What's changed on this site.

A full-site accuracy pass — every load-bearing number re-checked against its source

A site-wide review traced every load-bearing number back to its primary source, corrected a handful of stale figures, and expanded the automated verifier that keeps them from creeping back. Most changes were small. Three are worth flagging.

The illegal-off-leash-use figure from Seattle Parks’ owner survey is now blended across the three settings the survey actually reports — 39% in local parks and 38% in large parks (weekly to monthly), 36% on trails — to about 38%, replacing the single 39% shown before. The survey is correctly dated 2015, not 2016, and its source — the 2017 People, Dogs and Parks Strategic Plan — is now committed to the repository and quoted from the page it supports.

Part III’s Magnuson case study has been reframed. The volunteer group that stewarded the park for two decades (MOLG) has gone dormant and its website is dead, so the section now describes it in the past tense as a site-specific model, and centers current stewardship on COLA — the still-active nonprofit that partners with Seattle Parks across the system.

→ part2-access.html · Finding 05 · part3.html · Magnuson

2026 staffing agreement received — same three-officer plan, re-priced; the “expansion” is delayed hiring, not new scope

A new records request (C265589) returned the 2026 Seattle Parks & Recreation (SPR) / Seattle Animal Shelter Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) and the 2023 Park District budget book. The 2026 agreement re-prices the same three-Animal-Control-Officer program funded back in 2023: wage growth lifts the per-officer cost from $151,551 to $176,093, and the Finance & Administrative Services (FAS)-side maximum from $454,652 to $528,279/year. The headcount ceiling did not change; the price did.

This reframes the April 2026 “more paw patrols” coverage. Funding for up to three officers has existed since 2023, but the positions sat largely vacant — as of April 2026 SPR said two of the three were still being filled, with roughly one officer working parks. So the increase now underway is the 2023 plan being executed (and re-priced for wages), not a new budget expansion, and the city's actual spend has not tripled. One structural change: the 2026 MOA pairs each officer with an existing Park Ranger rather than a Facilities Maintenance Worker — but neither is sworn police, so the “can't compel an ID” limit is unchanged.

→ enforcement.html · Finding 02 · opinion.html · O1

Current ACO staffing agreement received — the park-patrol program's funded headcount tripled in 2023, and the enforcement itself can't compel an ID

A records request (C265341) returned the current signed Seattle Parks & Recreation (SPR) / Seattle Animal Shelter Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) and the city's 2022 report to Council behind it. The agreement shows the park-patrol program was expanded earlier than the April 2026 headlines suggested: in 2023 the Seattle Park District Board funded two additional Animal Control Officers (ACOs), taking the program from one officer to three — a billed $454,652/year (the Finance & Administrative Services (FAS) side), on a seven-day schedule, with traceable budget codes, running through 2027. The per-officer cost is essentially unchanged ($152,399 → $151,551); the city simply now buys three.

The 2022 report also documents a structural limit the records make explicit for the first time: Animal Control Officers are not police. They cannot compel identification from an owner who refuses, and cannot detain; Seattle Police "recently… have been unable to assist," so officers "issue verbal warnings on all first contacts." Residents have learned this and share patrol locations online. It is a city-documented mechanism for how citation output can fall while patrols continue — now noted on the Enforcement page.

This response fulfills the previously-pending staffing records request (#7). The cost-per-citation chart deliberately keeps its officer denominator conservative — parks patrols are a minority of these officers' duties — with the reasoning set out in the page's cost footnote.

→ enforcement.html · Finding 02 · opinion.html · O1

Find-It-Fix-It complaint records received — residents report far more than the city cites

A records request (C263990) returned every “Nuisance Dogs in a Park” complaint filed through the city's Find It Fix It app, April 2024–June 2026 (the complaint category was created in 2024). Residents filed about 3,010 in 2025, the first full year — roughly 11 for every off-leash citation the city issued. Month to month, complaints and citations move independently: complaints rose while citations fell, then citations went nearly silent after mid-2025. A new Enforcement finding sets the two side by side.

The complaint figure also replaces the earlier partial-year “~1,100 in 2024” secondary citation on the Access page.

→ enforcement.html · Finding 07

Dog-license records received — most Seattle dogs are unlicensed, and the share is falling

The Seattle Animal Shelter released 2014–2025 dog-license counts and revenue (C264029). Annual licenses issued fell about 21% (24,309 → 19,219). About 26,650 dogs hold a current license — only an estimated 7–18% of the 150,000–400,000 dog-population range. Asked directly, SAS holds no compliance estimate or internal dog-population figure of its own.

New material: a licensing/compliance finding on The Gap; a license-revenue-vs-OLA-spending contrast on Budget (the city collects ~$1.24M/yr in dog licenses against a disclosed ~$100,000–129,000/yr off-leash area (OLA)-only operating budget — different departments, read as scale); and a note reinforcing the Access deficit map.

→ part1-the-gap.html · budget.html

More citation data received; enforcement page updated

A new public records request (C263949) extended Seattle's off-leash citation record through April 2026. Combined with the earlier data, the enforcement page now covers a continuous 2014–2026 record and was restructured to lead with the fiscal picture: cost per citation, output over time, the first-offense mix, and geography.

Two things stand out: citation output peaked in 2018 (1,276) and has not recovered — the strongest year since is 2024 (447), about a third of peak — and the program's cost per published citation (its annual cost divided by citations issued, not the price of writing one ticket) has risen even as output fell. First-time offenders remain 84–96% of citations in every year of the record.

Where 2019 appears in both requests, the fuller C263949 record is used. Every figure on the page is reproducible from committed scripts and checked by a verification harness that now also greps the published prose against the data.

→ enforcement.html · Finding 01

First complete public release

Eight-page public-data reference on Seattle's off-leash area (OLA) system: overview, Part I (The Gap), Part II (Access), Part III (Forward), Enforcement, Budget, Peer Cities, and the signed Opinion editorial. Every factual claim links back to its source; the underlying dataset pipeline is reproducible from committed scripts.

Network walkshed methodology landed as part of v1.0. The earlier ~33% straight-line walkshed estimate was replaced with a proper network-distance analysis: 11.7% of Seattle residents are within a 10-minute walking path of an OLA (76.6% within Seattle Parks & Recreation's [SPR] 2.5-mile standard). Computed via compute_walkshed.py (osmnx against Seattle's OSM walk network) and population_coverage.py (2020 Census block-group overlay).

Enforcement page shipped with the full PRR C049204 dataset (4,803 citations, 2014–2019), hotspot map, walkshed-overlap analysis, top-20 table, offense-mix breakdown, and revenue-vs-cost chart against the 2021 Memorandum of Agreement (MOA)'s documented $152,399/yr Animal Control Officer II (ACO II) cost.

Peer Cities page shipped with detail sections on Portland, San Francisco, Vancouver BC, Washington DC, Minneapolis, NYC, Austin, and Boise.

→ index.html · full v1.0 details in the CHANGELOG