Category: City Council

City Council, Elections

PubliCola Questions: City Council Candidate ChrisTiana ObeySumner, District 5

By Erica C. Barnett

The 2023 election will dramatically reshape the Seattle City Council. Four council members are not seeking reelection, while a fifth, Teresa Mosqueda, is running for King County Council and will be replaced by an appointee if she wins. Even if all three of the incumbents who are running win reelection, the council will probably have at least five new members next year—a new majority of freshmen on a council whose most experienced members will, at most, be entering their second terms. If all eight seats turn over, it would make Sara Nelson, an at-large council member who started her first term last year, the most senior member of the council.

Debates over issues and ideology are understandably front and center in campaigns. But with eight of nine council seats up for grabs, I want to focus for a moment on an often overlooked question that impacts how the city council makes decisions and functions on a daily basis:  Can these people work together? Among the current council, the answer is frequently no. At best, there’s a sense that council members aren’t talking to each other outside public meetings, which are still largely virtual. At worst, the hostility bursts out into the open—as it has during this election, when one council member, Sara Nelson, is actively campaigning against three of her incumbent colleagues.

In this setting, five—and up to eight—new council members could provide a needed reset and eliminate some of the bad blood that has built up over the past several years.

Less optimistically, an inexperienced council could leave Mayor Bruce Harrell’s exercise of executive power unchecked, allowing the mayor to push through any number of priorities that the current council has shot down—like raiding the JumpStart payroll tax, which is supposed to be spend on housing and equitable development, to pay for general city obligations.

The next council will have to get up to speed fast, because they’ll soon face challenges that are only growing in scope—from homelessness, gun violence, and addiction to a looming $250 million budget deficit that will require tough decisions and could mean significant service cuts.

To get a better sense of how council incumbents, challengers, and first-time candidates would tackle these challenges, PubliCola spoke with 10 of the 14 council candidates, representing every council district.

Two candidates—Rob Saka in District 1 and Tanya Woo in District 2—ignored our emailed requests to sit down for an interview and did not follow up after I asked again in person. One candidate, District 3’s Joy Hollingsworth, set up an interview but then canceled, and did not respond to my request to reschedule. Maritza Rivera, running in District 4, would not sit down for an interview but did provide emailed responses to written questions. And Cathy Moore, in District 5, declined my request in an email.

The number of candidates who declined, canceled, or ignored our requests for an interview is unusual. While PubliCola isn’t shy about expressing our views on issues, that has rarely been an impediment to dialogue in the past. These candidates’ refusal to sit down for an in-depth conversation about the issues they will have to address if elected could bode poorly for transparency on the new council; in our experience, candidates who refuse to talk to members of the press they perceive as critical rarely become more tolerant of tough questions under the pressure of public office.

I’ll be rolling out interviews with the council candidates in every race over the next two weeks. I hope readers will learn more about the candidates from these in-depth conversations and use them to inform your vote. Ballots go out on October 18.

Today’s interview is with ChrisTiana ObeySumner, a social equity consultant who has worked as a housing navigator at Harborview Medical Center and as a counselor and case manager for the Downtown Emergency Services Center and Compass Housing Alliance; they also served as co-chair of the city’s Disability Commission and Renters’ Commission. ObeySumner is running to represent North Seattle in Council District 5.

PubliCola [ECB]: You worked as a housing navigator at Harborview, which involved securing permanent supportive housing for people who needed it. Can you talk a bit about what you learned from that experience and how that work would inform your approach to housing and homelessness if you’re elected?

ChrisTiana ObeySumner [CO]: When I was at Harborview, my role was grant-funded from a federal grant. And there were certain requirements of the grant in order to continue the funding. One of them was, we had to essentially do a landlord partnership style program with around 50 landlords. So we spent all this energy and time either trying to talk with the grant funder or find some way around how we could fulfill that grant requirements so that we could stay in compliance.

But the issue wasn’t necessarily having partnerships with the landlords. The issue was all these other things people didn’t have, like documents to get their IDs. A lot of my clients who were working, they were working either second or third shift, so there was no shelter space available for them. They may have a disability or a medical condition where living with roommates was not ideal or would not be a perfect solution. Or they had a partner and children where it was really hard for them to find a two- or three- bedroom apartment, even if they did otherwise have the means. There was one person I remember back in 2016 or ‘17 who needed something like $7,500 just for the moving fee alone. And again, we can help him with that, but the thing is, this is going to drain all the savings, and the second month is only going to be 30 days away.

Those were the areas that we needed to focus on. But in order for me to be able to even be there to focus on it, we had to fulfill these grant requirements. It had nothing to do with what’s happening on the ground. And it was really frustrating to feel like I was always having to fight and advocate and get in trouble to do my job.

“The KCRHA is being funded to serve maybe five to 15 percent of those would otherwise be qualified [for shelter and services], which makes a dent. But if you have a credit card debt, and you’re only paying five to 15 percent of the principal, not even the interest, then you’re never going to be making progress.”

ECB: The King County Regional Homelessness Authority has seen a lot of setbacks, including the departure of former CEO Marc Dones and the recent decision to shut down the Partnership for Zero program aimed at ending homelessness downtown. Do you think the KCRHA can still be successful, and what would you do as a councilmember to help it succeed?

CO: They’re being funded to serve maybe five to 15 percent of those would otherwise be qualified [for shelter and services], which makes a dent. But if you have a credit card debt, and you’re only paying five to 15 percent of the principal, not even the interest, then you’re never going to be making progress. On top of this, there is a chronic issue of the folks working in industries that make our cities run being woefully underfunded and woefully underpaid, and also having to use the same resources at the clients. I remember, I had to get a conflict of interest waiver because I had to take a client to DSHS, and their case manager at DSHS was the same as mine, because made so little money working full time I qualified for food stamps.

When you really look at the scale of the issue, and you look at what their proposed budget is, whether it’s the KCRHA or the state, it’s still shoestring, and it’s usually for a limited amount of time. And the onus gets put on the folks who have this limited budget and whose staff are underpaid and overworked. I wonder what would happen if we looked at what has been the most successful project, whether it’s KCRHA, LEAD, whatever, and just brought it to scale?

ECB: The initial version of the KCRHA’s Five Year Plan came out and they said it would cost $12 billion. And everybody flipped out and said, ‘Well, we certainly can’t do that.’ So let’s just instead keep doing the same thing we were doing before with no increase beyond inflation. So what do you see as the solution—is it passing more local taxes? Is it just trying to incrementally improve the budgets?

CO: I feel like we’re in that space where we’re sort of trying to pay off our credit card with a credit card. We look at these different budget decisions or plans as these discrete things. People talk about the Comprehensive Plan. And then we’re going talk about the Move [Seattle] Levy. And then we’re going to talk about social housing. And then we’re going to talk about the Green New Deal. But they’re all connected, at the end of the day, to the [same] shared goal. We need to make sure that we have affordable, accessible, sustainable housing that is near that’s transit and pedestrian-focused.

[I was talking] at a forum about sustainable development, and I said it would be great to have a building where the apartment is over a preschool, it has a green space, it’s near transit, and it has a retail space for folks who own small businesses to be inside. And someone was like, ‘Can you give an example of what we have [like that] already?’ and I sent him the example of [Roberto Maestas Plaza at] El Centro de la Raza. And they’re like, ‘It’s $45 million. That’s not scalable.’ And I was like, well, the transit levy can pay for the transit part of it, and the Green New Deal can help pay for the eco-village part of it. And then I agree with [the list of potential taxes[ the progressive revenue stabilization task force came up with. I support all nine of the suggestions. I definitely think we need a capital gains tax in the city. I think that is also going to lead to a CEO [pay disparity] tax [and an] increase in JumpStart taxes.

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And we really have to talk about the fact that the reason why we have the most regressive tax structure in the country is because of a [state] constitution that says we can only have equal taxation [regardless of income]. And if we don’t change it, it’s never going to be progressive. [The impact of] a 1 percent income tax for someone making $400,000 versus someone making $18,000 is a huge difference. And so everyone’s like, ‘You’re only running for one district in the city, ChrisTiana, are you saying you’re going go up to the state of argue but constitutional law?’ Yes. Yes. Because if my job is, how do we get progressive revenue, my responsibility shouldn’t end at my purview. That’s why we need folks who are going to be able and willing and coming with a network of folks in different jurisdictions. And unless we are willing to fight the systemic inequity, we’re just playing, and I’m not running for office to play.

ECB: What are some of your top priorities for ensuring that police are held accountable for misconduct, and how would you address the fact that the city is unable to hire the number of police many elected officials say they need? How would you start transitioning away from that police-centric model of public safety?

CO: You could add more people or more money. Or you could say, Why don’t we just make sure that we can streamline your purview to what your core job and focus is, and not rely on you for every single thing, since you’re already stressed out? And so you decide what team or department should be created, based on moving these responsibilities out of [SPD’s] purview, you look at the cost of previous team doing that service and start there for budgetary allocation, and then you continue to monitor progress. And from there, you also make sure there’s accountability so that this team that’s been in this hurricane of sorts can get back on track in terms of accountability to themselves, to their job, to the people they serve.

SPD has been saying, for who knows how long, that we have been asking them to do things that they feel is out of their purview. They’re like, ‘We’re not social workers’. And we don’t have the police officers. The entire industry of policing has been having an issue with recruiting and retaining officers since 2018. So really, whether you are someone who wants no police or whether you’re someone who wants more police, we should have a shared understanding that the police are doing much more today than they used to.

And now we just passed this drug ordinance, which is asking SPD, again, to do more things when they are already saying that they’re overburdened, overworked, overloaded and working out of purview. So what I’m wanting to do is go to them and be like, ‘Do you really want to, one, be accountable for more stuff you don’t want to do, that we can easily move over to someone else who does and is more successful at it? And it’s going to help actually increase community safety, because we know that the empirical data shows that just having more police doesn’t lead to increased community safety.

“People think that the majority demographic in District 5 are these rich white homeowners. I think they’re the loudest. And these are the people who have the time and privilege to go down to City Hall at 2:30 on Tuesday afternoon and give a two-minute public comment about something when other folks have work or childcare or something else they have to do to survive.”

ECB: I think the mayor would say yes to everything you said. And then I think he’d say, look, I created this great new department that will do just that.

CO: Bruce is one of those people that I think really wants to show his constituents with that he’s [quotation fingers] ‘doing a thing.’ And I think he feels like shiny and new is better than tested and true. And that’s not the case. And especially when you start something new, there is so much foundational work that’s needed to fund it, to structure it, to staff it, to pilot it. We have organizations in the city that have been making progress with shoestring budgets. I would advocate for Bruce to get to know those organizations and partner with them in a way where he can know enough about the work and the progress that they’ve done to fund that and not always want to create some shiny new thing.

Because really, what we need our mayor to do right now is to help reconstruct this narrative that everything is just this huge hot mess at the bottom of a dumpster fire in the middle of a shit show. And that there are opportunities, there is hope, there is a pathway forward that can lead to progress. And that’s not going to be overnight. So if we don’t do that, and we’re always just looking for whatever quick fix or shiny new toy we have, we’re never going to move forward.

ECB: The lack of sidewalks in District 5 is a perennial problem that candidates in this district always bring up. What are some other issues specific to District 5 that you would prioritize?

CO: One of my first jobs was at Walgreens. There’s a Walgreen’s across from where I used to live on 145th at Northgate, and they have pretty significant natural haircare aisles. The reason why that is important is because I know from working at Walgreen’s that you’re not going to stock products can’t move. It shows that we’re here. And especially since 2020, there’s been more supportive housing, more tiny home villages, more Seattle Housing Authority housing, more folks who are immigrant and refugees, more folks who are renters, more folks who are students. I’ve been living here in District 5 the entire time I’ve been in Seattle, since 2010.

People think that the majority demographic are these rich white homeowners. I think they’re the loudest. And these are the people who have the time and privilege to go down to City Hall at 2:30 on Tuesday afternoon and give a two-minute public comment about something when other folks have work or childcare or something else they have to do to survive. And I really feel like whether it’s sidewalks or anything else that takes investment, we need someone who knows what it’s like to not be that demographic in this district. So yes, we need sidewalks, but I think the [lack of] sidewalks is a product of this deeper issue of North Seattle being seen as the ‘burbs.

We need to make sure that we’re actually investing in having a thriving economy. If you want to have a 15-minute, walkable city that should mean everywhere, including up here. We need to make sure that we do have the infrastructure, because there really is flooding and damage and sewer issues and electricity issues.

ECB: In covering city hall over the years, I’ve noticed that there are eras when the city is focused on neighborhoods and eras when downtown takes priority. Right now, we’re obviously in a part of that cycle where the mayor is hyper-focused on downtown. What would you do to pull some of that focus to District 5?

CO: My question to Bruce about focusing on downtown is unless you’re completely forsaking anyone who isn’t a tourist, where do you think we can get the money to come downtown and spend it. If I have a business in District5, and I’m not getting the support as a small business owner, or having affordable rents, or having affordable grocery stores, or I have to spend more money to travel further to be able to get to the services I need, I’m not gonna have the money to go downtown and spend it on some fancy restaurant or go up in the Space Needle, or whatever it is. So we really have to look at the whole system, not just hyper-focus on what’s going to make the best photo. There’s a disparity here. This has been swept under the rug and someone has to talk about it.

City Council, Crime, Mayor Harrell, Morning Fizz, Police, public safety

Police Budget Fizz: Hiring Falls Short, Shotspotter Gains Support, Burgess Misrepresents Jane Jacobs
Overtime costs at SPD continued to increase this year.

1. The Seattle Police Department is, once again, falling fall short of its annual hiring goals, and would have to increase hiring by nearly two-thirds to hit the goals it has set for 2024, despite receiving full funding for its recruitment and retention plan, which included recruitment bonuses of up to $30,000, last year. City Council central staff presented the numbers at a council budget committee meeting last week. At the end of the year, according to current projections, SPD will have lost another 27 net officers, once both new hires and departures are factored in.

During last year’s budget deliberations, in which the council eliminated funding for 80 vacant and unfillable positions, SPD predicted that by the end of September, it would have hired 82 new officers, out of 120 total this year. Instead, the department had hired just 46. Of those, just six were fully trained “lateral” hires from other departments—24 fewer than SPD predicted.

Despite losing officers year after year, SPD continues to predict robust hiring; next year, for example, SPD says it expects to hire 120 new officers and lose 120, for a net gain of 15 officers. If the city funds this plan and the department fails to hire all 120, that money will be left over for other, unrelated priorities—which is exactly what happened this year.

Mayor Bruce Harrell’s 2024 budget proposal for SPD uses $8.1 million in salary “savings” from unfulfilled 2023 hiring projections to pay for $6.3 million in unanticipated overtime—necessitated, SPD says, by the staffing shortage. That leaves $1.8 million in free-floating revenues, which the mayor has proposed spending on new surveillance technology, including a gunshot detection system the council rejected last year.

However, Burgess misunderstands Jane Jacobs’ point about the need for ‘eyes on the street’ when he claims that 24-hour camera and audio surveillance will “complement” the city’s efforts to make Seattle’s sidewalks feel safe for everyone. Jacobs advocated for “wholesome” and “casual” oversight of city sidewalks, not 24/7 remote surveillance by police.

Several council members took exception to providing SPD with an ongoing slush fund that is expected to grow year after year as positions stay vacant but funded. Councilmember Lisa Herbold said she planned to propose a proviso, or spending limitation, on SPD’s salary savings, an idea that prompted Councilmember Sara Nelson to counter that SPD could finally hit its recruiting targets this year, so “now is not the time to be discussing reducing money” for the department.

Much of the city’s spending on overtime was to pay for police to direct traffic at events, including concerts (Beyonce, Taylor Swift), sporting events, and visits from politicians, including President Biden, Police Chief Adrian Diaz told the council.

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2. The aforementioned gunshot-locator system is back on the table again after the council rejected it last year, and most of the council now seems to be on board. What has changed? Nothing, materially, unless you count the fact that the mayor’s office now plans to add CCTV camera surveillance to the mix—and the fact that former council member Burgess, rather than the mayor’s recently ousted niece Monisha Harrell, is now the deputy mayor overseeing police and public safety.

Burgess, a longtime public-safety hawk who argued for tough-on-crime policies as a council member, said he was inspired to take another crack at Shotspotter—an audio monitoring system that alerts human audio experts when it detects any gunshot-like sound—while driving to a shooting in the parking lot of a Safeway store in Rainier Beach earlier this year.

“I asked the chief,  ‘What else should we be doing to suppress this gun violence which is increasing dramatically in our city?'” Burgess told the council. “And we had a conversation about the various interventions we could employ, including cameras in specific places. And I think that was kind of one of the beginning points of the conversation.” (Shotspotter is the most commonly used gunshot locator system, so the name is used generically to describe all such systems.)

In August, SPD signed a $2.6 million contract with the Seattle marketing firm Copacino Fujikado to create an “SPD recruitment brand” and produce video, online, radio, and social media ads for the department.

“Gun violence… happens all over the city, but it is very concentrated in very specific places,” Burgess said. “And we’re keenly aware of that. And those places deserve the city government to do what we can to stop that gun violence. The same with human trafficking.” Initially, depending on cost, SPD plans to place the cameras and acoustic devices on Third Avenue downtown, Belltown, and/or Aurora Avenue North, but the cameras could move depending on need, according to the mayor’s office. Harrell’s office has asked for an “omnibus” approval of the technology, so that once it passes a mandatory review and receives a Surveillance Impact Report, the systems can be moved to other neighborhoods without an additional review.

Civil liberties and racial justice advocates have argued that focusing surveillance on specific neighborhoods and communities puts police on high alert in those areas, leading to unnecessary stops in communities that have long been subject to overpolicing.

Shotspotter has been around for decades; closed-circuit cameras have been around even longer. There’s little evidence that cameras have any impact on violent crime, although they do seem to deter some thefts; multiple studies have found little to no evidence that Shotspotter works to reduce crime, prevent crime, or solve crimes after the fact. (Notably, many recent Seattle shootings have happened in locations that were under camera surveillance.)

“Mayor Harrell grew up in the CD and attended Garfield High, where there was another shooting last week leading to a lockdown, so I trust he’s listening to the community and wouldn’t be putting this forward again unless people living in the areas where people are dying really want this,” Councilmember Sara Nelson said.

Councilmembers Andrew Lewis and Dan Strauss, who have each tried to shake off a soft-on-crime image as they run for reelection, both said they now support funding Shotspotter, which they opposed last year, along with CCTV surveillance. Lewis, who represents downtown, compared the proposal to other “place-based strategies” like the Third Avenue Project, which is overseen by Purpose Dignity Action, the same group that operates LEAD. “I think that that this is a really innovative way for us to try to enhance, with limited resources, our presence in some of these areas,” Lewis said.

Nelson, meanwhile, said she needed no further convincing that Shotspotter is needed, citing the support of three Black women who lost children to gun violence, as well as Harrell’s personal roots in the Central District, as evidence that Seattle’s Black community supports the plan. “Mayor Harrell grew up in the CD and attended Garfield High, where there was another shooting last week leading to a lockdown, so I trust he’s listening to the community and wouldn’t be putting this forward again unless people living in the areas where people are dying really want this,” Nelson said.

3. The police department is turning to ads and other paid media in an attempt to woo new and transferring officers. In August, SPD signed a $2.6 million contract with the marketing firm Copacino Fujikado to create an “SPD recruitment brand” and produce video, online, radio, and social media ads for the department. The firm, which is based in Seattle, has previously produced marketing campaigns for Sound Transit, the Downtown Seattle Association, and Visit Seattle, among others.

4. In his memo supporting Shotspotter, Burgess quoted pioneering urbanist Jane Jacobs, who wrote in The Death and Life of Great American Cities about the need for mutual surveillance among many people co-existing on busy, vibrant neighborhood streets—a co-existence she assumed would also include police.

However, Burgess misunderstands Jacobs’ point about the need for “eyes on the street” when he claims that 24-hour camera and audio surveillance will “complement” the city’s efforts to make Seattle’s sidewalks feel safe for everyone. Jacobs advocated for “wholesome” and “casual” oversight of city sidewalks, not 24/7 remote surveillance by police. In fact, in that same 1961 book, Jacobs warns about overpolicing on the sidewalks near public housing projects, writing that the problem wasn’t lack of police, but lack of legitimate, legal reasons for people to be on the sidewalk. “No amount of police can enforce civilization where the normal, casual enforcement of it has broken down,” she wrote.

City Council, Elections

PubliCola Questions: City Council Candidate Ron Davis, District 4

By Erica C. Barnett

The 2023 election will dramatically reshape the Seattle City Council. Four council members are not seeking reelection, while a fifth, Teresa Mosqueda, is running for King County Council and will be replaced by an appointee if she wins. Even if all three of the incumbents who are running win reelection, the council will probably have at least five new members next year—a new majority of freshmen on a council whose most experienced members will, at most, be entering their second terms. If all eight seats turn over, it would make Sara Nelson, an at-large council member who started her first term last year, the most senior member of the council.

Debates over issues and ideology are understandably front and center in campaigns. But with eight of nine council seats up for grabs, I want to focus for a moment on an often overlooked question that impacts how the city council makes decisions and functions on a daily basis:  Can these people work together? Among the current council, the answer is frequently no. At best, there’s a sense that council members aren’t talking to each other outside public meetings, which are still largely virtual. At worst, the hostility bursts out into the open—as it has during this election, when one council member, Sara Nelson, is actively campaigning against three of her incumbent colleagues.

In this setting, five—and up to eight—new council members could provide a needed reset and eliminate some of the bad blood that has built up over the past several years.

Less optimistically, an inexperienced council could leave Mayor Bruce Harrell’s exercise of executive power unchecked, allowing the mayor to push through any number of priorities that the current council has shot down—like raiding the JumpStart payroll tax, which is supposed to be spend on housing and equitable development, to pay for general city obligations.

The next council will have to get up to speed fast, because they’ll soon face challenges that are only growing in scope—from homelessness, gun violence, and addiction to a looming $250 million budget deficit that will require tough decisions and could mean significant service cuts.

To get a better sense of how council incumbents, challengers, and first-time candidates would tackle these challenges, PubliCola spoke with 10 of the 14 council candidates, representing every council district.

Two candidates—Rob Saka in District 1 and Tanya Woo in District 2—ignored our emailed requests to sit down for an interview and did not follow up after I asked again in person. One candidate, District 3’s Joy Hollingsworth, set up an interview but then canceled, and did not respond to my request to reschedule. Maritza Rivera, running in District 4, would not sit down for an interview but did provide emailed responses to written questions. And Cathy Moore, in District 5, declined my request in an email.

The number of candidates who declined, canceled, or ignored our requests for an interview is unusual. While PubliCola isn’t shy about expressing our views on issues, that has rarely been an impediment to dialogue in the past. These candidates’ refusal to sit down for an in-depth conversation about the issues they will have to address if elected could bode poorly for transparency on the new council; in our experience, candidates who refuse to talk to members of the press they perceive as critical rarely become more tolerant of tough questions under the pressure of public office.

I’ll be rolling out interviews with the council candidates in every race over the next two weeks. I hope readers will learn more about the candidates from these in-depth conversations and use them to inform your vote. Ballots go out on October 18.

Today’s interview is with Ron Davis, who’s running to represent Northeast Seattle in District 3. Davis is an attorney, tech consultant, and housing activist who touts his working-class roots when talking about the need to build more housing and fix the state’s regressive tax system, which forces cities to rely heavily on taxes that disproportionately impact poor and working-class people.

PubliCola [ECB] Your opponent, Maritza Rivera, has accused you of flip-flopping on the recent legislation that empowered the city attorney to prosecute people for public drug use, based on the fact that you deleted a tweet that said you supported prosecuting drug dealers. What is your position on the law, particularly when it comes to prosecuting people who sell drugs?

Ron Davis [RD]: I sent out a email with a multipoint plan, and then I tried to summarize it on Twitter in six points. Two of the points involved enforcement. The fourth said something about dealers and people who are a risk of harm to others who are, presumably, arrested under the ordinance. And I used the word ‘prosecute.’ And then I sat down with some retired judges, and people in the criminal legal system space. I sat down with [Purpose Dignity Action co-director] Lisa Daugaard, and I said ‘You’ve got a better understanding of what’s happening on the ground, both in terms of the plans of the Harrell administration and what the evidence shows.’

And so what I came to see, and clarify, is that in many of these cases, people who are dealing on the street are [dealing at a] subsistence level and they’re folks struggling with addiction themselves. And it turns out that the remedy for them is the same as in any other case, which is to get them into recovery resources. So I said something like, ‘The answer is diversion, services and, housing.’ And Maritza was like, ‘Ron Davis wants to subsidize drug dealers.’ And then the Seattle Times said, ‘Ron Davis does not support any enforcement ordinance whatsoever.’ Diversion does not imply zero enforcement. I did write to them and say, ‘You’re entitled to call me an extremist, but you are not entitled to your own facts.’

“Shotspotter is a great example where the evidence is really clear that it doesn’t work. And so it seems like a great, great example of actually throwing money away. If there’s technology we can use to reduce crime or make policing more efficient, without violating people’s civil rights, but I haven’t seen it.”

ECB: Where do you stand on the ordinance?

RD: I’ve been asked many times how I would have voted. And my answer is this: After talking to [a variety of] people, I got a really conflicting picture that emerged about what the past practice was in the last 10 years. There are some people who insist that the past practice was that post-arrest, people who were really struggling with addiction were not incarcerated, and we can’t even book people for that. And then there’s another set of people who are saying, that’s ostensibly true, but they tend to have other things on their record that you can book for, and we are using that as a front door into incarceration.

So there was an empirical question I could not get a straight answer to, and I don’t have staff and I don’t have access to city data. So when I’ve gotten like the ‘yes/no/maybe’ surveys, I’ve said ‘maybe.’ Critics say it will reignite the drug war, and boosters say it’s a path into treatment. And I think what is really true is that we don’t have a lot of capacity in either jails or treatment. And so, it will depend on execution and what do we actually fund in the future.

ECB: The mayor’s most recent budget proposal doesn’t increase ongoing funding for treatment or services. Are there specific programs you would push for if you were on the council during this budget cycle?

RD: When I think about where we can get the most bang for our buck, it’s things like LEAD and CoLEAD, plus supportive housing for folks in that process, because there’s a number of folks who get into some of those recovery services and if they don’t get stable housing, they don’t recover. Evergreen Treatment Services has a mobile buprenorphine treatment unit, and I think expanding that low-barrier access is one of the best evidence-based ways to get people into what is now clinically called recovery, right, which is a many-step process.

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ECB: The city is facing a budget shortfall of up to $250 million starting with the 2025 budget, which the council will take up next year. Even if the city passes new progressive taxes, the revenues may not be available that quickly and they probably won’t completely close the gap. What areas of the budget will you prioritize for cuts?

RD: I will say, I think expansion of Jumpstart, which has already passed the courts, topping off the progressive tax on extreme capital gains, could generate the revenue in a timely enough fashion.

Look, I was a CEO—I got teased by my investors about squeezing a buck. I do think we need to be smart. But I also think we need to acknowledge that right now, we are spending less as a percentage of GDP at the state local level than we were 10 years ago. So when you get these b.s. statistics that are like ‘Spending is going up faster than inflation’—number one, the cost of doing business when you’re a government is not tied directly to regular inflation, because it’s mostly labor-intensive and land-intensive and construction-intensive. In the private and public sector, those exceed inflation. But number two, any government economist who made it pass their sophomore year can tell you that the way we measure government spending, and if we’re spending a lot or a little, is as a percentage of GDP, and that’s gone down in the last 10 years.

Now, for most of us, that’s not true, because we have a regressive tax system that always, always, always takes from working class folks or little old ladies on fixed incomes, in big houses that are technically worth a lot, but they have no cash. And I do think that means we need to fix our tax system. And, you know, we don’t have to kill the golden goose. We could be the go from the being the [most] regressive state to the [third]. We could rebalance the tax code just a little bit to be, like, remotely in line with Democratic Party values. And I don’t know that we can fix everything, but we can make massive, massive difference in these problems.

“When you build a [police] budget around a staffing plan that is literally impossible, it would be just like me building an affordable housing plan around reducing the price of lumber and interest rates”

ECB: One place the city never wants to cut is the police department—even after getting rid of 80 vacant positions last year, the city continues to fund vacant, unfillable positions and allow the department to use that extra money for overtime as well as other new programs, like Shotspotter and camera surveillance, which are both in this year’s budget. Do you support cutting the police budget?

RD: [Shotspotter] is a great example of one of those places where the evidence is really clear that it doesn’t work. And so it seems like a great, great example of actually throwing money away. If there’s technology we can use to reduce crime or make policing more efficient, without violating people’s civil rights, but I haven’t seen it.

I don’t know how ‘ghost’ positions there are. But as I’ve said in the past, I think false promises are a bad idea. And I think when you build a budget around a staffing plan that is literally impossible, it would be just like me building an affordable housing plan around reducing the price of lumber and interest rates. So I say this often, but I want to say it again. Eighty-five percent of jurisdictions in Washington state are below their [police] hiring targets. Everett, Tacoma, Olympia, and Bellevue have all described themselves as at crisis levels. Memphis, Atlanta, Tulsa are, as a percentage, off [their hiring goals] ] almost as much as SPD. And this is a national, structural problem where hundreds of thousands of people left the profession. So I think any budget or plan that is selling people safety based on doing magic is policy malpractice, and it’s dishonest with voters.

ECB: Seattle Police Department officers have repeatedly been caught mocking or belittling the deaths of people killed by police—most recently SPOG vice president Daniel Auderer, who was caught on tape joking with SPOG president Mike Solan about the killing of Jaahnavi Kandula by a third officer. Do you think SPD can be reformed, and if so, how?

RD: For me, reforming the culture means reforming the governance. Right now, the culture is one where impunity is allowed, because there’s no genuine independent oversight and accountability. And without that, I don’t know why we would think we would stop having a culture of impunity. We’ve been under a consent decree for 10 years because of that culture of impunity and lack of accountability.

I think that whether it’s OPA or whatever body [is in charge of investigating police misconduct], it needs to be fully civilianized. And they may need to have subpoena power or disciplinary power, extending all the way to firing for cause and putting that on someone’s record. I do think there’s things like Before the Badge, de-escalation training, community policing, that are evidence-based ways to nibble around the edges and improve things, but we’re not going to persuade people to be nice at this point. That’s not working. We’ve been trying that for a long, long, long time.

I also think that will build community confidence that officers who step out of line are going to be accountable for it. And building that community confidence might even make the department a more attractive place to work and more reflective of the community. But given the fact that we’re the department that sent the most officers to the January 6 insurrection, right now we’ve got a department that’s really out of step with the community.

ECB: The city is seeking to have the Supreme Court review a Ninth Circuit panel decision on homelessness involving a sleeping ban in Grants Pass, Oregon. If the court overturns the ruling, it could mean the end of Martin v. Boise, another ruling that says that in the Western states, jurisdictions can’t ban unsheltered people from sleeping in public unless the jurisdiction offers adequate shelter. What do you think the implication will be if Martin v. Boise is overturned?

RD: I don’t know if Martin v. Boise is holding back us a whole lot. We are not allowed to sweep people, in the sense that we cannot clear encampments without either some very, very specific circumstances or offering housing. And often what we call offering housing, I would say we ostensibly offer housing— where we walk into an encampment and we’re offering congregate shelter. I don’t think qualifies for number of reasons. And we’re offering an amount of congregate shelter capacity that does not match the size of the encampment anyway, because we know people will say no, and using it as a pretext for sweeping.

You know, when we do the relationship building, we do the work, and we offer actual, real, viable alternatives, people are very responsive. But we have constraints in terms of how much of that we have available.

ECB: You’ve said many times that you support Option 6 for the upcoming update to the city’s Comprehensive Plan—an alternative put forward by pro-housing activists that would add more density, in more parts of the city, than the most housing-forward official comp plan option, Option 5 How likely do you think it is that Option 6, or elements of Option 6, move forward?

RD:  I think it really depends on who gets on the council. I know that there’s at least one person in almost every race who feels pretty strongly that that’s where we should go. So it will really depend on the composition of the council. I also think that the definition of what [Option] 5 is will have the potential to evolve.

What is really important to me is that our comp plan, one, does not make the housing deficit worse, which currently all the options do. Two, actually chips away at or solves the housing deficit. And then three, does so in a broadly spread way that allows us to do things like have reasonable lot coverage requirements, so that we have nice things like trees. And there’s other pieces of it that I want to see that are also essential, that aren’t necessarily have to be comp plan driven, like complete neighborhoods where people meet most of their needs in their neighborhood on foot, with accessible infrastructure. We can do that through the various transportation levies, but I’d like to see that in the comp plan, too.

ECB: If you win, you’ll be a newcomer in a council full of newcomers. What are your biggest knowledge gaps, and where would you turn to fill those gaps?

RD: Although I enjoy incredible support in the labor community, and I have aligned values, I am not an expert in labor relations. I see [Councilmember] Teresa Mosqueda as the model legislator when it comes thinking carefully about labor legislation and working closely with that community, while still having an open dialogue with the business community. Another area where I would really like to increase my knowledge is around utilities. And [former council member] Mike O’Brien was the chair of that committee, and he’s a mentor. On issues of racial equity, I’m constantly learning, and I know that I’m likely to bring in kind of notable blind spots, just based on my own lived experience. Somebody I really respect in that space is[46th District state Rep.] Darya Farivar, who is one of my endorsers.

City Council, Density, Development, housing, Taxes, Transportation

Council Fast-Tracks Plan to Legalize “Impact Fees” on New Apartments
Seattle’s list of projects that impact fees could fund includes projects that have already been funded and are nearing completion.

By Erica C. Barnett

In an unusual move, City Councilmembers Lisa Herbold and Alex Pedersen persuaded a majority of their council colleagues last week to fast-track an amendment to the city’s Comprehensive Plan that would set the stage for “transportation impact fees” on new housing—fees that are based on the premise that dense, urban living causes negative impacts on the city’s transportation system.

The Comprehensive Plan is the overarching framework for planning and development decisions in Seattle. The changes the council is considering would allow transportation impact fees, “identify deficiencies in the transportation system associated with new development,” and adopt a list of projects that could be funded through such fees.

Pedersen has said fees on new housing could allow the city to reduce the size of the Seattle Transportation Levy, which is paid for by property taxes—lowering taxes for homeowners while raising the cost of new apartments for renters.

The council voted to bypass the normal process for approving changes to the comp plan, skipping Councilmember Dan Strauss’ land use committee to send the proposal directly to the full council, with a single public hearing scheduled for the council’s 2pm meeting on November 7 (coincidentally, Election Day). The council would vote on the amendment itself two weeks later, on November 21—the deadline to push the changes through this year.

Unlike MHA, in which developers fund new affordable housing in exchange for greater housing density, impact fees treat new housing as a bad thing that must be offset by fees to offset its negative impact. This anti-urbanist assumption elides the fact that the hundreds of thousands of people moving to Seattle over the coming decades are going to have to live somewhere—and that if there isn’t enough housing in the city, people, including many who can no longer afford to live in Seattle, will be pushed out into car-dependent suburbs.

Strauss, who has already scheduled a public hearing in the land use committee for November 29, protested this departure from the council’s normal procedures, noting that the city spent years deliberating over changes to industrial zoning and a tree protection ordinance, and both still need work after passing earlier this year. In addition, Strauss noted that the city’s hearing examiner has yet to issue a ruling on an appeal related to the fee proposal, which developers say would have a significant negative environmental impact—namely, it would reduce the amount of new housing in the city.

“I believe it is important that we receive the hearing examiner’s decision and have the time needed … to understand the policy” and hold a public hearing before voting the changes through, Strauss said.

Proponents of the legislation, including Herbold and Council President Debora Juarez, have minimized its impact, calling it a minor “procedural vote” with no actual policy impacts. In reality, changing the city’s Comprehensive Plan to allow impact fees is a consequential decision that could ultimately reduce the amount of housing that gets built inside city limits.

Juarez, Herbold, and Pedersen are not running for reelection and will leave the council at the end of this year.

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According to a staff analysis, impact fees could bring in between $200 million and $760 million over 10 years—similar to the Mandatory Housing Affordability program the city adopted in 2019, which allowed denser development in some areas while helping to fund new affordable housing. MHA, like impact fees, was controversial, and the council held “at least 20 committee meetings” before passing it, Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda noted.

Unlike MHA, in which developers fund new affordable housing in exchange for greater housing density, impact fees treat new housing as a bad thing that must be offset by fees to offset its negative impact. This anti-urbanist assumption elides the fact that the hundreds of thousands of people moving to Seattle over the coming decades are going to have to live somewhere—and that if there isn’t enough housing in the city, people, including many who can no longer afford to live in Seattle, will be pushed out into car-dependent suburbs whose negative impacts are well-documented.

Advocates on both sides of the issue will now have just two opportunities to weigh in—once at the full councl meeting on November 7, and two weeks later, when the council is scheduled to take its final vote. Although Pedersen claimed last week that the commenters who showed up to oppose impact fees were just “paid lobbyists” who were “afraid of a public hearing,” Mosqueda argued that the accelerated schedule makes it less likely that ordinary members of the public will be able to weigh in on changes that could further depress housing development in the middle of a housing downturn.

Once the council adopts the changes to the Comprehensive Plan, they can begin the process of adopting the fees themselves. That process will almost certainly have to include additional comp plan changes, since the proposal the council is considering includes a list of projects that includes some that have already received funding—like the RapidRide G line on Madison Street, set to open next year.

City Council, Elections

PubliCola Questions: City Council Candidate Maritza Rivera, District 4

By Erica C. Barnett

The 2023 election will dramatically reshape the Seattle City Council. Four council members are not seeking reelection, while a fifth, Teresa Mosqueda, is running for King County Council and will be replaced by an appointee if she wins. Even if all three of the incumbents who are running win reelection, the council will probably have at least five new members next year—a new majority of freshmen on a council whose most experienced members will, at most, be entering their second terms. If all eight seats turn over, it would make Sara Nelson, an at-large council member who started her first term last year, the most senior member of the council.

Debates over issues and ideology are understandably front and center in campaigns. But with eight of nine council seats up for grabs, I want to focus for a moment on an often overlooked question that impacts how the city council makes decisions and functions on a daily basis:  Can these people work together? Among the current council, the answer is frequently no. At best, there’s a sense that council members aren’t talking to each other outside public meetings, which are still largely virtual. At worst, the hostility bursts out into the open—as it has during this election, when one council member, Sara Nelson, is actively campaigning against three of her incumbent colleagues.

In this setting, five—and up to eight—new council members could provide a needed reset and eliminate some of the bad blood that has built up over the past several years.

Less optimistically, an inexperienced council could leave Mayor Bruce Harrell’s exercise of executive power unchecked, allowing the mayor to push through any number of priorities that the current council has shot down—like raiding the JumpStart payroll tax, which is supposed to be spend on housing and equitable development, to pay for general city obligations.

The next council will have to get up to speed fast, because they’ll soon face challenges that are only growing in scope—from homelessness, gun violence, and addiction to a looming $250 million budget deficit that will require tough decisions and could mean significant service cuts.

To get a better sense of how council incumbents, challengers, and first-time candidates would tackle these challenges, PubliCola spoke with 10 of the 14 council candidates, representing every council district.

Two candidates—Rob Saka in District 1 and Tanya Woo in District 2—ignored our emailed requests to sit down for an interview and did not follow up after I asked again in person. One candidate, District 3’s Joy Hollingsworth, set up an interview but then canceled, and did not respond to my request to reschedule. Maritza Rivera, running in District 4, would not sit down for an interview but did provide emailed responses to written questions. And Cathy Moore, in District 5, declined my request in an email.

The number of candidates who declined, canceled, or ignored our requests for an interview is unusual. While PubliCola isn’t shy about expressing our views on issues, that has rarely been an impediment to dialogue in the past. These candidates’ refusal to sit down for an in-depth conversation about the issues they will have to address if elected could bode poorly for transparency on the new council; in our experience, candidates who refuse to talk to members of the press they perceive as critical rarely become more tolerant of tough questions under the pressure of public office.

I’ll be rolling out interviews with the council candidates in every race over the next two weeks. I hope readers will learn more about the candidates from these in-depth conversations and use them to inform your vote. Ballots go out on October 18.

Today’s conversation is with District 4 candidate Maritza Rivera, most recently deputy director at the city’s Office of Arts and Culture and a former staffer for ex-mayor Jenny Durkan, the national Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and former President Bill Clinton. Rivera has said she decided to run for office after a shooting at Ingraham High School, where her two daughters go to school, in 2022. Rivera did not agree to sit down with PubliCola but her campaign did respond to written questions; the following is a lightly edited version of what we received.

PubliCola [ECB]: The next council will take up the SPOG contract and participate in ongoing negotiations with the police union. What are one or two specific items that will be on the top of your agenda?

Maritza Rivera [MR]: We must take accountability for law enforcement off the negotiation table in our next SPOG contract. I’m concerned with how the previous contract undermined the effectiveness of the Office of Police Accountability. The current contract limits staffing levels for investigators, puts arbitrary time constraints on investigations, and requires an “elevated standard of review” that exceeds a preponderance of the evidence in arbitration. These restrictions have the effect of preventing our department from disciplining or firing individuals and exercising agency in establishing the kind of culture and standards that match our City’s values. 

“The city should develop a new therapeutic court focused specifically on addiction. Unlike the previous failed community court model, which was built on abolitionist principles of total permissiveness and zero meaningful sanctions for those who did not participate, this court should take a more balanced approach that combines incentives to seek help and treatment with some penalties for those who fail to fulfill their obligations.”

ECB: Do you believe recent revelations about specific officers’ behavior (comments by Seattle Police Officers Guild vice present Daniel Auderer laughing with SPOG President Mike Solan over the death of 23-year-old Jaahnavi Kandula; the mock tombstone found at the East Precinct) represent endemic cultural challenges at the department, and if so, how would you work to address them? If not, why not?

MR: We keep seeing unacceptable and racist behavior from some police officers in our community—even those at leadership levels. I am angry and frustrated, both for our entire city that is deeply affected by these disturbing acts, and for the many officers who share our values and whose work is undermined.

In particular, the audio of the vice president of SPOG joking about the death of a 23-year-old woman is beyond disturbing. It decimates the trust and credibility in the community that is necessary for law enforcement to do their work. It is critically important that the Office of Police Accountability (OPA) conduct a speedy, transparent and thorough investigation. Community deserves a Seattle Police Department that affirms this is wrong, against policy, and holds officers accountable. 

Again, this is a reminder that we cannot afford another Seattle police contract that negotiates away accountability. These negotiations are occurring right now, and represent the best opportunity our city has to improve our department, and start to address cultural change.

Incidents like this one also make it challenging to recruit and retain the right kind of police officers. The right kind of officers, who may decide it is simply not aligned with their values to work somewhere where their colleagues joke about the death of a 23-year-old woman or where a fake gravestone of a young Black man shot and killed is featured prominently in their office.

Enjoying this article? PubliCola is supported entirely by readers like you. Help keep PubliCola sustainable by CLICKING HERE to become a one-time or monthly contributor.

ECB: You supported the law criminalizing public drug use at the municipal level, which expresses the city’s support for diversion instead of arrest and jail. Now that it has passed, what are some forms of diversion or treatment that you would advocate for funding as part of the city’s budget in future years?

MR: Diversion and treatment are the first priority to address substance abuse. Arrest and enforcement is a method of last resort, to be used when necessary for the safety of our community and individuals. That’s why I support the Mayor’s plan to create a drug overdose unit modeled after Health One, build a post-overdose diversion facility, and pilot new research-based drug-abatement programs.

Additionally, I strongly support pre-filing diversion programs like our mobile methadone clinic, JustCARE, LEAD and CoLEAD. I also believe the city should develop a new therapeutic court focused specifically on addiction. Unlike the previous failed community court model, which was built on abolitionist principles of total permissiveness and zero meaningful sanctions for those who did not participate, this court should take a more balanced approach that combines incentives to seek help and treatment with some penalties for those who fail to fulfill their obligations. 

“In order to continue, [the King County Regional Homelessness Authority] must demonstrate an ability to successfully plan, execute, and measurably impact homelessness. I do not think we should give up on KCRHA or the promise of a regional approach to homelessness at this point, but the agency is at a critical juncture and must demonstrate better results soon.”

ECB: The King County Regional Homelessness Authority has experienced a number of major setbacks recently, including the end of the Partnership for Zero program downtown and the departure of its founding CEO. Do you believe the KCRHA can be successful, and if so, what are some steps you would take as a council member to get the agency back on the right track?

MR: The recent and major setbacks have proven that in order to continue, KCRHA must demonstrate an ability to successfully plan, execute, and measurably impact homelessness. We also need to ensure buy-in from other nearby cities throughout our region, not just Seattle. Regional efforts must bring a renewed focus to oversight, accountability, and transparency. We need to be clear about the function of the KCRHA and how it will achieve proven results. I do not think we should give up on KCRHA or the promise of a regional approach to homelessness at this point, but the agency is at a critical juncture and must demonstrate better results soon. In this regard, a lot rides on the results of the search currently underway for a new CEO. 

ECB: The city council could, at some point in the next several years, take up revisions to the Mandatory Housing Affordability program, which provides millions of dollars for affordable housing (and also has resulted in some on-site affordable units). What changes would you push for the program?

MR: I support the existing MHA requirements, but I also believe we need to determine whether the current requirements are working—or if they need to be amended to incentivize building affordable units faster. Particularly by ensuring more neighborhoods in our city receive the benefits of our MHA program and that what is considered affordable by MHA is truly affordable for the people that live here. 

ECB: What, beyond vehicle electrification, should the city be doing to reduce our overall reliance on fossil fuels, including single-occupancy commutes?

MR: Every neighborhood should have access to safe, reliable, and quick multi-modal transportation options, including foot, transit, bike, or car. While our leaders have campaigned on making Seattle a “15-minute city” for almost a decade, we’ve not made significant progress in connecting our communities and integrating our transportation system with land use and housing. Transportation is the single largest source of climate emissions in Seattle. The best investment in fighting climate change is creating connected communities where you can live close to transit, green space, amenities and community hubs.

In addition to scaling up investment in transportation options, we need to collaborate with downtown businesses to create a real plan for net-zero [emissions] buildings that could cut carbon emissions in Seattle by as much as 10 percent. The Building Emissions Performance Standards proposed by Mayor Harrell are an excellent start and the most significant policy proposed to meet our climate goals in the last two decades. Now, we need to work with community and business leaders to support this policy and create pathways for businesses to exceed expectations and meet the standards set before 2050. At the same time, Seattle must also bring higher standards to new construction and to residential zoning as well, which collectively contribute to over 20 percent of our city’s emissions.  

What issue specific to District 4 do you wish people were more aware of?  

Public safety. It’s not particular to D4, but when I knock on doors it is THE issue that people want to talk about. We experience public safety issues in D4 as much as anywhere else in the city. While it may seem that there are issues that are more prevalent in one district than another, there are more similarities in what Seattleites care about than differences. All people want to feel safe in their homes, on the streets and transit, and in their schools.

City Council, Elections

PubliCola Questions: City Council Candidate Alex Hudson, District 3

By Erica C. Barnett

The 2023 election will dramatically reshape the Seattle City Council. Four council members are not seeking reelection, while a fifth, Teresa Mosqueda, is running for King County Council and will be replaced by an appointee if she wins. Even if all three of the incumbents who are running win reelection, the council will probably have at least five new members next year—a new majority of freshmen on a council whose most experienced members will, at most, be entering their second terms. If all eight seats turn over, it would make Sara Nelson, an at-large council member who started her first term last year, the most senior member of the council.

Debates over issues and ideology are understandably front and center in campaigns. But with eight of nine council seats up for grabs, I want to focus for a moment on an often overlooked question that impacts how the city council makes decisions and functions on a daily basis:  Can these people work together? Among the current council, the answer is frequently no. At best, there’s a sense that council members aren’t talking to each other outside public meetings, which are still largely virtual. At worst, the hostility bursts out into the open—as it has during this election, when one council member, Sara Nelson, is actively campaigning against three of her incumbent colleagues.

In this setting, five—and up to eight—new council members could provide a needed reset and eliminate some of the bad blood that has built up over the past several years.

Less optimistically, an inexperienced council could leave Mayor Bruce Harrell’s exercise of executive power unchecked, allowing the mayor to push through any number of priorities that the current council has shot down—like raiding the JumpStart payroll tax, which is supposed to be spend on housing and equitable development, to pay for general city obligations.

The next council will have to get up to speed fast, because they’ll soon face challenges that are only growing in scope—from homelessness, gun violence, and addiction to a looming $250 million budget deficit that will require tough decisions and could mean significant service cuts.

To get a better sense of how council incumbents, challengers, and first-time candidates would tackle these challenges, PubliCola spoke with 10 of the 14 council candidates, representing every council district.

Two candidates—Rob Saka in District 1 and Tanya Woo in District 2—ignored our emailed requests to sit down for an interview and did not follow up after I asked again in person. One candidate, District 3’s Joy Hollingsworth, set up an interview but then canceled, and did not respond to my request to reschedule. Maritza Rivera, running in District 4, would not sit down for an interview but did provide emailed responses to written questions. And Cathy Moore, in District 5, declined my request in an email.

The number of candidates who declined, canceled, or ignored our requests for an interview is unusual. While PubliCola isn’t shy about expressing our views on issues, that has rarely been an impediment to dialogue in the past. These candidates’ refusal to sit down for an in-depth conversation about the issues they will have to address if elected could bode poorly for transparency on the new council; in our experience, candidates who refuse to talk to members of the press they perceive as critical rarely become more tolerant of tough questions under the pressure of public office.

I’ll be rolling out interviews with the council candidates in every race over the next two weeks. I hope readers will learn more about the candidates from these in-depth conversations and use them to inform your vote. Ballots go out on October 18.

Today’s interview is with Alex Hudson, who’s running to represent Capitol Hill, the Central District, and other central Seattle neighborhoods in District 3. Hudson is the former executive director of the Transportation Choices Coalition and former director of the First Hill Improvement Association.

PubliCola [ECB]: Seattle Police Department officers have repeatedly been caught mocking or belittling the deaths of people killed by police—most recently SPOG vice president Daniel Auderer, who was caught on tape joking with SPOG president Mike Solan about the killing of Jaahnavi Kandula by a third officer. Do you think SPD can be reformed, and if so, how?

Alex Hudson [AH]: I sure hope so. I absolutely, deeply hope that our police force can be reformed. And we need to do everything we can to do that. We need to make it so that [the Office of Police Accountability] doesn’t have a huge majority of police officers on it. This should be a community-led thing. Police policing [other] police doesn’t work. And it contributes to a culture where we have police officers with strong leadership positions in their union who have cost the taxpayers millions of dollars in legal fees.

I think that we should take accountability out of the contract. That’s not a working condition. That is a basic oversight condition that all other employees of the city have. So it’s just making the police just like anybody else, so that we can hold the bad ones accountable, and then start getting different kinds of police officers in there.

The recruiting question also comes up all the time. And I think to myself, we don’t have a problem recruiting police officers because of the tone of the city council, we have an issue of recruiting police officers because—who would want those people to be their colleagues? You look at the situation with the with the tombstone, or the Trump flag, or the recent statements about not valuing human life, and why would you want to have those people be your colleagues? So we need to reform our police department in order to be able to recruit.

And I think part of that is that of the stuff that we like to ask the police to do, they shouldn’t do. Police officers don’t need to be directing overflow traffic at major events, and I would assert that police officers don’t necessarily need to show up at every theft. If your house gets robbed, the police officers are not coming with a detective who’s going to go track down your television. You’re looking for somebody who’s going to give you a report, so you can take it to your insurance company. Why does a police officer need to do that? And so I think that as we limit their scope of responsibilities, you also will have police officers who are less likely to be thinking about everyone as a as a potential criminal.

ECB: The King County Regional Homelessness Authority has seen a lot of setbacks, including the departure of former CEO Marc Dones and the recent decision to shut down the Partnership for Zero program aimed at ending homelessness downtown. Do you think the KCRHA can still be successful, and what would you do as a councilmember to help it succeed?

AH: It can’t work unless all the cities who are under its jurisdiction come to the table—if it’s just Seattle and King County. It can’t work if cities like Burien behave the way that they are around this issue. I think it has to work, because homelessness is a regional issue. And so I think the way that we do that is we start taking a look at policies that the builders’ remedy [which allows housing developers to bypass restrictive zoning codes if they build affordable housing] in California—like, if you’re not providing a certain kind of shelter and services for homeless people in your city, and your body politic isn’t willing to do that, then we’re going to step in and make it be that way.

We have clear examples of municipalities in King County that have these issues and are refusing to do the thing that’s necessary to address them—why did they get to refuse? So I think that that would bring those municipalities into better compliance onto the side of solving problems, not creating them, and make it so that there was a little bit less ability to opt out.

“I just strongly, strongly, strongly prefer to follow the overwhelming evidence from every medical institution in the world. It’s very clear that drug addiction is a public health crisis, not a criminal justice problem.”

ECB: The city council recently voted to empower the city attorney to prosecute drug users. You’ve said you would have voted ‘no’ on that proposal. Can you talk a bit about why?

AH: Drug addiction is a medical issue. Even if you were a jail-as-a-solution person, that’s not an option that even exists. And the resources aren’t there for the options that we knew do help people. This is an underfunded idea that feels like more of the thing that the city is constantly doing, which is saying sort of the right things and putting no actual resources behind it. And so what is going to happen is that we are just going to keep people in this vicious cycle.

My 14-year-old, when we were walking home three days ago, told me that she thinks that the grocery store is scary. And that’s not acceptable for anybody. And it’s most certainly not acceptable for the people who are suffering tremendously and miserably from a medical issue that no one is coming with real solutions for at all. The lack of scalability, the lack of urgency on this—it’s shameful. And I don’t think that allowing our city attorney to prosecute people does anything to make it so that people whose situation in life has found them smoking fentanyl on Third Avenue get better. And what everyone in this city wants is for people to be able to get better. They want it to be real. So I don’t see that this bill does that. And I just strongly, strongly, strongly [prefer to] follow the overwhelming evidence from every medical institution in the world. It’s very clear that drug addiction is a public health crisis, not a criminal justice problem.

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ECB: There is a lot of discussion about treatment and diversion in the bill, but no actual new resources for treatment or diversion. What kind of programs would you like to see the city actually fund?

AH: I identify as somebody who is a survivor of addiction myself, and what made it so that I could find those steps to a better life was having a life worth living, and having some support to do that. I live a block away from a methadone clinic. And that is an important community resource that serves our community. But I don’t see why people should have to taxi in from Kent every single day, or how that in any way helps them put their lives back together. So we need to have the medically assisted treatment be more available where people are.

The mobile unit is a good start. We need to have way more of those overdose recovery centers, we need to have way more things like Peer Washington, which is this really incredible nonprofit organization that pairs people up—like having a sponsor outside of the [Alcoholics or Narcotics Anonymous] structure. We need to have a whole lot more housing and shelter, we need to have workforce development, we need to have actual counseling. Homelessness is a severe form of trauma, and drug addiction is a symptom, usually, of some other very deep, underlying trauma—and the things that people are forced to do in order to survive while in the active throes of their addiction are very traumatizing.

And I think what we need to do is we need to pass a municipal capital gains tax and bring tens of millions of dollars on an annual basis into creating those solutions—real things, not just stuff that feels good. Art therapy—no hate on the transformative power of being able to be creative—but th at’s enough. We’re not going to solve it with technology. People do not have ongoing addictions because they lack the right coloring book.

ECB: As a transportation advocate and resident of First Hill, you’ve advocated strongly against Sound Transit’s proposal—backed the mayor and the King County executive—to eliminate the planned Midtown station and to “relocate” the planned Chinatown/International District station to Pioneer Square. What would you do, as a council member, to advocate for the Sound Transit 3 plan voters actually adopted?

AH: There’s a city council seat on the Sound Transit board, and I would love the opportunity to serve my city and my district in that way. But the city [itself] has a ton of power over Sound Transit. We decide what happens around the Sound Transit station areas, we provide the connectivity and have authority over some of the right-of-way permits, and we have the ability to be able to deliver those faster and cheaper through the permitting and regulatory process.

I am the holder of the grudge about the [decision to eliminate the original] First Hill station. First Hill has done its part to create a walkable, sustainable, wonderful, affordable, and inclusive city, and deserves to have the transit service associated with that. The Midtown station should have been on First Hill—the First Hill station should have been on First Hill—and every inch that that station moves to the west is one more barrier to hardworking people at Virginia Mason and hardworking people at Swedish and hardworking people at Harborview and hardworking people who live in these neighborhoods to be able to be connected to the region.

And I understand the very real concerns that people in CID have. There is no reason in the world that anyone in the CID should trust that this is the time the transportation infrastructure is not going to have a negative impact on their community needs. I do believe that there is some potential in the [proposed new] SoDo station, depending on where it’s sited, depending on the land use, and depending on the way do the connectivity over and under the station, which can create, functionally, that hub idea that [the previously proposed] Fourth Avenue and Fifth Avenue stations were supposed to create.

“The reality is that we’re probably going to have to have a conversation about narrowing [the new downtown waterfront highway]. I think that that will become extremely apparent when it’s finished and everyone looks around and says, ‘This isn’t really what we wanted.’”

ECB: There’s an obvious tension among the current council candidates, and even the current council, about where new housing should go and whether it’s time to abandon the old “urban village” model, which concentrates almost all of the city’s density around busy arterial streets. Would moving away from that model be a priority for you?

AH: When people talk about urban villages, I think what they mean is, like, a neighborhood commercial area. And so part of the issue in single-family neighborhoods I,s not just the lack of housing it’s the lack of anything else. I say all the time, you shouldn’t need a gallon of gas to get a gallon of milk. And so we need to absorb and allow for housing, with a minimum of sixplexes everywhere, just like we used to have. I’ve walked hundreds of miles around this district, and I can tell you that there are apartment buildings everywhere—they just aren’t legal to build anymore. And what is missing is a place where you can walk to or send your kid down to go get some ice cream and pick up a loaf of bread.

ECB: What would you prioritize, beyond electrifying buildings and cars, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the city?

AH: It’s really super, super clear that the largest emitter of greenhouse gases in our city and in our state is our transportation sector. And the overwhelming evidence is also very clear that we need to reduce vehicle miles traveled by 50 percent. And the only way that you do that is by connecting people more closely to the things that they want. A corner store in your neighborhood is a climate solution. Better transit is a climate solution. The city obviously doesn’t run the transit agency. But we are a major purchaser of that service. So if we want things like the Route 8 to be a functional choice for people in this district, then the city needs to be having conversations about putting bus lanes on every arterial, about clearing the way so that our transit service can be an irresistibly good choice for people to make.

First of all, it’s just lovelier to live in a neighborhood where you can walk around. And, oh, by the way, it also makes it so that our, our planet is habitable for my grandchildren’s grandchildren. And so, to me, it is about building the kind of communities where you can close the gap between where you are and what you need and want and where you’re trying to go. And we have to create the alternatives that make it so that everyone in this isn’t forced to choose a private vehicle as their best way to get around.

ECB: The downtown waterfront is nearing completion, and people are beginning to realize that it’s not only an eyesore but essentially a new surface highway that is going to be quickly choked with cars. Is there any policy you would advocate for to fix the waterfront, or is it too late to fix it?

AH: Nothing’s ever too late. We have a million examples of repurposing right-of-way that has been car infrastructure and turning that into something beautiful for people. So I never concede that the future can’t be different than it is. I think we’re going to need to increase the connectivity and do a lot more investments in the people based infrastructure. And the reality is that we’re probably going to have to have a conversation about narrowing that roadway. I think that that will become extremely apparent when it’s finished and everyone looks around and says, ‘This isn’t really what we wanted.’ And so, yeah, we’ll have to come back to it.

 

City Council, Drugs, homelessness, Mayor Harrell, Taxes

Council Debates Harm Reduction, RV Storage and Jumpstart Tax as Annual Budget Deliberations Begin
Mayor Bruce Harrell’s proposed budget turns an estimated $212 million funding shortfall in 2026 into a $247 million shortfall, according to a city council staff analysis.

By Erica C. Barnett

Seattle City Councilmember Sara Nelson raised objections to funding several small harm-reduction programs using funds from the state’s settlements with opioid makers and distributors on Thursday, saying that the funds might better be spent on “treatment” rather than drug user health programs at the Hepatitis Education Project (HEP), Evergreen Treatment Services, and the People’s Harm Reduction Alliance.

These programs, which total less than $500,000, were originally funded using money the council set aside for a safe consumption site; in the face of strong political opposition to that idea, including from former mayor Jenny Durkan, the city worked with advocates to come up with alternatives that would still fulfill the original mission of harm reduction and health care without requiring a physical site.

Nelson, who has advocated for the city to fund traditional, abstinence-based inpatient treatment, said she wanted to know “what is the harm that is being reduced by the use of this money, and how do we measure the the performance of that investment? Because I know people know that I prefer that our scarce dollars should be used for treatment.” Although the three groups received funding from King County through a competitive Request for Proposals process, Nelson said they should go through another one, since the funding source is new.

According to City Attorney Ann Davison’s office, any lot for storing RVs that were previously used as residences has to be directly adjacent to a noncongregate shelter site—a requirement that has had the effect of virtually prohibiting such a lot. Davison said RVs could be allowed in this situation for up to 90 days, with extensions on a “case-by-case basis if the resident is working in good faith towards permanent housing”—a significantly more paternalistic approach than the previously approved proposal.

Both council president Debora Juarez and Councilmember Lisa Herbold seemed exasperated by Nelson’s objections. Juarez said it was already the city’s policy to fund both conventional treatment and harm reduction, while Herbold noted that the King County Board of Health, which includes Herbold and Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda, just unanimously approved a resolution supporting harm reduction as one use for the opioid settlement funds.

The council, Herbold pointed out, just approved spending $5 million in block grant funds for a new low-barrier opioid treatment facility, along with $2 million for a post-overdose recovery site, on Tuesday.

Another odd detail that emerged on Tuesday: Although the city allocated $1 million a year last year for people who had been living in RVs to store their vehicles for up to a year while they transitioned to living in shelter or permanent housing, the money has not been spent. The reason? According to City Attorney Ann Davison’s office, any lot for storing RVs that were previously used as residences has to be directly adjacent to a noncongregate shelter site—a requirement that has had the effect of virtually prohibiting such a lot.

The reason for allowing people to hang on to their old vehicles, at least for a while, while they transition into shelter is obvious. Many people are reluctant to move from the relative safety and privacy of their own RV into a shelter bed or tiny house, and don’t go into shelter as a result. If people can keep their RVs as a backup option, they’re much more likely to say yes to offers of shelter.

In a memo, an advisor to the city’s Human Services Department told the KCRHA that Davison’s office had determined that RV storage is “not identified as a permitted princip[al] use in the Seattle Land Use Code and is prohibited” everywhere in the city. RVs, the city attorney’s office said, could be allowed as an “accessory use” to a tiny house village for up to 90 days, but only if each resident who owned an RV started meeting with a case manager within 90 days to move toward permanent housing; extensions allowing people to store their vehicles longer “could be granted on a case-by-case basis if the resident is working in good faith towards permanent housing.”

This significantly more paternalistic version of the original proposal will require a provider willing and able to meet the city’s new conditions and restrictions. KCRHA put out an initial “letter of intent” seeking providers that are interested in opening an RV storage lot and a tiny house village next to each other on Wednesday.

On Thursday, Councilmember Lisa Herbold called the city attorney’s interpretation a “pretty significant misunderstanding” of the reason people want to store their RVs while they stay in a shelter. “The idea is is that this is a lot—much like a tow lot—where people voluntarily allow their vehicles to be towed into a fenced-in area,” Herbold said. “There are tow lots all over the city and they don’t all have to be next to housing for formerly homeless people.”

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The council is just starting its annual budget deliberation process. At a high level, the council will be debating how best to prepare for a “structural” general-fund budget deficit that’s now estimated at $212 million in 2025, an improvement from earlier predictions. Harrell’s budget plan would increase that structural deficit by adding $51 million in new expenditures, of which almost $28 million are ongoing annual costs.

Although the general fund is actually projected to do better in 2024 than anticipated, a lot of one-time funds that created new programs during COVID are set to expire, and the new council, which will likely have at least five new members, will have to come up with new revenues and, most likely, cuts.

Given that reality, it’s likely the council will scrutinize Harrell’s decision to add 110 new city employees next year, most of them permanent positions that create ongoing new funding obligations for the city. Overall, Harrell’s 2024 budget adds $51 million to the 2024 budget the council and Mayor Bruce Harrell “endorsed” last year) and increases the estimated deficit in 2025 to $247 million. Of the 110 positions, 40 are funded through the general fund—the part of the budget that pays for most of the city’s operations—and another 16.5 come from Jumpstart.

Jumpstart revenues are now expected to come in about $21 million below previous predictions; the tax is based on payroll expenses for the highest-paid employees at the city’s very largest companies, which makes it susceptible to swings when big tech companies cut jobs or move offices elsewhere.

The mayor’s proposal would extend an exemption from the tax for highly paid employees of nonprofit hospitals who make between $150,000 and $400,000. If this exemption was allowed to expire as scheduled, the city would take in an additional $5 million. Most of the private hospitals in Washington state are nonprofits and are exempt from many other taxes.

Harrell’s budget transfers $27 million from the Jumpstart tax fund to the general fund, an ongoing practice that the council has approved every year for the past several years to keep COVID-era programs going. Much of that includes new spending beyond what the council approved last year in the “endorsed” 2024 budget.

For example, the mayor’s budget would use revenues from the Jumpstart tax—which are supposed to be dedicated to affordable housing, small businesses, equitable development, and Green New Deal investments—to pay for higher human service worker pay, relocation costs for a tiny house village that needs to move off Sound Transit property; and subsidies for child care workers.

Nelson noted that she was the only councilmember to vote against raising human service workers’ pay, because she thinks the goal of eventually raising human service workers’ wages by 37 percent—the increase a University of Washington study concluded they would need to get to parity with similarly skilled workers—is unrealistic.

“The taxpayers are paying for a lot,” she said, citing several voter-approved human services levies.

“Regardless of what jurisdiction, it is—city, county, state, federal—it’s all taxpayer money,” Councilmember Lisa Herbold responded, and noted that other local jurisdictions, like King County, are also contributing to higher wages for human services workers, who often make so little that they qualify for social service programs themselves.

Harrell’s budget does not continue funding for a one-time 4 percent pay increase, plus an ongoing 3.6 percent increase, for homeless service workers, which the city had hoped the KCRHA would figure out a way to fund long term. Paying for these pay increases would cost the city an additional $1.9 million a year.

Councilmember Alex Pedersen, who represents the University District, suggested that it would potentially harm the people living at the tiny house village to “quibbl[e] about the pots of money”—a position that runs counter to his frequent calls for audits and “accountability” for programs he believes may be wasting money.

The mayor’s proposal also includes $1 million a year in new funding to evaluate the effectiveness of the Jumpstart tax, which would include two new permanent employees and unspecified additional expenses. It would also extend an exemption from the tax for highly paid employees of nonprofit hospitals who make between $150,000 and $400,000. If this exemption was allowed to expire as scheduled, the city would take in an additional $5 million. Most of the private hospitals in Washington state, including Virginia Mason, Providence/Swedish, and Pacific Medical Centers, are organized as nonprofits and are exempt from many other taxes.

Given how often the council has had to agree to exemptions from the spending plan since Jumpstart went into effect in 2021, a council staff memo asks semi-rhetorically, “is it time to consider expanding the areas of spending the JS Fund can be used for on a permanent basis?” Jumpstart architect Teresa Mosqueda may object to changing the spending plan, as she has in the past, but she’s likely to be replaced by a new, appointed council member next year, assuming she wins election to the King County Council.

City Council, Drugs, Elections, homelessness

Burien Mayor Sees No Issue With Distribution of Homeless People’s Private Info, Council Member Blames Her Colleague for Fentanyl Deaths

1. During a debate focusing on homelessness sponsored Wednesday night, Burien Mayor Sofia Aragon, who is running for King County Council District 8, responded to PubliCola’s report that the director of a group called The More We Love that offers private encampment sweeps had shared personal and medical information about vulnerable homeless residents of the city with police, city officials, and a private business owner.

The real issue, Aragon said, was that someone in the city had “leaked” the information to me, not that the person who shared the information, The More We Love director Kristine Moreland, had done so without apparent concern for the privacy of the more than 80 people included in the detailed spreadsheet she created.

“I know that there was some information shared, and I don’t know how that got to the reporter, but I know that you know, things that we share within the city will often leak out,” Aragon said. “I don’t know how that occurred, we definitely would be we would be serious about the protection of health information because in [the nonprofit] industry, that is certainly something important.”

Aragon said it was understandable that Moreland sent her spreadsheet of personal information to the private business owner, Jeff Rakow of Snowball Investment, because he contracted with Moreland’s group to remove an encampment outside a Grocery Outlet property that he owns.

As I reported, I received the information through a routine public disclosure request; Moreland attached the spreadsheet to an email she sent to a city council member, two police officials, and a real estate investor who paid Moreland’s group to remove an encampment on his property. It’s unknown whether, or how widely, Moreland distributed her spreadsheet outside the city of Burien, since only public officials are subject to public disclosure requests.

When debate moderator Scott Greenstone from KNKX noted that I got the information through a records request, Aragon breezed past the clarification, saying it was understandable that Moreland sent her spreadsheet of personal information to the private business owner, Jeff Rakow of Snowball Investment, because he contracted with Moreland’s group to remove an encampment outside a Grocery Outlet property that he owns.

“And what he did, because he did see some success, is he shared that with the city, but that doesn’t excuse leaking out of private information from those who are homeless, and that’s something that needs to be addressed,” Aragon said.

As a side note: Unlike Moreland, I did not publish or distribute any of the private information contained in Moreland’s spreadsheet, because that would be an additional violation of the privacy of the people whose information she distributed.

For context, credible nonprofit homeless service providers do not, as a rule, share their clients’ private information outside their organizations without explicit informed consent, because to do so would violate people’s privacy, damage trust, and potentially break federal laws protecting people’s medical information.

2.In a TV ad for District 7 city council candidate Bob Kettle, Seattle City Council member Sara Nelson accused her colleague, District 7 incumbent Councilmember Andrew Lewis, of being responsible for the deaths of countless people from drug overdoses during the two and a half months when the city did not have a law empowering the city attorney to prosecute people who use drugs in public. Lewis cast the deciding vote against the bill in June, then voted with the majority of the council in favor ot a substantively similar bill in September.

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“Andrew Lewis’ decision to block my drug bill cost the lives of too many people from fentanyl overdose. I trust Bob Kettle to do the right thing,” Nelson said in the ad.

Nelson sponsored the initial version of the bill, which said nothing about treatment, diversion, or overdose prevention, and opposed many of the new provisions in the updated bill that support diversion and crisis intervention training. Lisa Herbold and Lewis sponsored the version that passed, which included language indicating that police should divert people to treatment or other diversion programs instead of jail. Public drug use and simple possession are already illegal across the state, thanks to a law passed in May that made both a gross misdemeanor.

“When you have nothing substantive to say, I guess the only thing to do is resort to Republican-style attack ads,” Lewis said. “I will continue my campaign of bringing people together to achieve real results for the people of District 7.”

City Council, Elections

PubliCola Questions: City Council Member Tammy Morales, District 2

By Erica C. Barnett

The 2023 election will dramatically reshape the Seattle City Council. Four council members are not seeking reelection, while a fifth, Teresa Mosqueda, is running for King County Council and will be replaced by an appointee if she wins. Even if all three of the incumbents who are running win reelection, the council will probably have at least five new members next year—a new majority of freshmen on a council whose most experienced members will, at most, be entering their second terms. If all eight seats turn over, it would make Sara Nelson, an at-large council member who started her first term last year, the most senior member of the council.

Debates over issues and ideology are understandably front and center in campaigns. But with eight of nine council seats up for grabs, I want to focus for a moment on an often overlooked question that impacts how the city council makes decisions and functions on a daily basis:  Can these people work together? Among the current council, the answer is frequently no. At best, there’s a sense that council members aren’t talking to each other outside public meetings, which are still largely virtual. At worst, the hostility bursts out into the open—as it has during this election, when one council member, Sara Nelson, is actively campaigning against three of her incumbent colleagues.

In this setting, five—and up to eight—new council members could provide a needed reset and eliminate some of the bad blood that has built up over the past several years.

Less optimistically, an inexperienced council could leave Mayor Bruce Harrell’s exercise of executive power unchecked, allowing the mayor to push through any number of priorities that the current council has shot down—like raiding the JumpStart payroll tax, which is supposed to be spend on housing and equitable development, to pay for general city obligations.

The next council will have to get up to speed fast, because they’ll soon face challenges that are only growing in scope—from homelessness, gun violence, and addiction to a looming $250 million budget deficit that will require tough decisions and could mean significant service cuts.

To get a better sense of how council incumbents, challengers, and first-time candidates would tackle these challenges, PubliCola spoke with 10 of the 14 council candidates, representing every council district.

Two candidates—Rob Saka in District 1 and Tanya Woo in District 2—ignored our emailed requests to sit down for an interview and did not follow up after I asked again in person. One candidate, District 3’s Joy Hollingsworth, set up an interview but then canceled, and did not respond to my request to reschedule. Maritza Rivera, running in District 4, would not sit down for an interview but did provide emailed responses to written questions. And Cathy Moore, in District 5, declined my request in an email.

The number of candidates who declined, canceled, or ignored our requests for an interview is unusual. While PubliCola isn’t shy about expressing our views on issues, that has rarely been an impediment to dialogue in the past. These candidates’ refusal to sit down for an in-depth conversation about the issues they will have to address if elected could bode poorly for transparency on the new council; in our experience, candidates who refuse to talk to members of the press they perceive as critical rarely become more tolerant of tough questions under the pressure of public office.

I’ll be rolling out interviews with the council candidates in every race over the next two weeks. I hope readers will learn more about the candidates from these in-depth conversations and use them to inform your vote. Ballots go out on October 18.

Today’s interview is with District 2 Councilmember Tammy Morales, who represents Southeast Seattle and is running for reelection in District 2.

PubliCola [ECB]: Some of your colleagues have disavowed their support for reducing the police budget by 50 percent. Do you still think the council did the right thing in drawing this line in the sand in 2020, and what does the backlash say about where we are as a city?

Tammy Morales [TM]: I think the thing [to know] about all of that is that nobody [on the council] is talking about that anymore. The important thing for us to do now is to talk about accountability. Because when officers demonstrate contempt for the public, when they’re harassing neighbors, when they’re laughing at the death of a young woman, a death that was caused by one of their own, that’s public safety, too. That’s a safety issue for all of us. And I think we need to really start to have a conversation about this department that takes 47 percent of our general fud—what is the return on investment for us?

My hope is that we can have those conversations about the culture of the department, which is clearly very toxic, as demonstrated by the fact that the majority of members elected two very toxic leaders of their union. And we need to figure this out, because people are frustrated and angry, and rightfully so.

“Pushing a narrative of fear, and [portraying the city as] a dystopian situation is not helpful. And I don’t think just listing off all the challenges that the city has, as so many candidates are doing right now, is helpful either. We need serious solutions, we need to be able to pay for them, and we need to be able to provide our neighbors with the things that they need in order to thrive.”

ECB: You seem pretty pessimistic. Do you think that SPD can be reformed?

TM: Here’s the challenge that we face as a city: We have boxed ourselves into a corner. We allowed the guild to bargain, and to assume that they can continue to bargain, around accountability. I think we are going to have to have a conversation in the legislature about this as we’re trying to move the dial there. But as we’re moving toward the next contract, questions about arbitration, questions about allowing disciplinary decisions to be overturned—these are things that really need to be front and center, and we really need to get back to the accountability measures that we had in the 2017 accountability legislation.

I’m not part of those conversations anymore. I’m not on the [Labor Relations Policy Committee]. Even if it was, I couldn’t talk about it. But I will say that I don’t know how we change the culture. That has to come from the top. That has to come from expectations from the mayor, expectations from the chief. Loudly and clearly calling out when shit happens instead of excuses. I don’t see that happening right now. And so what we are left with as a council is the contract negotiation, and how and whether we support whatever that looks like.

ECB: The new council is going to consist largely or mostly of new members, and if you’re reelected, you’ll be a veteran by virtue of being in your second term. Are you worried that having so many newcomers getting up to speed at once will diminish the council’s ability to serve as a check on the mayor, especially when there are disagreements?

TM: I am actually not worried about that. Well, I guess it depends on the outcome. I do think that there are candidates who are coming in with some pretty clear visions for what they want to see in terms of how the city grows and changes, how we make sure that our communities are vibrant, strong, and healthy, and what that means for the way we hold ourselves accountable as a city and fund the things that need to happen in the city. So, again depending on the outcome, we could be moving in a really positive direction. I do think it is important to pay attention to the tone that’s being set.

ECB: Can you talk a little more about what you mean by tone?

TM: We’re a growing city, and we did not keep pace with the infrastructure or the services that we need to deal with the structural problems that we have. And then on top of that, we have a social service crisis brought on in part by the pandemic. So there’s absolutely a lot of work to do. But pushing a narrative of fear, and [portraying the city as] a dystopian situation is not helpful. And I don’t think just listing off all the challenges that the city has, as so many candidates are doing right now, is helpful either. We need serious solutions, we need to be able to pay for them, and we need to be able to provide our neighbors with the things that they need in order to thrive.

ECB: The council is in the middle of its annual budget process. What are your priorities for new investments, and how are you going to pay for them beyond this year, given that the city faces a looming budget deficit of $250 million a year starting in 2024?

TM: It’s going to be hard. There’s no doubt about that. We’re a growing city with growing needs. We were able to fund a lot of those needs with one-time federal money that we got during COVID. But that money is gone, and the needs still exist, and they are growing. So we’re going to have to talk about raising more revenue. I was one of three council members in last year’s budget who voted to increase the progressive payroll expense tax. And I think that needs to be on the table. I think the capital gains tax needs to be on the table. I don’t quite know how the executive pay disparity tax would work. But that I know, that was also a recommendation, and I think it’s something worth investigating more.

And I think we’re going to have to partner with the county, with the state, with the feds, to try to fill some of these other holes that we have, if we’re really going to get serious about meeting the needs of the folks who are most vulnerable in our community. And, you know, I can certainly think of one place that we could trim a little bit, but that conversation is fraught, and I don’t know that it would be terribly productive.

ECB: You don’t think that talking about cutting the police budget at this point is going to be productive?

TM: What I will say is that I certainly don’t think we should be adding funding there. And I know there is more money added to the department [in Harrell’s proposed 2024 budget] from salary savings, from some other places, for some additional one-time funding [for things like Shotspotter and surveillance cameras]. I don’t think we need to be adding anything new that isn’t going to be sustainably funded.

“As a city, we have a responsibility to protect the safety of our community members, and that includes [drug users’] health and safety. That includes people who are experiencing homelessness and substance use disorder. So in my mind, this bill does not protect them. It doesn’t provide treatment, it doesn’t provide services, and in fact, basically defines the threat of harm as public drug use.”

ECB: What about Jumpstart? Every year, Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda is a fierce advocate for preserving the Jumpstart spending plan instead of raiding that funding source for other purposes. If she’s elected to the county council, which seems likely, are you concerned about preserving that stable source of funding for housing and equitable developmemt?

TM: I want to have that conversation in the context of whether or not we will be able to increase [the Jumpstart payroll tax]. And I don’t know yet. There are some really important programs that Jumpstart is funding—some really important goals that we have for the city around affordability and housing. And it was really important to me to get the Equitable Development Initiative included in that package. And I fought to make sure that we had at least that 9 percent setaside because EDI needs a permanent funding source. And so the way that was set up was really, in my mind, a value statement—wanting to dedicate resources to the things that we say are important, and not letting it get sort of swept up in the general fund.

That said, you know, it has been an important way to fill some of the [budget] hole, and now that that hole is bigger. I don’t want all of the payroll expense tax to go into that gap. But we may need to at least extend the percentage that has been going [to the general fund]. And if we’re able to increase the tax, then that is another way to try to fill some of that hole.

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ECB: What are some of your priorities for reducing gun violence in southeast Seattle, and why do you think the rate of gun violence has continued to rise, both in your district and throughout Seattle?

TM: What I have what I have said my entire term, and even before my term, is that what we really need to be doing is investing in neighborhoods that are underresourced, and investing in things that can change the community conditions that lead to violence in the first place. And part of the problem is we just don’t have a social safety net in this country. So we need to invest in our neighborhoods so that people have housing they can afford, and food security, and access to medical care, and high quality education and job opportunities, and after school programs, and mentoring, and all of those things. We need all of that.

And in addition to that very upstream answer, we need to be scaling up the kinds of programs that provide street activation and diversion programs and violence interruption programs—all of those things that can help activate the streets, that can identify the people who are involved in some of this activity, and either divert them after arrest or try to engage them before they’re arrested so that they get onto a different path. I think identifying the people who are at risk is important, and there are a lot of programs that do that kind of work.

And then trying to mitigate that risk, and making sure that we are providing groups like, you know, Southeast Safety Net and Choose 180—those groups that work on a pathway out of violence are also important. And then I think there is a role for the police to play after the fact in some of this— responding to violent calls, investigating incidents of drug trafficking, or sex trafficking, or any of the other things that that are really harming people.

ECB: You voted against the new drug criminalization bill, which put you in the minority on the council, and I wanted to just give you a brief opportunity to explain why and what you would like to see happen now.

TM:  For me, the issue remains that this bill was really about giving the city attorney the ability to prosecute [drug users], more than more than anything else. And I still believe that if our goal is to help people who are suffering from addiction, then we need to be taking a public health approach to solving that problem. And what public health professionals are saying is that we need to expand treatment options. We need to expand harm reduction options. We need to make sure folks can access the medications that they need that could help them with withdrawing from these drugs that they’re on.

I think something like 1,000 opioid-related deaths have happened in the last year. As a city, we have a responsibility to protect the safety of our community members, and that includes [drug users’] health and safety. That includes people who are experiencing homelessness and substance use disorder. So in my mind, this bill does not protect them. It doesn’t provide treatment, it doesn’t provide services, and in fact, basically defines the threat of harm as public drug use.

“The folks in the south end don’t consider [Link light rail] done yet, and won’t consider it done until you make the safety investments that you should have made in the first place. Because it’s great that you’ve learned all kinds of lessons, and you’re doing things differently, or plan to do things differently, up in Ballard or wherever else you’re going. But you learned those lessons at the expense of the folks in the Rainier Valley.”

ECB: You came out in favor of the new “North and South of Chinatown/International District” light rail option, which would eliminate stations in Midtown and the heart of the CID. There are a lot of people in the district who have advocated for a Fourth Avenue option that would provide the CID with a connection to the rest of the system, including the airport, in the future. Can you explain why you decided to support these new locations?

TM: There’s a real fear that if we move with the Fourth Avenue option, local businesses will be disrupted, local businesses will lose customers, and they will shut down. I think there’s something like 20 businesses around there. And the CID is changing rapidly already. There’s a lot of national chains coming in that I think are really changing the character of the neighborhood. And so the initial conversations were really like, how do we make sure that we’re preserving these businesses? And so the conversation started about the other two locations that [some neighborhood] advocates were proposing. This is a community, as we’ve all heard over and over again, that has regularly borne the brunt of these transit projects with very little engagement or seeming understanding from the agencies themselves about the impact they’re having. And they’re fed up, understandably.

So that’s where the conversation started. I will say that I realize the plans weren’t fully developed as we were having those conversations. And now that Sound Transit has identified that as the preferred alternative, and is beginning the process of diving deeper into what these are, I do want to see what it’s going to look like. And I think that regardless of what ends up happening, Sound Transit really needs to step up their community engagement there, and they need to be very clear about what mitigation measures and what community benefits they will commit to.

ECB: In Southeast Seattle, Sound Transit’s at-grade light rail trains continue to collide with vehicles along MLK Way SE on a routine basis, and a number of pedestrians have been struck and killed by trains. How are you working with Sound Transit to make the light rail crossings in Southeast Seattle safer for residents of those neighborhoods?

TM: I have quarterly meetings with Sound Transit about MLK, in particular. And there’s been some movement on [the Seattle Department of Transportation’s] side to add leading pedestrian intervals, different kinds of signal timing, and more lighting around the stations themselves. On Sound Transit’s side, there is beginning to be a conversation about what it would take to add [railroad] arms to the pedestrian pathway so that they can’t cross into the track. There’s all kinds of design and engineering reasons why they say that is problematic. But I think there’s finally a willingness to really have that conversation.

And as I say every time we talk, the folks in the south end don’t consider this project done yet, and won’t consider it done until you make the safety investments that you should have made in the first place. Because it’s great that you’ve learned all kinds of lessons, and you’re doing things differently, or plan to do things differently, up in Ballard or wherever else you’re going. But you learned those lessons at the expense of the folks in the Rainier Valley. And that needs to be addressed.

 

City Council, Elections

PubliCola Questions: City Council Candidate Maren Costa, District 1

By Erica C. Barnett

The 2023 election will dramatically reshape the Seattle City Council. Four council members are not seeking reelection, while a fifth, Teresa Mosqueda, is running for King County Council and will be replaced by an appointee if she wins. Even if all three of the incumbents who are running win reelection, the council will probably have at least five new members next year—a new majority of freshmen on a council whose most experienced members will, at most, be entering their second terms. If all eight seats turn over, it would make Sara Nelson, an at-large council member who started her first term last year, the most senior member of the council.

Debates over issues and ideology are understandably front and center in campaigns. But with eight of nine council seats up for grabs, I want to focus for a moment on an often overlooked question that impacts how the city council makes decisions and functions on a daily basis:  Can these people work together? Among the current council, the answer is frequently no. At best, there’s a sense that council members aren’t talking to each other outside public meetings, which are still largely virtual. At worst, the hostility bursts out into the open—as it has during this election, when one council member, Sara Nelson, is actively campaigning against three of her incumbent colleagues.

In this setting, five—and up to eight—new council members could provide a needed reset and eliminate some of the bad blood that has built up over the past several years.

Less optimistically, an inexperienced council could leave Mayor Bruce Harrell’s exercise of executive power unchecked, allowing the mayor to push through any number of priorities that the current council has shot down—like raiding the JumpStart payroll tax, which is supposed to be spend on housing and equitable development, to pay for general city obligations.

The next council will have to get up to speed fast, because they’ll soon face challenges that are only growing in scope—from homelessness, gun violence, and addiction to a looming $250 million budget deficit that will require tough decisions and could mean significant service cuts.

To get a better sense of how council incumbents, challengers, and first-time candidates would tackle these challenges, PubliCola spoke with 10 of the 14 council candidates, representing every council district.

Two candidates—Rob Saka in District 1 and Tanya Woo in District 2—ignored our emailed requests to sit down for an interview and did not follow up after I asked again in person. One candidate, District 3’s Joy Hollingsworth, set up an interview but then canceled, and did not respond to my request to reschedule. Maritza Rivera, running in District 4, would not sit down for an interview but did provide emailed responses to written questions. And Cathy Moore, in District 5, declined my request in an email.

The number of candidates who declined, canceled, or ignored our requests for an interview is unusual. While PubliCola isn’t shy about expressing our views on issues, that has rarely been an impediment to dialogue in the past. These candidates’ refusal to sit down for an in-depth conversation about the issues they will have to address if elected could bode poorly for transparency on the new council; in our experience, candidates who refuse to talk to members of the press they perceive as critical rarely become more tolerant of tough questions under the pressure of public office.

I’ll be rolling out interviews with the council candidates in every race over the next two weeks. I hope readers will learn more about the candidates from these in-depth conversations and use them to inform your vote. Ballots go out on October 18.

First up: Maren Costa, a former Amazon employee who founded Amazon Employees for Climate Justice, where her organizing helped lead to Amazon’s “climate pledge” to reduce the company’s net emissions to zero by 2040. In 2020, she was fired after circulating a petition on behalf of warehouse workers organizing for better workplace conditions. Her opponent, Rob Saka, is supported by Mayor Bruce Harrell.

This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

PubliCola [ECB]: Seattle Police Department officers have repeatedly been caught mocking or belittling the deaths of people killed by police—most recently SPOG vice president Daniel Auderer, who was caught on tape joking with SPOG president Mike Solan about the killing of Jaahnavi Kandula by a third officer. These are police leaders, and they shape the culture at the department. Do you think SPD can be reformed, and if so, how?

Maren Costa [MC]: Reform is really hard. A lot of the things that happen in a fight or flight decision—which is where we see, oftentimes, the worst examples of police brutality and overpolicing—those come from the brain stem. In big tech, we deal with implicit bias all the time. We know that there’s implicit bias—it’s just everywhere, and it hard to train out of people. So when you’re dealing with somebody who has a gun, and they’re in an adrenaline situation, it’s just going to be hard for people not to resort to that lower brain and not to go to their fear-based reactions.

I am a proponent of minimizing armed response where it’s not needed—so, standing up that third department that we’ve all been waiting for, whether we call it CARE or civilian response or dual dispatch. I think the community will be safer if we don’t send an armed officer when we don’t need an armed officer.

And then we need to hold people accountable when we see that kind of behavior. Culture comes from the top.

“I do think that treatment for some people might need to be mandatory— enough to give someone a chance to be off drugs, to help them get onto methadone, or whatever will help ease them back to a non-drug[-using] stage.”

ECB: You told me before the primary that you opposed local legislation giving the city attorney the ability to prosecute people for using drugs in public or for simple possession. Now that the law has passed, what policies will you advocate to promote diversion and minimize harm?

MC: I think the evidence shows that treatment works better than incarceration for substance use disorder. So but we need to fund that. But this bill that passed, unfortunately, seemed performative. If you’re someone who wants to incarcerate someone for substance use disorder, I’m sorry, that won’t happen. Because we don’t have time, courts are backed up, the jails are full. If you’re someone that wants to treat substance use disorder, sorry, that won’t happen [either]. Because we don’t have the beds, we don’t have the programs, we don’t have the resources and the diversion set up to deal with it.

ECB: What do you think effective treatment looks like?

MC: Fentanyl is such a beast. And, you know, somebody said, ‘There’s no such thing as a long-term fentanyl user,’ which is so tragic. We know that getting out of addiction can often take multiple tries. And sometimes you just don’t get those chances with fentanyl. So I think it’s just going to be different for every person. You know, ‘is this your eighth time in [treatment]? Have we seen you before? What are you struggling with?’

I think when people talk about, ‘incarceration works,’ they’ll have these anecdotal stories of somebody saying, ‘I sobered up in jail and it saved my life.’ And you can have the same anecdotal stories of people saying ‘I sobered up in the hospital’ because they had some kind of an injury that put them in the hospital where they couldn’t leave [and had to stop using drugs]. So I don’t think it has to be jail. But I do think that treatment for some people might need to be mandatory— enough to give someone a chance to be off drugs, to help them get onto methadone, or whatever will help ease them back to a non-drug[-using] stage.

ECB: How do you feel about your ability to work with City Attorney Ann Davison’s office on less punitive alternatives to prosecution for drug users arrested under the new law?

MC: Oh, great. We agree on the outcomes. We want people to not hurt other people and not hurt themselves. [We want them to] not be doing drugs on openly on the streets. We want to house people. Most of us still want to be compassionate. But we also don’t want to accept harmful behavior. And the devil then is in the details. How do we do all of those things? And then also, how do we pay for them?

ECB: How do we pay for them? Inpatient treatment can be very expensive, to name one example.

MC: We  obviously want to make sure we’re spending every dollar that we have as best as we can. At Amazon, there was a leadership principle called frugality: Every dollar not spent on the customer is a dollar wasted. That was drilled into us. So we should make sure we’re spending the money we have as efficiently as we can. This might have to come from the mayor, but I would love to say to all the departments, ‘Filter up 10 ways that your department can save money.’

And it can be anonymous, because there might be people in a department who are like, ‘We have this meeting every week where there’s 10 people sitting around making $300 an hour and nothing comes out of that meeting.’ Or, ‘we’re paying this one nonprofit to do this work, and they have never produced results.’ Or whatever it is—you know, bubble it up. And let’s go after those things and try to save as much money as we can and do that quickly, because we’re going to need to do everything we can.

And then we need to raise progressive revenue, because we have an upside-down tax code where the poorest among us pay the highest percentage of their wages. We have a ton of money in the city. And we have a hard time getting the people who have that money to pay their fair share. So we have to make sure that we’re getting everybody to pay their fair share, and then we’ll have more money to solve our big problems. And that’s where I can’t get my opponent to commit, because the Trump donors that are funding his [independent expenditure] campaign don’t want to hear him say he’s going to raise taxes on big business.

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ECB: The King County Regional Homelessness Authority, which is mostly funded by the city, has struggled to find its footing in its first two years and has suffered a number of high-profile setbacks, including the termination of its program to end homelessness downtown and the departure of its founding CEO. Do you think homelessness requires a regional approach, and if so, what can be done to turn the KCRHA around?

MC: I’m not ready to abandon it. But we have to make sure that we’re monitoring it and auditing it to make sure it’s meeting the goals, and if it’s not meeting the goals, fix it or kill it. And I think we’re at the fixing stage. I have hopes for it. I think the regional intent is good. When it comes to [deciding], where are we going to put all the tiny home villages or safe [parking] lots that we want to build, everyone in the region has to pony up. You know, ‘Give me three places where you will be willing to put [shelter] in your neighborhood’ and share the load appropriately. I think it’ll make us more efficient and more able to actually meet the needs of our own homeless population, which is growing every day.

I met with [a policy staffer for KCRHA] recently, and he gave me a lot of hope for the organization. He said that when they are actually going into encampments armed with what they need to solve the problem, they’re having a 90% success rate of bringing people inside. And that’s what I love to hear. Because that’s what we need to do. And you need to tailor that offer. Before, we were offering congregate shelters and nobody wants to go. When we can go in and really help people get situated into something that works for them, we’re getting 90%.

ECB: It sounds like he was talking about CoLEAD, which does encampment work in state-owned rights-of-way in collaboration with the KCRHA. That’s an intensive, expensive model that is unlike how the city itself responds to most encampments, which is to give 72 hours’ notice and offer people whatever shelter is available. And that’s in a best-case scenario where the city doesn’t just call an encampment an obstruction and remove it without notice or a shelter offer.

MC: LEAD works. It’s also very expensive. So if there’s a way to do it cheaper, great. And we can look at that, too. But I mean, these things are just going to cost money. I think we’re all really tired of not solving the problem.

“These decisions we’re making right now are going to impact our city for hundreds of years. And so it’s very short-sighted to worry about years of [light rail] construction. The most important thing we can do is build something that people actually want to use and that meets their needs, because we need to get people out of their cars, and in order to do that, we have to make it more convenient.”

ECB: Sound Transit has recently proposed moving around several stations in downtown Seattle to reduce the impact of construction on businesses and residents. What are some of the tradeoffs you see coming down the road in West Seattle, and can you talk about how you see light rail transforming District 1, for good or bad?

MC: Well, there’s going to be disruptions. Somebody’s going to lose their house, somebody’s going to lose their business. I guess I would want to make sure that we’re fairly compensating businesses and renters and homeowners. My sister’s business was actually under eminent domain for a while. I met with the owner of a daycare center who will probably get displaced for the Delridge station,, and the amount of money that they’re being offered to compensate them is not anywhere near the amount of money they’re actually going to need to reestablish their business somewhere else.

These decisions we’re making right now are going to impact our city for hundreds of years. And so it’s very short-sighted to worry about years of construction. The most important thing we can do is build something that people actually want to use and that meets their needs, because we need to get people out of their cars, and in order to do that, we have to make it more convenient. It’s a long wait. Ten years from now. Where are self-driving vehicles going to be at [by then]?

ECB: Do you support putting self-driving vehicles on our streets?

MC: Yeah. Probably not yet, but like 10 years from now? Sure. Let [other cities] be the guinea pigs for a year or two. We tend to want to rush everything—like rushing AI. And we don’t really just slow down and take a minute to see how well it’s working. So I’m not opposed to it, when it’s safe.

ECB: What are some of your ideas to decarbonize the city, other than electric vehicles and maybe, eventually, self-driving cabs?

MC: Everything we do to bring cars off the road is great, and we can’t just electrify them all because it is still an inefficient way to move people around. Sometimes when I’m sitting on I-5, I like to think about if you could snap your fingers and have the cars go away, the way that like Cinderella’s carriage went away, and then you just had the number of people that were there. It would be empty. It would just be like, ‘Oh my God, we have this massive thing running through our city and it’s only moving this this many people. It’s so frustrating. So we need to get cars off the road.

We have building emissions performance standards coming up—that needs to have teeth and it needs to happen. I would love to find a way to tax carbon so that we’re making the right thing to do the actual cheaper thing to do

We’re currently not on track to meet our climate goals. As a city, as a state, as a nation, as a planet, nobody is on track to meet our climate goals. We are all just numbingly accepting this as business as usual. We can’t refreeze the ice caps, we can’t de-acidify the oceans, we can’t reverse the biodiversity loss. And I don’t believe in blaming the individual at all, because that’s not where we need to change. But we need to have people understanding what the tradeoffs are—we’re currently trading our convenience today for a livable future. We need to help people understand that and then demand better from our government.