By Erica C. Barnett
We had Mayor-Elect Katie Wilson on Seattle Nice this week for a wide-ranging interview about her priorities as mayor—as well as how she plans to deal with the massive budget deficits set up by Mayor Bruce Harrell and the city council and the constraints the council has placed on her administration.
As PubliCola has reported, Harrell’s budget—which the council will pass in final form tomorrow—plunges the city into nine-figure deficits starting in 2027, which will force Wilson to act quickly to address budget shortfalls her predecessor failed to address. The budget also seeks to force Wilson to preserve some of her predecessor’s pet projects, including the encampment-sweeping Unified Care Team and a squad of graffiti removal staff, through restrictions that prohibit her from spending city funds on anything other than sweeps and anti-graffiti efforts.
We discussed those issues and much more, including many questions submitted by readers, in a wide-ranging 45-minute discussion with the mayor-elect.
A few highlights:
On whether she plans to replace Harrell’s police chief, Shon Barnes:
I’m going to respectfully decline that question at the moment. It’s a very sensitive question, and I am looking forward to meeting with Shon Barnes in the near future and having conversations with a lot of people about how things are going at the police department. And this is not just about the police chief, but this is about department leadership across the city, because there’s the question, when a new mayor comes into office, of potentially appointing new department heads.
For me, this is really not a political question. I don’t care what department head supported Harrell or campaigned actively for him. For me, this is really about getting the best people in place to lead those departments, and obviously there needs to be a certain amount of kind of vision alignment for someone to want to work with me. But beyond that, the thing that I really care about is that they’re a good leader that their, you know, employees respect them and can work for them. … So I’m hoping to retain in department leadership folks who are dedicated public servants doing a great job, and then yes, I’m sure there will be some, some turnover. So that applies across the board, including our police department.
On whether she’ll be Seattle’s “urbanist mayor”
Seattle’s a big city, and I love living in a big city, and I want Seattle to become a bigger and better city, where it’s possible, for example, for someone to live like I do right now, which is raising a child in in an apartment. And that means that the city kind of becomes your your backyard or your living room. And I think that urban lifestyle is something that we need to promote, and we need to make it possible for more and more people to live in this city without owning a car. And that’s not just for the sake of the people who don’t own cars. I mean, as more people continue to move to Seattle in our region, we just have limited space, and it’s just not possible to keep adding cars to the road. …
We deserve a world-class mass transit system. I think that’s just a very, very important thing to be working towards for all kinds of reasons. And we need great public space. We need more car -free public space. We need great parks, great playgrounds, all of those urban amenities. And so I am going to be very focused on making sure that Seattle is Seattle is a great, big city that can continue to grow in that direction.
On breaking Seattle’s 16-year streak of one-term mayors:
Despite the fact that I challenged an incumbent, I think it’s not great to just have one-term mayor after one-term mayor. So I do hope to govern in a way that leads to me being able to serve another term.
One of the things that I understand about Mayor Harrell is that I do believe that he stepped into office wanting very much to be a two-term mayor. And I think that his approach, and his consultants’ approach to governing over the last four years, has been to really focus on building that coalition of interests that could get him reelected for a second term. … It’s a kind of a transactional style of politics where he was trying to kind of gather together those interests that could get him reelected. I don’t think that’s a good way to govern. Because you’re doing favors for people, you’re building those relationships, but that’s not a vision for the city, you know? That’s not a vision of delivering for the people of Seattle. And so for me, I do want a second term, but I do not want to govern to win a second term.I want to govern to do the right thing, and if I’m lucky, that means that I will get a second term.
On restoring the longstanding nude beach at Denny Blaine Park, which Harrell repeatedly tried to shut down:
Yes, I do want to do this, and I want to work closely with Friends of Denny Blaine and others. I mean, there are some legitimate issues that need to be solved to make sure that the park is good for all the folks using it. But yeah, I would like to restore the park to its historic use as a queer nude beach.
Evidence of Jon Grant’s incompetencies and hypocrisies are well-documented in Publicola:
“Wellspring Family Services, a homeless service provider that holds a $465,000 rapid rehousing contract with the city of Seattle, fired two of its housing specialists, Walter Washington and Jon Grant, after discovering that around $35,000 had been billed inappropriately to the wrong contracts—in effect overcharging some agencies that provide funding to Wellspring, with the money going into the nonprofit’s housing division.”
https://publicola.com/2021/01/07/former-council-candidate-ousted-over-billing-irregularities-fewer-seek-homeless-services-and-more-on-rentons-shelter-saga/
“Grant resigned his position as executive director of the Tenants Union during his first campaign for this same position….The board didn’t dispute any of the staffer’s claims against Grant. (In one email, they said they had ‘agree[d] to have Jon resign'”: https://publicola.com/2017/07/27/morning-crank-chaos-and-turmoil/
“Jon Grant, the former Tenants Union director and a candidate for city council Position 8, recently confronted and photographed a woman who was out canvassing for his opponent, Teresa Mosqueda, in an incident Grant calls ‘an uncomfortable situation'”
https://publicola.com/2017/09/01/morning-crank-im-sorry-that-got-a-little-heated/
ECB: As a white guy, how do you sit here and say, ‘Vote for me—I will represent the interests of women and women of color better than a woman of color’?
JG: I think this comes down to values and theory of change. Very early on in this race, I sat down with my opponent, and it was really clear to me that we represented different visions for the city.
https://publicola.com/2017/09/28/the-c-is-for-crank-interviews-jon-grant-2/
“Throughout his campaign, city council Position 8 candidate Jon Grant has touted the Honest Elections initiative, which created a system of public financing for city council elections and imposed campaign spending limits, for “leveling the playing field and supporting grassroots candidates” like himself. Just yesterday, however, he requested—and got—his second exemption from the spending limits imposed by the Honest Elections program, allowing him to not only raise more money but raise it in larger contributions—up to $500, or twice what the law prescribes.”
https://publicola.com/2017/10/20/morning-crank-leading-the-initiative-that-her-opponent-was-hired-to-work-on/
Grant touts his work on the $15 minimum wage campaign and last year’s statewide minimum wage initiative. Yesterday, his campaign put up an ad for a campaign organizer position that pays $2,500 a month, or $14.42 an hour assuming a 40-hour work week.
https://publicola.com/2017/05/23/2593/
“The difficulty with Jon’s position is that he never came to the table to work with anyone else. It was always ideological—’Here’s what we represent and what we believe, and we’re not compromising. We’re not giving.’ What do you do with that? It’s not very helpful when you’re trying to work toward solutions. And the basic inability to even understand or accept that there are a myriad of other perspectives in our city, and we have to put all these interests together—none of them are evil, they’re just different. He never participated, and he ended up marginalizing himself, because he didn’t come to the table with any ideas or solutions or input. It was just negative: ‘Here’s my ideology and I don’t want to [discuss anything else].’ It’s very difficult to work out a solution if you’re not willing to listen.”
https://publicola.com/2017/10/09/maria-barrientos-woman-of-color-affordable-housing-developer-jon-grant-campaign-villain/
This is not to mention his previous efforts to ally himself with Seattle’s premier symbol of symbolic grandstanding, Kshama Sawant:
https://publicola.com/2015/07/28/on-eve-of-election-grant-mobilizes-underdog-support/
https://publicola.com/2015/11/04/election-2014-establishment-up-coattails-down/
Or his documented history of being anti-growth:
https://publicola.com/2017/04/18/morning-crank-mcginn-again/
https://publicola.com/2017/09/12/morning-crank-a-framework-for-inaction/
https://publicola.com/2018/05/21/the-city-studied-the-impact-of-easing-rules-on-garage-apartments-what-they-uncovered-was-an-indictment-of-single-family-zoning/
In sum, don’t do it Katie! Please pick someone who is actually capable of getting things done and doesn’t have a documented history of being terrible with finances.
“I don’t think that’s a good way to govern. Because you’re doing favors for people, you’re building those relationships, but that’s not a vision for the city, you know? That’s not a vision of delivering for the people of Seattle. And so for me, I do want a second term, but I do not want to govern to win a second term.I want to govern to do the right thing, and if I’m lucky, that means that I will get a second term.”
Hope this means she doesn’t put a moron like Jon Grant in charge of housing just because they were organizing buddies.
It’s hard to say where her inexperience will lead her. I’m trying to be optimistic, but so far she comes across as a lightweight. Jon Grant is a disaster, and Katie has already tapped Tiffani McCoy as part of her transition team, and she’s even a bigger disaster.