Category: City Council

City Council, Elections, Mayor Wilson

Greater Seattle: Primary Election Edition

By Josh Feit

Mayor Wilson > Theories of Mayor Wilson’s Demise

As the mainstream media and the Seattle Times pounce on Mayor Wilson, please keep their bias (and incoherence) in mind.

As fans (and endorsers) of former mayor Bruce Harrell, the Seattle Times hasn’t liked Wilson from the start. Long before the brouhaha over now-former police chief Shon Barnes, they were hyperventilating about Wilson’s supposed gaffes. What that meant was that they didn’t agree with her support for State Sen. Jamie Pedersen’s millionaires tax. (Of course, they now love it because Pedersen is Exhibit A in their argument that last week’s election amounted to a backlash against progressives.)

If you can overlook the contradictions in that line of thinking, can I interest you in a victorious peace deal to open the Strait of Hormuz?

I also don’t follow their objection to firing Barnes in the first place. Or did they do a 180 on that one too, now that Erica has made any defense of  the OOO chief laughable thanks to the comprehensive reporting she did on his schedule?

It’s true that the city council is steamed at the mayor—and has been, as PubliCola has reported, for a host of reasons that date back to well before Wilson pushed Barnes out earlier this month. But tension between the second and seventh floors is hardly new—and certainly not grounds for the kind of hyperventilating at the Seattle Times.

The premature death notices are wishful thinking. And I must say: If wacky temporary councilmember Debora Juarez —who went on KOMO recently to say she had “no confidence in this administration”—is your champion, you don’t have a bead on the Seattle electorate. P.s. The progressive candidate in last week’s primary running to fill Juarez’s open D5 seat, Nilu Jenks, is currently beating the establishment choice Julie Kang, 54 to 33 percent.

Get a bead on this, though: Last week, popular lefty council member Alexis Mercedes Rinck turned to supposedly down-and-out Mayor Wilson for backup on her new, progressive Mamdani-esque legislation to stop supermarkets from gouging poor people with what amounts to surge pricing for groceries.

15,288 > 7,327, 11,085, or 6,635

In more evidence that we aren’t looking at a reversal of 2025’s progressive sweep, those are the number of votes cast for the winner of each District 5 council primary, in reverse-chronological order going back to 2015 (the first year of district elections.) That’s Nilu Jenks’ vote total this year, followed by Cathy Moore in 2023 and Debora Juarez in 2019 and 2015.

In addition to getting more votes than any previous primary winner, Jenks also got the highest percentage of any primary winner, and is the first D5 candidate to ever come out of the primary with a firm majority of the vote—currently 54 percent to her more conservative challenger Julie Kang’s 33 percent. (Not all ballots have been counted).

Granted, the field in D5 was smaller this year than previous primaries, with four candidates rather than the six, eight, or ten that showed up in previous elections. But this year’s D5 turnout was higher than usual, too—around 29,000 voters so far, more than any previous primary in the district—and Jenks’ vote is larger than the combined total of the top two contenders (Moore and Christiana ObeySumner) in 2023’s 10-way primary. Jenks ran in that primary but only got 19 percent, so her showing this year represents a real and significant growth in support.

Jenks was endorsed by council member Rinck, while Kang has support from the council’s centrist bloc—including Maritza Rivera and Bob Kettle alongside former conservative council president Sara Nelson.

Progressive Challenger > Longtime Incumbent

We can also look to South Seattle for evidence of progressive primary results. In the race for Position 1 state representative in the 37th District, newcomer Kelabe Tewolde is leading 28-year incumbent Rep. Sharon Tomiko Santos 51 to 48 percent. Tewolde—a progressive, density advocate, and current member of the Seattle Planning Commission—was endorsed by Tech for Housing, The Urbanist, and Rinck.

City Council, labor, Mayor Wilson, Media, Police

This Week on PubliCola: More Details on Barnes’ Absences and Departure, KOMO May De-Unionize, and More

By Erica C. Barnett

Monday, August 3

New Column! Introducing Greater Seattle

PubliCola co-founder Josh Feit has a new column based on a simple premise: X > (is greater than” Y, as in “The Case for Firing SPD Chief Shon Barnes > The Case for Keeping Shon Barnes,” the first of three Greater Than items this week.

Tuesday, August 4

Issues With Former Police Chief Barnes Weren’t Just About His Travel or Where He Lived

A lot has been made (appropriately so) of former police chief Shon Barnes’ outsize response when reporter Connor Nash asked him about my reporting on his frequent absences from Seattle. But Barnes’ tenure in Seattle was already tenuous, thanks to a litany of other issues ranging from SPD’s treatment of the LGBTQ+ community under his leadership to his seeming lack of interest in partnering with the city’s team of trained mental health first responder.

Wednesday, August 5

Kettle Blames Mayor for “Unconscionable” Delay in Surveillance Expansion

When City Council President Joy Hollingsworth introduced a proposal to spend $250,000 in funding for surveillance cameras that can’t be used this year to hire violence interruptors from We Deliver Care, Councilmember Bob Kettle had a bit of a meltdown, saying he would vote against the entire midyear budget if they didn’t set the money aside for cameras (which the budget director had just explained could not be spent on cameras this year).

SPD Puts Former Chief’s Calendar in “Lockdown”

We would finally get a (mostly) complete copy of former chief Barnes’ camera later in the week, but as of Wednesday, SPD told us to file a records request and wait. Last week, they said they’d be able to provide Barnes’ schedule no problem, but after he left, they said it was “locked down” in some way and no longer accessible. 🤔

Thursday, August 6

Former Police Chief’s Payout Will Be Higher Than Previously Known

PubliCola reported exclusively that former chief Barnes’ would get an even larger payout than the $700,000 package that was previously known. Read on down the list for more details on the extra bonus he received when he signed a no-sue agreement.

KCRHA Still at Full Staffing as Contract Transition Begins

The city and county announced this week that they’ll be hiring 23 and 11 new staffers, respectively, to manage the transition of homeless service contracts as the King County Regional Homelessness Authority shrinks down to just a few “core” functions. Although the “rightsizing” was announced more than a month ago, the KCRHA has not made any layoffs, and still has 73 employees.

Friday, August 7

A More Complete Calendar Shows Former Police Chief Was Out of Office Almost 40 Percent of the Time This Year

Remember how a bunch of local commentators went on KIRO, KUOW, and other local shows to call my reporting dishonest, unfair, and false last week (and how one of them said I should be “ashamed”?) Hopefully they saw this post, which confirms that Barnes was, or planned to be out of town or otherwise off duty, including at his family home in Chicago, at least 12 weeks this year—including three weeks from late July to mid-August.

Barnes Got An Additional $41,000 Payout

On Friday, PubliCola exclusively obtained the details about Barnes’ vacation payout: Despite being out of town 40 percent of the time, he still somehow had 29 days’ paid time off accrued, according to the city. The additional money—a little less than a minimum wage worker makes in Seattle, btw—brings Barnes’ total payout to more than $741,000.

KOMO Reporters Will Vote on De-Unionizing

Reporters and anchors at KOMO filed a petition with the National Labor Relations Board to end their representation by SAG-AFTRA; the vote’s next week. One likely factor behind the push is that the staffers all negotiate their own contracts individually, and SAG-AFTRA’s guarantee is reportedly far below what any of the on-air talent makes.

Also this week: I made the rounds of local podcasts, talking about Barnes’ resignation, Tuesday’s election results, and other news from this week with City Cast Seattle, KUOW’s Seattle Now, and as always, our weekly podcast, Seattle Nice.

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City Council, Mayor Wilson, Police, Privacy, public disclosure

Kettle Blames Mayor for “Unconscionable” Delay in Surveillance Expansion, SPD Puts Former Chief’s Calendar in “Lockdown”

1. A council committee meeting about midyear changes to the city budget went briefly off the rails on Tuesday, after Joy Hollingsworth proposed using $250,000 in unused funding for police surveillance cameras to pay for community violence interruptors from the group We D eliver Care for the rest of the year. The money is a one-time expenditure; starting next year, the city expects King County to pick up the tab as part of its”mitigation” for a mental health crisis center the county is opening in Hollingsworth’s district.

Nine surveillance-related SPD positions are sitting vacant while the NYU Policing Project completes a privacy and security audit of the cameras. City budget director Aly Pennuci said any money from the unfilled positions may be needed to fund a “significant request” for more spending on SPD, which appears to have once again overspent its budget this year.

Council budget hawk Maritza Rivera, who had already questioned some of the other midyear adds, seemed satisfied with that explanation. But public safety chair (and camera fanatic) Bob Kettle was not, taking the mic to bellow that he found it “unconscionable” that Wilson would not simply expand the camera system without finishing the study.

“I am confident how the NYU report is going to come out, and then the mayor should push forward on the CCTV cameras, and SPD can obligate those funds here in this calendar year,” Kettle said. “And I would note that is unconscionable in terms of what the mayor has been doing with this program, because we vetted this program, we built in so many protections in this program, we built in so many safeguards, protocols from top to bottom. So the fact that she hasn’t done anything on those nine positions is unconscionable.”

In fact, the city council rushed a second round of cameras through last year before any study could be done, asserting at the time that there was no way they could be used to violate people’s privacy. The Policing Project is doing the review the council declined to do in its haste to get cameras up before Bruce Harrell left office.

After he finished criticizing Wilson for doing basic due diligence before unleashing police surveillance citywide, Kettle said that even though he supported violence interruption programs  “110 percent,” he would vote against funding this violence prevention program—and oppose the whole supplemental budget—if it used a penny of  2026 camera funding for anything other than cameras.

The midyear budget also includes funding to pay for universal school lunches during the upcoming school year, announced last week in a joint statement by Mayor Katie Wilson and city councilmembers. The money will come from $5 million the city no longer plans to spend on Northgate Commons, a mixed-use Seattle Housing Authority project near the Northgate light rail station (the city’s contribution will go from $20 million to $15 million).

2. Last Monday, several days before Mayor Katie Wilson asked then-police chief Shon Barnes to resign, I (and other reporters) requested Barnes’ calendar. The version I received begins abruptly on March 29, and has been color-coded and altered to remove Barnes’ original plans for the last week of July and first week of August, when he returned to Seattle from planned time off to respond to a shooting at Seattle Center.

Each time I followed up to request Barnes’ full calendar last week, SPD assured me they were “working on it” and would have the missing months’ schedule to me shortly.

But this Monday, a week after I originally requested Barnes’ calendar, an SPD spokesman told me that because Barnes resigned, his schedule is now “locked down” and can only be accessed through a public disclosure request. As I’ve reported, getting records out of SPD often takes months or years, meaning that a document SPD could have simply handed over last week won’t be public until their public disclosure office gets around to providing it.

Despite this newly imposed delay, we do know a little about Barnes’ calendar for the first few months of the year. Between information SPD provided reporters last week, PubliCola’s previous reporting, and Barnes’ social media, it’s clear that between late last December and the end of March, Barnes took a 15-day vacation, was in Chicago with his family for at least nine additional days, and spent five days doing recruitment at a basketball tournament held by a conference of small HBCUs that includes Barnes’ 2,300-student alma mater.

As with his calendar we reviewed in 2025, Barnes’ weekends were mostly empty, with several Fridays preceding unscheduled weekends marked as “unavailable,” “out of office,” or “focus time,” with nothing specific on the calendar.

City Council, Density, education, Mayor Wilson, Police

This Week on PubliCola: August 2, 2026

Police chief resigns, Burien city manager fired, school meals resolved, and much more.

By Erica C. Barnett

It was a busy, busy week for PubliCola, with news about now-former Seattle police chief Shon Barnes starting on Sunday night, when we broke the news that he was out of town during the mass shooting at Seattle Center, an absence we later learned contributed to a five-hour delay in information getting out about the incident. I spent the week burning up the phones and breaking news.

Meanwhile, on KUOW’s Week In Review this week, two guests (including one of KUOW’s editors) dedicated a huge chunk of time to insulting PubliCola and our work, calling me an “influencer” who just “hung out a shingle” and “called myself a news person.” (They didn’t name PubliCola directly, but every reference was to our reporting).

KUOW editor and reporter Catherine Smith and their guest Angela Poe Russell, who’s making the rounds as a Barnes defender, erroneously claimed that every police chief going back to Gil Kerlikowske has been out of town as much as Barnes has. “Don’t give us one-sided narrative and call it journalism,” Russell said, and Smith agreed that I didn’t have the goods, saying it was not “fair” for me to “criticize him for that when other chiefs travel like that.”

Russell and Smith presented zero evidence for their assertions. Smith claimed her story this week included information about those past chiefs’ schedules that contradicted my reporting, but it did not; the only “reporting” she had on that subject was a summary of a spokesman saying “Barnes’ level of travel is consistent with past chiefs of police.”

Then Russell said biased and false reporting like mine was why people should support public radio like KUOW instead The host of Week In Review, a show on which I am sometimes a guest, did not push back as the two women insulted me and said my work this week was inaccurate. (For the record, I’ve been a full-time reporter in Seattle since 2001, and at PubliCola since 2009—and I stand by my reporting).

So! This is your reminder that PubliCola is a paywall-free independent news source brought to, and our ONLY source of funding is direct contributions from readers who appreciate this work. If you can, please consider making a one-time or ongoing contribution via Patreon, Paypal, Venmo, or check, or subscribing to my Substack newsletter below. Thank you for reading and supporting PubliCola!

Monday, July 27

Council’s School Meals Plan Will Require Cuts to Other Services

An early plan by city councilmembers Joy Hollingsworth, Dionne Foster, and Dan Strauss to dip into the city’s general fund to pay for universal school meals would have required Mayor Katie Wilson to come up with cuts elsewhere totaling around $3 million. The proposal, which changed later in the week to one the mayor and council could both accept, came after Hollingsworth and Foster proposed delaying universal school meal funding to pay for take-home food vouchers for low-income kids as part of the Families, Education, Preschool, and Promise (FEPP) levy.

Seattle Police Chief Out of Town During Mass Shooting

I broke the news on Sunday that then-police chief Shon Barnes was out of town at a conference in Dallas during a shooting at Seattle Center, part of a planned absence of at least two weeks during the height of the summer’s public festival season. As I previously reported, Barnes’ family and permanent home are in Chicago, where he has traveled frequently, and he also spent much of his time as chief giving keynote speeches and attending out-of-town events.

Tuesday, July 28

Confrontation With Reporter Was Just “Passion on Full Display,” Police Chief Says; OPA Complaint Filed

When South Seattle Emerald reporter Connor Nash asked Barnes about my reporting on his frequent absences from the city, Barnes lashed out verbally; his chief of staff and longtime friend Alex Ricketts inserted himself physically between Barnes and Nash and hustled Barnes away. Asked about his outburst at a press conference, Barnes claimed he was just being “passionate about what I do as a police office.” One person who disagreed with Barnes’ takeaway filed a complaint against him with the city’s Office of Police Accountability. Although KUOW’s story described the OPA complaint as a mere assertion by me as an individual, I obtained a copy of the complaint and quoted it in my piece.

Wednesday, July 29

On Narrow Vote, Council Gets Rid of Local Appeal Process that Delays Land Use Legislation

On a 5-4 vote, with Bob Kettle serving as a swing vote, the Seattle City Council approved legislation to eliminate one of several avenues for opponents to appeal land-use legislation, such as the city’s comprehensive plan. The bill, sponsored by Councilmember Eddie Lin, eliminates pre-legislative appeals to the city’s hearing examiner while still allowing people to appeal legislation to the state Growth Management Hearings Board or to King County Superior Court after it passes.

Partial, Altered Schedule Shows Police Chief Out of Town Nearly 7 Weeks So Far This Year

A partial schedule that was altered to removed time then-police chief Barnes had previously planned to be away in August showed that the chief was out of town, mostly at conferences and visiting his family, about seven weeks over less than three months. (SPD only provided an accurate schedule between March 29 and July 26; Barnes had also planned time off in August, but the schedule was altered to show him in town after the shooting). In other words, Barnes was out of town or otherwise not on the job at least 40 percent of time time during the 17 weeks for which SPD provided his schedule.

Multiple Sources Say Police Chief Barnes is Out; Mayor’s Office Not Responding to Questions

As of Wednesday, what we knew about Barnes’ departure was vague and unverified; my sources told me Barnes had started calling some of his captains to say he’d been fired, and that he had been seen entering Wilson’s office late in the day and leaving a couple hour later. At the time, Mayor Katie Wilson’s office was not responding to questions; later, it would become clear that she had asked him to resign and he had refused, launching negotiations over a settlement that would not wrap up until late the following day.

Thursday, July 30

Burien Council Fires Controversial City Manager

Burien City Manager Adolfo Bailon, who’s been on paid leave pending an investigation into his conduct on the job, was fired by the city council this week. In addition to months of pay while the investigation was ongoing, he’ll get six months’ salary as a settlement—about $117,000. You can read about some of the many issues that have been raised about his performance in my post.

Mayor and Council Say They’ve Found Money for Universal School Meals After All

As mentioned above, the mayor and city council manage to identify “underspend” in the 2026 budget that will pay for universal school meals, with the FEPP levy picking up the tab for both low-income food vouchers and universal school meals the following year. The city is banking on the success of the so-called millionaires’ tax at the ballot box in November to pay for school meals after that.

Police Chief Shon Barnes is Out, His Deputy Andre Sayles Will Serve as Interim Chief

Mayor Wilson made it official at 3:30 on Thursday afternoon: Police Chief Shon Barnes resigned and will be replaced on an interim basis by one of his two deputies, Andre Sayles. Negotiations over the terms of Barnes’ settlement stretched into Thursday, contributing to a frustrating delay in information out of the mayor’s office.

Friday, July 31

Wilson, New Interim Police Chief Sayles Address Barnes’ Ouster, SPD’s Future

At a packed, rowdy press conference, Wilson and new interim chief Sayles took questions about Barnes’ resignation and the mayor’s plans for appointing a new police chief. I reported that Barnes will receive a total of $700,000 as a settlement. Although reporters repeatedly demanded that Wilson lay out her reasons for firing Barnes, the settlement agreement reportedly includes standard non-disparagement language that would prevent Wilson from going into too many specifics.

(That didn’t stop the Seattle Times editorial board from accusing her of firing Barnes to create a “distraction” from her incompetence and saying without specific reasons, the public would be right to believe he was “scapegoated.”)

Also this week: We did two Seattle Nice podcasts about the police chief’s departure—recording one on Wednesday, during the chaotic period when rumors were swirling and we didn’t know the details, and another on Saturday, after the mayor’s decision was official and Sayles (whose family also lives out of state) was officially the interim chief. The second one is behind a paywall as bonus content—subscribe to Seattle Nice on Patreon to listen now, or check out the preview first!

 

City Council, Mayor Wilson, Police

Wilson, New Interim Police Chief Sayles Address Barnes’ Ouster, SPD’s Future

By Erica C. Barnett

This post has been updated to include the information that former chief Barnes is receiving a $700,000 payout to leave the city.

A press conference with Mayor Katie Wilson and new interim Police Chief Andre Sayles revolved, somewhat predictably, around questions about why Wilson didn’t talk to the press sooner both after Sunday’s mass shooting and yesterday, when she finally announced at 3:30 that she had asked for Seattle Police Chief Shon Barnes’ resignation.

Sayles, Barnes’ replacement, was previously the police chief of Beloit, Wisconsin, a small town near the Illinois border. Barnes hired Sayles as his second deputy chief as part of a hiring spree that included several other brand-new executive positions. During the press conference, Sayles confirmed that his family, like Barnes’, lives in Illinois (not Wisconsin, as I previously reported); property records indicate they live in a town called Belvidere, just across the Wisconsin border.

“I do frequently go back to visit my family, probably about every eight weeks or so, but my wife spends most of her time out here with me” at a second home in East King County, Sayles said. “We’re looking to make this our home. It’s our area that we can retire from one day. But right now, we have kids that we need to get settled, and one day we’ll make this area our home.”

Wilson emphasized the need for the next permanent police chief to live here full-time and be part of the Seattle community. Unlike Harrell, who appointed Barnes with no public process, Wilson said she’ll appoint a search committee “that reflects the full diversity of Seattle to conduct “a meaningful engagement process.”

Reporters, including many TV reporters who spent much of yesterday fuming about the lack of information from the mayor’s office, also asked why the mayor was firing a chief who’s popular with so many current council members.

Five council members issued statements (and several did interviews) yesterday excoriating the mayor for firing Barnes. Four of the five (Rob Saka, Joy Hollingsworth, Maritza Rivera, Bob Kettle, and Debora Juarez) are centrists elected as a bloc in 2023 and most explicitly supported Harrell over Wilson last year. (Juarez, who described herself as an “elected leader” in an interview with KOMO, declined to run for reelection in 2023 and was appointed last year to replace Cathy Moore, a member of the Class of 2023 who quit less than a year and a half into her term).

Asked about the council’s opposition to her decision, Wilson said, “As the executive of the city, I do have a different window into our police department,” adding that she was confident that she made the right decision.

As I reported yesterday, one reason police took so long to release information about Sunday’s shooting was that the police chief, who spent much of his time out of town and whose family lives in Chicago, was at a conference in Dallas. Barnes reportedly wanted to be briefed on the shooting before he would allow SPD assistant chief Tyrone Davis to brief the press, who had gathered at the scene of the shooting and spent hours irritably standing around waiting for information on the shooting.

Wilson has not directly explained the reason for yesterday’s delay in releasing information. However, my own reporting indicates that Barnes did not agree to a settlement until late afternoon—a full day after rumors that he had been fired began swirling.

Barnes will receive a settlement of $700,000—about two years’ annual salary—as part of his agreement to step down. Wilson wouldn’t say how much he’ll receive; I’ve filed a records request for that information.

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I was able to confirm that Barnes gets to keep the entire $50,000 “lateral hiring bonus” he and several of his new staff received when Harrell hired him, a story I broke last August. The city approved the lateral hiring bonus during what Harrell and most of the city council claimed was a police hiring “crisis,” and it was designed explicitly to recruit “new police officers”—not top executives—from other police departments. Under the law, any officer who receives the bonus and doesn’t remain at the city for five years has to pay the bonus back on a pro-rated basis, so Barnes has received an exemption from that requirement.

Although the mayor declined to elaborate on why she gave Barnes the boot, it’s clear that his temperament and frequent travel out of town, both to his family home in Chicago and to conferences around the country, were factors in the decision. Barnes was also reportedly unpopular with many rank and file officers, and gave short shrift to the CARE Team, a group of social workers created to respond to 911 crisis calls that don’t require police. Barnes did not meet with CARE Department Chief Amy Barden for more than a year, and CARE has been hamstrung since last year by a police union contract that restricts what kind of calls they can respond to.

In searching for a new chief, Wilson said, she’ll be looking for a person “who can earn the respect of our police force while also leading needed changes to culture and protocol in a way that’s firm and fair. I will be looking for someone who can practice clear communication in stressful situations. I will be looking for someone who is consistently present in Seattle, keeping travel to an appropriate minimum, and who also ensures that when they are away, there is sufficient SPD leadership in town to guide our city from any emergency.” Wilson also name-checked the CARE Team, saying she wants a police chief “who understands the value of our alternative crisis response system, our CARE and fire departments, and our service providers.”

We discussed Barnes’ ouster, which was still unconfirmed at the time we recorded, on this week’s edition of Seattle Nice, and will be doing another episode over the weekend, so stay tuned.

City Council, education

Burien Council Fires Controversial City Manager; Mayor and Council Say They’ve Found Money for Universal School Meals After All
Burien City Manager Adolfo Bailon

1. Burien City Manager Adolfo Bailon was fired by the Burien City Council earlier this week on a 4-1 vote, with Councilmember Kevin Schilling absent. His last day will be August 27.

The firing followed a council vote more than three months ago to put Bailon on paid leave while an outside consultant, Kathleen Haggard (of the Haggard-Ganson law firm) conducted an investigation into his conduct as city manager. The council has discussed this investigation in executive session, but has not made any of the details public; PubliCola has requested a copy of the investigation report.

A short list of issues that have come up during Bailon’s tenure as city manager would take up many paragraphs, but they include: Shooting down efforts to stand up a homeless shelter on land owned by the city, threatening to sue a church that hosted an encampment; turning down $1 million in shelter funding from King County; berating council members over their views on homelessness, filing a complaint against one of those councilmembers over his tweets, demanding the removal of Burien’s police chief, and spending much of his time calling 911 on unsheltered people in the park outside his office.

Although the resolution passed this week cites the investigation findings, Bailon was officially fired without cause, allowing him to collect six months’ pay as severance, in addition to receiving his full salary during his nearly four-month leave. During this time, the city of Burien has also been paying interim city manager Bob Larson to serve in Bailon’s stead.

We’ve asked the city for Bailon’s exact salary. According to the Washington Citizens’ Commission on Salaries for Elected Officials, Bailon made $224,664 in 2024, up from $215,000 when he was hired in 2022. Extrapolating from that two-year cost of living adjustment, Bailon’s. current salary is a little under $235,000, meaning he’ll receive around $117,000 in severance pay.

During the meeting, Schilling went on a brief tirade after Mayor Sarah Moore opened up public comment on Bailon’s firing, which the council had just officially announced (although Schilling telegraphed that it was happening earlier, before the council went into executive session.) Opening public comment at 10pm, when “no one’s here,” was a “charade” and “ludicrous,” Schilling said. “This is pretty crazy, Mayor,” Schilling said.

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Then, referring to the one person who remained in council chambers and wanted to speak, Schilling said, “The only member of the public who’s here is Quinten [Thompson], and Quinton’s here because he gets driven home after the council meeting.” Thompson, who frequently attends Burien council meetings, uses a wheelchair and gets around via Access van.

Schilling complained that all the comments would be in favor of removing Bailon, then left. Alex Andrade, the one vote in Bailon’s favor, called a point of order to tell a speaker that it was “improper” for him call the behavior that got Bailon fired “abusive.”

Former city councilmember Cydney Moore, speaking during public comment, said it was “incredibly disrespectful and dismssive the way that the current, present audience member was referenced by somebody on council as though their presence is not absolutely intentional and not just passive because they are waiting for a ride. That’s a member of our community who is very active and should be treated with … respect.”

2. After a public outcry, the Seattle City Council has backed down on a proposal to trade universal school meals for low-income grocery vouchers during the upcoming school year, announcing earlier this week that they have reached a deal with Mayor Katie Wilson to provide both immediate universal meals and the vouchers by using “underspend” from an unspecified city department.

The council faced backlash from supporters of universal school meals when they voted 6-3 for an amendment to the spending plan for the Families, Education, Preschool and Promise Levy, sponsored by Councilmembers Joy Hollingsworth and Dionne Foster, that delayed funding for universal meals until the 2027-2028 school year. The amendment took $3 million that would have funded universal school meals starting this year and redistributed it across all six years of the levy to provide $500,000 for food subsidies for up to 5,000 low-income families, or about $100 per family per year.

The new spending plan keeps the food vouchers, which supporters say will provide meals for low-income kids on weekends and over holidays during the school year. Funding for school meals would come from the levy beginning in the 2027-2028 school year under the plan announced this week. The proposal doesn’t address what the city will do if a state tax on income above $1 million is overturned by voters in November or subsequently by a court challenge; instead, it assumes the tax will begin funding school meals statewide in 2029.