Category: Opinion

City Council, Development, homelessness, housing, immigration, Mayor Harrell, Opinion

PubliCola’s Seattle Predictions for 2025

By Erica C. Barnett, Josh Feit, and Sandeep Kaushik

The three co-founders of PubliCola—that’s me, PubliCola columnist Josh Feit, and my Seattle Nice sparring partner Sandeep Kaushik—have put together our annual list policy-obsessed, 100-percent accurate Seattle predictions for 2025. Each of us gave the assignment our own spin—I’m going out on a limb by boldly predicting things that will definitely happen in Seattle next year; Josh is predicting things that shouldn’t happen but will; and Sandeep has a list of things that won’t happen, but should. – ECB

Erica’s Predictions: Things that definitely will happen

Predictions are vibes. By that I mean: Even when they don’t come true, a good prediction captures the zeitgeist of the year, whether or not it’s correct in all the details.

One reason I believe this, probably, is because I’m notoriously terrible at making specific, particularly political predictions. This goes way back, to at least 2003, when I referred to a city council candidate as a “formidable” challenger to the incumbent, Peter Steinbrueck—less than three months before he dropped out of the race because he couldn’t raise any money. (Steinbrueck went on to win with nearly 83 percent of the vote.)

But another reason I think this is because it’s basically true. No, my 2024 prediction that the new council would move quickly to reverse renter protections like the winter eviction ban didn’t pan out—but only because the council wasted months getting up to speed on what the city does, and the repeals got pushed to this year, when they’ll likely happen.

And yes, I was technically wrong when I said the council would find it harder than expected to close a $250 million budget deficit—but only because I didn’t anticipate that council members who campaigned on making “hard choices” would practically trample each other to endorse a cynical short-term fix—using revenues from the dedicated JumpStart payroll tax to fill the entire budget gap.

As for my prediction that the then-new drug law wouldn’t have much of an impact? Well, the city failed to invest adequately in new diversion or treatment programs, so the people who are getting arrested for using drugs in public are still largely ending up back where they started—on corners like 3rd and Pine and 12th and Jackson, where police stage occasional raids that only push people to the next neighborhood over.

So with those caveats out of the way, here’s my list of specific, measurable predictions that will definitely come true in 2025. At least in spirit.

Big picture stuff: 

Federal funding cuts will hit Seattle because of our status as a “sanctuary city,” and we won’t be remotely prepared.

Monday, January 6 marked the first time a council member (Cathy Moore) publicly raised serious concerns about the incoming Trump Administration’s promise to cut federal funding to cities that refuse to participate in mass deportations of undocumented immigrants. But the city has done little to plan for what happens when we no longer have access to federal emergency response dollars (pretty critical during COVID), federal housing funds, which come  in the form of tax credits as well as direct subsidies that make our housing levy pencil out, and federal transportation funds, without which we would have no functioning transit system.

If Seattle really is going to do its part to protect immigrants from racist deportations (and people seeking reproductive and gender-affirming care from prosecution and jail), the time to start planning was last November. But the mayor and council have shown little inclination to discuss what losing funds will mean, much less come up with a plan to deal with this near-inevitability.

The city council will amend the tree ordinance to prevent even more new apartments, all in the name of environmental protection. 

The comprehensive plan isn’t the only policy area where council members are likely to weaponize the city’s environmental goals to prevent new housing in the city’s single-family enclaves. Last year, the city council passed a comprehensive tree protection ordinance that requires property owners to navigate a labyrinth of new restrictions (and pay thousands of dollars) if they want to remove a tree larger than 12 inches in diameter. (We called it byzantine and pointed out that most of Seattle’s tree loss occurs in city parks, not on privately owned lawns). But so-called tree advocates, whose transparent (and often explicit) goal is preventing development in the single-family neighborhoods where they own houses, have argued that these new rules don’t go far enough.

During the council’s first two meetings of 2025, on Monday, Councilmember Cathy Moore accused housing advocates of dismissing trees as a “NIMBY issue” (again, I’ll point readers to the piece I wrote about why the focus on trees in people’s private yards won’t actually protect the city’s tree canopy, while tree planting requirements would), and said she plans to do something to stop the “indiscriminate cutting of trees relating to development” that she claimed is allowed under the current tree law.

Expect a tree code update this year that hews closely to the demands of groups like Don’t Clearcut Seattle, which has misrepresented city regulations to argue for expanded tree requirements for multifamily housing along with dramatic increases in tree removal fees. (They also want to create permanent, legally binding tree covenants for private residential properties). These policies are designed to prevent the housing council members claim they want, but they’ll pass as long as the rest of the neighborhood-based council members go along with Moore and Northeast Seattle Councilmember Maritza Rivera, who has also cited trees as a reason not to allow new housing in her low-density district.

Elected officials will take the wrong lessons from the ongoing uptick in police hiring.

As Sandeep notes below, the Seattle Police Department has started to reverse a trend that began during the 2020 pandemic, when police officers began retiring and quitting en masse, in some cases to avoid COVID vaccine requirements. However, the new hires will not come close to meeting Seattle’s (already scaled-back) version of the nationwide 30 by 30 initiative, which calls for three out of ten new police recruits to be women by 2030. Recruiting women to become officers will turn out to be more complicated than just hiring the former chief of a department that hit that goal; it will require deep changes to a culture of misogyny and actions to remedy past and current gender discrimination in the department.

The city council will continue to take its cues—and legislation—from the mayor, further blurring the gap between the legislative and executive branches.

Although the council did exercise initiative this year by reversing many progressive policies—reinstating special “stay out” zones for drug users and sex workers, expanding the city’s use of jail beds for misdemeanor offenders, and bringing back the old prostitution loitering law, to name a few—much of the legislation they passed this year came prewritten from the mayor’s office, from legislation to increase the city’s control over the King County Regional Homelessness Authority, to a proposal to remove restrictions on SPD’s use of “less lethal weapons” for crowd control.

Hell, the entire 2025 budget radically shifted the way the city funds general government services, and no one protested except Tammy Morales, who cited bullying by her colleagues as the reason she resigned last year. Sure, individual council members will occasionally butt heads with specific  departments (for Rob Saka, that’s SDOT; for Moore and Maritza Rivera, the city’s planning and land use departments), but they won’t oppose the mayor who helped most of them get elected.

Even major appointments now play out like faits accomplis: Harrell chose Madison, Wisconsin police chief Shon Barnes as the city’s new police chief without any public process or even a list of finalists. It’s hard to overstate what a break this is from longstanding practice; I went back 25 years, to the appointment of Gil Kerlikowske, and could find no examples in which a mayor appointed a permanent police chief without publicly vetting multiple candidates.

The council would be wise to question Harrell’s judgment when it comes to police chiefs. Just last year, Harrell defended disgraced former police chief Adrian Diaz as a “fine leader” whose “integrity is above reproach.” (Diaz, who was facing allegations that he had sexually harassed and discriminated against his female subordinates, announced he was gay on a right-wing talk show the following day. Seven months later, Harrell fired him for having, and lying about, an inappropriate relationship with a woman he hired.)

But they won’t. The head of the city council’s public safety committee, Bob Kettle, has already offered Barnes a “warm welcome” to his new job in a Harrell press release, and the council will almost certainly follow suit, approving the mayor’s pick after a perfunctory hearing process.

PubliCola is supported entirely by readers like you.
CLICK BELOW to become a one-time or monthly contributor.

Support PubliCola

 

And some quick hits: 

Despite near-unanimous support from the council she helped get elected, Sara Nelson will face a serious reelection challenger and could lose her seat.

Despite a lackluster first term (see Sandeep’s predictions, below), Mayor Bruce Harrell will not face a serious challenger and will win reelection, after a shakeup that involves the appointment of two, if not three, new deputy mayors.

Despite the city council’s successful push to place the social housing funding measure, I-137, into a low-turnout February election slot (more on that underhanded effort here), the proposal will pass, because the concept is broadly popular.

Despite overwhelming public support for turning Pike Place Market into a pedestrian-only zone, the streets around the Market will still be choked with cars at the end of 2025.

Rob Saka will still have to look at his nemesis—that fucking curb!—every time he drives to or from his downtown office, as SDOT finds reasons not to spend $2 million removing it.

Continue reading “PubliCola’s Seattle Predictions for 2025” →

City Council, Development, housing, Opinion

“I’m Not Prepared to Sacrifice My Neighborhood”: Councilmember Cathy Moore Takes Hard Line Against Apartments
Cathy Moore says she won’t “sacrifice” her neighborhood to three-to-five-story apartments around an intersection in Maple Leaf (the lavender blocks inside the circle above)

By Erica C. Barnett

Councilmember Cathy Moore came out swinging against the extremely modest, geographically limited density increases Mayor Bruce Harrell proposed in his comprehensive plan update on Monday, taking aim at straw “urbanists” who, she claimed, believe the “lie” that brand-new housing is affordable and that new apartments automatically lead to frequent transit.

“Too many of our young people cannot afford to live in this city, and this is what’s driving a lot of this. And yet they are told, ‘Well, if you just let us have a free rein and build, you’ll be able to have the housing.’ It’s not true,” Moore fulminated. “Allowing free-range zoning is not going to get you into the home that you want. It’s not going to create the homeownership opportunity that you need to grow your wealth [and] create a stable society where people are engaged socially and politically.”

Moore’s specific objection to the plan was Harrell’s refusal to eliminate a small node of density in her neighborhood, Maple Leaf, where the current comp plan proposal would allow apartments within one to two blocks of a small commercial center at 90th and Roosevelt. The intersection, she noted, is still “slated for a neighborhood center, despite my two formal requests to the mayor’s office to remove it.”

“I’m not prepared to sacrifice this particular—my particular—neighborhood, and the reason that I live here and support this neighborhood, so that we can just throw a bunch of townhouses up that start at $700,000,” Moore said.

The planned neighborhood center includes eight and a half blocks around an existing commercial district around 90th and Roosevelt, where apartments between three and six stories would be allowed. The location is smack between two light rail stations and on a frequent bus route that arrives every 15 minutes, which Moore referred to as the “one little bus” that serves the neighborhood.

An example (from the proposed comp plan) of a neighborhood center.

Density is code for rental housing, Moore continued, and “rental housing isn’t working. … When I talk to young people, they want a place of their own. They want a little garden. They want the amenities that us current homeowners have, and we’re creating a false promise what we’re putting out here and what the urbanist people are telling us.”

Moreover, Moore said, “people seem to believe that if you build all this multifamily housing, transit will come. Let me tell you, it will not come. That’s not how it works.”

Phew. OK. It’s hard to fully capture to the condescension in Moore’s comments about renters and “young people,” but let’s start here: Sixty percent of the people who live in Seattle—young, old, and in between—rent their homes, and it’s pretty insulting to dismiss all of them as naifs who don’t understand basic realities about the cost of housing in Seattle. Nor, frankly, is it the place of homeowners in their 60s, 70s, and 80s—including those who showed up in the middle of the morning on Monday to argue that apartments don’t belong next to houses—to talk about what working renters need or want.

Maple Leaf’s planned neighborhood center already has a commercial district that includes bars, coffee shops, restaurants, and businesses.

Much like the idea that most current renters will ever be able to afford a house in Seattle, Moore’s straw urbanist is a fiction. Real-world urbanists have never argued that brand-new rental housing is cheap; rather, they point out that in cities with acute housing shortages like Seattle, artificial scarcity—the kind city governments create by imposing sweeping prohibitions on new housing—pushes non-wealthy people out. “Rental housing isn’t working” because too many renters are paying half their income to live far away from their jobs, not because they don’t understand that what they really want is a mortgage. (Note to the “buy a house like I did” crowd: Given that at least half of all renters pay more than they can afford on rent, how exactly are they supposed to save up for the $462,000 downpayment they’ll need to qualify for a home loan in Seattle?)

Second, she’s actually wrong about how transit decisions work—King County Metro makes bus planning decisions precisely based on housing density—the more people live in an area, the more demand there is for bus service, which is why you don’t see frequent transit in places like west Magnolia or Laurelhurst. “If you build it, they will come” is literally how it works.

Moore and Councilmember Maritza Rivera represent some of the wealthiest, lowest-density areas of the city; although Moore’s district includes Northgate, Lake City, and other urban hubs, it also encompasses vast swaths of single-family urban deserts, represented by the beige areas in the northeast corner of the map above. Seattle has always concentrated density and growth along large arterials,

The council is discussing the comprehensive plan over several meetings in January and February. Because Harrell took so long to finalize the plan (amending it repeatedly to decrease, then slightly increase, the amount of housing it would allow), the council has a hard deadline: If a new plan isn’t in place by June, the state’s model code, which would increase density citywide, will go into effect.

City Council, Opinion

The City Council Says Cracking Down on Sex Workers Will Create Services, Stop Sex Trafficking, and End Gun Violence. Don’t Believe Them.

By Erica C. Barnett

A sad spectacle played out at Seattle City Hall today, as council members who support a crackdown on sex workers made a series of baseless promises to people who live and own businesses on and around Aurora Ave. North. Many of these residents expressed understandable concern about a recent surge in gun violence in the area, but blamed it on sex workers and “pimps fighting over turf.”

Others argued that all or most of the women working on Aurora are victims of trafficking who would benefit from the city’s support, in the form of services after arrest, to escape their abusers.

And many simply expressed disgust at the visible presence of sex workers in the area, saying they could no longer walk outdoors because of scantily clad women, condoms, and “human waste,” which is also a common complaint about unsheltered people who lack access to toilets.

Council members did not address the points made by sex workers, advocates, and experts on sex trafficking who spoke against the bill and asked for the council to engage with them before adopting legislation that will impact them directly. They did respond to supporters of the legislation, assuring them repeatedly that the new laws targeting sex workers will reduce gun violence and eliminate sex work along Aurora once and for all, while giving victims of sex trafficking and exploitation abundant “off ramps” to escape the sex trade.

Finally, Moore claimed, police would have “the ability to approach and inquire and talk about, ‘how do we get you into services’?” Finally, Moore told groups that provide services for sex workers, the city would be able to “provide the tools to go after the buyers and the pimps, and to provide services, off-ramps, and the collaboration, the money that you need, to do the work that you are doing on a shoestring right now.” Finally, gun violence will become a thing of the past, as would-be sex workers are “deterred” by the threat of punishment and pimps find themselves out of a job.

None of these claims is based in fact. The legislation would do nothing to address gun violence, which is already a felony for which the police have full authority to make arrests.  It doesn’t address sex trafficking, which is also a felony, beyond asserting, in a lengthy preamble, that the “intent” of the legislation is to stop it from happening. And it creates no “off-ramps,” and provides no money, to anyone working to help sex workers or victims of sex trafficking, saying only that police “should” attempt to divert people to programs when possible, without identifying or funding these unidentified programs.

Substantively, the proposed law would make it easier for police to arrest people they believe are “loitering” in order to engage in sex work. Prostitution is already illegal, as is paying for sex, and the city attorney already has the authority to prosecute people for either crime; felony sex trafficking is handled by the King County Prosecutor. The reinstated loitering law would simply lower the bar for police to search and arrest suspected sex workers—allowing police to target people who engage in behaviors such as waving, asking someone if they’re a cop, or “engag[ing] passersby in conversation,” rather than conducting a lengthy, expensive sting.

The Stay Out of Areas of Prostitution (SOAP) orders, which are part of the same bill, would also do nothing to help victims or address gun violence. Instead, it would  empower the Seattle Municipal Court to banish people from hundreds of blocks around Aurora as a form of probation or a condition of their release from jail, pushing them into other areas. The bill would establish a new crime, a gross misdemeanor, for anyone who violates a SOAP order, even if they haven’t been convicted of the underlying misdemeanor crime.

Nearly 140 people signed up to speak about the legislation Tuesday morning; Kettle cut off public comment after about an hour and a half, when just over half the people who signed up had a chance to speak. (Not to be thwarted, many of them stuck around until the 2:00 council meeting and expressed their opposition then). Then he handed the floor to Moore, who showed an eight-minute video featuring supporters of her legislation, surveillance video showing unidentified women who Moore said were “commercially sexually exploited,” and video of several gun battles that sent the sound of gunshots ricocheting loudly throughout council chambers. The sudden, ear-splitting gunfire was an unpleasant surprise, as Moore didn’t warn the audience—which included many people who testified they had been traumatized by gunshots—that it was coming.

After this lurid display, Moore introduced a panel to speak in favor of her proposal—a group that included Kirkland real estate broker Kristine Moreland, who runs a controversial group called The More We Love. PubliCola has written extensively about The More We Love and Moreland, who originally performed private encampments sweeps at a rate of $515 for each person removed and now holds the sole contract for all homeless outreach in Burien. Moreland didn’t bring up her work in Burien, instead describing The More We Love as “an anti-sex trafficking organization” and talking about the need for more funding for supportive services for victims of trafficking.

Moore appears to have gone to great lengths to eliminate any suggestion that her legislation could have negative consequences from the official council record. As Ashley Nerbovig reported in the Stranger, she took the highly unusual step of removing references to the potential unintended consequences of her legislation from a council staff analysis, which is supposed to be assiduously neutral.

The language Moore removed included a reference to my reporting on the city’s ongoing use of undercover stings, which primarily target men of color, especially immigrants, who often plead guilty rather than exposing themselves to a risky criminal trial. In an interview, an experienced public defender said she had never had a white, English-speaking client charged with sexual exploitation (the city’s term for patronizing a prostitute).

Moore promised that as part of the fall budget process, she will propose funding for a new “receiving center” for sex workers who need services and help leaving the sex trade.

Reality check: The city is facing a $260 million budget deficit, and so far, the only programs that have received significant new funding are police recruitment initiatives. My prediction is that after the council adopts these new laws criminalizing sex work, they’ll end up giving $85,000 to an existing group such as REST or The More We Love and calling it a “pilot receiving center.”

Ironically, after making outlandish claims about a bill that makes gauzy, unfunded promises about future diversion and prevention programs, a majority of the council later voted against legislation from Tammy Morales that would release the full $20 million collected to pay for youth mental health programs this year—justifying their vote by claiming supporters of the funding failed to understand the perils of voting for legislation that lacks a detailed funding plan.

“It is problematic to be making promises to communities that we very well know we cannot fulfill, because what you saw today is what happens— people leave here and children leave here thinking that we are not supporting them… and that is very upsetting to me,” Councilmember Maritza Rivera said. “We shouldn’t be making promises to community that we know we cannot deliver in an act of symbolism, because community doesn’t understand the difference between a symbolic vote and an actual vote.” She could have been talking about the council.

City Council, Opinion, Speech

Let the People Clap! (And Speak!)
City Council chambers shortly before Council President Sara Nelson shut down a meeting because people shouted at the council to let them testify.

By Erica C. Barnett

Over the past few days, city council members have objected repeatedly to public commenters expressing their support for one another by clapping—an innocuous, brief burst of joyful noise that council members argue is a disruption that slows council meetings down and prevents everyone from being heard.

Ironically, they’ve also terminated public comment before everyone signed up has had a chance to speak, leading audience members to shout and jeer, then compounded this own goal by locking down council chambers and retreating to their offices, where they can vote on divisive issues without having to hear people boo.

City council members have certainly expressed exasperation in the past about vocal crowds; former council president Debora Juarez was well known for chiding clappers and deriding people whose comments sounded too similar for her taste. (Juarez often made a point of dismissing people who used advocacy groups’ templates to express their disapproval by referring to their feedback as “form letters.”)

But the contempt the current council has shown for members of the public who oppose their policy proposals has gone further, and is now a feature of nearly every council meeting.

Last week, for example, Bob Kettle instructed commenters at a sparsely attended public safety committee meeting to snap their fingers instead of clapping, which he suggested would be disruptive. On Wednesday, Dan Strauss told advocates for student mental health spending, many of them current or recent high school students, to use silent “jazz hands” to express approval, and admonished them repeatedly for clapping instead.

And of course, on Tuesday, Council President Sara Nelson repeatedly warned people who showed up to testify against a long list of council proposals to stop being “disruptive” by clapping and cheering supportively. Then she cut off public comment, prompting many in the crowd to yell at her to let them speak. Instead of defusing the situation by extending public comment, Nelson pulled the council off the dais for a recess, then another, before shutting down council chambers and reconvening the meeting remotely.

This lockdown marked the second time in Nelson’s seven-month tenure as council president that she kicked the public out of council chambers. The first time followed a nearly identical template: Nelson cut off public comment, called two recesses, and ordered the public out, leading to an angry standoff in which Councilmember Cathy Moore demanded that police “arrest those individuals” who were shouting from outside the locked council chambers.

PubliCola is supported entirely by readers like you.
CLICK BELOW to become a one-time or monthly contributor.

Support PubliCola

This is going to keep happening as long as the council does not think of people who disagree with their policy decisions as constituents they have to listen to. Right now, a lot of people happen to be extremely pissed off at a vast array of policies the council is attempting to fast-track with minimal public process—a new law criminalizing sex work, jailing people for low-level misdemeanors, and the creation of special no-go zones for drug users and sex workers, to name a few. It isn’t a conspiracy when advocates on these issues show up in council chambers to sound the alarm—it’s a sign that people without access to the council are using the one avenue they have to make them listen.

If the council doesn’t want to hear from people whose views, or mode of expression, they find disagreeable (cue Kettle saying “this fucking drives me nuts” after people chanted “when we fight, we win” two times earlier this week), that’s on them: The job of being a council member is inseparable from the duty to listen to the public, including during official public comment periods, even when the public’s message is basically, “you suck.”

City Council members, especially those whose previous jobs didn’t involve interacting with the public, have responded to public criticism since time immemorial by decrying the “current lack of civility,” or by suggesting that public commenters have been duped by media misinformation or4 just don’t understand how the city works. (Here’s a brief history of “civility” as a political concept, for those seeking extra credit.)

Yesterday, for example, after a large group of young people testified in favor of a budget proposal to release funding for student mental health care, Kettle said they had mistakenly brought their concerns to the wrong place, and that the adults that brought them to City Hall should have taken them, instead, to Olympia. Maritza Rivera accused Morales of making false promises to “the students who were here, who were expecting that if we pass this money, that somehow they’re going to get it immediately.”

The council’s condescension to young people (who, incidentally, were the instigators of the proposal to spend money on mental health care, which Kettle repeatedly claimed “came out of nowhere”) is the flip side of their enraged response to frustrated public commenters on Tuesday. Kids who disagree with the council are confused; adults who disagree with the council are dangerous. My advice for the council is to try something that might feel radical: Just let people speak.

erica@publicola.com

City Council, homelessness, Mayor Harrell, Opinion, Police

The New City Council Is Just Asking Questions

By Erica C. Barnett

As I’ve noted previously, with some frustration, the Seattle City Council—which includes six brand-new members and a council president with just two years’ experience—is still spending most of its public meeting time getting up to speed on various city departments and offices do.

This slow-moving crash course in Civics 101 is probably necessary, since most of the new council members have never worked in or around City Hall, but the endless PowerPoint parade does give the impression the council has nothing urgent on its plate, even as a $230 million budget shortfall looms.

One thing the new council has been doing plenty of is asking questions. Although many are rhetorical or more-a-comment-than-a-question (looking at you, Rob Saka), they still say a lot about what the council hopes to do whenever they get around to governing full-time. Here are a few examples, from who recent council briefings about housing, homelessness, and public safety.

Sara Nelson wants to know if the problem with police hiring is the exams.

Nelson, a former council aide and two-year council veteran, pressed the director of the city’s two Civil Service Commissions, Andrea Scheele, about the city’s contract with the National Testing Network, a company the city uses to test new recruits’ knowledge, skills, and aptitude for the job, suggesting that the city should consider picking another vendor that could move applicants through the hiring process faster. The Public Safety Civil Service Commission administers tests for applicants for SPD and Seattle Fire Department applicants.

The city “invested heavily” in helping to develop the NTN test, Scheele noted, after a judge put the city under federal oversight amid allegations of bias and excessive use of force in 2012. (The US Department of Justice terminated most of that consent decree last year).  “The exam was tailored to assess a candidate’s cognitive abilities, but also to evaluate candidates’ skills and abilities related to judgment, appropriate human interactions, and integrity and ethics,” Scheele said.

“I don’t get a sense of urgency, frankly, when I’m listening to your presentation. And that’s not acceptable. You’re here to serve the city, the citizens of the city, and the citizens of the city deserve to have police officers put on the streets as quickly as possible.”—Councilmember Cathy Moore, speaking to Public Safety Civil Service Commission director Andrea Scheele

About a month and a half ago, Scheele added, Mayor Bruce Harrell asked the PSCSC to “consider either adding or switching to” a test from a company called Public Safety Testing. Currently, between 60 and 65 percent of applicants either drop out during the testing phase or fail the NTN test, Scheele said. According to the Seattle Times, 90 percent of applicants pass the PST test.

Cathy Moore wonders if the problem with police hiring is that civil servants have no “sense of urgency.”

During her presentation, Scheele noted that the PSCSC now provides a list of candidates who have passed the application test to SPD, but said it would take another full-time employee to accelerate that process to every two weeks or faster. Currently, the two civil service commissions have three staff.

“I just think we’re moving way too slowly, and basically what I see here is a bureaucracy that’s clunky,” Moore responded. “We need to go faster. There’s no reason that we should be waiting to [administer exams and] send [SPD] a list of eligible candidates every six to eight weeks.”

“I don’t get a sense of urgency, frankly, when I’m listening to your presentation. And that’s not acceptable,” Moore said.

Scheele said the reason the PSCSC would need another employee to speed up the testing process is because the commission would have to stop processing test scores in batches—a change that would speed things up from the applicants’ perspective, but would add a new inefficiency at the end of the process. Moore said Scheele’s answer was “not satisfactory,” and told her to come back to the council in 30 days with “concrete steps that you’ve taken, because this is just too slow.”

“You’re here to serve the city, the citizens of the city, and the citizens of the city deserve to have police officers put on the streets as quickly as possible. Obviously, they need to be qualified, and we need to go through this process,” Moore continued. “Although there’s some question about whether we actually do need to, but nonetheless, this is where we are. So we have to light a fire under our our civil servants’ feet, because you are here to serve the city of Seattle.”

PubliCola is supported entirely by readers like you.
CLICK BELOW to become a one-time or monthly contributor.

Support PubliCola

 

Sara Nelson wants to know if we could subsidize cops’ housing (and day care, and cars, and college, and child care…)

Police officers in Seattle make a starting salary of around $83,000 before overtime and hiring bonuses, but could Seattle do more?

Nelson and other council members think they could, starting with perks like housing subsidies, “take-home cars,” subsidized day care, medical benefits after retirement, and other goodies that aren’t available to other city employees.

Rob Saka, elected last year, siad the city should consider paying relocation assistance for police who move here from elsewhere; when he learned that the city already does this, Saka said, “that’s great—and then paired with an actual housing subsidy, I think that that will be the most impactful.” Los Angeles provides new recruits with a $12,000 annual housing subsidy for their first two years, but the subsidy is only for housing in the city; currently, most SPD officers live outside Seattle.

Rob Saka wants to know why Seattle prioritizes homeless people’s privacy.

Washington state law allows unsheltered people to opt out of putting their personal and medical information into the county’s tracking system for homeless services, the Homeless Management Information System (HMIS). A significant number of people choose to do so because of privacy concerns, since the information the county tracks includes detailed information about substance use, time spent in hospitals or jail, and information provided to case managers. This “opt out” option means that Seattle’s homelessness data is never perfect; shelter referrals, for instance, represent an undercount.

Saka, along with council newcomer Maritza Rivera, wanted to know if there was a way to get around these requirements in order to “run analytics capabilities and use services to help us make better informed decisions and monitor trends, get ahead of trends, [and] plan—better planning, better outcomes.”

Saka, a former attorney for Meta, said he was aware that “there are some some notable potential privacy and security challenges with collection of certain data. But just because that is the case, and just because … the same issue applies to various technologies, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t use them or adopt them. Let us have effective safeguards in place to to control for that. But we need strong data collection capabilities to help us make better data-informed decisions.”

Requiring people to opt in to HMIS in order to receive homeless services would require a change in state law, something Rivera suggested the the city should support in an upcoming legislative session.

“What I know is that when budget time comes around and the REACH [homeless outreach] coordinators come in, they yell, ‘Stop the sweeps! Stop the sweeps!’ and then they are making it easier to stay in these dangerous environments.”—City Council President Sara Nelson

Maritza Rivera wants to know why we let people say “no” to shelter.

Rivera also questioned why the city allows people to decide whether they want to go indoors based on what shelter is available—saying no, for example, if the only option is a mat on the floor in a mass shelter.

“We do need to prioritize getting people indoors, whether or not we’re able to—you know, the goal is their first choice, but if that’s not available, we nevertheless have to get folks indoors. … I feel it’s inhumane to leave people on the street regardless” of whether they get their choice of shelter, Rivera said.

Tanya Woo wants to know how the city can help police feel safer at encampment sweeps.

Woo, who lost her race against District 2 incumbent Tammy Morales before the council appointed her to a citywide seat in January, said she has seen plainclothes police officers show up at encampment removals in the past, but “most of the time they don’t attend these, because they’re afraid of interactions during protests or interactions with unhoused residents. So,” she asked, “is there is there a plan going forward and how to mitigate some of that during resolutions?” Woo heads up a volunteer night watch in the Chinatown/International District, and led a successful effort to prevent the expansion of a Salvation Army-run homeless shelter in SoDo.

Deputy Mayor Tiffany Washington, who was leading a presentation about the Unified Care Team (the city’s umbrella group for encampment response) said police do show up at every encampment removal, adding that “the issues are, 98 percent of the time, with the protesters and not the actual people that are unhoused at the site.”

Sara Nelson wants to know: Why do we even pay for homeless outreach, anyway?

Nelson, whose beer business was one of the first to place eco-blocks in the public right-of-way to keep people from parking their RVs there, singled out the outreach provider REACH in asking Washington what the city’s outreach contracts are for.

“When we talk about outreach, what is it really supposed to do? Because when I hear you say you said earlier, that we want our outreach providers to stay engaged week after week, and we hear that they meet people where they’re at to build trust—toward what end?” Nelson asked. “Because if they’re just if we’re just building trust so that they can stay in these dangerous situations, exactly what is the programmatic goal of our outreach investments?”

“What I know,” Nelson added, “is that when budget time comes around and the REACH coordinators come in, they yell, ‘Stop the sweeps! Stop the sweeps!’ and then they are making it easier to stay in these dangerous environments.”

Although Washington noted that outreach is “a critical part of the homelessness response system,” Nelson’s disparaging comments about REACH could be a preview of the city’s upcoming budget discussions, where spending on everything but police, fire, and 911 will be on the table for cuts.

City Council, Opinion, Uncategorized

“Arrest Those Individuals”: Councilmember Demands Police Response to Protests Outside Locked Council Chambers

By Erica C. Barnett

New Councilmember Cathy Moore demonstrated an alarming intolerance for Seattle’s long tradition of noisy protest by demanding that police arrest a group of demonstrators for being too loud and making her “feel threatened” at a council meeting Tuesday afternoon.

The demonstrators showed up to demand that the council cut police department spending to pay for housing for immigrants and refugees living in Tukwila, where the need for shelter and housing has been (literally) overwhelming.

Council president Sara Nelson started the meeting on a sour note by suggesting that the demonstrators were “exploiting vulnerable people for their own political ends”—suggesting, in so many words, that they were only pretending to care about homeless refugees because it helped them advance an unrelated anti-police, anti-sweeps agenda. (Those who were allowed to speak noted that in their view, these issues are all related). Compounding the insult, Nelson limited public comment to 20 minutes, telling the group they ought to be taking their grievances to King County and the state, which play a more direct role in responding to the refugee crisis.

Council rules limit public comment to topics on the agenda and issues within the purview of a council committee, so Nelson was technically within her right to cut off comments. In recent years, however, the council has generally not enforced this rule, tacitly acknowledging that it’s better to let people say what they have to say than shut down speech.

PubliCola is supported entirely by readers like you.
CLICK BELOW to become a one-time or monthly contributor.

Support PubliCola

Nelson’s unforced error set the tone for the rest of the afternoon. After pulling the council into recess twice, she had security clear the room; when  six people refused to leave, police arrested them for trespassing and booked them into the downtown jail. Legal? Almost certainly. Ill-advised? 100 percent. Seattle has a history of protest and civil disobedience that stretches back decades; if an elected official’s first reaction when people shout and disrupt a meeting is to kick them out and call the police, that says a lot about what they think of that culture and history.

“It is not appropriate” for protesters to be disruptive, Moore, a former King County Superior Court judge, continued. “We need to make sure that this does not happen going forward. We are shutting down the operations of a democracy because of a mob action. It is not to be tolerated.”

Which brings us back to Moore.

With the chamber emptied, the council reconvened to discuss a resolution honoring the state’s first Black senator, George Fleming. From outside the locked council chambers, demonstrators continued to yell, and several banged on the glass chamber walls, prompting Moore to interrupt the proceedings to say she felt “physically threatened” by the protesters outside.

Invoking the image of a “mob” storming the room and physically attacking the council, Moore said, “Our physical safety is being threatened by the actions of the demonstrators outside, banging on the windows, which could easily get broken and we will have a mob scene. I’m asking for police presence to arrest those individuals.”

When Nelson, belatedly trying to deescalate the situation, pointed out that arresting people for protesting would require “several steps”—”I appreciate that it’s very loud”—Moore interrupted, insisting, “It’s more than loud. It is a physical threat to the safety of each of us on this council and it is a threat to the operation of the civic institution.”

“It is not appropriate” for protesters to be disruptive, Moore, a former King County Superior Court judge, continued. “We need to make sure that this does not happen going forward. We are shutting down the operations of a democracy because of a mob action. It is not to be tolerated.”

This is a misunderstanding of how the city council operates. Unlike a court hearing, a council meeting is a place for comment and dissent, up to and including protests that may interfere with scheduled business. The best approach is generally to let people speak their mind, and to listen to what they’re saying—not to declare disruptions “intolerable” or refer to demonstrators as a violent “mob.” If council members aren’t willing to tolerate noisy dissent, they probably should have looked more closely at the job description before applying.