Category: Guest Contributor

Guest Contributor, Taxes

Voting “Yes” On Prop. 1 Will Fund the Library System We Deserve
Seattle Central Library, by Guilhem Vellut; CC BY 2.0 license

By Brittney Moraski

As Advocacy Chair for the Seattle Public Library Foundation’s board, I want all Seattleites to know that the quality of our library system is within our control. This summer, we have the opportunity to vote in favor of one-third of the Seattle Public Library’s budget and invest in its future.

On the August 4 primary ballot, Seattle voters will be asked to replace the expiring 2019 Library Levy with a $479 million package. This is funding that cannot be met by philanthropic or other governmental sources. To sustain the system we know, love, and use, please vote yes.

Whether you’re checking out an e-book or e-audiobook through the Libby app, reserving a meeting room, picking up a book after-hours at a holds locker, watching movies on DVD or through Hoopla, finding respite from the heat, practicing music, attending programs like Story Time, or participating in Summer Book Bingo, there are endless ways to “visit” the library. The Seattle Public Library is one of the only places in our city that Seattle residents can enjoy without having to spend additional money, as a record number of people are discovering: In 2025, there were 430,000 active Library users.

The replacement levy further expands the Library’s reach and impact on Seattle. It would add staff to enhance literacy and learning programming, like book readings by authors, and make that programming more accessible by broadcasting it on the Seattle Channel. The new levy also invests more in physical and digital materials, which will reduce wait times for in-demand books. It would also upgrade technology hardware and software needed to connect library users to the digital world.

I know some voters may question the price tag of this year’s proposed levy, which is larger than the levy passed in 2019. But the new investments are necessary additions that reflect growing library use. More than 70 percent of the new $479 million levy will go toward continuing operating hours, collections, and programs provided in the 2019 levy, including popular programs like No Late Fines and Peak Picks. Furthermore, these voter-approved dollars will fund a quarter of Library staff over the next seven years.

In addition to supporting collections and programs, the 2026 Library Levy is essential to maintaining the physical spaces of the library. Despite its futuristic appearance, the Central Library is now more than 20 years old, and this well-loved place is showing its age. The levy will fund improvements at Central, ensuring that the space remains welcoming to the thousands who visit it each day. Additionally, the levy will fund seismic retrofits of the Columbia and West Seattle branches and maintain elevators and escalators at locations throughout the city. These investments are critical to keeping our libraries safe and accessible to everyone.

All of this comes at good value for Seattle residents: The average homeowner will pay an additional $9 a month, less than the cost of a paperback book. Levy spending is overseen by an independent Board of Trustees, with quarterly and annual reports from the Library available to the public. And while concerns over the city’s state-mandated levy cap are legitimate, this issue is larger than the scope of this levy, which makes up just 7 percent of overall city property taxes.

At a time of layoffs and high prices in an already expensive city, I take it seriously to ask my fellow residents, homeowners and renters alike, to voluntarily tax themselves to fund our libraries. However, the books and services the Library provides are all the more important during times of economic hardship. From early learning programs for families to skill-building for job seekers to retirement preparation for seniors, the Library provides resources for people at every stage of life. Failure to pass this Levy would remove a third of the Library’s funding—jeopardizing an institution that serves as a lifeline and a catalyst for so many Seattle residents.

A thriving library system is the foundation of an affordable city, a bulwark against disinformation, and a place where those who will create the world we yearn for—entrepreneurs, free thinkers, and activists—find their voice and way. Seattle voters get to decide the kind of library system we have. Together, let’s ensure it remains an outstanding one.

Brittney Moraski is a Seattle Public Library Foundation Board Member and Advocacy Chair.

 

 

education, Guest Contributor, legislature

Here’s What Being a “Child Care Candidate” Actually Means
Photo by BBC Creative on Unsplash

By Erin Haick

Everyone loves child care, especially in an election year.  Candidates for the Legislature, City Council, and County Council are promising universal child care, because it’s a real problem that child care is so expensive for parents while providers make poverty wages. Child care is easy to love, but policy and funding fixes are much harder.

So the first question: Why is it so expensive? First, child care isn’t babysitting. High-quality early learning means credentialed educators, and enough of them to give a toddler a lot of one-on-one attention. It means warm, safe, nurturing environments filled with bright colors and toys. Early learning professionals take continuing education classes just like other educators, and use a quality curriculum that teaches infants, toddlers, and pre-k at each age, from numbers and letters to how to play well with others.  

And unlike public schools, child care businesses pay for labor, rent, supplies, insurance, and more from the individual tuitions of individual families. The math just isn’t mathing anymore.  

In 2021, the Legislature passed SB 5237, the Fair Start for Kids Act—a road map for making child care more affordable for parents and more sustainable for providers. Gone was the cap of 33,000 households (in a state of 3.5 million) who could get help paying for care, imposed a decade prior during the Great Recession. Under Fair Start, a family of three earning an extravagant $4,317 a month (about $52,000 a year) was newly able to access assistance. Subsidy rates increased for providers, helping to stabilize these small, typically women- and immigrant-owned businesses. And family income eligibility was scheduled to go up 10 percent in 2025 and again in 2027.  

If the Legislature had kept the promise of Fair Start for Kids, a family of three in 2025 making (again, an extravagant) $83,000 a year would have qualified for state help, and their child care costs could have dropped from $2,000 or more a month to $215. When affordability is the issue of the day, this is functionally a serious pay raise. Fair Start laid out a road map to helping not both low-income and middle-income families, and thousands of working families were signing up for this program that helped their kids get a Fair Start while they went to work.

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Today, those promises are gone, eliminated by multiple years of state budget shortfalls and child care, which lacks the constitutional protections of public education, being treated as discretionary spending.  

The first test for leaders who want universal child care is simple: Will they say no to further cuts?  Will they protect provider sustainability and family access, in a world where more than a billion dollars was already cut out of early learning in 2025?

So first, stop the bleeding. Next, remember that help paying for child care is only valuable if the care exists to be paid for. In 2025, New Mexico got headlines for being the first state to offer no-cost child care to all families, but they forgot about the workforce. The state’s own estimates identified a shortfall of nearly 16,000 physical slots and at least 5,000 new professionals needed to staff them. Today, many families have access to a subsidy they cannot use because the care provider is not there.

The warning for Washington: Expanded eligibility will fall short if the state continues to cut or lets the workforce shrink. Families need open doors, staffed classrooms, and providers who can afford to stay.

So what should elected officials do?

  1. Commit to no more cuts to child care.  Governor Ferguson’s most recent budget proposed that child care account for 40 percent of budget cuts. This month, he told agencies like the Department of Children, Youth, and Families to prepare for “significant cuts” this winter. Washington should not balance the budget by making child care more expensive for families or harder for providers to deliver.
  2. Treat child care workers like the professionals they are with wages, benefits, real career pathways, and retirement security. Today, unionized child care providers —the largely Black, brown, and immigrant women who uphold our economy—are prohibited by law from bargaining over retirement. Washington cannot keep asking workers to carry the system while denying them the tools to stay in the field.
  3. Pay for the actual cost of care. Washington requires high quality care from providers, but the subsidy rates don’t cover those same costs. A bill to reform how these rates are set has languished for two sessions. When rates are uncompetitive, providers make rational economic choices, like reducing their enrollment of low income families or raising rates on middle income families to make up the difference.  

This election season, it’s easy to say you want universal child care.  The real test is how leaders support the workforce that make access to care for families possible in the first place.  

Erin Haick is the Political & Legislative Director at SEIU 925, which represents more than 19,000 workers in early learning, K-12, higher education, and public service across Washington State.

Guest Contributor, Mayor Wilson, Police, Privacy

Seattle Turned on the Surveillance Cameras Before It Wrote the Rules
Screen shot of footage from a police camera that was looming over a Planned Parenthood clinic on Aurora Avenue N, obtained by Our Seattle through a records request.

By Phil Mocek

On Friday, Mayor Katie Wilson activated the Stadium District surveillance cameras for the duration of the FIFA World Cup, reversing the pause she announced in March. Invoking a briefing from Seattle police and the FBI, her late-afternoon public announcement identified “general but credible threats” to justify the deployment.

Two days earlier, at a Seattle CityClub event, she had defined a credible threat narrowly: Information that a specific person “has the intention to cause harm” and that “it is believable that they might be able to carry it out.” A “general” threat at a large event is not the narrow thing she defined. It is the ambient condition of hosting a mega-event, present at any gathering of this scale, identified by no one in particular, aimed at no one in particular. As a justification for recording crowds of people suspected of nothing, it has no natural limit, and will return every time the city hosts the world.

The standard Wilson set on Wednesday did not survive even until Friday.

What she conceded in the same breath as her announcement matters as much as her reversal. Even as the cameras go on, Wilson said, the city will “continue honing our policies and protections to safeguard the data these videos capture.”

Those protections have not been written. The cameras are on anyway, recording everyone who passes by, without any suspicion of wrongdoing. That is the entrance built before the exit: the sequence that quietly turns a temporary emergency measure into permanent infrastructure. 

The city already has a working example of the alternative: SPD has suspended its patrol-car license-plate readers while it works out how to comply with a new state law restricting collection near schools, clinics, and courts. Rules first, then the system. For the stadium cameras, though, the city reversed that order.

The debate that produced this was flattened into a single question: On or off. But “on or off” was always the wrong question. The consequential questions are who controls the switch, under what written rules, where the footage goes, how long it is kept, and who can access it. On Friday the city answered “on” and left the rest blank.

Strip away the World Cup  urgency and the case for the cameras rests on one claim: that the footage might help after something goes wrong. Wilson acknowledged  as much at CityClub, where she said cameras are “less” useful for “preventing or deterring crime” than for solving it.

That concession should end the prevention argument the camera hawks on the City Council are making. But investigative usefulness was never the test. Almost any sufficiently invasive practice is useful to investigators: Door-to-door searches would be, document checkpoints would be, unfettered access to medical records would be. We restrict those not because they don’t  work but because a free society does not make its residents prove their innocence to a camera. The burden is on the government to justify watching a population suspected of nothing. “It might help” does not carry that burden.

By turning the cameras on, Wilson added to a system that already sits in constitutionally uncertain territory. Washington’s constitution forbids disturbing anyone’s “private affairs … without authority of law,” and the State Supreme Court reads that guarantee as broader than the federal Fourth Amendment—broad enough to require a warrant before police track a car’s movements (State v. Jackson), and explicit that the protection does not shrink merely because people have grown accustomed to being watched. 

Federally, the U.S. Supreme Court held in Carpenter v. United States that assembling a record of a person’s movements over time can constitute a search even when each movement happens in public — while declining to decide whether ordinary security cameras cross the same line. A permanent, recorded, searchable network trained on public crowds sits squarely in the space those rulings left open. The cameras on Aurora already sat there; the stadium network enlarges it. What changed on Friday is not the constitutional question but the mayor’s posture toward it: In March, she hit “pause” precisely to avoid feeding that uncertainty, and on Friday she fed it anyway, before the safeguards she promised exist.

None of this is a complaint about cameras in general. The stadium district was never going to be unwatched: The city’s emergency operations center already takes continuous feeds from hundreds of SDOT traffic cameras, and police routinely pull footage from private businesses after an incident. What is different about the stadium cameras—20 installations, each consisting of four fixed lenses forming a 360-degree view, plus one pan-tilt-zoom camera, for 100 distinct feeds—is what becomes of the images: They feed SPD’s Real-Time Crime Center. 

As City Councilmember Bob Kettle approvingly noted in his statement commending the activation, the decision “connect[s] them to the Real-Time Crime Center.” There, the footage is recorded, retained, and searchable. What sets it apart from a live traffic feed is not the lens but the system behind it: images pulled into a police database, held, and made available for investigative use rather than passing through and vanishing.

Because this database is hosted by a private vendor, it can be retrieved by subpoena, including from out of state. The city’s own surveillance law already says as much: Data may be shared “to the extent required by court order, subpoena, or as otherwise required by law,” no matter what data protections the city has promised. And the footage need not wait for a subpoena in order to escape: Anyone can request and receive it under the Public Records Act—including, as advocates have noted, out-of-state authorities checking who drove past a reproductive health care clinic. It is a different object from a live traffic feed, and it is the object now switched on.

A spokesperson clarified to PubliCola that once the games are over, the city will turn the cameras back off until a long-term decision is made about the original pilot program. That is welcome, but it is not a sunset date or a binding protocol, and switching cameras off is not the same as deleting what they recorded. The fine print the city skipped is still missing: published activation criteria, a single named official accountable for making  the call, a retention-and-deletion schedule for everything captured or derived from it, a firm decommissioning date, and a binding commitment that the data will be purged and never shared for immigration enforcement purposes. None of that requires waiting. All of it could be published before the first World Cup match on June 15.

The council’s majority spent months pressing Wilson to turn the cameras on. But it cannot compel a mayor to run a surveillance system, and no one should want it to. That power would effectively bind every future mayor to operate every funded system, no matter what later comes to light.

Wilson says she cares about privacy, and that her team is working on the rules. A published protocol, a firm deletion date, and a decommissioning plan before June 15 would prove it. Until then, turning the cameras on is not a public-safety policy. It is the absence of one.

Phil Mocek is a software engineer and civic technologist who researches government surveillance and public-records compliance in Washington.

Guest Contributor, Transit

How We Can Save Ballard Light Rail

By Seattle City Councilmember Dan Strauss

Ballard Light Rail is facing its biggest threat yet. Despite the fact the Ballard Link Extension is projected to serve as many as 148,000 people daily, the most riders of any project in Sound Transit history, the agency is considering postponing the project indefinitely to address its long-term budget issues.

That’s unacceptable. As a Sound Transit board member, I am proposing amendments to get the Ballard Link Extension back on track. They raise the question: Are we going to do everything we can to get this project done, or are we going to make this decision without exploring every option?

Since Sound Transit 3 (ST3) passed in 2016 with the promise to bring light rail to Ballard, we have planned the growth of our city around it. In that decade, Ballard has grown from being just one of Seattle’s many neighborhoods to an officially designated regional center, meaning it is zoned for the highest density of job and housing growth.

Now, under Sound Transit’s current proposal, construction of the so-called Ballard Link Extension would only be funded to Seattle Center. That’s nowhere near Ballard.

So, has Ballard Light Rail reached the end of the line? That would be a generational mistake that we can’t afford to make. Here are some of the solutions I will be proposing to the Sound Transit Board.

First, build a Ballard Starter Line.

One of the key ways Sound Transit’s plan falls short is by prioritizing nearly $11 billion in Seattle-area funding to build a second downtown tunnel over building light rail to Ballard. That’s a policy choice, not a necessity.

That second tunnel would run parallel to the current tunnel and serve roughly the same area. To maximize ridership, we should move Seattle’s funding from the second downtown tunnel to where it’s needed most—building a Westlake to Ballard Starter Line and reaching new light rail riders.

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The second tunnel could then be funded through future revenue and cost-saving strategies identified through Sound Transit’s ongoing Enterprise Initiative. The initiative has already delivered on once-delayed promises to Tacoma and Everett to finish the central “spine” of our light rail system. My amendment would not impact those or any other extension projects. It simply moves Seattle area funding within Seattle.

The second downtown tunnel is important. We need to build it. But it can’t come at the cost of building rail to Ballard.

The biggest challenge to my Westlake to Ballard Starter Line proposal is Sound Transit’s ability to answer valid questions about the impacts of the proposal with certainty before the vote. These questions can be answered but require more time. We should take that time and give this critical decision the consideration it deserves.

Second, we can improve the way we finance light rail.

By improving how Sound Transit finances light rail, we can deliver every project faster without raising taxes. Sound Transit currently only uses 30 percent of its legal debt capacity. Making some limited, commonsense adjustments to this policy would make a huge difference.

It’s not just me advocating for this. Issaquah Mayor Mark Mullet has pushed for this strategy to deliver projects sooner, before inflation drives the costs even higher.

We must also make our case with legislators in Olympia to allow Sound Transit to take longer-term bonds. While 75-year bonds may not be smart for most projects, they are a helpful tool financing infrastructure that outlasts the life of the bond—like the second downtown tunnel.

That’s not to mention the efficiencies we must put in place to rein in Sound Transit’s spending. Transit systems across the globe build and operate light rail at a lower cost. We need to use their best practices.

This month, I hosted a town hall. More than 200 community members showed up to support the Ballard Light Rail extension. I was struck by how many older people told me they voted for ST3 for their grandkids, even though they may never see the Ballard Link completed. That made it so much more heartbreaking to hear from many of those grandkids, now in their 20s, wondering whether Ballard would get light rail in their lifetimes.

It’s time for us to keep our promises. It’s time for us to build Ballard light rail.

Sound Transit’s plan and my proposed amendments are on the agenda for the next Board of Directors Meeting on May 28 at 1:30 PM. Community members are encouraged to participate and can find more information on Sound Transit’s .

Seattle City Councilmember Dan Strauss represents District 6, including Magnolia, Ballard, Phinney Ridge, Green Lake, Greenwood, Fremont and many other microneighborhoods. He also serves as a Sound Transit Board Member.

Guest Contributor, legislature

Legislators Must Save Washington’s Talking Book and Braille Library
A Perkins braille typewriter

By Anna Zivarts

It’s the end of a long day in front of my computer screen. And if I’m honest with myself, even before I sat down to work, I was up reading on my phone for a couple hours before that. My head aches and all I want to do is close my eyes. But it’s bedtime and my kid wants a story. So I pull out my phone again, willing myself through another chapter.

Many of us feel like we spend too much time on screens. But, for me, reading print books isn’t really an option. I was born with nystagmus, a neurological condition that makes my eyes shake and makes it really hard for me to read regular-sized font. By using my phone or a laptop, I can enlarge the font, and that reduces the eye strain. Even with large fonts, by the end of a long day, I feel the tension around my eyes spreading into a headache. 

I love reading. Since childhood, books have been a way to picture a world that I couldn’t always see with my own eyes. Which is why, as reading text became painful, I started to dream of reading with my fingertips: I really wanted to learn braille. 

Like any language skill, braille is much easier to learn when you’re young. This has become very apparent as I try to learn braille alongside my kid, who has been getting instruction since kindergarten. He particularly enjoys grading the homework he’s assigned me; more often than not, I end up with a negative number of stars. 

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Being the only kid at school who’s learning braille is a lonely path, which is why I was so thrilled when I learned about the Washington Talking Book and Braille Library and the services they offer for young readers. Through their youth program, my kid has participated in summer reading challenges, and most recently joined their braille pen pal program. 

Last week, we sat together as he used his Perkins brailler (an awesome manual braille typewriter with six large keys, one for each of the dot cells used in braille letters). His excitement around connecting with another young person who is also learning braille was apparent as he peppered me with questions. Where did she live? What grade was she in? Would she know the special braille contractions he was using? Then for my homework assignment, he insisted I type a letter to my friend who is learning braille and proceeded to correct all my typing errors. 

But like so many critical services, the Talking Book and Braille Library is facing funding cuts. Declining Washington State revenue from document-recording fees meant that last year, the library had to lay off staff and make cuts to programming—including story times, low-vision workshops, and braille instruction. 

The library is seeking $3 million from our state’s general fund this year to prevent further cuts. At risk of elimination is their audio and braille production capabilities. As a local author published by a small press without the ability to produce an audio version of my book, I was frustrated that my work wasn’t going to be available to blind readers. But thanks to the Talking Book and Braille Library, my book is being recorded and will be released soon. This production capacity ensures that books by Northwest authors are accessible to people who can’t read standard print, not just here in Washington state but to people living throughout the US through the National Library Service for the Blind and Print Disabled. 

Now is not the time to walk away from funding public services and institutions that bring our communities together. The $3 million funding the Talking Book and Braille Library  is seeking from our state’s general fund is a small ask. I urge our legislators to find the money to support this critical resource. 

Anna Zivarts is the parent representative on WTTBL’s Patron Advisory Council and a Seattle-based author of When Driving Isn’t an Option, Steering Away from Car Dependency (Island Press, 2024).

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City Council, Guest Contributor, human services

Amid Federal Cuts and State Austerity, The City Must Step Up and Pass a Budget that Puts People First

By Alexis Mercedes Rinck

In response to an openly antagonistic federal government more interested in interior decorating than keeping food on the kitchen tables of over 40 million Americans, and an austerity-minded state government, local governments are being asked up to step up more than ever to keep our communities fed, healthy, and thriving.

In the past 11 months, we have seen the Trump Regime 2.0 fundamentally rock the foundations of our country by taking a wrecking ball to nearly every federal agency. This has sabotaged federal funding streams for research and critical programs, and decimated the federal workforce. At the same time, the administration has issued a flood of hostile executive orders and administrative changes to grant applications designed to disqualify organizations and jurisdictions, like Seattle, that serve immigrants and the queer community.

This year’s state legislative session did not come to the rescue as we hoped. While House and Senate Democrats put forward legislation to enact progressive revenue with powerful coalitions rallying in support, the legislature ultimately failed to pass many of these options. This translated to austerity for many programs Seattle residents depend on, including the Encampment Resolution Program—a highly successful program focused on removing encampments on state right-of-way and getting people into housing .

These cuts are destabilizing to organizations that serve actual people. The public may not know or care if a clinic or a food bank is funded from federal, state, or local dollars—but they will feel the pain when it disappears.

Local government cannot backfill all the losses in state and federal funding. Our charge must be to prioritize the safety and wellbeing of the people living under our care. Within the 2026 city budget, I have proposed a number of amendments to do just that.

The first would provide $1.4 million to stabilize and backfill federal and state cuts to homeless youth service providers. Earlier this year, organizations providing services to LGBTQ+ and immigrant youth were unable to receive federal Runaway and Homeless Youth (RHY) funds, and more changes and cuts at both the state and federal level are anticipated  in 2026.

The number one predictor of adult homelessness is experiencing homelessness as a young person. Without intervention we could leave hundreds of young people in an even more precarious position.

Our next amendment would add $1 million to gender-based violence survivor services. Due to Trump Regime executive orders and calculated administrative changes, local domestic and sexual violence programs from organizations such as Refugee Women’s Alliance, NW Immigrant Rights Project (NWIRP), and API Chaya, are facing an impossible choice: Either deny lifesaving services to queer and immigrant survivors, or risk losing federal funding In addition to the threatened federal funding, state Victims of Crime funding has been cut annually since 2018, even as providers face rising costs.

During the 2025 city budget cycle, funding for tenant services were cut by $1 million, or about 40 percent. I have introduced an amendment that would restore this funding.

Tenant services is a broad category that includes legal counsel for low-income renters facing eviction, legal clinics for individualized support to prevent eviction in the first place, as well as guidance and counseling on how to deal with common issues facing renters, including conflict mediation and payment negotiations. In 2024, King County landlords filed more than 7,000 unlawful detainer cases (evictions)—the highest number in state history.

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In a majority renter city that is grappling with an affordability crisis, we need to invest in measures that keep people housed and provide tools to protect their rights. Restoring $1 million to our tenant services programs will enable organizations such as the Tenant Law Center, Housing Justice Project, Solid Ground, and Be:Seattle to continue their work.

None of this critical human services work would be possible without the frontline workforce. The devaluation of care work has created a doom loop for the people who work in the human services field. Seattle remains one of the most expensive cities in the country, and too many human services workers are paid at wages that, in some case, qualify them for the programs they work in.

In 2023, a city-funded study found that nonprofit human-services workers make 37 percent less than private-sector workers with comparable jobs, a disparity that makes it hard to hire and keep qualified staff. Those who left nonprofit human services jobs saw an average pay boost of 14 percent, the study .

The mayor’s budget proposes a three percent wage equity increase for nonprofit service providers, but we need to move the needle further. A livable wage is fundamental to a thriving workforce, and the City Council has long recognized that basic fact when securing pay City employees. The most recent  contracts included a cumulative 10 percent pay increase over two years, while members of the Seattle Police Officers Guild received a retroactive pay increase last year of roughly 24 percent over three years.

Human services workers at the nonprofits that provide Seattle’s safety net also deserve fair pay. That’s why I’m sponsoring  an amendment to provide a 5 percent wage equity increase for human service providers. The full five percent increase fulfills promises the city  , and is critical to sustaining and uplifting the human services system our community depends on.

Over the next three weeks, the council will be considering these amendments along with many others that represent priorities in our city. We need a balanced budget that puts people first. Contact your councilmembers and make your voice heard.

Alexis Mercedes Rinck is a Seattle City Councilmember representing all Seattle residents in citywide Position 8.