Category: homelessness

Courts, homelessness, King County

Burien Moves Forward on Tiny House Village as Mayor Vilifies Police Chief for Not Enforcing Camping Ban

 

Burien Mayor Kevin Schilling

By Erica C. Barnett

The Burien City Council advanced a zoning change during its meeting last night that would allow a tiny house village on a piece of property owned by Seattle City Light. The zoning rule, as amended by the council, will allow future transitional housing only on properties between one and two acres, and will cap the size of such housing at 30 residents—a change that cuts the potential size of the long-planned tiny house village by half.

Before voting for the zoning change, Burien Mayor Kevin Schilling complained at length about the “previous council” and King County, which has offered $1 million to fund the project, saying that the proposal “was thrown at us” by the county with no room for dissent.

“What we have the ability to do here is amend that ridiculous process that happened last year from the county,” Schilling said. “We are making decisions about the future of land use in the city of Burien, not just for this one singular project, which was not organically decided by our planning commission or our city council. It was something that was shoved to us by the county without any flexibility. So we have an opportunity here to reverse the process.”

The council voted 6-1 (with Stephanie Mora dissenting) to place the rezone on next week’s consent agenda, after a public comment period in which two veteran Burien police officers denounced City Manager Adolfo Bailon and the council for demanding the removal of longtime Burien Police Chief Ted Boe. Boe works for the King County Sheriff’s Office, which provides police services to the city under a contract; Sheriff Patti Cole-Tindall recently sued the city after the council banned sleeping or “living” outdoors 24 hours a day.

Boe provided a statement supporting the lawsuit, which claims the ban violates the 8th and 14th Amendments, and has not been enforcing the law.

Both officers who spoke said they were speaking on their own accord and did not tell Boe they planned to testify on his behalf.

“I cannot sit back and let one man be insulted, demeaned and vilified for issues that are clearly failures by the city government for the last several years,” Officer Mark Hayden told the council. A second officer, Henry McLauchlan, said that if the city ousts Boe, it will result in an officer exodus to “more supportive organizations within the county. … Nobody, except the least senior deputies and sergeants, will be forced to work a place that does not support constitutional policing.” 

Schilling has claimed repeatedly (including a meeting of the council majority that apparently violated the state Open Public Meetings Act last week) that Boe could simply choose to “enforce the parts of the ordinance” that ban unsheltered people from occupying public space during the day. (In city manager-council governments like Burien’s, the council picks one of their members to serve as mayor every two years, and the city manager serves as the executive.)

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In fact, the total ban the council passed last year “repeal[s] and replace[s]” the older law. Boe has no legal authority to enforce a law that doesn’t exist, even if the council later regrets repealing it.

Schilling also claimed, during an interview on KIRO Radio, that the city never stopped paying the King County Sheriff’s Office for its services (as Bailon, in fact, directed city staff to do in response to the lawsuit earlier this year). “The only part that we’re not paying them for is the part that they’re not enforcing,” Schilling said, referring to the homeless ban. “So we’re not paying for that element of it because they’re not doing their job.” 

A spokesman for the sheriff’s office, Captain Cory Stanton, said the office has not billed Burien yet for the first half of 2024, so there is no way to know yet whether they plan to pay their bills for police service, and how much. “The fact is, we’re going still provide [police] services to the city of Burien, and if they don’t pay, that’s a conversation the command staff will have to have,” Stanton said.

It’s unclear how long the tiny house village will be able to stay at the City Light property, assuming the council approves it next week. The city has delayed approval of the project, which includes a $1 million no-strings contribution from King County, for most of the last year. PubliCola has reached out to City Light for more information about how long the property will be available and will update this post when we hear back.

homelessness, King County, Police

At Press Conference, Majority of Burien Council Demands Sheriff Enforce Camping Ban They Overturned
Burien mayor Kevin Schilling (KING 5 screenshot)

By Erica C. Barnett

Burien Mayor Kevin Schilling, who has repeatedly butted heads with the King County Sheriff’s Office over the city’s 24-hour ban on “living” outdoors, held a press conference with three other city council members Thursday morning to criticize the King County Sheriff’s Office for refusing to enforce an anti-camping ordinance the sheriff’s office calls unconstitutional. (In Burien, the council selects a mayor from among its members every two years).

The sheriff’s office, which provides police service to Burien under an interlocal agreement, sued the city last month, arguing that the ordinance violates the constitutional rights of people living unsheltered in Burien. The city responded by withholding payments to King County for police service; countersuing; and demanding the removal of Burien police chief Ted Boe, who works for the sheriff’s office. The city also terminated its contract with its homeless outreach provider, REACH.

“There has been no [judicial] order calling our ordinance unconstitutional. It has just been the sheriff’s office and the county executive saying it is, without any kind of legal support for that statement,” Schilling said.

KING 5 attended the press conference and posted a full video on Thursday.

The expansive new ban repealed and replaced an earlier law, Ordinance 827, that banned “camping” during daytime hours and placed restrictions sleeping in public at night. The newer, more restrictive law includes exceptions for people to sleep outside at night if no shelter is available, but the city has interpreted that to include shelter in Seattle, 12 miles away—another matter of dispute.

Schilling held the event in a meeting room at the King County Library, which shares a building with City Hall. He did not inform city staff about the event, which some staffers didn’t realize was happening until they walked by the press conference on their way to their offices.

Schilling appeared alongside three other members of the seven-member city council—Alex Andrade, Linda Akey, and deputy mayor Stephanie Mora. Under the state Open Public Meetings Act, it is illegal for a majority of any elected body to hold a scheduled or special meeting without providing at least 24 hours’ notice, such as by posting the meeting agenda on the city’s website. Not only did Schilling not post any public notice of the meeting, he did not inform city staff it was happening.

A spokesperson for the city declined to comment on the potential open meetings violation. “[S]taff were not involved with nor made aware of the event in advance, so we don’t have that level of detail to share at this time,” the spokesperson said.

During the press conference, Schilling repeatedly claimed the sheriff’s office could simply start enforcing the previous version of the sleeping ban. “The ordinance is already in place,” Schilling said. “It is the King County Sheriff’s office’s stated goal to not enforce any part of the ordinance and they’re choosing to do that.”

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“We have requested again and again and again for them to just go back and enforce the parts of the ordinance that are already in place,” Schilling said.

In a joint statement, King County Executive Dow Constantine and Sheriff Cole-Tindall said the sheriff’s office had no problem enforcing the earlier law, but the city would need to reinstate it. “In the media event today, Mayor Schilling claimed that there is no need to reinstate the prior ordinance because it already exists,” Cole-Tindall and Constantine said. “But it was replaced and amended with the adoption of the new one. This leaves KCSO with nothing to enforce except the new ordinance which, again, appears unconstitutional on its face. ”

The US Supreme Court will likely rule early this summer on a case called Grants Pass v. Johnson that could overturn a 9th Circuit ruling that prohibits cities from sweeping unsheltered people if no shelter is available. If the court upholds Grants Pass’ camping ban, it could affect the portion of the lawsuit that is based on the 8th Amendment, which bans cruel and unusual punishment, but it won’t impact the sheriff’s 14th Amendment claims.

That amendment, which guarantees due process, prohibits laws that are too vague for an ordinary person to understand. Burien’s camping ban  bars people from “exercis[ing] nontransitory exclusive control over any portion of nonresidential public property” without explaining what “nontransitory exclusive control” is; it also includes a map of areas where no one can “live” at any time, even if no shelter is available, and gives the city manager unfettered authority to expand the prohibited areas without notice.

Cole-Tindall and Constantine also disputed Schilling’s claim that the sheriff has an obligation to enforce the law until a court determines whether it’s constitutional. “Both Burien Mayor Schilling and Deputy Mayor Mora have admitted in writing that the constitutionality of the new camping ordinance is for a judge to determine, which is why we have placed it before the federal court,” they said. “The city has yet to present a defense of its new law, which we believe cannot be done. Rather, the approach has been to avoid and delay resolution.”

homelessness, Mayor Harrell, Morning Fizz

Morning Fizz: New City Attorney Hire, Changes Coming at KCRHA, Council Seeks “Reversal” of Pandemic Travel Trends

1. City attorney Ann Davison has hired a former Pierce County deputy prosecutor, Fred Wist II, as her new criminal division chief; he’ll replace Natalie Walton-Anderson, who resigned last year.

According to Davis’ announcement, Wist “oversaw the elimination of a backlog of thousands of cases and worked with stakeholders to more efficiently move cases through the criminal justice system” in Pierce County. There’s scant information about Wist online, and several people who routeinly deal with the city attorney’s office said they had never heard of him; his Facebook page—where he uses a sheriff’s badge with a “thin blue line” mourning band as his avatar—is mostly inactive.

Wist was in the news a few years ago, though, when his office investigated the actions of a special drug investigation unit led by Lt. (and 2021 Pierce County Sheriff candidate) Cyndie Fajardo, finding they had committed potentially dozens of policies and procedures, including falsifying a police report to protect an informant. Fajardo and eight deputies later sued Wist, another deputy prosecutor, and several sheriff’s department officials, accusing Wist and the other defendants of harming their reputation for “political” reasons; the prosecutors put some of the officers on a “Brady” list of dishonest cops, preventing them from testifying in court.

One of the council’s resolutions seeks to “reverse” the following trends “to pre-pandemic” status: “disruptions to transportation patterns and behaviors, which have resulted in sustained trends including increased remote work, intra-neighborhood trips, and use of public right-of-way for people uses, alongside reduced downtown commute trips and an associated decline in transportation revenues.”

2. On Thursday morning, the King County Regional Homelessness Authority’s governing committee, made up of elected officials, could discuss plans to reorganize the embattled agency’s governance structure to give more power to elected officials and less to the experts and people with direct experience of homelessness who make up the agency’s implementation board. (Representatives from actual homeless service providers are explicitly barred from serving on this board.)

This would be the long-awaited showdown over who is in “charge” of the agency, and could result in a singular new board made up mostly of elected officials with a handful of homelessness experts in the mix—a change that would effectively hand power to the elected officials who ceded authority to experts when the KCRHA was created in 2019.

While that discussion has been going on, the homelessness authority has decided to forge ahead with its search for a permanent CEO—a process that two powerful members of the CEO search committee, Seattle Chamber CEO Rachel Smith and former governor Christine Gregoire, told committee members and Mayor Bruce Harrell they wanted to halt. Interim CEO Darrell Powell, Harrell’s pick for the temporary position, is reportedly one of the top contenders for the permanent job.

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3. Earlier this week, the City Council’s transportation committee approved several amendments to Mayor Harrell’s Seattle Transportation Plan, including one intended to “identify the Council’s priorities for future renewal of the Move Seattle Levy.” As we’ve reported, advocates for active transportation and safer streets have asked the city to increase levy spending on transit, sidewalks, and safety improvements, which Harrell’s proposal cuts in favor of huge new investments in roads and bridges that primarily serve cars.

So what are some of the council’s top priorities? In addition to sidewalks and street calming to “deter… drive-by shootings” near schools and in areas with high levels of “vehicle-involved [gun] violence,” one of the council’s resolutions seeks to “reverse” the following trends “to pre-pandemic” status: “disruptions to transportation patterns and behaviors, which have resulted in sustained trends including increased remote work, intra-neighborhood trips, and use of public right-of-way for people uses, alongside reduced downtown commute trips and an associated decline in transportation revenues.”

In other words: People need to re-commit themselves to hated commutes, stop working from home, stop patronizing businesses inside their own neighborhoods (so much for the 15-minute city?) and make room for cars in streets that transformed during the pandemic into safe places for kids to play. It’s a weird juxtaposition: Full-throated support for sidewalks in neighborhoods (and, thanks to an amendment from Councilmember Joy Hollingsworth, traffic calming improvements on Lake Washington Boulevard) combined with a hellbent insistence on getting everyone back on the road to their downtown cubicles.

Other council goals for the plan: “Improving on-time performance of transit in the Denny Way corridor,” home to the perpetually delayed Route 8; including funding for traffic calming on Lake Washington Boulevard (courtesy Joy Hollingsworth) and, as we’ve reported, Bob Kettle’s amendment to “exclude funding for the Pike Place Event Street”—a concept-level plan to periodically kick cars out of Pike Place Market and allow people to enjoy the space—from the transportation levy.

 

Courts, homelessness, King County, Police

Burien City Manager Demands Removal of Police Chief Who Won’t Arrest People for Being Homeless

By Erica C. Barnett

Burien City Manager Adolfo Bailon sent a letter to King County Sheriff Patti Cole-Tindall this week demanding a replacement for Burien Police Chief Ted Boe, whose “actions,” Bailon wrote, “no longer represent the City of Burien best interests, vision, and goals, in a manner that supports trust between the City and King County Sheriff’s Office.”

The sheriff’s office provides officers, including Chief Boe, who serve as the city’s police force through a contract with the county.

Last month, Cole-Tindall sued Burien over its total ban on “camping” in the city, calling the ban unconstitutional. Burien responded by countersuing the sheriff’s office, alleging breach of contract—an ironic claim, given that Bailon responded to the county’s lawsuit by directing city employees to stop paying the sheriff’s office for the services it provides under the same contract.

In his letter, Bailon accused Boe of violating a portion of an agreement between the city and county that says the police chief will act “in a manner that supports and maintains trust” with the city, and another that says “Police Chiefs are expected to represent the City’s point of view, consider City needs in carrying out their duties and advocate on behalf of their City similar to other City departmental directors.” Effectively, Bailon is saying Boe has an obligation to enforce a law he and his actual employer, the Sheriff’s Office, believe is illegal.

In his declaration, Boe laid out some of his concerns with Bailon’s, who he said repeatedly demanded that Boe “redeploy resources away from other public safety matters such as 911 calls and to address several non-criminal aspects of camping. … He also made repeated calls to 911 to redirect patrol resources away” from actual emergencies—at least 45 last year, as PubliCola recently reported.

In her response dismissing Bailon’s request, Cole-Tindall noted that just “two hours prior to Bailon’s letter, Burien was given detailed statistics on the first three months of 2024 that demonstrate the high level of police service in Burien,” including an uptick in arrests for drug-related crimes and an overall reduction in both violent and property crime since last year. In February, Cole-Tindall continued, city council members lauded Boe for his “excellent” performance.

By demanding Boe’s removal, Cole-Tindall continued, Bailon appeared to be retaliating against Boe for statements he made as part of the sheriff’s lawsuit against the city. In his declaration, Boe laid out some of his concerns with Bailon’s, who he said repeatedly demanded that Boe “redeploy resources away from other public safety matters such as 911 calls and to address several non-criminal aspects of camping. … He also made repeated calls to 911 to redirect patrol resources away” from actual emergencies—at least 45 last year, as PubliCola recently reported.

“State law prohibits any local government from retaliating against a person for raising concerns with the constitutionality of government action,” Cole-Tindall wrote. “King County cannot be party to retaliatory action against the chief.”

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Boe’s statement notes that until the city council hired Bailon, “I had limited challenges in addressing the unhoused persons living in Burien. I worked collaboratively with the City Manager who was not focused on addressing homelessness as a crime.” But once Bailon arrived, Boe said, “the approach to unhoused persons began to shift,” as Bailon began asking the department to arrest unsheltered people rather than working with service providers like REACH to find shelter and services.

Bailon unilaterally canceled the city’s contract with REACH, which is funded with federal ARPA dollars, earlier this year. He is reportedly working toward a new contract that would replace REACH with The More We Love, a controversial group that until recently advertised “sweeps” at a rate of $515 for each homeless person they remove from a site. (The city’s contract was with Discover Burien, a downtown business group that led its own encampment sweep last year, because The More We Love was unable to get the required insurance.) It’s unclear whether The More We Love meets federal requirements for ARPA funds. Continue reading “Burien City Manager Demands Removal of Police Chief Who Won’t Arrest People for Being Homeless” →

City Council, homelessness, Media, Mental Health, Police, Transportation

This Week On PubliCola

A weekly digest of stories PubliCola published this week.

Monday, April 1: Seattle Times Shocked to Learn Even Groups They Disagree With Can Get Street-Use Permits

The Seattle Times denounces the city for granting a permit for the Cascade Bicycle Club, which advocates for safer streets, to use the West Seattle Bridge for its annual fundraising ride.

The Crisis Care Centers Levy, One Year Later: Where Will the Kids Go?

Guest columnist Brittany Miles discusses the immediate need for a crisis care center for kids under 17, and the hurdles crisis care centers will inevitably face as King County tries to site them in local communities.

Tuesday, April 2: Tentative Police Contract Includes 23 Percent Retroactive Raise, Raising Cops’ Base Salary to Six Figures

PubliCola breaks the news about double-digit wage increases for police, at a time when other city workers will get cost of living adjustments that barely keep pace with inflation.

Don’t Open Pike Place to Pedestrians, Council Member Urges

Pedestrianizing the traffic-choked road in front of Pike Place Market is a popular proposal, but new Councilmember Bob Kettle wants to make sure the city doesn’t do it.

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Thursday, April 4: After Series of Hurried Meetings, Homelessness Authority Decides to Continue Search for Permanent Leader

The embattled regional homelessness authority will keep looking for a new leader, rather than suspending the search as two powerful search committee members urged last week. Plans to restructure the authority to give more power to elected officials also continue.

Friday, April 5: Police Contract Offers Big Raises, No Significant Accountability Improvements

We got a copy of the tentative police contract, which the police union briefly posted before replacing the contract with a photo of the union president. The contract includes almost none of the baseline accountability measures the city adopted into law in 2017.

New Police Contract “Does Not Appear to Address Accountability at All,” Reform Advocates Say

Reporter Andrew Engelson dives further into the details of the contract, and talks to advocates for police accountability who say it falls short of their lowest expectations.

City Council, homelessness, King County, Mayor Harrell

After Series of Hurried Meetings, Homelessness Authority Decides to Continue Search for Permanent Leader

By Erica C. Barnett

The King County Regional Homelessness Authority has decided to continue its search for a new CEO, PubliCola has confirmed, after two high-level meetings in the past week at which agency officials and search committee members discussed whether to continue the hiring process or begin “winding down” the agency.

Last week, as PubliCola exclusively reported, former governor Christine Gregoire and Seattle Metropolitan Chamber director Rachel Smith wrote a letter to other members of the CEO search committee urging the committee to pause the hiring process until the agency’s future is clear; in their letter, Smith and Gregoire cited “challenges the agency has faced and/or been unable to respond to” along with ongoing questions about the agency’s governing structure. The KCRHA is headed up by an implementation board of subject-matter experts who make policy and budget decisions, and a governing committee made up mostly of elected officials board that is supposed to approve the implementation board’s decision.

The CEO search committee met on Friday. The original plan for that meeting was to whittle down a list of a dozen candidates for the permanent CEO position, currently filled by interim CEO Darrell Powell, who has reportedly applied for the permanent job. The agency has been without a permanent leader since its first CEO, Marc Dones, resigned last May.

There’s an existential issue at play here: Can the KCRHA can be successful if it’s directly controlled by political actors at King County and the city of Seattle, which together provide most of the authority’s funding?

Instead of talking about the candidates, the search committee discussed the broader future of the agency. Some committee members, reportedly including Seattle City Councilmember Cathy Moore, argued that the KCRHA needs to come up with a new governance structure before appointing a CEO in order to create a sense of stability at the agency. This, the theory goes, could lead to a deeper pool of more qualified applicants.

Moore declined to comment for this story, citing an NDA, and others involved in the internal conversations about KCRHA’s future did not respond to questions or declined to speak on the record. (The NDA, as described to PubliCola, pertains to the appointment itself, including the list of applicants. It does not restrict people from talking about the process in general or about other questions we had for Moore, such as how she would like to see the KCRHA’s governance change.)

The second meeting, held earlier this week, was called to discuss those governance concerns. It’s unclear whether the group reached any consensus about how the agency will be governed in the future. However, sources familiar with the discussions say representatives for Mayor Bruce Harrell and King County Executive Dow Constantine expressed their strong support for the KCRHA and its “regional approach” to homelessness. Last month, Harrell’s office announced the city was stripping KCRHA of its authority over encampment outreach and homelessness prevention, but Harrell’s office suggested it it might consider handing these responsibilities back to the authority at some point in the future.

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Many Seattle officials have argued that the KCRHA’s two-board structure (three if you count the federally mandated Continuum of Care board) is confusing and grants too much power to unelected experts who aren’t directly accountable to voters. Those with long memories will recall that this was also a heated debate back in 2019, when the KCRHA was created; at that time, the non-elected implementation board was seen as a bulwark against political influence.

One possibility, according to sources close to the discussions, is that the KCRHA will eliminate the implementation board and incorporate a handful of homelessness experts into the governing board, which would become the agency’s main decision-making body. There’s an existential issue at play here: Can the KCRHA can be successful if it’s directly controlled by political actors at King County and the city of Seattle, which together provide most of the authority’s funding?

Last year, the KCRHA was supposed to re-bid the entire homelessness system—a huge undertaking that could mean ending longstanding contracts and opening new ones with first-time providers—but that was put on hold to give the agency time to address immediate problems, including late payments to service providers.

Powell, who was Harrell’s pick to lead the agency, has been on the job for just over two months; earlier this week, the authority hired King County Department of Community and Human Services’ emergency response director, Hedda McClendon, as Powell’s interim deputy, after the mayor’s office proposed her name to Powell by email in January.