1. The city of Seattle settled last week with Seattle police officer Denise “Cookie” Bouldin, a longtime officer who sued the department in 2023, alleging gender and racial discrimination.
Bouldin, best known for the chess club she started for students in Rainier Beach in 2006, claimed in her lawsuit that her fellow officers and SPD officials subjected her to “race and gender discrimination on a daily basis that had “been ongoing and continuous throughout her entire career.” Among other allegations, Bouldin said SPD staff refused to give her a parking pass, mishandled her personal property, and retaliated against her when she complained about officers who allowed their dogs to “roam around” SPD’s south precinct.
The size of the settlement is unclear. Bouldin’s attorneys did not respond to a request for comment.
The City Attorney’s office would not say how much the settlement was for. In the initial tort claim that preceded the lawsuit, Bouldin sought $10 million from the city, according to media reports.
In a statement, City Attorney Erika Evans said Bouldin “is a pioneer at the Seattle Police Department who has been a beloved and deeply trusted presence in our community for decades. The City is thankful
2. The city council is poised to consider legislation that would make it easier for the city to site and build tiny house villages, but the three bills—sent down by Mayor Katie Wilson without prior conversation with council members or staff—will likely face scrutiny.
Two of the proposals—one that would provide about $5 million in funding for future tiny house villages, and another that would allow the city itself to lease and prepare land for shelters—do not have committee assignments yet. The other, which would increase the maximum size of tiny house villages from 100 people to as many as 250, is heading to Councilmember Dionne Foster’s housing committee.
It isn’t the cost of the proposal itself that’s currently raising eyebrows on the council: Most of the funding would come out of this year’s budget, which already includes money for shelter that can be used to build out the first set of 500 beds Wilson wants to add before the World Cup games in June.
Instead, councilmembers are raising questions about the size of the potential shelters (there’s a big difference between 25 to 50 tiny house units and hundreds), the fact that Wilson seems committed to tiny houses, specifically (Jon Grant, her chief homelessness advisor, worked at the city’s main tiny house village provider, the Low Income Housing Institute, immediately before joining Wilson’s office), and the level of services the new shelters will be able to provide for an average cost of $28,000, which is less than existing shelters that provide 24/7 on-site staff and wraparound support for chronically homeless people.
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Behind the scenes, councilmembers have grumbled that Wilson didn’t work with them before dropping her legislation in an announcement that only Rob Saka, whose district includes SoDo and other areas with a large number of unsanctioned encampments and RVs, attended.
3. By June, most King County employees will be required to work from physical offices three days a week, and many employees are pushing back. (Seattle also has varying in-office mandates that we’ve covered extensively.) Editor’s note: This sentence has been corrected to reflect that June, not March 30, is the general deadline for Return To Office. According to the county executive’s office, different departments are implementing the new mandate on different timelines.
In a recent internal newsletter, King County Executive Girmay Zahilay expressed his “commitment to building a Better Government includes listening to staff and empowering you to identify challenges and bring forward solutions” [emphasis in original]. Some county employees, taking him at his word, used the newsletter as a forum to express their frustration with the mandate.
King County covers more than 2,100 square miles, and many King County staffers do not live in or near Seattle, where the county’s central office space is located. Several noted that their jobs require them to go to far-flung locations; forcing them to commute to an office downtown will mean sitting in a cubicle and attending meetings remotely instead, they argued.
A number of staffers said the return-to-office mandate takes away valuable family and leisure time, contributes to stress and demoralization, and costs real money. “As a blanket and rigid policy, it disproportionately harms parents and caregivers who must secure new, costly childcare to cover mandated office days,” one staffer wrote. “It places the greatest strain on lower-wage workers and especially single working parents. The mandate forces parents to spend less time with their children, so they can sit in a cubicle alone with a headset, taking the same Teams calls they would at home. It forces employees to budget for new expenses (childcare, gas, parking, etc.) in a burgeoning recession when gas, groceries, and utility prices are on the rise.”
“Many staff moved to more affordable housing when positions were fully remote. That is how many of us are surviving,” another staffer wrote. “The long-term effects of this lowered productivity will negatively impact the work we do and the providers we support.”
Several staffers raised concerns about crowding in the county’s downtown office spaces, including King Street Center and the Chinook Building. The county scaled back on office space during the pandemic, and is now scrambling to find places for workers to sit. One staffer from the Department of Public Defense said staffers will now be forced to conduct client interviews from offices where three desks have been crammed into spaces built for one, compromising confidentiality in the name of “boots on the ground” and office camaraderie.
Asked about the employees’ concerns, Zahilay spokeswoman Callie Craighead said the executive wasn’t taking a “one-size-fits-all approach” and has, for example, allowed employees to meet their return-to-office requirements by working from county offices outside downtown Seattle. “Departments are currently developing plans to meet the three-day in-office expectation while continuing to preserve telework flexibility where possible,” Craighead said. “This includes coordinating in-office schedules and using existing space creatively.”
Responding to concerns about new expenses and the need for work-life balance, Craighead said, “The Executive recognizes that employees are balancing many considerations, including commute times and family responsibilities. As the father of a newborn and a toddler, he understands firsthand how important flexibility is for working families. His goal is to strike a thoughtful balance between maintaining the flexibility we value and strengthening in-person collaboration so the County can continue delivering strong results for residents.”
Something should be done about city employees and other public service workers having to live outside the city. It’s not just bad for them…that’s city tax dollars being spent outside the city on rent and other expenses that should circulate in the city. It’s been said elsewhere that if you can’t live in the city where you work, you may be working in a theme park.