Category: Uncategorized

City Council, Mayor Wilson, Uncategorized

Council Budget Proposal Uses One-Time Funding, Dips Into Reserves to Pile On New Spending and Reverse Mayor’s Cuts
City Council budget chair Dan Strauss

Budget chair Strauss balked at requiring the council to pass a budget that’s balanced long-term. “I’m concerned with how much power we’re giving the executive.”

By Erica C. Barnett

City Council budget committee chair Dan Strauss released his “chair’s package” of amendments to Mayor Katie Wilson’s proposed budget on Tuesday. The proposal, which represents a starting point for the next few weeks of council budget deliberations, includes more than $40 million in proposed spending that relies on one-time funds for either one or both years of the two-year 2027-2028 budget to continue existing spending or fund new programs that will almost certainly be ongoing. If the spending the plan proposes funding just in 2027 is continued in 2028, that number balloons to around $60 million.

Each of these added priorities, from $5 million for programs that help survivors of gender-based violence (sponsored by Alexis Mercedes Rinck) to $14 million for firefighter overtime (sponsored by Maritza Rivera), will require the council to find new money to sustain it in either 2027 or 2028; otherwise, ongoing programs will lose their support from the city.

This number excludes all capital projects (things that will be built, as opposed to new city employees or services for people) as well as projects that are, or appear to be, time-limited, such as a contract with the National Network for Safe Communities to come up with a “focused deterrence” crime prevention plan (sponsored by Maritza Rivera).

Unsustainable spending, including the practice of funding ongoing needs with purportedly “one-time” funds, is one of the primary reasons the city has experienced growing budget deficits over the past several years. Last year, then-mayor Bruce Harrell and the council adopted a budget that fell immediately into a $150 million deficit in 2027, ballooning to more than $375 million by 2029. That budget, too, included tens of millions of dollars in one-time funding, but Strauss’ package would rely even more heavily on one-time funds for ongoing programs than the final 2026 budget did.

Notably, Strauss’  balancing proposal does not include some big-ticket items proposed by other council members, like $3 million proposed by Bob Kettle to remove graffiti from private property, or $11.4 million, also from Kettle, to hire additional police officers beyond the 66 new hires in Wilson’s budget. That doesn’t mean all those proposals are dead—the council is still at the beginning of the amendment process—but it does reflect that much of the council’s bellyaching over what Kettle calls the “unfund budget” (and Strauss calls “Mayor Wilson’s austerity budget”) has been more show than substance.

The programs and staff that will be paid for using one-time funds include additions from every council member. In addition to the gender-based violence programs and firefighter overtime mentioned above, here are a few of the dozens of additions for which money will run out either next year or in 2028:

  • $470,000 over two years to “establish limited permissions, time, and space for artists to freely create graffiti/mural artworks on a structure” in the Delridge neighborhood (Rob Saka)
  • $6.4 million over two years to “provide ongoing and dedicated support to the organizations that aim to preserve and revitalize Seattle’s Central District and Southeast Seattle Community” (Joy Hollingsworth)
  • $1.5 million over two years to expand services at Seattle’s 14 senior centers (Saka)
  • $500,000 for one year to continue and expand access to abstinence-based addiction treatment at Lakeside Milam, a private treatment center in Kirkland (Rivera)
  • $200,000 for one year to fund programs that improve maternal health outcomes for women of color at Byrd Barr Place (Hollingsworth)
  • $1 million for one year to expand the Back to Business program, which provides funds for businesses damaged by vandalism (Rivera)
  • $200,000 for one year to “uplift semi-professional sports” (Saka)
  • $600,000 over two years to continue a program, first funded this year, that helps refugee women artisans achieve economic stability (Debora Juarez)
  • $7 million for one year to support the council’s district transportation funds, which pay for small projects every year (Saka)

And while this isn’t one-time spending, it would preclude the Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) from using these funds for any other purpose: Strauss included an amendment that would require SDOT to spend $2.5 million from the just-reapproved Seattle Transit Measure to increase service on Route 17 to Ballard and reviving the 15 bus route to Ballard, which was replaced by the RapidRide D. The 17 serves Strauss’ neighborhood but currently has limited hours.

Many of the council’s new spending proposals are arguably essential, particularly those that fund health care and human services as a new federal law cutting off benefits for millions nationwide takes effect. Others, like the very recently adopted council district funds, could be cut without much impact. But all will lack ongoing funding if they make it into the final budget, which creates problems for the mayor and future councils, who will have to decide what to cut, what to continue funding, and how to pay for all of it starting next year.

For this year, at least, Strauss is proposing to move funds around, dig deeper into the JumpStart fund (a business tax originally earmarked for housing and other progressive priorities) and use up some reserves to fund the new spending. Strauss’ proposal would transfer an additional $31 million in JumpStart revenue into the general fund over two years—money that’s partly offset by higher-than-expected revenue projections—with a built-in assumption of another $11 million transfer in 2029. The city would also grab around $13 million from JumpStart’s revenue stabilization fund in 2028, lowering it to $20 million, the minimum requirement.

 

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Strauss’ plan would also reduce contributions to the firefighters’ pension fund by $22 million over two years and use that money to backfill the general fund; that’s on top of the $10 million transfer that’s already in the mayor’s budget.

The budget also assumes a new 0.01 percent sales tax for family shelter; that money will offset the King County tax that had Seattle Times columnist Danny Westneat hot and bothered, so the total hit for Seattle residents will still be only around $4 a year.

In addition to all the added spending, Strauss’ proposal also adds back funding for nine parking enforcement positions that the Seattle Police Department has never filled, plus $1 million as an “incentive” for SPD to actually try to hire for those positions instead of just using the money to pay for overtime and other police priorities. The PEOs would cost around $2 million over two years, but the budget treats them as a no-cost addition by assuming that each officer will bring in more revenue, in the form of fines, than it costs to hire them.

Standing outside council chambers after a press conference on Tuesday, Strauss took issue with my characterization of the council’s budget practices, including the use of one-time funds and transfers from funds intended for other purposes, as “tricks” and asked me for an example. I mentioned the district funds, which the council gave themselves last year. Strauss said those funds are “a really great example of what one-time funding should be used for,” because the small projects it pays for are one-time capital expenses. The flaw in that argument is that the district funds themselves are designed to just go to each council member year after year—they’re an ongoing expense, even if the projects they fund are not. 

Strauss also inadvertently made the case for why these funds—which allow the council to direct spending by SDOT, an executive department—may not go to the best purpose but the one that has the most organized neighborhood support. Typically, the most organized neighborhood residents are older homeowners, while most Seattle residents are renters. Strauss gave an example of a project just north of Green Lake, a primarily single-family area, where residents got a petition together and asked for a speed hump. There are a number of reasons the city doesn’t usually budget based on citizen petitions, including the fact that letting the most organized residents with the most free time dictate spending priorities often leads to inequitable spending.

I asked Strauss whether, in the interest of fiscal discipline, he would be supporting a proposal from Dionne Foster that would require the council to balance the city budget over six years, as the mayor is now required to do with her initial budget proposal. He said he was “happy to keep talking about it,” but that the way the budget process is set up, the council doesn’t really get enough time to come up with a balanced long-term plan.

“I think the thing that concerns me about that proposal is that the mayor has five months of actual budget work, ahead of the five weeks the [budget] chair has to balance it,” Strauss said. “And with having a strong mayor system, the mayor has the ability to implement or not implement anything that we pass in the budget or by law. And so, further tying the hands of council is a dangerous proposition. … I’m just concerned with how much power we’re giving the executive.”

Elections, legislature, Media, Uncategorized

Campaign Fizz: The More We Love Promotes Anti-Tax Initiative, Former Candidate Spams Voters With Text Promos for “Lefty Cheat Sheet”

1. Kristine Moreland, whose group The More We Love received city funding last year to run shelter in Renton for women leaving the sex trade, stars in ads supporting an initiative from MAGA multimillionaire Brian Heywood that would overturn the state’s “millionaire’s tax,” a marginal tax on annual income above $1 million. So does at least one woman who says she was helped by Moore’s nonprofit, The More We Love—a controversial group that received around $600,000 from the city of Seattle last year.

In the videos for the Yes on I-645 campaign (top five donors: A venture capital fund, a retired tech executive, two trucking company executives, and Bellevue megadeveloper Kemper Freeman), Moreland, “fewer families in need are being helped today because of Olympia’s income tax. Fewer kids are being rescued from fentanyl exposure. Fewer battered women have a safe place to go.” 

In the second video, set against the same generic kitchen background, a woman named Marisa says she became addicted after a car crash and ended up a victim of sex trafficking. “A local charity”—The More We Love—”got me back on my feet. … Now, the same program is losing funding because Olympia’s income tax is pushing away the people who donate to places like this.” 

No one has been impacted by the tax on income above $1 million because no one has paid the tax yet.

Many of The More We Love’s former shelter clients spoke to PubliCola earlier this year. They said they felt abandoned once they moved into the Renton motel where the group ran its shelter for women trying to leave the sex trade, describing unlivable conditions and scarce help obtaining counseling, addiction treatment, transportation to appointments, and assistance with housing and jobs. Women also said the shelter staff pressured them to participate in religious ceremonies, including an exorcism.

The More We Love also refuses to serve trans women, according to a report on the contract produced by the Seattle Human Services Department—a position that puts them right in line with another Heywood initiative—I-638, which would exclude trans girls from playing sports and require some girls, including those who don’t have personal pediatricians, to submit to invasive genital exams.

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2. Voters for Honest Endorsements, a PAC created by former 46th District state house candidate Ron Davis after the Stranger didn’t endorse him, sent a second round of texts to voters in the 43rd and 46th Districts last week, lambasting the Stranger and promoting a site called the Lefty Cheat Sheet as the true progressive alternative to the Stranger’s endorsement “cheat sheet

“By now you’ve heard the Stranger was bought by investors in 2024, including by Amazon’s top Lobbyist, and they have started endorsing more corporate-friendly candidates in many races,” both texts begin. “Fortunately, the Lefty Cheat Sheet has stepped in to fill the gap.”

Davis, safe to say, is a little obsessed with the Stranger, which endorsed his fellow challenger, Will Dreher, in the race against 46th District incumbent Gerry Pollet. The paper also endorsed longtime 43rd District incumbent Jamie Pedersen over his challenger, Hannah Sabio-Howell. (Also: Militant socialist Kshama Sawant).

Davis’ preoccupation with the Stranger’s Dreher endorsement came through, inadvertently, in his text supporting Sabio-Howell, which includes a paragraph complaining that Dreher (running in a different district) is “personal friends” with Stranger CEO Brady Walkinshaw. The Stranger’s entire unionized editorial staff put out a statement earlier this year saying management had no say in their endorsement decisions.

The claim that the Stranger is owned in part by “Amazon’s top Lobbyist” appears to stem from the fact that one of the board members for the company that owns the Stranger, Lynn Hubbard, is the wife of Amazon’s general counsel.

The Lefty Cheat Sheet, which describes itself as “a quick guide on how to vote lefty” in Seattle, is a website that makes voting recommendations based on an aggregation of selected endorsements. Generally, the “cheat sheet” excludes groups that endorsed Dreher or Pedersen.

It’s unclear who is behind the site or what criteria they used to choose and exclude endorsements from the “lefty” list; when we asked these questions, the group did not respond. On Bluesky, an account representing the site called our questions offensive and said disclosing who was making the recommendations would put people in danger and could harm people’s future political careers.”

Whatever the criteria, no reproductive rights, gun control, climate change, or civil liberties groups made the “lefty” list, and the urbanist groups that made the cut are the ones whose picks align with the Lefty Cheat Sheet’s. Fuse Washington’s Progressive Voters’ Guide, which is excluded, comes in for some pretty harsh, and inaccurate, criticism, while.unions are listed but excluded by default as too “risk-averse.”

Davis did not respond to our questions o n Friday. Voters for Honest Endorsements has reported raising nearly $20,000, most of it from programmers and software engineers; former city councilmember Mike O’Brien contributed $2,000 to the effort.

The Stranger endorsed Dreher and Pedersen in the primary, which led Davis and many of his supporters to conclude that their new-ish owner, former state legislator and Grist CEO Brady Walkinshaw, had tipped the scales.

 

City Council, Transit, Uncategorized

Greater Seattle: A Supermajority, a Mistake, and a Chance

 

By Josh Feit

66 percent = A Supermajority

I’ve gone from stunned, to angry, to eventually, “oh, Seattle” since I first learned more than a decade ago that the Seattle Department of Transportation doesn’t charge for street parking in West Seattle. So, while I wasn’t exactly breaking out the champagne, I was relieved when the city finally announced on September 30 that it has decided to expand its parking demand management program to the West Seattle Junction (and to Upper Queen Anne as well.)

The SDOT program, which exists in most business districts in the city, regularly reviews parking availability from Ballard to Roosevelt to Capitol Hill to South Lake Union to Columbia City, tweaking the dials on parking rates to ensure there’s always one to two spots open per block. The well-tested theory behind the (mostly) citywide policy, first enacted in 2010, goes like this: When people have to pay for parking, they’re likely to be more efficient with their time, which leaves more spaces open more often. Showing great forbearance, SDOT patiently explained this concept and the change—$1 an hour in the morning to  $4 an hour in the evening—to West Seattle residents in the recent report.

According to SDOT’s “intercept” surveys of West Seattle Junction visitors (conducted in-person rather than online), a 66 percent supermajority of people said they walked, biked, or took transit to the Junction as opposed to driving.

This provides a potential new rejoinder to complaints from businesses about paid street parking.

The longstanding and obvious retort is that rather than decreasing the number of people who can park and shop, paid parking adds more shoppers by making parking spots more readily available. Now SDOT can add this: The fact that a supermajority of people aren’t even driving to the commercial district in the first place means the shopping-while-driving customer isn’t the seismic constituency shopkeepers may assume they are.

The 66 percent number tracks. It’s similar to the 60+ percent number the SDOT’s survey found in Upper Queen Anne.

Admittedly, SDOT’s online surveys showed the opposite: More people in those surveys said they drive in to the Junction and (though much less so) to Upper Queen Anne. The online sample size was also bigger. But with hundreds of in-person respondents who were actually interviewed in the neighborhood, the West Seattle and Queen Anne surveys seem noteworthy enough for SDOT to call out, which they did in the Queen Anne report under the banner “Many People Visit Without Driving.” They also noted the supermajority in the West Seattle report. “While 71% of online respondents said they typically drive to the Junction, our intercept survey found 66% of respondents typically walk, bike, or take transit to the Junction.”

Slower Bus Service > Faster Bus Service

I’m all for dedicated lanes and multiple-door boarding and inline platforms. And I’m a yes to off-board payment and synchronized traffic lights and queue jumps. Give me all the smart-bus fixes that speed up service. What I’m not for is taking away stops on one of the busiest local bus lines in the city. That’s the current vision for the 7, which King County Metro plans to replace with the Rapid Ride R line—R for Rainer. The county council is scheduled to vote on the the changes—which could reduce the number of bus stops on the popular 7 by about 30 percent—before the end of the year.

Council members and Metro planners should remember that R also stands for Rely on, which is exactly what many of the 11,000 daily 7 riders do—to get to local grocery stores, services, and appointments along the Rainier corridor itself and not necessarily, as the RapidRide plan seems to imagine, travel exclusively to downtown.

To quote Anna Zivarts’ recent editorial for us: “The downtown-centric alignment of the Rapid Ride R was based on pre-pandemic destination data. Despite profound changes in commute patterns since then, there hasn’t been time or resources to examine whether Rainier Valley’s transit needs have evolved.”

Eliminating stops along one of the most heavily used local bus routes in the city seems likely to make it less popular and less reliable.

5 to 4 > 6 to 3

Seattle voters have a chance to second 2025’s election results in a few weeks. Which I hope they do to make it clear for the the Seattle-is-Dying media that bashing Mayor Wilson for the past year hasn’t prompted the backlash they’re hoping for.

Last year, in addition to electing dorky socialist Mayor Katie Wilson, Seattle also added two much-needed progressives to the council’s vote count, nudging city hall from an 8-1 conservative-bloc roll call to a less- dominant 6-3 dynamic by adding brainiac lefty Dionne Foster and urbanist attorney Eddie Lin.

Foster and Lin have been great additions so far. Former Washington Progress Alliance ED Foster, no surprise; YIMBY Lin for rookie legislator of the year (thank you for reining in hearing examiner appeals on land-use decisions)! They’ve both joined charismatic Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck, the most reliable lefty of the three.

Three is still less than six, though. North Seattle voters now have a chance to add a fourth progressive to the mix, Nilu Jenks, whose strong showing in the primary bodes well for the ongoing trend away from the Harrell years. And with swing votes like Rob Saka and Dan Strauss occasionally breaking from the majority, even that 5 to 4 conservative hold could be tenuous.

All this is to say, our progressive mayor may soon have more votes to work with on the second floor.

A question would remain, though. Can she work with them?

Josh@PubliCola.com

Density, Elections, LGBTQ+, Mayor Wilson, Media, Police, Uncategorized

Poll Tests Anti-Density Messages, Mayor Wilson Does Damage Control, and Ron Davis Has Another Anti-Stranger Manifesto
Source: Fulcrum Strategy Group poll

1. A recent messaging poll by a group calling itself the “Green Neighborhoods Coalition” tested talking points against Mayor Katie Wilson’s proposal to finally get moving on the the Seattle Comprehensive Plan, which has been mired in appeals for more than a year. Activists who oppose the plan claim that allowing modest new apartment buildings in and around Seattle’s suburban-style single-family enclaves will “deforest” Seattle, result in the deaths of orcas and salmon, and lead to untold environmental devastation.

The comprehensive plan, which has been pushed back repeatedly since early 2023, epitomizes the concept of “endless delay”—or the “Seattle Process,” if you prefer.

The poll, conducted by Fulcrum Strategy Group (the same pollster behind recent Chamber and Challenge Seattle polls), describes Mayor Katie Wilson’s “taller, denser, faster” approach to the comprehensive plan neutrally, as a series of zoning changes designed “to more quickly address Seattle’s affordable housing crisis by supporting faster development of apartments and condos across Seattle with a particular focus on greater density transit corridors.”

Then, it tests detailed negative messages among people who say they support “a more deliberate approach” to development, including the argument that building more housing will destroy “parks, trees, and greenways”; that the approach “shortchanges climate resiliency” by “ignoring” climate change and “long-term environmental resiliency”; and that (finally) moving forward on the comp plan is a way of “cutting corners, taking shortcuts, excluding community voices, and trying to rush a decision.”

Andrew Thibault, the co-founder of Fulcrum, said the Green Neighborhoods Coalition’s messaging was not “NIMBY/anti-density.”

Editor’s note: This post originally said that the Seattle Parks Foundation was “the group behind” the Green Neighborhoods Coalition. They are the Green Neighborhoods Coalition’s fiscal sponsor, not a direct funder. We regret the error.

2. Less than a day before we published our story about interim Police Chief Andre Sayles’ complaint against a detective who spoke at a pro-LGBTQ event, Mayor Katie Wilson was at a meeting of the city’s LGBTQ Commission, doing a bit of preemptive damage control. At the time of the Thursday night meeting, Wilson’s office still had not responded to our questions for the story we published the following morning.

According to three commission members, and as reported by Seattle Gay News, Wilson and a staffer told the commission our story was basically toothless—specifically, that Sayles had only asserted that the detective, Beth Wareing, represented herself as an SPD detective in violation of orders not to do so. Wilson explained the issue as a “procedural” problem rather than a serious overstep by Sayles, one commissioner said, and let the commission know the case had been dismissed.

Not only did Wareing not mention her affiliation with SPD at the No Hate in WA State press conference, this was not the most incendiary allegation Sayles made against her. He also alleged that she lied about what two anti-LGBTQ initiatives would do, which would be a violation of SPD’s policy against dishonesty and a fireable offense that could have ended Wareing’s career. (She retired rather than continuing at SPD after a sabbatical as the direct result of Sayles’ unfounded complaint). According to OPA, Sayles’ claims against Wareing risked violating her right to free speech.

Jessa Davis, the co-chair of the LGBTQ Commission, said she was most concerned that Sayles seems to have taken right-wing podcaster Brandi Kruse at her word that Wareing lied about what the initiatives would do. Kruse, Davis said, is a “political activist who has publicly advocated in support of these ballot initiatives that the detective was speaking against.” In fact, she’s being investigated by the state Public Disclosure Commission for her advocacy work on behalf of the initiative sponsor Let’s Go Washington, which the PDC calls an in-kind contribution.

“We’ve seen SPD officers engage in political expression before, including statements that many people in Seattle and in the 2SLGBTQIA+ community find deeply troubling,” Davis said, pointing to the double standard that allows SPD officers to express right-wing viewpoints freely. “If we’re going to protect the officers’ rights to political expression, then the rules have to be applied consistently.”

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Wilson’s office said they didn’t have complete information about Sayles’ allegations when they spoke to the LGBTQ+ Commission, and that they were trying to be “transparent and provide them with information” before PubliCola’s story went up. “It was meant to be a high-level heads up, not an attempt to minimize the story or explain it away,” a spokesperson said. “In part, the briefing was for Mayor Wilson to express her expectation that Chief Sayles would be an inclusive leader.”

According to the spokesperson, Wilson had only read the closed case summary about the complaint, which did not include most of the information we reported, when she addressed our story at the meeting.

“The Mayor had only received very high-level information about the case,” and was “actively working with OPA to obtain additional documentation. We believed it was important for us to share with the community the limited information we had received.”

Some commission members, however, left the meeting feeling reassured that Sayles had done nothing serious, and that PubliCola’s story was about a minor incident that fizzled—rather than a serious complaint that led a 30-year detective to leave the department in frustration and disgust.

3. Ron Davis, the former 46th District legislative candidate who ran as an urbanist alternative to state Rep. Gerry Pollet, sent out yet another 3,300-word manifesto to his supporters last week, this one all about the Stranger and its failure to endorse him. In Davis’ mind, this decision was not based on the paper’s actual assessment of him and his candidacy, because that process would have obviously led them to endorse Davis over Will Dreher, the other candidate in the race.

Instead, Davis’ theory is that the “oligarchs” who bought the Stranger (and got rid of three staffers Davis preferred to the current staff) 1) forced the editorial board to endorse Dreher after voting for Davis and 2) maybe (?) told the union that represents Stranger workers to write a statement saying that the board really did prefer Dreher, not Davis, which Davis argues is impossible without interference by publisher Brady Walkinshaw, who knows Dreher. (He also knows Davis, by the way, and endorsed him personally for city council in 2023.)

Assuring readers that he “consulted heavily with two STEM PhDs” in his analysis, Davis spins out a theory in which the Stranger’s endorsement is “always decisive” for lefty candidates, across “hundreds” of past elections, and that there is a knowable, specific “Stranger bump” that applies to all of those candidates, and which Davis should have rightly received.

The whole tendentious essay is almost a textbook definition of correlation-causation confusion, all leading up to Davis’ argument that the new, crowdsourced “Lefty Cheat Sheet” can be a viable alternative to the Stranger’s endorsements, whose “buyout and behavior” have “dismayed and betrayed” its readers.

Candidates are often pissed that they don’t get endorsements. Davis is the first one I can recall who has turnsd a grudge against the Stranger into a proto-crusade against the paper’s endorsements in general. The truth, as Josh argued last week, is almost certainly much more banal—the Stranger met Davis, and they weren’t impressed by him. That should lead to self-reflection, not a multi-volume conspiracy theory.

4. We discussed a counter-complaint against Sayles, KCRHA’s handling of recent layoffs, and Davis’ post-election meltdown on last week’s episode of Seattle Nice—give it a listen if you haven’t already!

Uncategorized

Former Police Chief’s Payout Will Be Higher Than Previously Known; KCRHA Still at Full Staffing as Contract Transition Begins

1. Former police chief Shon Barnes’ $700,000 settlement agreement with the city, which PubliCola received Thursday through a records request, includes a year of paid health care, 18 months’ full salary, the $50,000 “lateral officer” bonus Barnes took when former mayor Bruce Harrell hired him, and a $60,000 relocation allowance for Barnes to move to Seattle from Chicago. (Barnes rented a apartment downtown, listed on Trulia in December 2024 at $3,228 a month, while retaining his family home in Chicago and frequently visiting his family there).

That adds up to $700,000. But the deal also includes a payout for any time off Barnes has accrued but not used. SPD has not responded to any of PubliCola’s questions since last week (except to tell us the chief’s schedule was “locked down” when he left) and the mayor’s office did not immediately respond to our question about how much time Barnes had accrued.  Barnes made $179.54 an hour and his accrued time off was paid out at that rate.

As we reported, Barnes began calling around last Wednesday to tell people he’d been fired (one of our sources was a retired officer who got the news directly from an SPD captain). In reality, Mayor Katie Wilson had asked him to resign and he refused. As a result, rumors swirled for almost a full day before the two sides signed the settlement agreement late Thursday afternoon.

In the agreement, Barnes agreed not to sue the city, and the city agreed not to say anything negative about him to potential future employers. Although Wilson critics have demanded to know exactly what Barnes did wrong (beyond the obvious), the agreement to refrain from badmouthing Barnes likely restricts Wilson’s ability to provide more details about why she fired him. But we can make some educated guesses based on issues that came up before last week, when Barnes confronted a reporter who asked him about PubliCola’s reporting on his frequent travel.

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2. Seattle and King County provided more details this week about their plans to claw back homeless service contracts from the King County Regional Homelessness Authority as part of the “right-sizing” they announced last month that will dramatically reduce the size and responsibilities of the homelessness agency.

After the contracts return to the city and county, which oversaw homeless services before setting up the KCRHA through an interlocal agreement in 2019, the KCRHA will be in charge of the county’s severe weather shelters (but not the city’s), the annual federal funding process (already at risk due to Trump Administration changes to the funding criteria), and the completion of this year’s Point In Time Count analysis of the region’s homeless population. As the region’s Continuum of Care for homeless services, it will also hang on to a number of administrative functions, like overseeing the region’s Homeless Management Information System (HMIS) database, at least for now.

The city will take back 117 contracts with 40 providers, totaling around $113 million. The county will take back 100 contracts with 40 providers totaling around $46 million.

Seattle plans to hire 23 new staffers in the Human Services Department to administer the contracts, and the county will hire 11 people.

It’s unclear how much staff duplication will occur while the contracts move from KCRHA to the two local governments. Currently, KCRHA has 73 staffers. The “right-sizing” announced more than a month ago included between 20 and 25 layoffs, but so far, none of those layoffs have occurred. The city is facing a budget deficit of at least $175 million, so it will need to cut KCRHA’s budget (and staff) by at least the equivalent of the new staff it’s hiring to avoid paying for double staffing next year.

Almost all of the KCRHA’s $203 million budget comes from Seattle and King County.

Uncategorized

Multiple Sources Say Police Chief Barnes is Out; Mayor’s Office Not Responding to Questions
Seattle Police Chief Shon Barnes speaks outside City Council Chambers

By Erica C. Barnett

Update on Thursday at 11:30 am: As of this morning, Mayor Katie Wilson’s office still has not responded to multiple requests for comment or clarification on Barnes’ employment status. Sources have told PubliCola that Wilson asked for Barnes’ resignation yesterday and that he declined to resign, which would force Wilson to fire him if she wants him out. The silence from the mayor’s office makes it impossible to clarify exactly what is going on with Barnes.

Meanwhile, a group of mostly older Black community leaders held a rally at City Hall calling on Wilson to keep Barnes this morning, saying they represent “the Black community” in Seattle.

Some City Councilmembers have reportedly begun pushing back on the mayor’s decision, although none of them have said anything publicly. Under the city charter, the mayor can fire the police chief “upon filing a statement of his or her reasons for so doing with the City Council.”

Original story follows:

On Wednesday night, multiple sources in several branches of city government told PubliCola that Mayor Katie Wilson fired Police Chief Shon Barnes earlier this afternoon. Barnes was reportedly seen leaving Wilson’s office on the seventh floor of city hall Wednesday evening after a lengthy meeting. Barnes was in his uniform when he arrived at an early-evening vigil for the victims of a mass shooting on Sunday at Seattle Center, but left before the vigil was over.

Multiple sources, including a recently retired SPD officer, said Barnes called at least some of the department’s captains Wednesday night to tell them the news.

PubliCola has not been able to officially confirm Barnes’ firing with either SPD or the mayor’s office. An SPD spokesperson said they had no information, and neither Wilson nor her communications office responded to requests for confirmation and comment tonight. The mayor reportedly canceled all regularly scheduled staff meetings this afternoon before meeting with Barnes in her office.

Rumors had been swirling about Barnes’ future at the department all afternoon, after Barnes canceled about a half-dozen TV interviews he had scheduled to discuss the shooting and address questions about his travel schedule. I reported on the canceled TV interviews Wednesday afternoon.

Barnes was out of town, attending a conference in Dallas, when gunfire broke out Sunday night; I broke the news about his absence from Seattle on Sunday.

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As I reported last year, Barnes rents in Seattle while his wife and kids remain in the family’s home in Chicago. The chief has traveled frequently throughout his time in Seattle, giving keynote speeches, attending conferences, and visiting his family in Chicago. He kept up his heavy travel schedule this year, traveling nearly seven weeks in the past seven months, on top of about two weeks spent on vacation and out of the office. SPD provided a partial copy of his schedule in response to PubliCola’s request, so these are conservative estimates based on information SPD provided for the first three months of the year.

A breaking point in Barnes’ relationship with the mayor may have come after clips of the chief confronting a reporter who asked about my reporting on his travel. When South Seattle Emerald reporter Connor Nash asked Barnes how often he was out of town, the chief Barnes tried to shut him down, said my reporting was inaccurate, and had to be hustled away by his chief of staff Alex Ricketts, who inserted himself physically between Barnes and Nash.

The confrontation, which Barnes brushed off a day later by saying he was just showing his “passion” for the job, made international news. It also sparked new interest in Barnes’ whereabouts since former mayor Bruce Harrell hired him in late 2024.

This is a developing story.