Seattle Parks & Recreation's total budget has doubled since 2018. The portion dedicated to off-leash areas has barely moved. Here is the money, year by year, with the percentages that make the comparison honest.
Same series; one vertical axis in millions of dollars on a log scale. That is the only way to see the OLA line at all next to the SPR total without misleading the reader about relative magnitudes.
Expressed as a share, the OLA investment is so small it rounds to zero at any reasonable precision. Using only the publicly disclosed OLA-only figures, the highest share ever recorded was 0.064% in 2018. Since then — even accounting for the one-time Cycle 2 construction capital — the proportional OLA investment has trended down, not up.
Another way to scale the investment: divide it by the users. Seattle has an estimated minimum of 150,000 dogs (Seattle Humane / Cascade PBS floor). SPR's 2023 Expansion Study cites estimates up to 400,000. Using the conservative floor, Seattle's public OLA spending works out to less than $1 per dog per year in most years.
The Seattle Park District runs in six-year cycles. Cycle 1 ran 2015–2020 with publicly-stated $100,000/year OLA-only operating spend (~$600K total over six years). Cycle 2 (2023–2028) includes a one-time $3.46 million capital appropriation for West Seattle Stadium + Othello construction and Ravenna design, plus roughly $129K/year in OLA-only operating (the 2024 publicly-disclosed figure, assumed flat for illustration).
Here is the attempt to do an apples-to-apples comparison of dog-park-specific budget spending across peer cities. The comparison is intentionally difficult. Almost no major U.S. city publishes a dedicated dog-park budget line. That fact, rather than the numbers, is the finding.
| City | Parks dept. total | Dog-park-specific line published? | Where dog-park spending lives |
|---|---|---|---|
| Seattle, WA | $339M (2025) | Partially — Cycle 1 (2016–2022) published $100K/yr OLA-only; Cycle 2 published $126K (2023) and $129K (2024), then stopped disclosing the split | Seattle Park District "Maintaining Parks & Facilities" BSL BC-PR-50000 (OLA + P-Patch combined) + Cycle 2 capital appropriations for new OLAs |
| Portland, OR | ~$120M (2023-24) | No | DOLA operating subsumed within broader maintenance and natural-areas divisions; only line-item reference found is for bark-chip purchasing shared with playgrounds |
| San Francisco, CA | $240M+ | No | 31 official Dog Play Areas managed within property-operations budget; no DPA-specific line item in published budget |
| Vancouver, BC | ~$150M CAD | No | 36 OLAs managed through broader park-operations budget; no OLA-specific breakout |
| Austin, TX | ~$160M | No | No dog-park-specific line published |
| Washington, DC | ~$85M | No | No dog-park-specific line published |
| Minneapolis, MN | ~$120M | No | Separate park taxing district; no dog-park-specific line published |
The Park District Cycle 2 one-time capital of $3.46M is presented by SPR as a significant commitment to expanding off-leash access. In absolute terms, it is more than Cycle 1's total OLA operating spend combined. In peer-city context, it is small. In infrastructure-cost context, it covers two new OLAs and only the design phase of a third.
| Reference point | Amount | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Cycle 2 OLA capital (W. Seattle Stadium + Othello construction + Ravenna design) | $3.46M | SPR project page |
| Implied cost per new OLA (2 sites, construction only) | ~$1.5M | Derived from above |
| Seattle single-family median home price, early 2026 | ~$900K+ | Broker data (approximate) |
| SPR's 2026 CIP budget for restroom improvements alone | $2M | 2026-2031 CIP |
| SPR's 2026 CIP for Gas Works Park priority project | $1.8M | 2026-2031 CIP |
| SPR's 2026 CIP for Green Lake Community Center + Evans Pool planning/design | $2.7M | 2026-2031 CIP |
| Combined SPR 2026 CIP (all capital projects) | $87.7M | 2026-2031 CIP |
Charts 01 and 03 put SPR's total budget and the OLA line on separate axes because the numbers are 1,000× apart. That's the most readable chart. This is the less-readable one — same numbers, one axis — because the readability problem is the point.
The full year-by-year data is in data/budget-detail.csv, with a source column on every row. The SPR totals reflect all-funds figures where available; the OLA-only column is populated where SPR publicly disclosed a split and left blank (visibly) where they didn't. Where we have only the combined OLA + P-Patch line, that value is shown in its own column.
| Year | Cycle | SPR total ($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 | — | — |
SPR total. "All funds" figures where available (2019 onward); 2016–2018 are general-fund + operating only, which is why the jump 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.
Peer cities. Dog-park-specific budget lines were not found in published budget documents for Portland, San Francisco, Vancouver BC, Austin, DC, or Minneapolis as of April 2026 search. This does not mean the spending doesn't exist — it means it is not separately reportable without a public records request. See data/peer-cities-budget.csv.
Percentage calculation. "OLA as % of SPR" divides the OLA-only dollar figure by the SPR total (both in dollars), shown as a percentage. Basis-point conversion: 1 basis point = 0.01%. The chart in Chart 02 uses basis points for visual clarity because the raw percentages are too small to render at ordinary chart scales.
Per-dog calculation. Uses the 150,000 Seattle dog-population floor from Seattle Humane / Cascade PBS coverage (the lower bound; SPR's 2023 Expansion Study cites higher figures up to 400K). Applying the higher dog population would make the per-dog spending proportionally smaller.
Corrections and contributions. If you have better primary sources, corrections to the figures, or access to peer-city dog-park budget data — please get in touch at [email protected] or file an issue on the repo. Every correction with a citable source will be applied.