In Part 2 of our interview, the mayor talks about the police chief and potential cuts to SPD’s budget, the future of the city’s CARE alternative first responder team, and what’s happening with her affordability agenda.

By Erica C. Barnett

PubliCola sat down this week with Mayor Katie Wilson to talk about how her agenda is going at six months in. This is Part 2 of our interview, which took place at City Hall on Tuesday morning. Read Part 1 here.

PubliCola (ECB):  Let’s shift gears to SPD. You decided to keep Police Chief Shon Barnes when you came in. You said you’re going to evaluate his performance and decide how to proceed. Have you made any progress on that evaluation?

Mayor Katie Wilson (KW): I am very hopeful about the relationship that Chief Barnes and I are building, and the work that we’re doing with Chief Barnes and SPD, especially around neighborhood of policing models.

ECB: So are you planning to keep him on as chief?

KW: I’m not making an announcement right now. [Pauses]. Yes, I’m retaining Chief Barnes, and we’re working on a number of things.

ECB: Are you concerned by any of the stuff that has come out on PubliCola and elsewhere about anti-LGBTQ statements and actions by Barnes, his deputies, and SPD officers, and the culture of SPD in general?

KW: Absolutely. And that’s one of the things that we’re working on. I think obviously SPD is a complicated department with a complicated history, and I also don’t think that leadership change changes that. So there’s really deep work that needs to happen within the department, and I’m confident that through a partnership with Chief Barnes, we can make some progress.

ECB: Barnes has said a few times now that he plans to keep hiring at the same pace even though the department’s own budget director said SPD will have to slow down hiring to stay within the budget. Councilmember Bob Kettle has said the same thing. At the same time, I’ve heard that you asked SPD to come up with $20 million in cuts. What would that level of cut look like, and what will you do if the police chief disagrees and keeps hiring?

KW: I’m the mayor. This is ultimately direction that’s coming from my office. We have not directed SPD to slow hiring at this point, and we are working with them very closely with the aim of making sure that they remain within their budget for this year,

ECB: And will there be budget cuts to SPD next year?

KW: We have asked all departments, including SPD, to model cuts, and we’re in that deliberative budget process. There are many things, many variables, but we have asked all departments to model cuts, anticipating that all departments will need to take some kind of cut.

ECB: If you propose an actual cut, conservative media like KOMO are going to scream that you’re defunding the police. How likely is it that we’ll actually see cuts to the police budget?

KW: That’s not just up to me, that’s also up to the council. Big picture, we’re in a very challenging budget situation, where we’re facing a shortfall of $175 million. Plus, JumpStart [tax] revenues are certainly not increasing significantly. And so we’ll have to make some hard decisions across the board.

ECB: Your fire district proposal would have really helped with the budget. Obviously, it’s not happening. So, what else is left? Raiding JumpStart even more?

KW: I mean, yes, it is an option to dig deeper into JumpStart, which means basically cuts to affordable housing. Capital gains tax is an option, but it’s not something where we would see revenue in the short term. It might take a couple years to get that up and running, so that doesn’t [help with] next year’s budget. Obviously, raising JumpStart is also an option. We’re still working on other progressive revenue ideas, but we don’t have a silver bullet.

For me, the bottom line is, we are going to be trying to preserve programs and services that directly serve Seattle residents, that contribute to a city that’s affordable and livable, and support our most vulnerable communities. So there’s definitely values guiding where we might choose to cut. And we’re also in the process now of talking with each council member to understand what their priorities are, the things that they would absolutely want to be preserved, so that we can try to transmit a budget where they see their priorities represented.

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

Support PubliCola

ECB: What’s going to happen to the CARE Team [whose authority was sharply curtailed in the last police contract]? Do you see a way forward for them?

KW: Obviously there are constraints in the police contract, but we’ve been working with the CARE Team and with SPD, and there’s plenty of work out there. There’s plenty of people in crisis, so it’s really a matter of how do we get the CARE team to a place where they’re serving people in crisis. And I think there’s a lot of opportunities to do that, that may be in some cases outside of the 911 dispatch system. So we’re working on making sure that we’re fully utilizing that team.

ECB: CARE is integrated into the 911 dispatch system [911 is known as the CARE Department]—what would it mean to take them out of that system?

KW: I haven’t heard like the latest on what that looks like, but I know that we’ve been working with them and SPD, to try to make sure that they’re not sitting idle.

ECB: If you talk to [CARE Department Chief] Amy Barden, she would say, ‘We’re supposed to be a co-equal department with the fire and police departments, and we can’t go into parking lots‘ [because of the contract].

KW: Yeah, I’m, very, very aware.

ECB: You’ve announced legislation that would ban rental junk fees, and you decided not to move forward with proposals to change the three-day notice requirement for evictions and overturn the roommate law. You’ve also delayed changes to the Mandatory Housing Affordability program that developers say they need to move housing projects forward. The comprehensive plan update is delayed by a lawsuit, which is outside your control. Is there anything else moving forward on affordability this year?

KW: There’s so many pieces to housing. I ran on affordable and abundant housing, and the things that you need to do to advance it are legion. I think what I realized is that for a lot of constituencies on the outside, they want to see more of a vision on housing, and when we’re moving forward with just one piece, then people look at that and they’re like, ‘Oh, that’s your vision on housing, but what about this, what about this, what about this?’ And it kind of accentuates that feeling of, ‘Why weren’t we brought in?’

So I think what we’re trying to do here is a little bit of a reset, where we can set a table, bring people in, and look at what is it going to take to accelerate housing, from the private market all the way to affordable housing and permanent support housing. Including people’s concerns about displacement, which are totally valid. We’re going to keep it a tight process, but what I’m hoping will come out of that is a little bit more of, ‘Here’s our work plan on housing for the next four years.’ And so that is a process that we’re about to embark on that I think will give us a more coherent vision for housing affordability.

When I think about affordability, housing is core, obviously, but food is a big part of this. Free preschool lunches—I think that’s a really impactful investment that we’re making. Honestly, in this very difficult budget process, I think the fight is going to be over how to retain funding for existing food security programs at the city. There was a lot that was added in the last budget cycle as one-time, like the expansion of Fresh Bucks, so we are going to have to figure out in this budget how to maintain those.

Obviously, the FEPP levy implementation included significant expansions of subsidized child care and preschool program that are certainly affordability investments. I think there’s a larger conversation around child care, which is also not just about subsidy, but also about the supply side, and what it takes to open and operate childcare. We’re working with the business community on what they’re doing to facilitate childcare. That’s a conversation that I think we’re going to be teeing up before the end of the year, but it’s not going to result in policy before the end of the year.

ECB The best thing about the World Cup for me, and I think for a lot of people, has been being able to just walk around in Pioneer Square without cars, and there’s food trucks and there’s excitement and there’s people, and it’s just a vibe. So have you given any thought to taking some of the lessons from that experience, like pedestrianizing the streets, or allowing food trucks, or any of the other things that have made downtown an exciting place to be over these past few weeks?

KW: I think that the last few weeks in Seattle have been amazing, and people are discovering their city anew, and we’ve been doing a lot of thinking about how do we keep that momentum going, how do we do more of this? Obviously, I’m a big fan of pedestrianizing spaces, and I think that the vitality of our city depends on having of people-centered spaces where people can go and hang out and go to restaurants and all that. So yeah, we’re thinking about how we can carry that forward, and I don’t have any specific plans to announce right now, but we’re working on that.