Share of Seattleites within a 10-minute walk of a legal off-leash area. 99% live that close to a park of any kind.
Seattle has one of America's best park systems. For dogs, it's one of the worst. This site is a sourced, reproducible public-data reference: every number links back to where it came from. The opinion page is clearly marked; everything else is factual. Download the full PDF.
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September 2026 · Five headline figures corrected, two records releases ingested, and every page cut to its finding
Asked directly, Seattle Parks produced the off-leash share of the parks-maintenance budget this site had said could not be known. The OLA-only figure is $328,345 for 2023, not the $126,000 carried here, and about $1.57M in 2025 once construction money is counted — of which $1,053,037 of $5,625,926 has actually been spent. The OLA gap is thirteen years, not seventeen; the two funded sites are expected in 2027–28, not 2026; and the City was billed $456,173 in 2024 for three officers it did not field. Sources and methodology now live on a single Data & Methods page.
The reports, in short.
Seven sections covering the OLA system: counts, access, what's working, enforcement, budget, peer-city comparisons, and the author's opinion. The first six are factual; the last is opinion. Sources and scripts are linked throughout.
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Part I — The Gap. Seattle has added zero net dog parks since 2013, and the two funded sites are now expected in 2027 and 2028. Since 2010 the city's population has grown 34% while the OLA count went from 11 to 14. Per capita, Seattle runs at about one-third of Portland and San Francisco's OLA density.
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Part II — Access. 11.7% of Seattleites are within a 10-minute walk of an OLA. (the Trust for Public Land [TPL] says 99% are within a 10-minute walk of any park.) Seven of 14 OLAs are below the American Kennel Club (AKC) 1-acre minimum. 2 of 14 have lighting; 5 have small-dog areas; water access varies by site.
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Part III — Forward. Three questions worth pressing on: which of Seattle's existing OLAs actually function well and why, what shared-use looks like in cities that have run it for decades, and which public lands outside Seattle Parks & Recreation (SPR), such as WSDOT right-of-way, Seattle City Light corridors and Port of Seattle property, could host off-leash space without new Park District dollars.
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Enforcement. 7,015 off-leash enforcement records (2014–2026): 3,151 citations and 3,191 verbal warnings. Six of the top ten cited parks have no designated OLA. Citations cluster in areas without OLAs, or where the OLA that exists is below the AKC 1-acre minimum.
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Budget. SPR's reported budget grew from $168M (2018, operating only) to $507M proposed (2026, all funds). About a quarter of the apparent jump is a 2019 reporting shift from operating-only to all-funds, not real growth. The dedicated-OLA line ran about $106,000 a year in Park District Cycle 1, 0.068% of SPR's total. Cycle 2 is several times that: $328,345 in 2023 and roughly $1.57M in 2025 once construction money is counted. About a fifth of the Cycle 2 money has been spent.
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Peer Cities. Per-city detail on how eight peers actually run their off-leash systems: Portland, San Francisco, Vancouver BC, Washington DC, Minneapolis, New York, Austin, and Boise. Counting methodology, governance, funding, operating rules, and at least one design choice per city that Seattle hasn't tried.
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Opinion & Recommendation. Author's policy recommendation: a time-zoned shared-use model for existing parks (NYC-style off-leash hours), with enforcement redirected to clean-park compliance.
All the reports.
The Gap
Seattle's OLA count has been stuck at 14 since 2013, thirteen years, while the population kept growing. Per-capita comparison to Portland, San Francisco, Vancouver BC, and Austin. Budget analysis through Park District Cycle 2.
Access
Walkshed coverage, peer-city OLA acreage, the Kinnear Park case study, and the pattern of illegal off-leash use that follows from insufficient supply. Interactive map of all existing, funded, and planned OLAs.
Forward
What works and what Seattle hasn't tried: which existing OLAs actually function well and why, how cities with decades of shared-use experience run it, and the non-SPR public land (WSDOT right-of-way, Seattle City Light corridors, Port of Seattle) that could host off-leash space.
Hotspots
Where Seattle Animal Control logged 7,015 off-leash enforcement contacts between January 2014 and April 2026. Contacts rose roughly seven-fold to a 2018 peak after the SPR / Finance & Administrative Services (FAS) patrol program went full-time in 2016, then fell and never recovered; actual citations fell 95% from 2018 to 2024, and neither agency has ever measured whether behavior changed. Six of the top ten cited parks have no designated OLA. Interactive hotspot map and top-20 table.
Where the money goes
SPR total budget versus dedicated off-leash area spending, 2016–2026. Absolute dollars, percentages, per-dog figures, Cycle 1 vs. Cycle 2 comparison, and a peer-city transparency table showing why the comparison is so difficult. Every row sourced.
How other cities do this
Per-city detail on eight peers: Portland, San Francisco, Vancouver BC, Washington DC, Minneapolis, New York, Austin, and Boise. Counting methodology, governance, funding mechanism, operating rules, and at least one design choice per city Seattle has not tried.
Opinion & recommendation
An opinion page with six principles, three opinions that fall out of the data, and one policy recommendation: a time-zoned shared-use model for Seattle's parks, modeled on New York City's long-standing off-leash-hours policy.
Every figure here comes from a public record or a script in the repository. The CSV files, the methodology and the per-page notes are on Data & Methods; the repository itself is on GitHub.