Category: City Council

City Council, homelessness, King County, Mayor Wilson, Police

This Week on PubliCola: June 27, 2026

Discouraging homelessness numbers, SPD hiring debate, King County budget shenanigans, and much more.

By Erica C. Barnett

Monday, June 22

Allegation: Civil Rights Office Director, Staff Went to Strip Club During City-Sponsored Civil Rights Trip

A recently concluded investigation into Seattle Office for Civil Rights director Derrick Wheeler-Smith, which found Wheeler-Smith subjected a subordinate to “unwelcome conduct of a sexually explicit nature,” details allegations that Wheeler-Smith and several other men went to a strip club in Alabama during an official City of Seattle-sponsored trip to civil rights history sites in the South, PubliCola exclusively reported.

Tuesday, June 23

Report: Homelessness in King County Continues to Grow, with 21 Percent Increase in Unsheltered Homelessness Since 2024

The latest biennial count of the region’s homeless population, which has been based since 2022 on interviews and statistical sampling rather than a physical count, found that homelessness overall increased 9 percent—a data point the King County Regional Homelessness Authority characterized as good news because it represents a slowed pace of increase—but that unsheltered homelessness increased 21 percent, largely because of the closure of some family shelters.

Wednesday, June 24

County’s Midyear Budget Sparks Controversy Over Harm Reduction, Human Service Contracts, and Lobbyists

Three King County budget-related items in this Morning Fizz:

• First, County Councilmember Rod Dembowski’s proposal to defund a successful harm reduction program that connects drug users to services by offering safer smoking supplies will not move forward. After PubliCola broke the story last week, Dembowski replaced the proposal with a request for information on the program.

• Second, Dembowski’s proposal to add more process to every grant or contract issued through the county’s Best Starts for Kids program—subject of a recent high-profile audit—got scaled back to a level the county’s Department of Community and Human Services said it can live with. New grants and contracts will still require a letter to the county council making a number of financial and other guarantees about each program.

• Finally, a majority of the county council voted to retain the county’s longtime federal lobbyist for another year after County Executive Girmay Zahilay put out a request for proposals and hired a new lobbyist. Councilmembers accused Zahilay of taking unilateral action, which his office says isn’t true; in fact, they say, a council representative has been present at every step of the hiring process. The council decision to hire two separate lobbyists will cost the county about $200,000 a year.

Thursday, June 25

Mayor Hires Temporary New Comms Team; Councilmembers Tell SPD: Keep Hiring, We’ll Pay for It!

Thursday’s Fizz featured an exclusive about Mayor Katie Wilson’s decision to hire political consultant, podcaster, and KVRU Radio co-owner Crystal Nicole Fincher as well as longtime SDOT spokesperson Dawn Schellenberg to help craft a new communications strategy and fill in while the mayor finds a permanent new communications director, respectively.

And several members of the city council, including Rob Saka and Bob Kettle, rejected the idea of slowing down Seattle Police Department hiring, as suggested by SPD budget staff, in order to above going above budget this year and in next year’s budget. Saka suggested that slowing the pace of hiring would be tantamount to defunding the police.

Friday, June 26 How Do We Get Transit Champions on Transit Boards?

In a fascinating guest editorial, nondriver movement leader Anna Zivarts explores what it would take to get actual transit riders on the Sound Transit board, looking at how other cities have tackled the problem of transit agencies whose decision makers don’t represent or understand the challenges faced by people who rely on transit every day.

Also this week: Check out the latest episode of Seattle Nice, where we discussed the dramatic increase in unsheltered homelessness and the latest plan to address drug use and criminal activity around 12th and Jackson.

 

City Council, Mayor Wilson, Police

Mayor Hires Temporary New Comms Team; Councilmembers Tell SPD: Keep Hiring, We’ll Pay for It!

1. Mayor Katie Wilson is hiring two new temporary communications staffers: Crystal Nicole Fincher—the political consultant, podcast host, and co-owner of KVRU community radio—will be Wilson’s strategic communications consultant, and Dawn Schellenberg, a longtime spokesperson for the Seattle Department of Transportation, will temporarily take over the communications director position. As we were first to report, Wilson’s original comms director, Seferiana Day, was asked to step down shortly after returning from months of medical leave earlier this month.

Schellenberg started on Wednesday and Fincher will start next month, according to an internal announcement from Wilson’s chief of staff Esther Handy. Fincher will step away from her other duties while working for the mayor, and both she and Schellenberg will be in their new roles through September, Handy wrote.

Fincher will reportedly be in charge of coming up with a new communications strategy for the mayor, who has garnered a fair amount of negative press over her surveillance camera policy, failure to stand up 500 shelter beds by the World Cup as hoped, and other decisions that many have perceived as strategic blunders or policy moves that don’t align with Wilson’s campaign promises.

Wilson is preparing to hire a permanent communications director. (A member of her communications staff reached out after this article was published to clarify that they are not interviewing yet, but seeking candidates). According to internal and external sources, Deputy Mayor Brian Surratt has communicated that the mayor’s office is looking for a Black man, specifically, to fill the position.

After this piece was published, the mayor’s office reached out to say that they are looking for a diverse candidate pool. In an all-staff email, chief of staff Esther Handy wrote that Wilson’s office “values having a diverse pool of candidates to draw from for our hiring processes,” that the office hopes “to attract candidates from a diverse range of backgrounds and perspectives, including leaders of color within the relevant industry, and that “we hope to draw from a diverse and inclusive applicant pool.”

It seems likely that more changes in the communications office are coming. As we reported, there’s tension between the mayor’s communications and policy shops, with each blaming the other for negative press around recent Wilson decisions, like her announcement that she’d be turning surveillance cameras at the stadiums in time for the World Cup.

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2. Several members of the city council say they’re putting their foots down: No matter how much more money the Seattle Police Department needs to hire the flood of new applicants that have poured in since the passage of a new police contractlast year, they aren’t going to support any hiring slowdown. “Now is not the time to withdraw our sustained investments to boost our officer staffing levels and boost our response times,” Councilmember Rob Saka said at a meeting of the council’s public safety committee on Tuesday, adding that the police budget is “sacrosanct.”

“It’s time to lean in, not tap out,” Saka said.

Given that the city will have to close a nearly $200 million budget shortfall, that could be a problem. Earlier this month, we reported that unless SPD slows down its hiring pace this year, it will go $1.7 million over its 2026 budget, with additional overruns next year if hiring continues at its current pace.

Council central staffer Greg Doss noted that SPD’s ballooning costs are “strictly related” to the salary increases the Seattle Police Officers Guild secured last year from former mayor Bruce Harrell and the city council, which guarantees fully trained new officers a salary of $126,000 a year. And Dan Eder, the former Harrell budget office director who was recently appointed budget director at SPD, said a hiring slowdown is, in fact, “on the table” if SPD can’t find other places in its budget to pay for all the new officers the department is hiring.

“We haven’t yet exhausted all possibilities” for funding the new officers, Eder said. “We’re looking at contacts and non-sworn expenditures. It is possible that if that is not enough savings, that we will not shrink the police force, but we will slow the growth of the police force  for the rest of the year. That’s just a recognition of the dire strait that the city budget finds itself in this year and for the next biennium of the budget. We just don’t feel that there is extra money.”

Saka, along with committee chair Bob Kettle, said slowing down police hiring would be tantamount to defunding the police.

Kettle said he had “indicated to SPD to continue the hiring, to maintain the momentum,” while Saka said the city “repealed the defund movement” via resolution last year. That resolution, which acknowledged people’s general “right” to “feel safe,” arguably had less substance than most nonbinding council resolutions. Among other things, it “formally reversed” the completely nonexistent “prior commitments” by the previous city council to defund and abolish the police.

City Council, Civil Rights, homelessness, Mayor Wilson, public safety

This Week on PubliCola: June 13, 2026
Upheaval at the Mayor’s Office, KCRHA Gets a Lifeline, SPD Hiring Surges, and nine other PubliCola stories you may have missed this week

By Erica C. Barnett

Monday, June 8

Morning Fizz: Wilson Backs Down on Tenant Protection Rollbacks

Fire Department Funding Plan Fizzles

Privacy Advocates Push Back on Surveillance During World Cup

Three stories in this week’s first Morning Fizz.

First up: Mayor Katie Wilson, who had been considering rollbacks to tenant protections requested by local affordable housing developers, has decided not to propose changes to the just cause ordinance that would have made it easier for landlords to evict tenants with three day’s notice and made it harder for renters to take in roommates and family members.

Second, a proposal to address the city’s budget deficit by moving much of the Fire Department’s funding onto a special taxing district—a story PubliCola broke last month—is dead, after the firefighters’ union declined to get on board with the mayor’s plan.

Finally, privacy advocates who supported Wilson’s campaign expressed skepticism at the mayor’s claim that she has seen evidence of a “credible threat” that justified turning surveillance cameras on at the stadiums during the World Cup games.

Tuesday, June 9

Seattle Turned on the Surveillance Cameras Before It Wrote the Rules

In a guest op/ed, anti-surveillance advocate Phil Mocek argued that Wilson decided to turn on police surveillance cameras near the stadiums before the city has even come up with rules for when and how surveillance will be deployed throughout the city.

City, County Plan to “Embed” Consultant to Address Financial Issues at Homelessness Agency

After a flurry of discussions last week, the city and county pulled back on a planned announcement that they would be taking over the homelessness contracts currently managed by the King County Regional Homelessness Authority. Instead, Mayor Wilson and King County Executive Girmay Zahilay announced plans to “embed” a consulting team at the agency to work on addressing financial issues identified in a recent forensic audit.

Wednesday, June 10

New Council Legislation Could Make Your Utility Bills Cheaper

Seattle City Councilmember Dan Strauss is proposing legislation that would expand eligibility for the city’s utility discount program to people at higher income levels over the next few years. Tenants without their own City Light accounts whose landlords use “ratio utility billing systems,” or RUBS, will continue to be ineligible for the discount program.

Auditor: KCRHA’s Corrective Action Plan Fails to Take Audit Findings Seriously

Responding to a “corrective action plan” KCRHA proposed to address the findings in a recent (devastating) forensic audit, the auditors urged local leaders to be skeptical of the KCRHA’s claims. The KCRHA has adopted a fairly dismissive attitude toward the audit, suggesting that most of the serious financial issues identified in the audit have been corrected, are being corrected, or resulted to forces outside their control; the auditors strongly disagree.

Thursday, June 11

Another Upheaval on Mayor Wilson’s Staff as Communications Director Departs

In a staff shakeup that PubliCola has heard won’t be the last, Mayor Wilson asked her communications director, Seferiana Day, to step down, and announced a major overhaul of her org chart (though no new hires). Sources said there’s an ongoing debate over who’s to blame for bad (or a lack of positive) press—the comms team or the mayor and her policy staff.

Friday, June 12

Morning Fizz: Police Chief Says No Plan to Slow Hiring Amid Budget Crunch

City Attorney Says “SOAP Orders Don’t Work” at Aurora Ave. Safety Event

At an event outside Council Chambers to announce actions the city is taking to address gun violence and sex trafficking on Aurora (including street closures and taking back guns from people accused of being involved in shootings), Police Chief Shon Barnes said the department has no plans to slow down on hiring, despite a budget presentation showing that SPD is on track to hire more new officers than it has funding to pay for.

During the same event, City Attorney Erika Evans took a strong position against Stay Out of Areas of Prostitution banishment orders—a bold position in a crowd of SOAP advocates, including the original SOAP sponsor, former councilmember Cathy Moore.

There was some backstage drama surrounding the event, which was originally planned as a council event excoriating the mayor for her lack of action on Aurora. Council-mayor relationships, which range from chilly to hostile, haven’t improved; lately, the council has been refusing invitations to mayoral press conferences as a kind of protest against Wilson’s tendency to announce big initiatives without talking to them first.

Afternoon Fizz:

Union Urges Wilson to Act After Investigation into Civil Rights Director Concludes

KCRHA Proposes 7 New Hires

Two more stories to close out the week. First, PROTEC17, the union that represents workers at the city’s Office for Civil Rights, urged Mayor Wilson to dismiss OCR Director Derrick Wheeler-Smith after an investigation into widespread misconduct claims affirmed at least some of the allegations staff made against the director earlier tthis year.

The KCRHA’s finance committee recommended making seven new hires at the beleaguered agency, despite a recommendation from the city, county, and auditors that the agency institute a hiring freeze.

 

City Council, Mayor Wilson, Police, public safety

Police Chief Says No Plan to Slow Hiring Amid Budget Crunch; City Attorney Says “SOAP Orders Don’t Work” at Aurora Ave. Safety Event
Seattle City Attorney Erika Evans

1. Seattle Police Chief Shon Barnes, responding to a question from PubliCola, said the police department does not plan to slow down hiring, despite a city council presentation this week that concluded, “SPD may need to slow hiring to live within its budget” because the speed at which it’s hiring new officers is outpacing the department’s spending capacity.

“I have not been notified that the police department will slow down on our current hiring plan for this year. We’re moving forward,” Barnes said. “I think we all share [the belief] that we need more police officers, but we also understand the constraints of a budget, and until I hear anything differently, we’re going to continue moving forward.”

A planned briefing of the council’s public safety committee, which was postponed due to time constraints earlier this week, found that SPD hiring will outpace the department’s budget by a projected $1.7 million this year. Recruitment has been up ever since a new police contract raised starting salaries, after training, to $126,000 last year, and the number of highly paid late-career officers leaving the department has declined. SPD is on pace to have just under 1,200 officers by the end of the year.

Mayor Katie Wilson has asked all city departments to come up with cuts of 5 to 10 percent to help close a budget gap of at least $175 million. The police department, whose nearly-$500 million budget is by far the city’s biggest general-fund obligation, was reportedly asked to come up with $20 million in potential cuts.

2. Barnes made his comments during an announcement about the city’s latest efforts to address gun violence and sex trafficking on Aurora Ave. N. City Attorney Erika Evans announced she would use Extreme Risk Protection Orders, a tool typically used to take guns away from domestic violence offenders, to remove guns from people accused of committing gun-related crimes, whether or not they have been convicted. (Violent gun-related offenses are typically prosecuted by the King County Prosecutor.) Evans also said she would seek funding for a full-time prosecutor to pursue the orders.

 

At the same press conference, Mayor Katie Wilson announced the Seattle Department of Transportation will install barriers on four streets that intersect with Aurora Ave. N to block traffic from getting through; residents who have demanded the city do something about increasing gun violence in the area have installed makeshift barricades in recent weeks.

City Attorney Evans broke with council members on one key issue, saying that she did not believe banishing men who pay for sex from the area around Aurora, which is designated as the city’s Stay Out of Areas of Prostitution (SOAP) zone, are an effective way to protect women and girls from pimps and traffickers. (Former Councilmember Cathy Moore, who sponsored the SOAP legislation, then skedaddled off the council, was in the audience for yesterday’s event.)

Noting that the city has had SOAP orders off and on for 30 years, Evans said, “If they were effective, Aurora and other areas of Seattle, including Little Saigon, would be safe, and they’re not. … SOAP orders don’t work. ERPO orders work.”

3. The press conference, which took place on the same day Wilson announced internally that she was reorganizing her office and that her communications director, Seferiana Day, was leaving, featured some internal drama of its own. According to sources, councilmembers frustrated with what they viewed as inaction on Aurora planned to hold their own press conference without Wilson at which they would criticize her lack of action on gun violence and sex trafficking in the area.

After a flurry of discussions, the mayor and council agreed to hold the press conference in the awkward, narrow space outside council chambers, rather than outside Wilson’s office. Councilmembers have repeatedly refused to participate in the mayor’s press conferences, despite being invited—an indication that council-mayor relations still have a long way to go after some dramatic early missteps by the Wilson administration.

City Council

New Council Legislation Could Make Your Utility Bills Cheaper

By Erica C. Barnett

City Councilmember Dan Strauss, along with Council President Joy Hollingsworth, is proposing legislation this week that would expand access to the city’s Utility Discount program by expanding eligibility in two stages—one in 2027 and one in 2029—to include people making 60 percent and then 80 percent of Seattle’s Area Median Income. The discount program provides a 60 percent discount on City Light bills and a 50 percent discount on Seattle Public Utilities bills.

Currently, eligibility for the discount program is is limited to people who make 70 percent or less of the state’s median income, which is much lower than Seattle’s—around $73,000 for a single person, compared to about $102,000 in Seattle. According to an analysis from the mayor’s office, about 31,000 more households would become eligible for the program if the city bumps eligibility up to 60 percent of median income, and another 48,000 would become eligible if that’s expanded to 80 percent.

Earlier this month, Strauss said he was surprised recently to learn that someone he considered well-off had signed up for the program when they lost their job. “That just reinforced for me that is absolutely the seniors, the parents of the kids that I grew up with” who need the discount program, Strauss said. “This is an important affordability program for everyone in the city, and we have to have that safety net, if they need to use it, available and easy to sign up for.”

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According to a fiscal note, increasing the threshold for the program to 60 percent of area median income would cost about $5 million for Seattle City Light and $13.9 million for SPU. The money would have to come from a rate increase of 0.5 percent for City Light and 0.1 percent for SPU, Strauss said, or an average increase of about 77 cents a month. City Light is currently considering separate increases to pay for, among other things, a maintenance backlog.

Enrolling eligible ratepayers in the discount program has always been a challenge; currently, about 36 percent of eligible residents, or around 39,000 people, are enrolled. Strauss’ and Hollingsworth’s legislation does not directly take on this problem. The program is also not available for renters without their own City Light accounts whose landlords use ratio utility billing systems, or RUBs—a type of third-party billing that allows landlords to pass the cost of a building’s overall utilities on to tenants and does not reflect how much service a tenant actually uses.

The council’s governance and utilities committee, which Hollingsworth chairs, will take up the utility discount legislation at its meeting on Thursday.

City Council, homelessness, Mayor Wilson, podcasts, Police

This Week On PubliCola: June 6, 2026

AI use by SPD, doubling taxes for transit, fare gates at light rail stations, and more.

By Erica C. Barnett

Monday, June 1

Seattle Nice: How Badly Did Sound Transit Screw Seattle Over?

On the first of three (three!) Seattle Nice podcasts this week, we disdid a deep dive on the Sound Transit board’s decision last week to indefinitely defer the voter-approved light rail extension to Ballard, a stretch that boasts by far the highest projected ridership of any line in the Sound Transit 3 package voters approved ten years ago. Is Ballard light rail doomed? Tune in to get our takes.

Aide to Councilmember Saka Sought Restraining Order Against Constituent

Elaine Ko, the longtime—and now retired—chief of staff to City Councilmember Rob Saka, got so fed up with a rude and persistent District 1 constituent that she sought a restraining order that would prevent him from contacting her about city business. A judge said the man’s behavior didn’t constitute harassment, but not all our readers agreed.

Tuesday, June 2

Wilson Proposes Doubling Transit Sales Tax to Fund Local Bus Service Expansion

Mayor Wilson rolled out a propsal to double the amount of sales tax Seattle residents pay to get extra transit service in the city. In announcing her plan to increase the regressive sales tax, Wilson said she decided not to impose a vehicle license fee on car owners, in part, because she thought it would prove too “controversial.”

Wednesday, June 3

New Federal Guidelines Put Funding for Permanent Supportive Housing at Risk

After a delay that resulted from a legal battle over an earlier proposal, the US Department of Housing and Urban Development proposed new funding guidelines for housing and services for people experiencing homelessness. Local providers and advocates are still discussing the implications of the guidelines, which could restrict funds for permanent supportive housing but appear less restrictive than the earlier, deeply problematic proposal.

Seattle Nice: Is Seattle’s Housing Market In Trouble?

On this week’s second episode of the podcast, we talked to Redfin’s chief economist, Daryl Fairweather, about the recent slowdown of Seattle’s housing market and whether it means renters and home buyers might see some relief on housing costs.

Thursday, June 4

At City Club Event, Mayor Answers Questions Like “Why Isn’t Pizza Cheap Yet”

FOX 13 anchor Han Kim interviewed the mayor at an event sponsored by City Club Seattle, hitting Wilson repeatedly with bad-faith questions and insisting that she respond to delusional claims about homeless people by D-list former reality star, crystal aficionado, and LA mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt.

No More Laissez-Fare: Pilot Program Will Install Fare Gates at Up to 14 Stations

Sound Transit announced a “pilot” project that will add fare gates to as many as 14 light rail stations, citing high rates of fare “evasion” by riders who board trains without paying at ORCA card readers . The proposal would cost between etween $79 million and $88 million, according to staff, and bring in an additional $30 million a year.

Friday, June 5

Investigation Found That KCRHA Director Retaliated Against Staffers Who Complained

An investigation last year found that a “preponderance of the evidence” supports the conclusion that King County Regional Homelessness Authority director retaliated against two former stffers, Edmund Witter and Xochitl Maykovich, after the two voiced concerns about Kinnison’s leadership at a contentious staff meeting last year.

SPD’s Chief Spokesperson Asked AI for Help with Interview Prep, Rewriting Blog Posts, and More

The Seattle Police Department communications director, Barbara DeLollis, used unapproved AI chatbots to produce a number of SPD-related documents, including a “Comprehensive Communications Toolkit for a Police Department Exiting a Consent Decree. The prompts included “a request to rewrite a published blog post to “ake this a better story for the public of a city that doenst liek crime or disorder” (sic).

Wilson Caves on Stadium Surveillance, Two More Cops Allege Discrimination as SPD Settles Earlier Claims for $2.6 Million

Two stories in this week’s late-Friday Fizz. First, Mayor Wilson decided at the last minute to turn on police surveillance cameras around teh stadiums for the upcoming World Cup games, citing unspecified “general but serious” security threats. She has been under intense pressure from conservatives and police to activate the cameras but had pledged she would not do so unless a credible threat emerged.

Second, four female police officers who sued the city over gender discrimination settled with the city for $2.6 million—right around the time that two different officers, a woman and a gay man, filed a tort claim against the department, alleging they were denied promotions due to anti-woman and anti-gay discrimination by Police Chief Shon Barnes.

Saturday, June 6

Seattle Nice: Mayor Wilson Doubles Down on Transit Sales Tax

On the third episode of Seattle Nice this week, we discuss the mayor’s proposal to double the local sales tax that pays for extra bus service in Seattle. The sales tax is regressive, but it’s one of only two options the city has for increasing local transit service. Wilson rejected the other option, a flat vehicle license fee, as risky; her transportation advisor, Alex Hudson, said this week that the fee would cost car drivers too much for what transit riders would get in return.