Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson was handed a major defeat Wednesday when a City Council Committee delayed her plan to provide universal taxpayer-funded school breakfast and lunch for public school students.

Instead, the plan, approved 6-3 by a special City Council committee after a more than four-hour debate, delays the breakfast and lunch program from September 2026 to September 2027.

The year-long delay will allow for taxpayer funding to be shifted to a voucher program aimed at providing meals for primarily Black and minority school students during holiday breaks and in the summer, when schools are not in session and low-income families lose access to the meals they provide.

The voucher program, which would give gift cards to parents of school children, shows the growing power of City Council President Joy Hollingsworth, who has been able to stop or alter several of the new mayor’s initiatives in Wilson’s seven months in office.

Hollingsworth introduced her amendment to the Wilson plan earlier this month and succeeded in pushing the change through, even as hundreds of members of the public called for sticking with Wilson’s original plan during council meetings.

Wilson issued a statement after the vote, emphasizing that the taxpayer-funded breakfast and lunch program would still be implemented.

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