Category: Elections

County Website Failed on Election Night Due to “Traffic Issue”

By Erica C. Barnett

County Executive Dow Constantine’s office chalked Tuesday night’s very late-to-go-live election results up to a “traffic issue” related to a new  web platform and design that has more than its share of very visible bugs. Essentially, according to the county, the new system was not set up to handle the large amount of traffic caused by thousands of people trying to load the website at 8:15 —when the first batch of results are posted every year—and, as a result, the link that would ordinarily go to a results page simply didn’t function.

King County Elections, which has been busy counting ballots after a brief delay when someone mailed white powder to election offices across the state, has not yet responded to our request for comment on the glitch, which forced people at election night parties, and elsewhere across the county, to turn to KING 5’s website, which had the results before they were generally available on the county site.

The county’s actual, “improved” elections website.

Earlier this year, King County IT staff and a group of outside consultants transformed the county’s website into a bare-bones, temporary-looking shell of its former self, with few images to break up the white space of what is now a mostly text-based site. The “upgraded” site—now includes many broken links (like the ones on this page to programs funded by the county’s Mental Illness and Drug Dependency levy) and gives prominent placement to a random assortment of county services: Metro, live traffic cameras in unincorporated King County, animal services, and job listings.

The county’s 2019-2020 budget included $1.3 million for upgrading the site. According to that budget, the changes were necessary to ” facilitate increased engagement with the public and improve their experience… [by] reduc[ing] web content, so people spend less time searching for information they want and more time engaging with the information. …To ensure engagement, KCIT will invest in modernizing the KingCounty.gov platform and the County’s web presence.”

Post-“modernization,” it can be maddeningly difficult to navigate the site—which, even if technically outdated, used to be fairly intuitive. If you’re interested in looking up a specific department’s website, your best bet is to go to the throwback A-Z site index, but you better know exactly what you’re looking for: “Garbage and recycling facilities,” for example, goes to a different page than “Garbage, recycling, and compost services,” and the Maleng Regional Justice Center—the downtown Seattle jail’s South King County counterpart—can now be found at a link labeled “Kent Jail.”

The county does plan to conduct an after-action report on what went wrong on election night. Fingers crossed that it will prompt to re-evaluate the entire “upgrade”—and perhaps downgrade it to a version that people can actually use.

Morales Surges While Other Progressives Flail in Latest Election Results; Mosqueda Explains Why She’ll Stay Through the End of This Year

1. UPDATE: On Friday afternoon, District 2 incumbent Tammy Morales pulled ahead of challenger Tanya Woo and now has 50.15 percent of the vote, a gap of 317 points. Alex Hudson conceded to Joy Hollingsworth in District 3, and District 7 incumbent Andrew Lewis conceded to Bob Kettle.

Dan Strauss (District 6, Northwest Seattle) officially pulled ahead of challenger Pete Hanning after King County Elections posted its latest set of results on Thursday, while the other two incumbents seeking reelection—Tammy Morales (District 2, Southeast Seattle) and Andrew Lewis (District 7, downtown and Queen Anne) began closing the gap on their opponents, Tanya Woo and Bob Kettle.

As is typical in local elections, progressive voters who were losing (or barely winning) on election night pulled ahead significantly in this first large batch of later results, though generally not enough to come back from election-night trouncings.

With another 47,000 votes counted, Strauss now leads Hanning 50-49, while Woo is a little more than three points ahead of Morales, at 51.5-48.2. That’s a big gain for Morales since election night, when Woo was leading by almost nine points, making this a competitive race.

Lewis, meanwhile, is now 7 points behind conservative challenger Kettle, at 46.2 to his opponent’s 53.4—a seven-point gap that’s unlikely to close unless the remaining ballots are wildly lopsided compared to those counted so far.

In the open seat for District 4 (Northeast Seattle), Ron Davis is now 6 points behind Maritza Rivera, with 46.7 percent of the vote to Rivera’s 52.9. In the other races in which no candidate has conceded (Districts 1 and 3—Rob Saka v. Maren Costa and Joy Hollingsworth v. Alex Hudson), the more progressive candidates remain double digits behind their centrist opponents.

In short, the new council will most likely consist of seven moderates (Sara Nelson plus six new members, one appointed by the council when Teresa Mosqueda leaves to join the County Council), plus Strauss and, potentially, Morales—a major shift from its current, more progressive makeup, and a sign that voters were in the market for candidates who promised harsher policies toward drug users, unsheltered people, and people committing low-level crimes.

2. Council budget committee chair Teresa Mosqueda, the presumptive winner of the King County Council seat being vacated by Joe McDermott, has come under pressure from left-leaning activists to resign now, before the council loses as many as seven progressive members, so that the council can appoint a progressive to serve until the next election. Under the city charter, the council has 20 days to replace a council member who resigns after their final day in office.

It’s an absurd argument, for a number of reasons, not least among them that most of the current council already votes in lockstep with Mayor Bruce Harrell, who openly backed many of the moderates who are currently leading in the races for open seats. A scenario in which Mosqueda “pushes through” a left-leaning candidate like former Lorena González aide Brianna Thomas would require support from both Andrew Lewis and Dan Strauss, against a council president (Debora Juarez) who would almost certainly oppose the idea, assuming that all the other progressives on the council got on board.

More important than that hypothetical, however, is the fact that Mosqueda’s budget committee will still be meeting to hammer out revenue options for future budget years until December, when the council is scheduled to vote on new taxes that could include expansion of the JumpStart payroll tax, which is earmarked primarily for affordable housing, and a local capital gains tax. “We have unfinished business in the Budget Committee that we won’t even get the chance to start voting on” until December, Mosqueda noted.

Neither Mosqueda nor her staff are independently wealthy, and living without a paycheck for six to eight weeks could represent a significant hardship, as it would for most people.

Whoever the council appoints next year will serve until the end of next year; if they run for the seat in 2024 and win, they will serve until Mosqueda’s original term ends in 2025, and will have to run again then.

 

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Election Night Results Represent a Turn to the Center for Seattle

City Councilmember Andrew Lewis at his sparsely attended Election Night party in Belltown

By Erica C. Barnett

In early results that signaled a hard turn to the center for the Seattle City Council, three progressive city council incumbents were trailing their more conservative opponents Tuesday night, while moderates had strong leads over progressives in all four open seats.

The number-one issue this cycle was public safety—exemplified, a bit absurdly, by a vote to empower City Attorney Ann Davison to prosecute drug users—and voters were apparently convinced that a slate of more moderate newcomers will be better equipped than the current council to address the city’s problems.

Collectively, the candidates who were prevailing on election night support aggressive efforts to hire more police, aggressive crackdowns on people using drugs in public, and a harsher attitude toward unsheltered people, particularly those who are visible downtown and in the city’s business districts.

Although land use took a backseat to issues that lend themselves better to soundbites, it’s likely that the new council will be disinclined to adopt policies that would allow more apartments in Seattle’s historically single-family neighborhoods; Joy Hollingsworth, leading urbanist Alex Hudson by almost 17 points in District 3, talked fondly of “middle housing,” citing her family’s experience converting their large house into a triplex, but spoke warily about other forms of density, telling PubliCola she considered the level of density in District 3 “very extreme.”

It’s almost unprecedented for a city council candidate to come back from a double-digit deficit. In fact, the only person to do it in recent memory was Kshama Sawant, who gained 12 points on challenger Egan Orion in late returns in 2019, ultimately defeating him by more than 4 points.

The one council incumbent who’s almost certain to prevail, District 6 (Northwest Seattle) incumbent Dan Strauss, still ended the night two points behind Fremont business leader Pete Hanning, despite the fact that Hanning raised relatively little money and did not benefit from the kind of massive business-backed independent expenditure campaigns that fueled other candidates.

In other races, progressive candidates trailed their centrist opponents by double-digit margins, each representing thousands of votes. Later votes in Seattle usually skew heavily toward progressives, but the gaps many lefty candidates who were generally viewed as competitive are facing—Rob Saka’s 18-point lead over Maren Costa in West Seattle’s District 1,  for instance—seem fairly insurmountable. (Up in North Seattle’s District 5, former judge Cathy Moore’s 41-point lead over social equity consultant ChrisTiana ObeySumner feels like a foregone conclusion, given ObeySumner’s 24-point second-place primary finish, but the lopsidedness of Moore’s lead is representative of Tuesday’s dramatic results.)

Some progressive candidates, such as Strauss and Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda—narrowly leading Burien Mayor Sofia Aragon in her race for King County Council—will surge ahead to comfortable leads in late results. Others, like Lewis and District 2 incumbent Tammy Morales, who ended Election Night almost 9 points behind neighborhood advocate Tanya Woo, could still pull off a win as later, leftier votes come in.

That said, it’s almost unprecedented for a city council candidate to come back from a double-digit deficit—bad news not just for Lewis but for District 4 progressive Ron Davis, trailing centrist Maritza Rivera by 11 points. In fact, the only person to do it in recent memory was Kshama Sawant, who gained 12 points on challenger Egan Orion in late returns in 2019, ultimately defeating him by more than 4 points.

Next year’s council will have as many as seven new members, including one the council itself will appoint to replace Mosqueda when she leaves next year. Sara Nelson, the Position 8 incumbent who campaigned for Saka, Woo, Rivera, and Kettle, wants to be council president, and will likely have the votes. But if the current trend holds and most of the centrist slate prevails, the new majority will have no one to blame if they fail. These candidates promised they had solutions to crime, homelessness, and addiction, and now their supporters will expect them to deliver.

The election could also leave Mayor Bruce Harrell in the unfamiliar position of being in the absolute majority, with a council that fully supports his agenda. If the mayor and his supporters can no longer blame the city council for thwarting his plans for the city, who can they blame other than the mayor himself? This isn’t to say that Harrell himself is vulnerable (as my podcast cohost often tells me, the man is popular), but it’s always easier to point the finger at political opponents than admit that some problems are systemic, complex, and unsuited to quick political fixes.

The county will post outstanding election results every afternoon aroudn 4 for the next three weeks, and I’ll be posting regular updates on all the races in which no candidate has conceded.

Read PubliCola’s Interviews with This Year’s Council Candidates

District 7 Councilmember Andrew Lewis and challenger Bob Kettle debate in Queen Anne in September.

By Erica C. Barnett

Over the past two weeks, I’ve been rolling out interviews with 10 of the 14 people running for Seattle City Council—from District 1 (West Seattle, Pioneer Square) to District 7 (downtown, Magnolia, Queen Anne). I’ve gathered all those interviews together in one handy post; if you’re a Seattle resident and aren’t sure what district you live in, you can look up your address on the city’s district finder page. Incumbents are marked with an “(I).”

Ballots started arriving in mailboxes last week; mail your ballot or drop it in any ballot drop box by 8pm November 7!

District 1:

Maren Costa

Rob Saka (did not respond)

District 2: 

Tammy Morales (I)

Tanya Woo (did not respond)

District 3: 

Joy Hollingsworth (canceled interview)

Alex Hudson

District 4: 

Ron Davis

Maritza Rivera 

District 5: 

Cathy Moore (declined interview)

ChrisTiana ObeySumner

District 6: 

Pete Hanning

Dan Strauss (I)

District 7: 

Bob Kettle

Andrew Lewis (I)

Help Our Neighbors—Vote Yes on the Seattle Housing Levy!

ʔálʔal, the Chief Seattle Club’s Housing Levy-supported building in Pioneer Square, provides supportive housing, health care, and services to more than 2,700 people a year.

By Derrick Belgarde and Brett D’Antonio

Seattle is in the middle of a housing crisis, and we need to act! Every day, more and more families are struggling to make ends meet or forced to move out of the city. This housing affordability and supply crisis is complicated, but Seattle has a proven tool that will allow us to rise and face it: The Seattle Housing Levy. We must renew the levy this November.

The housing levy has generated affordable housing solutions across the housing continuum since 1986. For almost 40 years, the levy has built more than 12,000 units of affordable housing across the city of Seattle and created 1,000 homeownership opportunities—housing more than 16,000 people overall.

The people who benefit from the housing it provides are nurses, grocery store workers, bus drivers, and other working people this city depends on every single day. More housing means more families can afford to live where their kids go to school; more housing means more opportunities for working people to thrive.

The rental assistance component of the levy will help an estimated 9,000 people. The homeownership component will create 360 affordable homeownership opportunities. And the prevention component will help keep thousands of renters and homeowners from becoming homeless due to eviction or foreclosure.

The levy has made a huge difference in Seattle, including through Habitat for Humanity Seattle-King County. Habitat’s mission is to build a world where everyone has a safe and decent place to live. It is because of the levy that we can build more homes and support Seattleites like Amber, a Habitat homeowner in our Capitol View community and a cultural worker in Seattle. Before moving into her home in Capitol Hill, she faced rising rents and the possibility of having to leave. Now, she owns her home in Capitol Hill and has stability and peace of mind. The levy lets us make more stories like Amber’s possible.

When renewed, the levy will invest $970 million in creating and preserving at least 3,500 affordable homes and stabilizing 4,500 low-income families and individuals. The rental assistance component of the levy will help an estimated 9,000 people. The homeownership component will create 360 affordable homeownership opportunities. And the prevention component will help keep thousands of renters and homeowners from becoming homeless due to eviction or foreclosure.

Investing in housing is also critical to Seattle’s racial equity goals. In a landmark 2022 report, the state Department of Commerce and state Homeownership Disparities Workgroup found only 49 percent of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) households, and only 31 percent of Black households, own their homes, compared to 68 percent of white households. A history of redlining, land appropriation, racially restrictive covenants, and other discriminatory practices has led to these disparities.

To help right these historical wrongs, we need to invest in affordable housing of all types. The levy allows us to create new homes for first-time homebuyers as well as working, rent-burdened households that are spending more than 30 percent of their monthly income on housing. Affordable housing projects, such as Chief Seattle Club’s ʔálʔal  in Pioneer Square, which includes 80 units of low-income housing with wraparound services, are concrete examples of rental housing solutions that work.

The Seattle Housing Levy is a commitment to housing our people with the kind of love, compassion, and dedication that will transform lives and begin repairing the traumas of previous generations.

As affordable housing developers and providers, we work to build homes for everyday people, because when you provide a home to someone you change the world. Let’s make the right choice. Choose housing; vote yes on Proposition 1 by November 7.

Derrick Belgarde is the Executive Director of the Chief Seattle Club. Brett D’Antonio is the CEO of Habitat for Humanity Seattle-King & Kittitas Counties,

PubliCola Questions: City Council Candidate Bob Kettle, District 7

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.

Our final interview is with Bob Kettle, a Navy veteran and longtime Queen Anne Community Council leader who has positioned himself as a moderate alternative to incumbent Andrew Lewis. Kettle has focused on Lewis’ support for reducing the police department in 2020 and what he sees as a culture of “permissiveness” that allows people to break laws with impunity.

PubliCola [ECB]: You’ve talked a lot about there being a “permissive environment” in Seattle. Can you elaborate on what you mean by that? Who do you believe is permitting people to live unsheltered and who is permitting people to use drugs on the streets—and what do you propose as solutions?

Bob Kettle [BK]: In March of this year, [Lewis] said that he was shocked that drug dealers can operate with impunity on Third Avenue. And I was like, what? They’re able to do that because of the permissive environment, and the permissive environment comes from the fact that we’ve lost, for example, so many police officers—and that comes back to the council’s work on Defund the Police. There’s no police presence to go after that drug dealer on Third Avenue. And that permissive environment also kind of creates this idea that anything can happen. So that kind of promotes these random acts of violence, this lawlessness piece that that plays out in different ways.

And it’s furthered when the city council says no, we’re not going to line up the municipal code with state law on public drug use and possession. The drug dealers, they feel a bit more comfortable, because they know that there’s going to be restrictions and the city government is going to be on its heels in terms of dealing with them. And that wrecks havoc on so many lives.

So that is the permissive environment that I’m talking about. And I think that we can arrest it—pardon the pun—hold it, stop it, and have it go on retreat, so that we can create a safer environment for not just my daughter at school, or the people who are small business owners and employees, but also those people that are in these encampments. Because ultimately, they’re inhumane.

ECB: It seems to me, having lived here for a long time, that the situation on Third Avenue kind of ebbs and flows, and that the number of people dealing and using drugs does not correlate directly with the number of police who are out there. And the jail is full, so booking people post-arrest is rarely an option.

BK: That’s why I say that we can’t succeed in public safety if we don’t also succeed in public health, and that primarily means behavioral health and addiction issues. And I know that homelessness has many root causes. It could be domestic violence, it could be medical emergencies, there could be dislocation. Helping out with behavioral health and addiction has been harder because we don’t have that capacity. You know, we’ve been talking about having alternative responses for years here. Mental health is a state function, and then public health service is a county function. So where are we at with capacity on that? And we need the city government’s engagement, because the last thing we need is we pass this [crisis] care levy that says we’re going to get five care centers, and then in the county says, ‘No, we’re only getting three.’ That’s gonna be horrendous, because it’s so important to have that capacity on the public health side. Because if we don’t, we can’t succeed.

“We do need to have the [appropriate] number of officers based on city of our size. So I support the mayor’s goal [of 1,400 officers], in terms of the  number. And we need a conducive, constructive relationship with SPD. Right now, we’re not there.”

ECB: I want to press some more, though, on the question of police presence in places like Third Avenue. What is the impact of that, if the goal is not to arrest or jail people? Is it just a matter of having a presence there so that people don’t feel comfortable dealing drugs there?

BK: Yes, that’s part of it. And there’s a little bit of a challenge in terms of playing whack-a-mole. To your earlier point, I would say, yes, there’s certain parts of the city where this has been an ongoing issue. But now we’re seeing it in other parts of the city that you didn’t see it before—Ballard, Queen Anne, Nickerson, or parts of 15th or Elliott Avenue, the U District—I mean, all across the city. Whereas before, we had a couple places downtown, a few places, that had the ebb and flow like you’re talking about.

Again, I do believe that we need to build up the public health side of things. It’s public health as much as public safety. But we do need to have the [appropriate] number of officers based on city of our size. So I support the mayor’s goal [of 1,400 officers], in terms of the  number. And we need a conducive, constructive relationship with SPD. Right now, we’re not there.

ECB: What about the need to ensure accountability for some of the abhorrent behavior some police officers have been caught engaging in recently, like the phone call between Officer Auderer and Mike Solan, the head of the police union? Do you see a need to address the overall culture of SPD, as opposed to cracking down on individual officers for their actions?

BK: I think we’re moving in a positive direction with the consent decree reforms and Chief [Adrian] Diaz’ leadership. If you spend time, like I have, with the Before the Badge team, with these young recruits, I think it’s fantastic in terms of their desire for public service. They’re going around and they’re learning [things] like, in this neighborhood, there’s a lot of [people who speak] English as a second language and they may not respond to you the same way that you might expect if you’re looking at somebody who looks like me. And there’s different reasons for that, based on past practices and what’s happened to those communities over the years, over the decades. And so they’re learning about this to help change the culture. And the challenge is that it’s kind of like turning an aircraft carrier—you can’t do that on a dime. It takes time and effort. And so I think we’re definitely moving in that positive direction.

ECB: In the case of Officer Auderer, do you think Diaz should fire him or take some other kind of disciplinary action?

BK: Yes, Diaz can take action. I’m not sure about firing, but definitely take action. And by the way, then it’s on his record. And I think then [other officers] can see the repercussions and see that they need to do better in terms of conduct.

ECB: Officer Auderer has a long record of complaints about professionalism, though, so I don’t know that having another one on his record will change his behavior.

BK: It might be a consideration for Chief Diaz to take that stronger step, maybe to to fire him or to really change his career, where he’s not going have any public-facing role anymore. I mean, he’s not going to be able to go as an expert witness before any jury. So his ability to be an officer is now hindered, particularly given his role and his expertise [in determining if someone is driving under the influence].

ECB: Do you think the city needs to remove accountability measures from future contracts with the police guild?

BK: Yes, I believe accountability should be separate. Disciplinary measures, maybe— like, you can receive this punishment for this or that. But accountability cannot be bargained. Accountability is accountability. And so I don’t think it should be part of the contract in that sense.

ECB: When I was talking to Andrew Lewis, he had a good soundbite: ‘The tax for single-family zoning is chronic homelessness.’ His point was basically that if we’re not going to allow more housing deeper into the neighborhoods, it’s going to be really hard to address homelessness. How do you, as a Queen Anne Community Council guy, respond to that?

BK: The Queen Anne Community Council and the Queen Anne community, we’ve always been for densification. So I kind of push back on that premise. Because look at the densification that’s been happening already—for example, in the Queen Anne urban village, like what’s happening right now with 21 Boston [Safeway] project. That’s a perfect example, by the way, of the community and developer working together, except where there was an appeal. In the community sense, that’s just an appeal. On the other side, that’s basically a lawsuit, and it goes over poorly. It’s thought of as a loss. Which is unfortunate, because in that effort, we got densification—we got 59 townhomes. Plus if you go down there, there’s a cedar on 10th, there’s elms on 9th, there’s different fir trees that have been saved. It’s like a win-win.

But the problem was we didn’t get the affordable housing. Because all those townhomes are a million dollars. So we’ve been doing the densification piece, but we shifted the affordability aspect of that densification to other parts of the city.

“We used to have a district council system. That system had major issues, but Mayor Murray just got rid of it. That was a mistake.”

I remember being on the Queen Anne Community Council when Mayor Murray’s team came to us and briefed us on the homelessness crisis and said, here’s the plan. I was like, sitting there going, Oh, my God, this is not going to work. We had no span of control, it was all over the place. It’s the same kind of reasons, I think, the KCRHA had such a false start. We need to have that organization, that structure, that management piece, to partner with the outreach. We need MSWs, but we also need MBAs. We need to have oversight to make sure that these programs are accomplishing goals. And we need accountability and transparency.

Yes, we are creating affordable homes. But we’re not really seeing them in Queen Anne, unless they’re part of the Seattle Housing Authority or Plymouth Housing. You’re not seeing in the more general sense, because those are always going to the south end.

ECB: Mayor Harrell has focused really heavily on bringing people back to the office. What do you think of those efforts? Is urging people to return to their downtown offices, in itself, going to revitalize downtown?

BK: I support the mayor’s efforts to activate downtown, and a key component is bringing people [back] there and to build up on commercial side—the small businesses or medium size businesses. We don’t want that Target [at Second and Union] to close down, for example. I will work downtown, as will my staff. If we can activate downtown, that will help alleviate some of the challenges that downtown has. But every business has its own policies. If there’s a company that wants to go two days a week, one day a week, whatever, fine. But ultimately we should know that we need people downtown. And this goes, by the way back to the idea of permissive environment. Creating a permissive environment is saying yeah, we don’t mind if we have secondhand fentanyl smoke on the buses.

ECB:  Every study has shown that secondhand fentanyl smoke can’t make another person high or sick. I’m not saying it’s acceptable. I don’t think it’s acceptable. But at the same time, I also think that we need to be realistic and not alarmist about the science.

BK: Well, I definitely believe in science. But I also believe that we have to be consistent—we don’t allow cigarette smoke pipe smoke and the rest of it, but somehow fentanyl smoke is okay? I don’t understand that. The other thing is, I know what [research] you’re referring to, but at the same time, and I’ve talked to people who were on the bus [next to someone smoking fentanyl] and suddenly he’s got a massive headache. That is testimony.

ECB: What other priorities do you have for the district that you don’t generally get asked about?

BK: We used to have a district council system. That system had major issues, but Mayor Murray just got rid of it. That was a mistake. So what I want to do is create a District Seven Neighborhood Council, where I bring in Magnolia Community Council, the Queen Anne Community Council, the Uptown Alliance, the East[lake], South [Lake Union], Westlake, and Belltown Community Councils. And I think we really need to have a Downtown Community Council. If we meet at least quarterly, and we learn the issues that each are dealing with, that makes me a better councilmember. But very importantly, they learn from each other. So, Magnolia can learn from Belltown, Uptown can learn from downtown. And that builds community. And I think that building community in all those different forms is something that we need to foster, and we shouldn’t be afraid of it. And it goes to the good governance piece, that we need to have positive, engaged leadership. This is why I like the mayor’s One Seattle [slogan]—it’s positive, it’s engaged, it’s simple, it’s clear.

ECB: If elected, you’ll be on a council with a majority of newcomers. Do you have a mentor, or someone you hope will be a mentor, on the council?

BK: I really respect Alex [Pedersen] and his departure is a loss for the council. Sara [Nelson] will be there, obviously, and I believe in what she’s been doing on so many fronts, and obviously she’s been supportive of my campaign. And we will have the central staff, which is [made up of] smart people. But then we can also bring in people on our personal staffs that have that expertise in terms of the workings of city government. And as you mentioned, we may be able to vote for an eighth. And so that would be an opportunity to bring another incredible, different perspective.

County Council Candidate Resurfaces Debunked Theory in Tommy Le Case; Businesses on Track to Far Outspend Labor in Seattle Elections

1. Burien Mayor Sofia Aragon, who’s running for the King County Council seat being vacated by Joe McDermott, reportedly caused jaws to drop at a “Tea Time with the Candidates” event at Wing Luke Museum last week when she brought up the death of 20-year-old student Tommy Le, who was shot by a King County sheriff’s deputy, as an apparent counterexample in response to a question about police violence and accountability.

According to community advocate Linh Thai, who worked to help pass the statewide police accountability initiative I-940 in the wake of Le’s death, moderator Wren Wheeler asked Aragon a question about police violence, naming Le in a list of people unjustly killed by police in King County. After giving a standard response about the need for accountability, Aragon pivoted, unprompted, back to Le, saying he had drugs in his system and was acting erratically when he was killed.

During an internal investigation into Le’s death, the sheriff’s office claimed the deputies were acting in self-defense and that Le had charged at them with a knife; a subsequent outside investigation found that Le had been shot in the back, had no knife, and may have been holding a ballpoint pen. After losing virtually every appeal it filed in the case, the county settled with Le’s family in a civil suit for $5 million.

Thai said the room went silent when Aragon implied Le had been in some way responsible for his own death. “Nobody asked her, nobody prompted her, she just decided on her won that ‘this is just something I should have something to say about,'” Thai said. “She said, ‘Let me circle back to the Tommy Le case and let me remind everyone that in the autopsy, there was a trace of drugs and also there was a report that things things were questionable about his mental health…” and I’m going, ‘Who asked you?'”

Aragon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Thai, who was queued up to ask the next question, said he took the opportunity to correct the record about Le’s death. “I was like, ‘I am not here to pick a fight with you on this, but what you said is just factually incorrect,” he said. “Regardless of whether there were drugs or mental health issues involved, there was no justification whatsoever for the manner in which Tommy Le was killed by the King County Sheriff’s Office—whatsoever.”

Later, Thai issued a public call for Aragon to apologize for her comments, which “have the potential to reopen old wounds, further deepening the pain that the Le family has endured for far too long. Most importantly, she might be governed and advanced policies that may not hold law enforcement to be accountable.”

Mosqueda, who appeared after Aragon, said she was waiting to speak in a green room and didn’t hear Aragon’s remarks.

2. Big businesses will dominate airwaves and mailboxes again this year, spamming voters with cookie-cutter messages accusing progressives of coddling drug dealers, hating police, and supporting encampments all over the city.

Real-estate companies and other business interests are outspending labor by about four to one so far in their efforts to elect city council candidates they believe will be sympathetic to their political goals. Not all candidates are equal, however; business-backed independent expenditure campaigns have raised far more (nearly $300,000) in their effort to elect Meta attorney Rob Saka (and defeat former Amazon labor activist Maren Costa) in District 1, for example, than they have to elect Chinatown0International neighborhood activist Tanya Woo, running against incumbent Tammy Morales in District 2 ($112,000, including a $10,000 donation from Bellevue resident and musician Krist Novoselic).

Similarly named campaigns (“Greenwood Neighbors,” “University Neighbors,” etc.) have popped up in six of the seven council districts (sorry, Pete Hanning), each backed by organizations like the Master Builders Association of King County, the Seattle Hotel Association, and the Seattle Restaurant Alliance, and companies like Goodman Real Estate, Dunn Lumber, and Saltchuk Resources.

In addition to Saka and Woo, they’re backing former Seattle employee Maritza Rivera over tech urbanist Ron Davis in District 4 ($259,000) former judge Cathy Moore over social equity consultant Christiana ObeySumner in District 5 ($185,000); retired Navy veteran Bob Kettle over incumbent Andrew Lewis in District 7  ($129,000); and cannabis entrepreneur Joy Hollingsworth over former Transportation Choices Coalition director Alex Hudson in District 3 ($51,000).

Labor, in contrast, has raised less than $250,000 for all its candidates combined. That includes $91,000 for Costa from a coalition of unions, $43,000 for Hudson from a similar coalition, and $102,000 from UNITE HERE Local 8, the hotel workers’ union, to support six candidates, including Hollingsworth, Moore, and District 6 incumbent Dan Strauss. (UNITE HERE’s mailers for Hollingsworth promise “Good jobs in new hotels. Make Seattle a better place.”) Even counting a $10,000 contribution from SEIU 775, the home health care workers’ union, to a pro-Lewis PAC called Energize Seattle, it’s obvious businesses will outspend labor the same way it always does—something to keep in mind the next time a Seattle Times editorial tries to both-sides the influence of “special interests” in local elections.

PubliCola Questions: City Councilmember Andrew Lewis, District 7

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 City Councilmember Andrew Lewis, who represents downtown Seattle, Queen Anne, and Southeast Magnolia. District 7 was reshaped dramatically during the decennial redistricting process last year, when the city’s redistricting commission moved the west half of Magnolia (which is consistently more conservative than the district as a whole) into District 6, represented by Dan Strauss. Lewis, a former assistant city attorney, just finished his first term.

PubliCola [ECB]: You became a proponent of the drug law and ultimately voted for it, saying it represented a “plan, not just a statute.” Now that the mayor’s budget has come out, it’s clear that there is no plan to add funding next year for diversion, treatment, or the other programs the bill talks about using as alternatives to jail—just the pre-existing opioid settlement money, which amounts to about $1 million a year over almost two decades. Were you expecting more out of this budget proposal, and why do you still consider the drug bill a “plan” if there’s no funding to implement it?

Andrew Lewis [AL]: Well, I disagree with your characterization of the [opioid] settlement money not being new money. I would say it is new money that we have a lot of discretion in how we program.

The other thing that I would say is there’s a number of initiatives that we are continuing and making more permanent, like the Third Avenue Project, and the We Deliver Care component of that work.

We’re not without resources right now to organize what we have and tackle the crisis that we’re seeing on our streets, and to give direction and instruction to the police to do warm handoffs to those institutions instead of arrest and remand to a court, which is distinct from what we were essentially being asked to endorse in June [when Lewis voted against the bill]. There’s a reason, candidly, that the city attorney’s office is grumpy about this new bill. There’s a reason the Seattle Times editorial board was grumpy about this new bill. There was a preference to resolve this in a cursory way. And that’s not what the council or the mayor is endorsing.

We’re going to get the October revenue forecast. We’re going to likely get more money. I imagine my colleagues will be very supportive of increasing our support for programs like LEAD and CoLEAD. I would imagine that’ll be a very high-priority for additional investment.

“There’s going to be hard decisions around revenue, there’s going to be hard decisions around cuts, there’s going to be hard decisions around reform. Because what has been made clear through our process—to my progressive friends who only talk about new revenue—is that new revenue, in and of itself, is probably not sufficient to close that gap.”

ECB: Given the prospect of a $200 million-plus budget deficit next year and beyond, why is the council revisiting new initiatives like ShotSpotter, which the council rejected just last year? [Editor’s note: After this interview took place, Lewis expressed his support for the mayor’s gunshot locator and CCTV surveillance programs, which would cost $1.8 million as a pilot and more in the future if the program is expanded.]

AL: Last year, I wasn’t convinced. [This year,] I appreciate that the source of funding is salary savings instead of the general fund. And I need to do more research to determine if the reported problems with acoustic gun detection systems is with the technology in general or with the specific vendor, ShotSpotter. I need to do more digging into exactly how it’s being packaged this time. Obviously, in last year’s budget, I think we did the right thing in reprioritizing the investment. But I want to look at how this proposal is different. And there’s a couple of other technologies that are in the package.

ECB: If you’re reelected, you will—by virtue of being in your second term—be a bit of a veteran on a council full of newcomers. Are you concerned about the loss of institutional knowledge on the council, and how do you plan to tackle the looming budget deficit as one of the few council members with any experience?

AL: I absolutely think it is going to be bad for the institution to lose people like Lisa Herbold, who by far is the model example of when a council member should be in terms of due diligence, reading everything, and asking good questions. The council is the board of directors for the city, and making sure that we have enough council members who have been through at least one budget process already, I think, is important.

Part of my pitch in running for reelection has been that we have a lot of projects that we’re making good progress on, and it would be bad to switch leadership in the middle of it. If you want to get the Queen Anne Community Center rebuilt—in my first term, we secured the money to do it, but money can go away. We funded it in the first term, and I want to get it built in the second term. Same goes for the alternative response department. We’re at the beginning of having a new civilian leader, Chief Amy Smith, who’s great and has a great vision for what that department is going to do. But we need to make sure that that remains a permanent priority and that it has a permanent base of funding in the general fund. And the crucible for all these decisions is going to be that budget next year.

I presided over the Metropolitan Park District renewal, which in essence was a mini budget process, and navigated that to an 8-1 vote—I even got Councilmember [Sara] Nelson’s vote for that package. There’s going to be hard decisions around revenue, there’s going to be hard decisions around cuts, there’s going to be hard decisions around reform. Because what has been made clear through our process—to my progressive friends who only talk about new revenue—is that new revenue, in and of itself, is probably not sufficient to close that gap.

Similarly, I do think there are opportunities for reform rather than cuts—like, there’s opportunities to do departmental consolidations. I think there’s lots of strategic adviser positions that might not be absolutely necessary for the running of certain departments. There could be a deregulatory component when it comes to some of our land use stuff. Those things have costs associated with them. So I think that that has to also be part of the discussion. And I think progressives should take that on.

ECB: The city recently filed an amicus brief seeking Supreme Court review of a case that could overturn Martin v. Boise (the Ninth Circuit ruling that says jurisdictions can’t sweep encampments in most cases without offering shelter). I’m curious what you think about this decision and what the implications for Seattle will be if the Supreme Court overturns Martin.

AL: I’m honestly, at this point, kind of ambivalent about Martin v. Boise, because there’s a lot of loopholes in the ruling where I actually don’t think it’s going to be that material of a difference if it’s overturned. I think the entire discussion is a distraction from what we really need to do to get to the core of this problem. I don’t think this is a problem of insufficient will or capacity to enforce. In cases where an encampment rises to the level of producing a threat to public health and safety, the city has shown that it is capable of remediating that site and doing it within the law.

At the end of the day, the thing that I’ve seen work under incredibly difficult circumstances is JustCARE [which partnered with KCRHA to clear encampments in state rights-of-way, moving people into hotel-based transitional housing with case management]. Encampments went away and they didn’t come back, and we tracked the outcomes of how it went, and the outcomes were good. Something like 45 percent of the participants ended up going to market-based, voucher-subsidized placements.

“[Defund the police by] 50 percent sounds like you’re basically going to cut the police force in half. And it’s not clear what’s going to replace it. That was where the wheels really fell off the wagon for a whole host of critical discussions.”

ECB :Your opponent has focused a lot on the council’s statements in 2020 that the city should reduce the police department by 50 percent, and you’ve called those statements a mistake made in the heat of the moment in 2020. That strikes me as a bit of a cop-out, since the intent of “defund,” including among councilmembers, was always to fund alternatives to policing, rather than just cutting the police budget. Why do you think this was a mistake, and with the benefit of hindsight, what should you have said instead?

AL: I think assigning the percentage, 50 percent, was the bigger mistake. I think the general concept that was pitched—have a look at ways that you can capture some additional savings and move that money into something else— warranted debate and discussion. But the place where we really, really tripped up was the 50 percent number, which was perceived by the public as arbitrary. The way it was effectively spun and represented to the public by people who opposed the council was, the council is going to pull the rug out from under the police and they’re not going to replace it with anything. Or they’re going to replace it with something goofy, and you’re not going to be safe.

Because 50 percent sounds like you’re basically going to cut the police force in half. And it’s not clear what’s going to replace it. That was where the wheels really fell off the wagon for a whole host of critical discussions. It’s taken three years to get this dual dispatch thing going. And I think that we would have been able to move faster, because I think we injured the credibility of those discussions. Because it sounded more like the council wanted to be engaged in a project of punishing the police then engaged in a process of actually building true community safety. And I’m just talking about public perception. I’m not talking about what the intent of the council actually was.

“I think the police are going to make sure everything looks good, clear the call, and they’re going to move on, just because there’s so much demand for police responses. But that said, it’s really easy to just take those [dual-dispatch] teams, and just make it a full alternative 911 response. It would be harder if the officer was embedded in the vehicle; it would be harder if it was within the police department.”

ECB: At the time, your message seemed to mostly be about funding a fully civilian response team like the CAHOOTS program in Eugene, Oregon. I got so sick of hearing the word “cahoots”! And what we got out of that, three years later, is a renamed 911 dispatch department, which will initially include just six new dual-dispatch responders who will be accompanied by police as they respond to a tiny subset of low-priority calls, which is pretty far off the CAHOOTS-style program you advocated for.

AL: It’s a type of CAHOOTS. I mean, look, we have different laws than Albuquerque, Denver, and Oregon, as relates to collective bargaining, and how these things have to get stood up. But the important thing is, it is a system that is like 90 percent of the way to being CAHOOTS. And getting that last 10 percent is an achievable policy goal in the near future.

I do think that, in practice, these guys are going to just be doing their own thing. I think the police are going to make sure everything looks good, clear the call, and they’re going to move on, just because there’s so much demand for police responses. But that said, it’s really easy to just take those teams, and just make it a full alternative 911 response. It would be harder if the officer was embedded in the vehicle; it would be harder if it was within the police department. It’s in a fully civilian independent department, led by a civilian director, who is committed to this work and knows it really well. They have their own equipment, their own vehicle, their own supervisors, they’re not within the chain of command with the police. And the only thing that’s keeping it from being the full CAHOOTS is that the officer has to essentially take a look at the scene and make a professional determination that the scene is safe. But the officer doesn’t have to stay or do anything else.

ECB: The downtown waterfront is partly in your district. What do you think of how it’s shaping up so far, and do you think the south end needs to be nine lanes wide? Can anything be done to make the road more hospitable to pedestrians and cyclists?

AL: I’m always down to increase the amount of pedestrian and multimodal spaces. I do think we need to let it be finished to see what the complete lay of the land is going to be when it’s done. That’s the only kind of pushback I have on my urbanist friends. I mean, yeah, the whole thing looks like a big concrete slab, because we haven’t done like the landscaping yet. We haven’t put in the plantings, we haven’t finished the bike path—although I do think the bike path should be slightly larger than it is. On the whole, it’s going to be a great new public space. And I think it’s a matter of how do we work to continue to improve it? And I think in the short term that can include conversations around a road diet [which would reduce the number of lanes without narrowing the roadbed itself].

ECB: Is there any issue or project you’ve worked on during your term that you feel is not getting enough attention and that you would want people to know about?

AL: We did really, really cool things with the Metropolitan Park District. But I think the park district didn’t get a lot of attention because it was, dare I say it, handled so well. Things that could have been controversial were resolved. We were able to take care of concerns about the park rangers. We really went to Parks and said, ‘We want a plan that is going to have our parks be clean, safe and open—like, have the bathrooms open and not be disgusting, and make sure that you’re cleaning them on a regular basis. We made massive investments in community centers, to decarbonize them and make them extreme weather sheltering sites, essentially. And we got very little attention or recognition, but I think it’s partly because there was no big shit show.

If we went back in time two years, parks was a big issue, because a lot of them had big encampments and everything else. Now our parks are activated, they’re well maintained. I don’t think anyone thinks the Parks Department is a poorly run department anymore. And that’s partly because of the reforms we drove forward.

PubliCola Questions: City Council Candidate Pete Hanning, District 6

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 Fremont Chamber of Commerce director Pete Hanning, who’s challenging Councilmember Dan Strauss in District 6 (northwest Seattle, west Magnolia). For 20 years, Hanning owned the Red Door, a bar in Fremont; he’s also a longtime member of the Fremont Neighborhood Council.

PubliCola [ECB]: On my way [to Lighthouse Roasters], I passed a ‘Defund Dan’ sign on Phinney Ridge. Was that yours?

Pete Hanning [PH]: It was!

ECB: Are you saying people should vote against Strauss because of his vote in 2020 to cut funding for the police, and is that a fair characterization, given that he has since clarified his position and called that vote a mistake?

PH: ‘Defund Dan’ is more an acknowledgement of how he has flip-flopped on the issue, saying he was for police and police hiring, and then he was for defunding. Now, he’s saying, ‘Oh, I have great relationships [with police].’ I think it’s indicative of his lack of leadership in a really important area.

If he was really strongly for standing up a third [first responder] agency, if he had real ideas about what that would look like and how that would make us a safer community, that would be great. But all he talks about is money. That’s not the only resource that we’re talking about here. We’re also talking about a relationship that needs to be rebuilt on both sides, between law enforcement and the city, and the city council in particular. I have a strong intention to rebuild that relationship with law enforcement so that they know that they are part of the solution, that they are respected, that we understand their role, and that we support them as best we can—while, at the same time, understanding that they have to be both reflective of our community, and also have work to do on their end to make sure that they really are being the civil servants we have.

“Jail is the least preferable outcome for many situations. But it has to be one of the options, to really put some tension on those diversionary opportunities for people. Fentanyl is a different kind of drug. It’s a poison in our community. And I’m really concerned that we don’t have mechanisms to really encourage people to seek treatment, and we’re just allowing them to stay in that cycle.”

ECB: There have been some very high-profile incidents recently where police were caught behaving abhorrently. So when you’re talking about repairing relationships, it sounds like you’re saying that’s the city and council’s responsibility, and not the responsibility of police to fix the culture of the department.

PH: Any relationship has multiple sides. But we have to find a way forward, I strongly believe that we want and need healthy law enforcement to be part of our solution.

The police department is a reflection of our culture, and us as a totality. It is not us versus them in any situation. It is us versus us. And one of the things I’ve been really noticing, as I’ve run for city council, is that we are so polarized in almost every issue. There is this desire for purity, whether we’re talking about environmental issues, the trees, our response to homelessness and addiction, or reforming our police and criminal justice systems.

ECB: Can you give me a concrete example of a law-enforcement policy that you would support that Councilmember Strauss does not support?

PH:  I believe that we need to be able to know when our officers are using—when they are struggling with substance use. We know in the general public what the percentages are. And we know that when you work in stressful jobs, certain substances are abused even more. We have a right to know and we should want to know, because a they have a job in which they have a legal firearm, and they are in positions where really difficult decisions have to be made in a snap of the fingers. And I also am concerned about their own internal culture—I want a police force that’s healthy and whole. [Police] Chief [Adrian] Diaz talks a lot how we should always be making sure that we are putting the tools in place. One of those is making sure that people know addiction is not a crime, and it is treatable. And we need to know when those officers are struggling.

ECB: You mentioned the SPOG contract. The Seattle City Council doesn’t have that much direct say over it, but they are responsible for laying out their priorities and passing legislation that can guide the terms of the contract itself. Are there any must-haves for you in the next contract?

PH: I think the must-have is we have to a respect their right to be able to collectively bargain. They need to be working under a contract for them to change their culture. They also have to have some of that protection. And so this is a two-way street where neither side is going to get everything they want. It’s kind of analogous in a different way to the Missing Link [the long-delayed bike lane connection along the Burke-Gilman trail in Ballard]. We’ve wasted too much time. The continuation of not having them under contract really causes more harm in our community. [Editor’s note: The Seattle police are under contract; it’s just the contract signed in 2018, which still applies during contract negotiations.]

ECB: The drug criminalization law that just passed gives the police more new responsibilities, like enforcing the new law, directing people to diversion programs, and deciding whether people pose a risk to themselves or others. How do you think the police should implement the law, and what kind of diversion programs do you support?

PH: Jail is the least preferable outcome for many situations. But it has to be one of the options, to really put some tension on those diversionary opportunities for people. Fentanyl is a different kind of drug. It’s a poison in our community. And I’m really concerned that we don’t have mechanisms to really encourage people to seek treatment, and we’re just allowing them to stay in that cycle. I am not a proponent of arresting people who are suffering from drug addiction. That’s not going to solve anything. The police officers themselves recognize that, nor do they want to be doing that.

If you and I were to go down to Leary Way and be around those encampments, it’s pretty quickly apparent the vast majority of these people need our help and services. And then one or two of those vans, RVs, or tents—those people aren’t in crisis. They’re the ones who are perpetrating the crime on our most vulnerable and keeping them in this cycle of addiction. We should put more emphasis on them. And we have to be supportive not just of law enforcement but we have to make sure that all the systems along that pathway are also in line and they all understand that our goal is to heal people and to get them back into community. And that so that’s the prosecutor, whether it’s the city attorney or the King County Prosecutor, it’s the courts, and it’s jail or diversionary programs, and treatment.

And then those folks who are selling the fentanyl, that is typically not the only crime in which you’re engaging. You’re forcing people into sex work, you’re fencing stolen goods, and that puts pressure on our businesses that are being shoplifted at such a high rates. We have to start holding folks accountable for criminal activity. Because it is affecting not just the businesses—it affects my pocketbook. It impacts our feeling of safety in the community. It affects how people feel our government is being responsive or not responsive to what’s happening. And so we definitely have a responsibility to prosecute those kinds of crimes.

ECB: I have another example. There was an incident recently where a man experiencing a mental-health crisis, someone who is well-known to social service providers and police, chopped down a tree in Ballard and dragged it down the street. Do you think he should have been arrested?

PH: Yes. And then hopefully get treatment. I think that we should look at the tools we have around involuntary confinement in our community. Because it’s not just him who’s in crisis, he’s creating a crisis for the community. We have more and more people who are really affecting our community negatively and also hurting themselves or cannot make healthy decisions to be in community.

ECB: In District 4, particularly along and adjacent to Leary Way, businesses have illegally placed hundreds of concrete “eco-blocks” in public parking areas to prevent people living in RVs from parking there. Do you see this as a problem, and if not, why not?

PH: Eco-blocks are an issue. But they are way down the list compared to the bigger issues that we have in our community. And they are a desperate last response from somebody that recognizes that [RVs] affect the ability of their neighbors or their clients to park in the area. They are a desperate plea for help. The city [should say], ‘Okay, wherever the eco-blocks are, that’s we’re going to put the most amount of our attention, because that’s where the most issues are popping up.’

“The city of Seattle’s putting in plenty of money [to the King County Regional Homelessness Authority]. It’s the other cities that aren’t putting enough money in, if any, and that’s bullshit. And if there’s anything that the council can do, it is to say ‘bullshit’ to all those other cities. Step up, put the money in, because if they did, then we would have more resources to work with.

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?

PH: I feel very strongly that we need to continue to support [the KCRHA]. I think it is the right approach, to look at it regionally. Standing up a new agency is hard, especially in a culture right now where we have such distrust of any kind of institution. But the piece I think is most important is that the city of Seattle’s putting in plenty of money. It’s the other cities that aren’t putting enough money in, if any, and that’s bullshit. And if there’s anything that the council can do, it is to say ‘bullshit’ to all those other cities. Step up, put the money in, because if they did, then we would have more resources to work with.

I’m also so thankful that the state took up housing [by passing legislation to allow more housing statewide] last year, because Seattle took on more of the growth than we should have. The growth should have been more regional. The other cities had a responsibility to allow for more density in their cities, and finally, this is putting some pressure on them as well.

ECB: You’re saying that every community in the state could use more housing. But people are moving to Seattle no matter what. Do you support adding more density in the city’s comprehensive plan, and what do you think of the unofficial Option 6, which would add more housing everywhere?

PH: I do support more density everywhere, because we all have a shared responsibility accept more of the change and growth. And the more we try to limit it to certain areas, the more the forced tension happens, when we could actually say, okay, we all are going to accommodate far more growth. That way, one community isn’t affected at such a high rate.

The reason the districts changed so drastically [in the recent redistricting process] was because in District 7, South Lake Union and downtown grew precipitously faster than anything else. So D7 had to shrink, and D4 and D3 shrunk. And so I’m concerned that if we don’t spread that out, we’ll start creating these different cultural neighborhoods in a way that we’ve never had before, where the people who live there, the way they view how government should be responsive is so different. And you know, Seattle is young right now—our median age is 35—and we have, just barely, a majority of renters. That’s not bad, it’s just new. It means that our city needs to be reflective and responsive to change.

ECB: Do we need a new progressive tax in the city to fund some of the stuff that we’re talking about, like more housing in Seattle?

PH: We have a lot of continuations of initiatives and levies that are okay. I’m supportive of the housing levy that will be on the ballot this year. Next year will be the renewal of the Move [Seattle] levy. I don’t think that currently, we are in a place where we should be looking at more taxes.

ECB: The mayor has put a lot of attention downtown. As a Fremont neighborhood advocate, do you feel like the city is neglecting other neighborhoods?

PH: Mayor [Ed] Murray tried to kill the neighborhood councils. Guess what? It didn’t work. They’re still vibrant. But where we let down our communities is that he took away those liaisons from the Department of Neighborhoods who went to the meetings. We need to restore those. We can do that while also not taking away attention from downtown.

Murray said the neighborhood councils were not reflective of the community as a whole. And he was right. They were primarily white retirees, older folks, homeowners. As someone who was on the board of the Fremont Neighborhood Council back when I was a renter, in my late 20s, we have always struggled with that. This is something where all our neighborhood groups struggle. How do we encourage more participation? Are there other groups that we can also add to this table? I feel very strongly that we need to revitalize that put and put more energy into it.

Candidate Ron Davis Signs Anti-Upzoning Pledge, Democrats Blast Bob Kettle’s Misleading Ad; Prosecutors Seek Second Opinion in Police Crash Case

1. City Council candidate Ron Davis, who frequently touts his urbanist cred (The Urbanist called him an “urbanist supervolunteer“) signed a pledge written by the U District Community Council attesting that he will never vote to upzone University Way NE, AKA The Ave, during his council tenure. Davis is running to represent District 4, which includes the University District, against Maritza Rivera, who declined to sign the pledge.

The pledge, which takes the form of a letter to Mayor Bruce Harrell and the city council, says in part:

Preserving the unique quality that small independent businesses bring to the city and maintaining a pedestrian- friendly experience on this narrow street are critical to the sustainable development of this urban center.

You will recall that both candidates for our position on the council in the previous election cycle endorsed a similar letter in support. We will follow their lead and agree to not upzone The Ave during our tenure on the council.

The Ave is a special and historic place. Preserving it provides a serious public good, directly experienced by hundreds of thousands of people every year.

Former District 4 city councilmember Rob Johnson agreed to a plan to remove the Ave from a 2017 upzone that was part of the city’s Housing Affordability and Livability Agenda, or HALA; the upzones increased the amount of density allowed along arterial streets, where apartments were already legal, and modestly increased housing capacity in some former single-family-only areas. Neighborhood activists and small businesses rallied against upzoning the Ave, arguing that taller buildings (and more housing) in the U District’s commercial core would destroy the neighborhood’s character.

“As you know, I’m not a fan of using historic preservation style actions to create private benefits,” Davis told PubliCola. “But I’ve always thought that where preservation creates significant public benefit (in this case, preserving one of our few human scale, walkable, downtown style gathering places in Seattle) and it is open to the public, it makes sense to consider preservation if the benefits outweigh the costs.” Davis added that the rest of the city needs to be upzoned, not just commercial areas, and said downtown Ballard and Pike Place Market were similar areas that “don’t need high rises.”

Earlier this week, Davis sent out a fundraising email lambasting “the giant corporate developers (Master Builders Association) that have done so much to make Seattle expensive” for “dumping upwards of $100K on behalf of Rivera.” The Master Builders, Davis’ email continued, were the same “people who rewrote our tree legislation so it would be easier to cut down trees like Luma the Cedar in Wedgwood.”

Asked why she didn’t sign, Rivera told PubliCola, “I’m not comfortable signing a blanket pledge about this—or any other—complicated policy issue where the policy proposal’s details are unknown. As I told the UDCC, if I’m elected in November, I am committed to bringing a thoughtful approach to reviewing any proposal that is put before me.”

Earlier this week, Davis sent out a fundraising email lambasting “the giant corporate developers (Master Builders Association) that have done so much to make Seattle expensive” for “dumping upwards of $100K on behalf of Rivera.” The Master Builders, Davis’ email continued, were the same “people who rewrote our tree legislation so it would be easier to cut down trees like Luma the Cedar in Wedgwood.”

The claim puts Davis’ position squarely in line with Alex Pedersen, the District 4 incumbent who has been the most vocal opponent of new housing on the council. Pedersen was out on the fringes of the council on this issue; Davis’ mailer echoes the misleading claims Pedersen made back in May when trying to scuttle a tree protection proposal that a supermajority of the council supported.

“Luma,” the name advocates gave to a large cedar tree that a developer planned to (legally) remove to build townhouses, became a rallying point for neighborhood activists who have long opposed new housing in historically single-family areas like Wedgwood—which, as Josh pointed out last month, was originally a dense forest that was razed by white colonizers who wanted to build a new whites-only neighborhood in the area. Pedersen’s attempt to derail the long-negotiated legislation failed 6-1.

The Democrats called Councilmember Sara Nelson’s claim about people dying because Lewis did not initially vote for the bill “unintentionally misleading at best, deliberately lying at worst.”

2. The King County Democrats issued a statement on Thursday condemning District 7 council candidate Bob Kettle for an ad (which PubliCola covered last week) that includes images of encampments and features Position 8 City Councilmember Sara Nelson, who blames District 7 incumbent Andrew Lewis for causing deaths due to drug overdoses by failing to pass her original version of a bill empowering the city attorney to prosecute people for having or using drugs in public.

In the video, Nelson says, “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.”

The Democrats compared the ads to similar “Republican scare tactics” used by Sen. Patty Murray’s unsuccessful challenger Tiffany Smiley last year; Smiley’s ads included images of encampments and a boarded-up Starbucks on Capitol Hill.

“Most distressing of all is the use of individuals experiencing homelessness in Bob Kettle’s ad, likely without their consent. It is imperative that we treat all individuals with dignity, especially those experiencing homelessness who already face immense challenges. Using their struggles for political gain is not only ethically wrong but also demonstrates a shocking lack of empathy and understanding,” the Democrats said in their statement. 

The Democrats called Nelson’s claim about people dying because Lewis did not initially vote for the bill “unintentionally misleading at best, deliberately lying at worst.”

3.  The King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office announced Thursday that it has hired an outside collision reconstruction firm, ACES, Inc., to analyze in-car and body-worn video and other materials submitted by the Seattle Police Department for the prosecutor’s felony traffic investigation into Kevin Dave, the SPD officer who struck and killed 23-year-old student Jaahnavi Kandula as he was speeding to respond to a call nearby.

According to KCPAO spokesman Casey McNerthney, the prosecutor’s office will decide whether to file charges against Dave at some point after they review the video—and, potentially, reconstruct the collision scene itself. McNerthney said the prosecutor’s office will have another update—which could, but won’t necessarily, include a charging decision—in November.

As we’ve reported, the police and fire departments initially claimed Dave was responding “as an EMT” to an overdose nearby when he struck and killed Kandula in a crosswalk, elaborating later that police need to be on scene when the fire department is reviving people who have overdosed because they can be violent. PubliCola’s reporting later revealed that the caller had not overdosed, but was lucid and waiting outside his South Lake Union apartment building when he made the 911 call. As PubliCola reported, Dave was driving 74 miles an hour and did not have his siren on when he struck Kandula on Dexter Ave., which has a 25 mph speed limit.