.csv, with a source column on every row. SPR totals are all-funds figures where available; the OLA-only column is populated where SPR publicly disclosed a split and left blank (visibly) where it was not. Where only the combined OLA + P-Patch line is available, that value is shown in its own column.
| Year | Cycle | SPR total ($M) | OLA + P-Patch combined ($K) | OLA-only ($K) | One-time capital ($K) | OLA as % of SPR |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016 | Cycle 1 | $156 | $100 | $100 | — | 0.064% |
| 2017 | Cycle 1 | $163 | $100 | $100 | — | 0.061% |
| 2018 | Cycle 1 | $168 | $100 | $100 | — | 0.060% |
| 2019 | Cycle 1 | $247.7 | $160.8 | not disclosed | — | — |
| 2020 | Cycle 1 | $261.9 | $338.0 | not disclosed | — | — |
| 2021 | Cycle 1 | $228.1 | $346.7 | not disclosed | — | — |
| 2023 | Cycle 2 | $328.2 | $475.1 | $126 | — | 0.038% |
| 2024 | Cycle 2 | $320.7 | $614.3 | $129 | $1,730 | 0.040% + capital |
| 2025 | Cycle 2 | $339.4 | $1,829.7 | not disclosed | $1,730 | — |
| 2026 | Cycle 2 | $506.9 | $1,845.7 | not disclosed | — | — |
Notes & methodology
SPR total. “All funds” figures where available (2019 onward); 2016–2018 are general-fund + operating only, which is why the step between 2018 and 2019 looks large — about half of it is methodology, not real growth. 2026 is the proposed budget; 2025 is the adopted + CIP. Primary source: Seattle City Budget Office — archives.
OLA-only line. Cycle 1 $100K/year OLA-only is from SPR's own 2016 public statement, repeated in Parkways and community reporting. Cycle 2 $126K (2023) and $129K (2024) are from Parkways coverage of the Expansion Study and budget. Post-2024 OLA-only splits are not publicly disclosed; the Maintaining Parks & Facilities BSL (BC-PR-50000) is reported as a combined OLA + P-Patch number. PRR #3 requests the split.
Combined OLA + P-Patch. The post-2019 line values ($160.8K through $1,845.7K) include both OLA maintenance and P-Patch community-garden maintenance. SPR has not published the internal allocation methodology. The line value overstates OLA-specific spending; the 2023 and 2024 disclosed OLA-only portions ($126K, $129K) are roughly 21–26% of the combined BSL, suggesting P-Patch is the larger share.
One-time capital. Cycle 2 includes $3.46M across 2024–2026 for construction at West Seattle Stadium OLA, Othello Playground OLA, and design only at Ravenna Park. Split across years as roughly $1.73M in 2024 and $1.73M in 2025 for chart purposes; the actual expenditure schedule depends on construction cadence.
Per-dog figure. Uses the 150,000 Seattle dog-population floor from Seattle Humane / Cascade PBS coverage. SPR's 2023 Expansion Study cites higher estimates up to 400K; the higher estimate would make any per-dog spending figure proportionally smaller.
Peer cities. Dog-park-specific budget lines were not found in published budget documents for Portland, San Francisco, Vancouver BC, Austin, DC, or Minneapolis (operating) as of April 2026 search. Minneapolis's MPRB publishes the OLA Enterprise Fund in its CAFR; the other cities do not separately report. See data/peer-cities-budget.csv.
Corrections and contributions. Primary-source corrections or access to peer-city dog-park budget data welcome — email us at [email protected] or via the issue tracker.