Category: Uncategorized

Uncategorized

Toilet Troubles at Kent Jail, Councilmember Invites Landlord Who’s Suing City to Lead “Housing Provider” Panel

1. Update: DAJD spokesman Noah Haglund says workers were able to adjust the flush limits in the double-bunked unit and people in that unit “remained in place. The toilets can now be flushed several times per minute.”

Earlier this month, as PubliCola exclusively reported, the King County Department of Adult and Juvenile Detention relocated 50 people from the downtown Seattle jail to the Maleng Regional Justice Center (MRJC) in Kent, part of a larger effort to reduce the downtown jail population. The minimum-security inmates are being “double-bunked” in cells that were previously occupied by one person each, with one guard overseeing just over 100 jail residents.

But an unanticipated problem has already swirled to the surface at the MRJC: The toilets, which sit out in the open, are programmed to only flush twice an hour, meaning anything that’s in the toilet after those two flushes has to stay in the toilet until the timer resets. The newly doubled-up jail residents are already complaining about the unsanitary situation in their tight living quarters, according to representatives for the unions that represent jail guards and public defenders.

“Imagine two people being in there—you’ve used your two flushes, and now you have to go to the bathroom, and whatever you do, it has to sit there for an hour. It’s not too pleasant for the two people who have to sit there in that small cell,” said Dennis Folk, head of the King County Corrections Guild. The regulated toilets also eliminate the option of a “courtesy flush,” which can reduce the nastiness of living and sleeping in the same room as your toilet.

DAJD spokesman Noah Haglund said the toilets in some MRJC cells have “flush meter limitations” because of a history of people flooding the cells or deliberately clogging the toilets. “Since the unit in question has not been double-bunked since prior to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, it was not initially flagged as a concern when the area was repopulated for double-bunked status,” Haglund said Friday, adding that the department would move people to another unit if they couldn’t figure out how to “reconfigure the toilets.”

The commotion over commodes isn’t the only issue with double-bunking people at the MRJC, however. The DAJD has struggled to hire and retain jail guards throughout the system, and the ACLU recently sued the county over conditions at the downtown jail, arguing that the department has violated an agreement from the 1990s known as the Hammer settlement.

Folk says the jail guards’ union has filed a demand to bargain over the decision to move 50 people to the RJC, noting that the 1:104 ratio of guards to inmates is far below the usual “direct supervision” standard of one guard for every residents. Haglund told PubliCola previously that although 1:104 isn’t ideal, the unit will be safe with just one guard because no more than 64 people will be out in the unit’s common area at one time. Folk disagrees, telling PubliCola, “The staffing ratio for this is just not safe.”

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2. On Wednesday, City Councilmember Sara Nelson invited a panel of “housing providers”—landlords—to give a presentation in her economic development committee about the hardships they’ve faced as the result of Seattle’s tenant protection laws, including eviction moratoriums, notice requirements for rent increases, and the “fair chance housing” law, which bars landlords from denying people housing based on their criminal history.

The discussion was like a bizarro-world version of Councilmember Kshama Sawant’s frequent panels on renters’ rights, where, instead of tenants describing unfair evictions, landlords complained about nightmare tenants who were almost impossible to get rid of. Nelson is more aligned with landlords than tenants, so it’s not surprising she would push a counternarrative and highlight landlords’ concerns.

But the leader of the panel, MariLyn Yim, was still an unusual choice to lead a city-sponsored panel, because she has sued the city repeatedly, including one lawsuit that is still ongoing, in an effort to roll back tenant protections.

In their first lawsuit, which was unsuccessful, Yim and her husband, Chong Yim, challenged the city’s “first in time” rule, which attempts to reduce discrimination against tenants by requiring landlords to rent to the first tenant who meets basic qualifications.

In the second, they argue that the city’s law barring landlords from asking about prospective tenants’ criminal history (and deciding whether to rent to someone based on that history) violates their constitutional due-process and free-speech rights. “The Yim family could not afford to live in Seattle without the rental income from these properties,” the lawsuit says.

Yim said during her presentation that an “explosion” of new tenant protections has been driving small, “mom and pop” landlords out of the rental market. “I think families are really going to have a tough time as we lose the smaller rentals and there’s also a shift in ownership profile.

Just this week, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled partly in favor of the Yims and their co-defendants, agreeing that the city has no authority to prohibit landlords from asking about a prospective tenant’s criminal history.

Yim said during her presentation that an “explosion” of new tenant protections has been driving small, “mom and pop” landlords out of the rental market, pointing to Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections (SDCI) data showing a “loss” of 11,000 housing units at buildings with fewer than 20 apartments. “I think families are really going to have a tough time as we lose the smaller rentals and there’s also a shift in ownership profile. There’s a lot of those larger properties that are less likely to be owned by local investors or members of the community,” Yim said.

However, that data actually refers to the number of units landlords have registered at the city; according to the report that was the source for Yim’s numbers, registrations with the city could have declined for a number of reasons, including relaxed enforcement by SDCI or the fact that “some landlords neglected or declined to renew their registrations during the pandemic.”

In addition to being a landlord and plaintiff in an ongoing lawsuit against the city, Yim is also a city of Seattle employee, earning $140,000 a year as a civil engineer for the Seattle Department of Transportation.

Bikes, City Council, Transportation, Uncategorized

Strauss Burke-Gilman Trail Proposal Revamps Rejected “Leary Alternative”
The “Leary Alternative,” with Councilmember Dan Strauss’ proposed change to an older version of the proposal marked inBu blue.

By Erica C. Barnett

When Seattle City Councilmember Dan Strauss announced, earlier this month, that he had come up with a plan to break a 29-year deadlock and complete the long-delayed Burke-Gilman Trail through Ballard, the response from local outlets who have covered the battle over the years ranged from mild praise to rapturous enthusiasm.

Seattle Bike Blog said Strauss’ proposed “Leary Alternative,” which would avoid conflicts with the industrial businesses that have stalled the trail’s completion with legal tactics for decades, marked “the biggest development in the Missing Link saga in years,” but noted that it could “spell doom” for a straightforward trail extension along Shilshole, the “missing link” of the trail. On the ecstatic end of the spectrum, the Stranger raved, “By God, Dan Strauss May Have Done It” in a piece touting Strauss’ plan to “satisfy everyone who’s had soooo much to say for the past two [sic] decades.”

Longtime bike advocates, however, noticed something about the plan: It wasn’t new. In fact, the city already painstakingly studied a very similar proposal, also known as the Leary Alternative, in a 2016 draft environmental impact statement (DEIS). The DEIS evaluated several plans to complete the Missing Link, including the Shilshole route, and concluded that Leary could be less safe for cyclists than the Shilshole option, in part because it included 13 intersections where cars and trucks would have to drive directly across the path.

“A connection on Leary that is built is safer than a connection on Shilshole that is never built.”—City Councilmember Dan Strauss

That’s “the most [intersections] of any of the alternative routes and substantially more than any existing portion of the [Burke-Gilman Trail], potentially making it a less desirable route for bicyclists and other trail users,” according to the DEIS—and potentially delaying trail users an average of 15-25 seconds when vehicles periodically block the trail. The Leary Alternative would also require sacrificing sidewalk space along parts of Market St., and could slow down buses on six different King County Metro routes, the report concluded.

Strauss says his plan, which shortens the distance bikes would spend alongside busy Leary Way by several blocks compared to the original Leary option, could be the breakthrough that resolves an apparently intractable conflict. “A connection on Leary that is built is safer than a connection on Shilshole that is never built,” Strauss said. Since the debate over the missing link began, the city completed work on a three-block stretch of path between 24th Ave. NW and the Ballard Locks; if that stretch had been completed in 2004, Strauss said, he wouldn’t have been riding his bike on the street several blocks north and gotten hit by a car.

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Strauss also argues that Ballard has changed dramatically since advocates first started pushing for a trail along Shilshole three decades ago. “Ballard has gotten more dense,” he said. “We used to have industrial businesses on Market, Leary, Ballard [Ave. NW] and Shilshole, and in today’s Ballard, Market, Leary, and Ballard are almost exclusively commercial while Shilshole remains almost completely industrial.” The DEIS remarked on this transformation seven years ago, noting that a trail along Market and Leary “would run through [a] busy commercial district, which would provide a different recreational experience”—with more people going in and out of businesses on foot, for example—than the rest of the Burke-Gilman Trail.

“There’s a lot going on, and a lot of opportunities for conflict. Any [Leary Way NW] design would have to be really aggressive in prioritizing the safe movement of people on bikes, people walking, as well as all the other people using the space for other purposes.”—Cascade Bicycle Club policy director Vicky Clarke

“There’s a lot going on, and a lot of opportunities for conflict” along Market and Leary, said Vicky Clarke, the policy director for Cascade Bicycle Club. “Any design would have to be really aggressive in prioritizing the safe movement of people on bikes, people walking, as well as all the other people using the space for other purposes,” like crossing from parking spaces to stores ad waiting for the bus.

The proposed route also includes a large number of utility poles that the trail will have to “wiggle around,” Clarke said. “When you’re designing around a bus stop or utility poles or businesses, it has the potential to erode the user experience, safety, and comfort, so there’s a lot of challenges to designing this route.”

Strauss has asked Mayor Bruce Harrell and Seattle Department of Transportation director Greg Spotts to study his alternative using money set aside to complete the trail. But even if the city decides to end the “missing link” impasse by building a revamped Leary alternative, Clarke notes that “there’s still going to be people biking on Shilshole because it’s the most simple and direct route to connect with the existing Burke-Gilman, so there still need to safety improvements along Shilshole.” Strauss says he agrees, and would start by fixing the variable pavement—which at different points consists of concrete, asphalt, and gravel—and provide better signage for driveways and parking spaces instead of the plastic drums and poorly marked gravel lots that serve those purposes now.

Clarke said the changes to Shilshole will need to go beyond flatter pavement and better signage. For example? Well, she said, “there’s a really good design for a trail.”

Uncategorized

SPD Trainer’s Views on LGBTQ+ Rights Spark Controversy; Ex-Reporter Claims Dubious Affiliations to Enter Press Event

1. The Seattle Police Department’s Before the Badge program, a five-week program for police recruits, is supposed to help familiarize new officers with the history of various Seattle communities, including those who’ve been victimized by police. But one Before the Badge trainer’s controversial views on same-sex marriage and LGBTQ+ rights have reportedly led at least one program leaders, Assistant Chief Lesley Cordner, to leave the program, which also includes trainings on the relationship between the police and Seattle’s LGBTQ+ community.

The trainer, Pastor Harvey Drake of Emerald City Bible Fellowship, said his primary reason for participating in the program “is because I have a deep desire to see the relationships improve between the Black community and law enforcement.”

In the mid-2000s, Drake signed on as a pro-Defense of Marriage Act co-defendant in a lawsuit filed by gay and lesbian couples who wanted to get married. In an op/ed for the Seattle Times defending DOMA, Drake and a co-author argued that that “[C]hanging marriage sends both boys and girls the message that a mom or a dad isn’t necessary,” adding, “No small group has the right to dictate to government, society, children and future generations that marriage has changed.”

Drake told PubliCola he isn’t “anti” LGBTQ+. “I’m pro-original marriage, period; that doesn’t make me anti-anything.”

More recently, Drake co-signed a letter defending a private school in Shoreline that taught children that homosexuality is “unnatural” and “a result of the failure to worship God.” The letter came in response to a Seattle Times story about teachers who said they were pushed out of their jobs for refusing to disavow same-sex relationships; in the letter, Drake and other religious leaders wrote that the school was “simply teaching what societies throughout history have accepted for millennia, that marriage is between a man and a woman. … Without heterosexual marriage, societies would no longer exist.”

Drake told PubliCola he isn’t “anti” LGBTQ+. “I’m pro-original marriage, period; that doesn’t make me anti-anything.”

“I have family members… I’ve had friends who are all in the lifestyle and they’ll tell you I never said a cross word to them,” Drake added.

Cordner, who reportedly left the program because she did not feel comfortable with Harvey’s participation, did not respond to a request for comment.

In the Before the Badge program, individual trainers lead discussion section with new recruits; Drake is one of several trainers who focus on Seattle’s African American community and their fraught history with police.

“We talk about the history and what we can do to change that,” Drake said. “We’re trying to say, listen, we now have an opportunity to correct some of the misunderstandings, and then we talk about some of the responsibility that we need to have as African Americans when we engage with police officers—for example, teaching young people to be respectful … not to be huffy and puffy, but how to cooperate if you get stopped.”

Police Chief Adrian Diaz told PubliCola he was aware of the letter about the school, and said “that is one of the things that I’m talking to [Drake] about. He also has a perspective of his family being targeted as far as police brutality.” Diaz said it’s important to learn about the experiences of Black Rainier Valley residents, “while also making sure he isn’t putting that perspective on our officers, of an anti-LGBTQ stance.”

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2. Former TV reporter Jonathan Choe, fired by KOMO-TV last year after encouraging viewers to come to a rally held by the Proud Boys, a seditious white supremacist group that helped lead the January 6 insurrection, has continued to insist he is a “journalist” entitled to attend events open only to members of the media. Choe is currently a “senior fellow”—a position held by Choe and 17 other men—at the Discovery Institute, a conservative think tank that helped launch the career of far-right provocateur and activist Chris Rufo.

Choe showed up at a press conference about the opening of a new mental health crisis center in Kirkland and claimed to be representing several different outlets, according to witnesses, including KIRO Radio, the Mill Creek View, and the Lynnwood Times.

Choe has no previous bylines at either of the two Snohomish County publications, and his only recent affiliation with KIRO consists of appearing as a guest when podcaster  Brandi Kruse was filling in as an on-air host earlier this year. In an email to Constantine’s office, a KIRO news editor confirmed, “Jonathan Choe is not an employee with KIRO Radio, and outside of his association with some of our fill-in hosts, he is not affiliated with our news division.” He did not publish a story or create content for any of the three outlets for which he claimed to be covering the press conference.

Independent media matters, and that includes journalists with conservative views as well as left-leaning publications like the one you’re reading now. But the right-leaning Sinclair Broadcast Group didn’t fire Choe because of his conservative bias; they fired him for behaving unethically, by promoting a white supremacist group that led the attack on the US Capitol.

In fact, the only video Choe produced of the event was branded content for the Discovery Institute.

Although Choe appears to believe that because he was once employed as a journalist, he should be admitted to press events in perpetuity, this is not standard practice. In fact, many journalists go on to work other jobs outside journalism, including for government entities, private companies, and activist groups like the one Choe represents, and forego their status as members of the media as a result.

Independent media matters, and that includes journalists with conservative views as well as left-leaning publications like the one you’re reading now. But the right-leaning Sinclair Broadcast Group didn’t fire Choe because of his conservative bias; they fired him for behaving unethically, by promoting a white supremacist group that led the attack on the US Capitol. In his work for the Discovery Institute, Choe has continued to violate bare-minimum ethical standards.

A widely used code of ethics for journalists in Washington State, for example, notes that journalists are not supposed to invade people’s privacy (in just one recent example, Choe published video and the full name of a child in crisis who he demonized as “deranged”), attack or provoke others (Choe frequently tapes himself taunting and mocking protesters) or engage in dishonestly—for example, by falsely claiming affiliation with a legitimate news outlet.

public safety, The C Is for Crank, Transportation, Uncategorized

Defensive Vision Zero “Top to Bottom Review” Recommends More of the Same

graph showing increase in Seattle traffic deaths from 2015-2021By Erica C. Barnett

Last July, incoming Seattle Department of Transportation director Greg Spotts promised a “top-to-bottom review” of the city’s Vision Zero program—a set of strategies, adopted in 2015, that are supposed to eliminate traffic deaths and serious injuries by 2030. Six months later, that review—titled, rather unimaginatively, “SDOT Vision Zero Top to Bottom Review”—is here. The diagnosis: Seattle is doing lots of great stuff, but if it wants to do better, it needs to do even more of the same—but only to the extent that it can, given all the obstacles that are outside the city’s control.

The review, a 37-page report supplemented by a graphics-heavy 22-page “overview,” includes exactly 100 recommendations—a nice round number that suggests padding. And indeed, almost a quarter of the strategies the report suggests are things SDOT is already doing—for example, “[c]ontinue to clarify and measure desired outcomes of educational programs. Many others are vague to the point of abstraction. What does it mean, for example, for a road engineering department to “[b]e willing to reduce vehicle travel speeds and convenience to improve safety,” or to “[b]uild SDOT Senior Team capacity as ambassadors for Vision Zero”? It’s understandable that this review doesn’t include specific project recommendations for specific streets; what’s perplexing is how few of the recommendations involve quantifiable results: Improve how? Build capacity in what sense? Accelerate how much, and by when?

The overview that accompanies the report does is a bit more specific, highlighting five “momentum-building actions” for 2023. This year, the report says, SDOT should phase in more No Turn on Red signs in downtown Seattle “in time for tourist season and the MLB All-Star Game”; add more leading pedestrian intervals—crosswalk signs that switch to “walk” before cars start moving—”where existing signal systems can support” the change; continue working with Sound Transit to improve safety along light rail in Southeast Seattle; address equity concerns about automatic traffic cameras; and change the role and title of SDOT’s chief engineer to include a focus on safety.

All these goals are limited in scope, either explicitly (protecting downtown tourists but not the rest of the city) or by caveats; they also fail to incorporate measurable goals or milestones that might allow Seattle residents to determine, at the end of the year, whether SDOT did what it said it would do. How many new no-right-turn signs is “more”? Who decides how many pedestrianized intersections are possible, and where? How will we know if the city has addressed equity concerns and is ready to move on to installing cameras to stop people from speeding through school zones?

Lowering the speed limit to 25 mph is fairly meaningless if you design roads to function like highways—as anyone who has tried to cross the street on Rainier Ave. South, where traffic lights are frequently more than a quarter-mile apart, can attest.

The report also fails to address safety on the broadest level, emphasizing individual behavior over the systems that enable and encourage dangerous driving. This echoes Seattle’s previous reports on Vision Zero, including a June 2022 presentation that contains many of the same graphics and recommendations as the new “Top To Bottom Review.” The 2022 report, presented just before Spotts arrived in Seattle, was actually more explicit than the new report in calling out road design as a central issue in traffic deaths, but it also suggested drivers just need to act differently: “We need people driving to slow down,” it implored.

Map showing traffic deaths and serious injuries in Seattle

Careless driving does involve individual choice, but being a “safe driver” is much easier in a system that doesn’t encourage going 60 mph in a 25 mph zone. Lowering the speed limit to 25 mph, for that matter, is fairly meaningless if you design roads to function like highways—as anyone who has tried to cross the street on Rainier Ave. South, where traffic lights are frequently more than a quarter-mile apart, can attest. 

To its credit, the report does note that traffic deaths happen most often on big, busy arterial roads, and acknowledges that crashes “often occur as a result of the way our transportation system has been designed.” However, it fails to recommend meaningful, immediate changes that might reverse bad past design decisions, such as narrowing streets and slowing down traffic to make collisions between cars and other road users less frequent and less deadly.

“One safety treatment is to analyze a street and see if reconfiguring lanes could improve safety and keep people and goods moving,” the report says, referring to the once-controversial idea of restriping roads to reduce the number of lanes. But the “safety treatment,” in reality, isn’t “analyzing” and “seeing if” highway-style city roads would benefit from conversion to slower streets; more than 12 years after the city’s first “road diet,” the concept is proven and does not need more study and analysis. We could just do it!

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And even the recommendations that gesture at future changes to road design focus on the need to educate drivers on what they’ll lose, presenting a reduction in “convenience” (speed) as a negative result of greater safety. If SDOT is going to make roads safer, the report says, it has to let drivers know about the “expected impacts” to their “travel.” It also says that any changes to streets, such as restriping, must “maintain[…] transit and freight networks.” That could be a problem on dangerous arterials like Rainier Ave. S., which serves as a major transit and freight corridor (and is one of the most deadly streets in the city.) Pitting “convenience” against safety is also a false choice; there’s nothing convenient about shutting down a road because another driver has struck and killed another pedestrian.

Besides focusing on driver behavior, the review often uses old data to reach conclusions that may be less applicable in a post-lockdown world. For example, the report concludes that reducing speed limits on arterial streets to 25 mph is a Vision Zero success story, using data from 2018 and 2019 data to show that “lowering speed limits and increasing sign density alone—without any marketing campaigns, additional enforcement, re-timed signals, or engineering changes to the street—resulted in lower speeds and fewer crashes.” But that date all comes from before the pandemic, when fatalities spiked nationwide as people drove faster on emptier streets, disregarding speed limits and driving impaired more frequently.

City Councilmember Tammy Morales represents Southeast Seattle, where roughly half the traffic deaths in the city occur. Last week, she expressed dismay that the city’s Vision Zero report failed to call for “dramatic or swift action to combat the unprecedented number of collisions, injuries, and fatalities on our streets, particularly in District 2. Changing signal timing and adding leading pedestrian intervals will not change the geometry of our streets, and as a result, will likely not change the behavior of users on these dangerous stretches of roadway. These actions are a start, but we need to fundamentally change our streets to address this crisis.”

The Vision Zero Top To Bottom Review indicates that, at an unspecified point in the future, the department will be releasing a formal Vision Zero Action Plan to implement concrete steps to reduce traffic deaths and injuries. For those impacted directly or indirectly by traffic violence, the time for action was years ago.

endorsements, housing, Uncategorized

PubliCola Picks: “Yes” On Initiative 135

Seattle is facing a historic housing shortage. In 2019, according to one national report, the region had a housing gap of almost 82,000 units, and the problem has gotten worse, not better, since the pandemic began. The lack of housing for people at all income levels has made this a dual crisis: With rents at all-time highs, even people with moderate incomes can barely afford to live in the city, and those at the bottom are suffering most of all. According to a recent study by Challenge Seattle, a business-backed group headed by former Gov. Christine Gregoire, there is a “severe shortage of affordable rental units for lower income households” in Washington state, particularly for those making less than 30 percent of median income—those most likely, in other words, to fall into homelessness.

PubliCola Picks graphicSocial housing—specifically, mixed-income rental housing that would remain permanently affordable and publicly owned—could be a key part of the solution to this multifaceted problem. Initiative 135, on the February 14 ballot, would create a new public development authority— a kind of quasi-governmental organization with the power to build, acquire, and operate housing in Seattle.

People with incomes ranging from 0 to 120 percent of Seattle’s median income would be eligible to rent apartments in these new and repurposed buildings. Renters in social housing wouldn’t get kicked out if their incomes rise; instead, their rents would increase too, though never higher than 30 percent of their income, the widely accepted definition of affordability. Crucially—and in contrast to other types of affordable housing—renters themselves would make up a majority of the new PDA’s governing board, and would also have a say in how their building is run, along with a budget for amenities and events.

This type of mixed-income housing won’t, on its own, fix the city’s housing crisis. What it will do is provide badly needed housing for hundreds of people who have been, or are at risk of being, displaced from Seattle, augmenting other efforts to build government subsidized public and nonprofit housing such as apartments for people exiting homelessness. Many more ambitious initiatives—such as Gov. Jay Inslee’s recent commitment to commit $4 billion to affordable housing and legislation that would allow denser housing across the state—will be necessary to fill the gap. Social housing is a key piece of the puzzle, not the whole solution.

Critics, including the Seattle Times, have claimed the initiative is toothless because it lacks a funding source. This is disingenuous: As supporters of the initiative have pointed out repeatedly, including a revenue source would risk violating the state’s “single-subject rule” for initiatives. Previous public developers, like the Pike Place Market PDA, have been established in exactly the same way I-135’s sponsors, House Our Neighbors!, are proposing: Get the developer going first, identify revenue sources second.

Nor is it true that social housing supporters haven’t thought about how they would pay for it. In fact, they’ve identified numerous potential revenue streams, including federal housing funds, new progressive local taxes, and funding from the state, whose Democratic leadership, including Gov. Jay Inslee, has recently shown a renewed interest in investing in new affordable housing. Longtime State Rep. and housing advocate Frank Chopp, now a senior advisor to the housing nonprofit Solid Ground, has publicly said he would work to secure funding if the measure passes—a strong vote of confidence from someone with a wealth of experience making housing happen.

The measure has also garnered opposition from members the anti-development left, who argue in the King County Voters’ Guide that the measure is a waste of money because it would create mixed-income housing, rather than housing exclusively for homeless or very low-income people. The idea that very poor people should be segregated into apartment buildings that bar tenants with modest incomes (or kick people out if their income rises) has been debated ad nauseam for decades, but the US has broadly abandoned Cabrini-Green-style public housing projects in favor of mixed-income communities where better-off renters help fund the “operations, maintenance, and loan service” for the community by paying higher rents than those making little or nothing.

This element of the plan should give skeptics cause for optimism: Once built, social housing should become a self-sustaining system—one solution, among many that must happen simultaneously, to Seattle’s affordable housing crisis.

PubliCola picks a “Yes” vote on Initiative 135.

The PubliCola editorial board is Erica C. Barnett and Josh Feit.

Uncategorized

SPD Confirms Name of Officer Who Killed Student in Crosswalk; Seattle Councilmember Mosqueda May Run for County Council

1. SPD has confirmed that the name of the officer who killed a 23-year-old student in a crosswalk earlier this month is Kevin Austin Dave, who joined the department in 2019. Divest SPD, the police watchdog group, first reported Dave’s name on Twitter Monday morning; they described the process they used to figure out his identity on Twitter and in a Substack post.

Dave, who is in his mid-30s, was driving to provide backup to Seattle Fire Department first responders at the scene of a suspected overdose in South Lake Union when he hit Jaahnavi Kundala, who was crossing Dexter Ave. in a marked crosswalk at Thomas Street. As PubliCola reported, the city had planned to install Seattle’s first protected crosswalk at the intersection, but Mayor Bruce Harrell canceled this safety project in his 2023 budget, citing financial constraints.

Court records, obtained through a records request, confirm another detail Divest SPD posted on Twitter:  Dave received a ticket for running a red light in Puyallup in late December 2017. Documents show that he didn’t pay his $124 fine, and the ticket went into collections last year.

Initially, in response to a request to confirm Dave’s identity, an SPD spokesperson sent PubliCola to a statement published on the department’s blog on January 26, which reads in part: “for purposes of both preserving the integrity of the investigation and respecting the family’s right to privacy, [SPD] will not be putting out information over and beyond what has already been provided.” In an email confirming Dave’s identity, the spokesperson said, “We are still exploring what—if any—additional details we can release and may be able to provide more information soon.”

PubliCola has requested information about how fast Dave was driving, whether he stopped after hitting Kandula or went on to his destination a few blocks away, and whether SPD is pursuing a criminal investigation.

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2. City council member Teresa Mosqueda is seriously considering a run for the King County Council District 8 seat being vacated next year by longtime County Councilmember Joe McDermott, according to numerous sources—in fact, the will she/won’t she chatter about Mosqueda’s electoral plans make this the worst-kept secret in Seattle politics right now.

Mosqueda, who lives in West Seattle, wouldn’t confirm or deny the rumors. But a run for county council would make sense on a number of levels. First, the county council is simultaneously lower-profile than the city council and has a broader scope—encompassing issues that the city doesn’t deal with directly, such as health policy and transit service. Second: It’s no secret that the Seattle City Council has become a toxic place to work; becoming a council member means accepting an endless barrage of verbal abuse, along with occasional protesters at your home. Four council members have already said they won’t seek reelection this year.

Mosqueda, like her colleagues, has to be acutely aware that the job is both riskier and less rewarding than it used to be. (One of her colleagues who is stepping down, District 1 Councilmember Lisa Herbold, for example, had a brick thrown through her window while she was home and was later among the targets of a violent “protest” encouraged by the late right-wing radio provocateur Dori Monson.)

It also makes sense that, if Mosqueda plans to eventually run for higher office, such as Congress, she might want to put some distance between herself and the eternally unpopular city council.

Two others who we heard were considering a bid for the seat Jeanne Kohl-Welles is leaving, Seattle City Councilmembers Andrew Lewis and Dan Strauss, said they aren’t running; Lewis has announced he’s seeking reelection to the city council, and Strauss told PubliCola by text, “Love my job representing D6!”

If Mosqueda was elected to county council this year, the council would have to appoint her replacement, since her citywide council seat won’t be on the ballot until 2025.

Other rumored) candidates for McDermott’s current seat include West Seattle attorney Rob Saka, who has also considered a run for the District 1 city council seat Lisa Herbold is leaving; Burien Deputy Mayor Kevin Schilling; and Burien City Councilmember Jimmy Matta. The district includes much of downtown Seattle, West Seattle, Burien, part of Tukwila, and Vashon Island.

Jeanne Kohl-Welles, who represents Ballard, Queen Anne, and Magnolia also announced that she plans to leave her seat after her term ends this year. So far, only one candidate—managing assistant state attorney general Sarah Reyneveld, who ran for the 36th District state House seat in 2020, losing to Liz Barry—has announced in that race. Two others who we heard were considering a bid for the seat Jeanne Kohl-Welles is leaving, Seattle City Councilmembers Andrew Lewis and Dan Strauss, said they aren’t running; Lewis has announced he’s seeking reelection to the city council, and Strauss told PubliCola by text, “Love my job representing D6!”

Uncategorized

LIHI Suspends Mail Service to Several Shelters, Says “Legally, We Can’t Be Accepting Mail”
LIHI Director Sharon Lee speaks at the opening of Rosie's Tiny House Village in the University District
LIHI Director Sharon Lee speaks at the opening of Rosie’s Tiny House Village in the University District. Seattle City Council from Seattle, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

By Erica C. Barnett

Earlier this week, the homeless advocates at Stop the Sweeps raised the alarm about the recent decision by the Low Income Housing Institute to stop providing mail service to people living at several of tiny house villages.

“Stopping mail deliveries will have a devastating impact on people being able to stabilize and get IDs or social security cards, register to vote, handle any outstanding court issues, and do all of the things that transitional shelter is supposed to help with,” Stop the Sweeps’ Jay Jones said in a statement.

On Thursday, LIHI director Sharon Lee pushed back on charges that her organization was deliberately depriving people of access to vital documents, saying that most of LIHI’s tiny house villages have never accepted mail deliveries, apart from a few “holdovers” that were started as self-managed villages and taken over by LIHI, such as Camp Second Chance in West Seattle.

“Legally, we can’t be accepting mail because we don’t have [US] Postal Service mailboxes,” Lee said. “Villagers have complained in the past they’re missing checks or ID cards, or their packages are stolen—there’s no way to receive things in a safe and secure way, so most of the villages do not accept mail” already.

Since tiny houses are meant to be temporary shelter, Lee said, it doesn’t make sense for LIHI to set up a system for people to receive mail at villages .”People have Social Security, ID information, checks, pensions, and important documents [sent by mail] and the problem is that when people leave, there often isn’t a forwarding address” to send their mail to, Lee said.

The message from LIHI to its tiny house village residents provided several alternative options for getting mail, including the Compass Center’s mail service in Pioneer Square and P.O. boxes through USPS.

Since tiny houses are meant to be temporary shelter, Lee said, it doesn’t make sense for LIHI to set up a system for people to receive mail at villages .”People have Social Security, ID information, checks, pensions, and important documents [sent by mail] and the problem is that when people leave, there often isn’t a forwarding address” to send their mail to, Lee said.

Stop the Sweeps said people stay at tiny house villages longer than other shelters, creating something akin to a landlord-tenant relationship. “[Tiny houses] shouldn’t be treated the same as other forms of emergency shelter,” another member of the group said in a statement.

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LIHI has argued in other contexts that it is not subject to landlord-tenant law—specifically protections that might prevent police from arresting people accused of attacking other tiny house village residents. In September, Lee asked Seattle Police Chief Adrian Diaz to tell officers to intervene in dangerous situations at tiny house villages after, according to Lee, it became “a routine practice for responding officers to refuse to arrest someone onsite” because they say doing so would violate landlord-tenant law.

“This includes death threats, weapons being wielded, domestic violence assaults between couples cohabitating the same unit, or non-clients breaking into our facilities who need to be removed,” Lee wrote.

In response to questions about the Postal Service’s policy on mail delivery to shelter offices, a USPS spokeswoman directed PubliCola to the agency’s online instructions for people without fixed addresses to get their mail at a P.O. box or through General Delivery.

It’s unclear how many tiny house village residents will be affected by the changes to LIHI’s mail delivery policy.

Uncategorized

Council Budget Chair Decries Colleagues’ “Misinformation”; Co-LEAD Program May Shift to State Highway Encampments

1. After voting against the 2023-2024 city budget yesterday, City Councilmembers Sara Nelson and Alex Pedersen issued lengthy statements explaining their rationale. In general, both argued that the council should have approved Mayor Bruce Harrell’s budget without significant changes, and should not have eliminated 80 of the 240 vacant police positions for which SPD would otherwise receive funding year after year.

The council funded Harrell’s entire police hiring plan, including large financial incentives for new and transferring officers, and moved parking enforcement officers back to SPD, another top priority for Harrell and the police department.

Still, Nelson and Pedersen described the budget (which Harrell praised) as an affront that will endanger resident and drive qualified police applicants away “With SPD down about 30% of its deployable force and fatal shootings up 35% since 2020, these are far from normal times, and we need to change the narrative that contributed to their staffing shortage,” Nelson said.

Those numbers require some context: There were 36 fatal shootings in Seattle in the first ten months of 2022, compared to 24 for the same period in 2020—at 33 percent increase. But those disturbing numbers of part of a national trend that is actually worse in rural (and Republican) areas, making it a stretch to suggest that shootings are up because of police staffing problems. Similarly, it’s far-fetched to suggest that a largely symbolic (and fairly obscure) council vote to stop funding some long-vacant positions is driving potential job applicants away.

“At best, Nelson and Pedersen are exhibiting sheer incompetence, but unfortunately it appears it’s a wilfull attempt to spread misinformation to prop up their individual political goals. They are being dishonest and actively harmful.”—Council budget chair Teresa Mosqueda

On Wednesday, council budget committee chair Teresa Mosqueda responded to the overheated rhetoric from Nelson and Pedersen, telling PubliCola: “At best, Nelson and Pedersen are exhibiting sheer incompetence, but unfortunately it appears it’s a wilfull attempt to spread misinformation to prop up their individual political goals. They are being dishonest and actively harmful.”

Although Nelson was just elected to her citywide position last year, Pedersen (who represents Northeast Seattle’s District 4) is up for reelection in 2023. One candidate has already announced, and PubliCola has heard about at least one more potential opponent—an urbanist who will challenge Pedersen from the pro-housing left.

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2. One program that did not receive full funding from the council this year—the Public Defender Association’s Co-LEAD program, which provides case management and hotel-based shelter to people experiencing homelessness—may end up having to shift their focus away from Seattle neighborhoods to encampments near state highways, PDA co-director Lisa Daugaard said.

That’s because without $5.3 million in annual city funding to keep the program going, the PDA may end up moving Co-LEAD to the King County Regional Homelessness Authority, which has access to state funds to address encampments in state-owned rights-of-way, such as embankments and overpasses.

“[Focusing on state highways] will take us further away from the focus on public safety in Seattle neighborhoods and the public safety concepts that both the Harrell Administration and the City Council have strongly espoused.—Public Defender Association co-director Lisa Daugaard

The PDA made a similar change to its JustCARE program, which previously focused on large encampments inside the city of Seattle, earlier this year. The program moves encampment residents to hotels and enrolls them in intensive case management, enabling the Washington State Department of Transportation to remove encampments in state rights-of-way—a top goal of Gov. Jay Inslee during the last legislative session—without simply displacing them.

“I think the most likely solution is that more of Co-LEAD may shift over to RHA, if indeed RHA is successful in advocating for the state to double down on the approach that we and other partners have brought to the state transportation right-of-way work,” Daugaard said. “But that will take us further away from the focus on public safety in Seattle neighborhoods… [and] the public safety concepts that both the Harrell Administration and the City Council have strongly espoused.”

JustCARE and Co-LEAD both emerged during the pandemic, with support from emergency federal funding, to address the proliferation of large, sometimes dangerous encampments in places like City Hall Park in Pioneer Square. The council’s budget does provide funding for LEAD, the PDA’s original diversion program, which provides case management to people involved in the criminal legal system, such as homeless people facing charges for misdemeanor crimes.

Uncategorized

Council Passes Budget By Narrow Margin; Sawant, Pedersen, and Nelson Vote “No”

By Erica C. Barnett

The Seattle City Council adopted a final two-year city budget by a narrow 6-3 margin late Tuesday afternoon, with Councilmembers Kshama Sawant, Alex Pedersen, and Sara Nelson voting “no.” The budget requires six votes to pass, so if even one council member (such as Lisa Herbold, who voted remotely from an airport) had not been present, the entire budget would have failed.

PubliCola reported Monday on the reasons Nelson and Pedersen gave for voting against the budget. In brief, both argued that reducing the number of vacant officer positions at the Seattle Police Department (from 240 to about 160) represented a step back on public safety; Pedersen called the move an example of police defunding, while Nelson said funding fewer vacant positions would send a negative message to potential police recruits.

Nelson and Pedersen also denounced the council majority (which is ordinarily Sawant’s department) for failing to add a number of new programs Harrell included in his original budget, such as a new gunfire detection system (Shotspotter) and an expanded anti-graffiti team.

“It would be out of line with the role of the legislative branch to just adopt [the mayor’s budget], and it would be impossible for every council member amendment to be added to the mayor’s proposed budget without any changes, given the resources that we have.” —Council budget chair Teresa Mosqueda

Neither Nelson nor Pedersen spoke at Tuesday’s meeting, but Pedersen sent a newsletter update to constituents on Tuesday arguing that the budget—which fully funds Mayor Bruce Harrell’s police recruitment and hiring plan—could discourage potential recruits from applying for jobs at SPD.

“It’s tempting at City Hall to ‘go along to get along‘ to avoid conflict with colleagues, but I ultimately believe each elected official should vote their conscience as they strive to synthesize the concerns and input from their constituents,” Pedersen wrote. “I cannot in good conscience endorse a final budget that I believe fails to learn from recent public safety policy mistakes and falls short on public safety for a third year in a row.”

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In her own  newsletter, Nelson  reiterated the comments she made on Monday about what she views as the budget’s shortcomings. “[L]et’s be clear,” Nelson wrote.”This is a policy choice to fund something else, not a necessity driven by a $9 million addition to our General Fund shortfall—which is a relative drop in the bucket.” 

The council majority wasn’t exactly hiding the fact that they had their own priorities—in fact, as council budget chair Teresa Mosqueda said Tuesday, it’s the council’s job as the legislative branch of city government to amend the mayor’s budget, not just rubber-stamp it. “It would be out of line with the role of the legislative branch to just adopt [the mayor’s budget], and it would be impossible for every council member amendment to be added to the mayor’s proposed budget without any changes, given the resources that we have,” Mosqueda said. “Those are the facts. That’s the role of the legislative body.”

Compared to Nelson and Pedersen’s heated denunciations, Harrell’s own statement about the council’s budget was anodyne and supportive.

“The amendment process led to important changes in the proposed budget, including ensuring our police recruitment plan is funded and respecting the requests of parking enforcement officers to reside in SPD,” the statement read. “The Council embraced our proposed budget’s needed investments in improving public safety, urgent action on the housing and homelessness crises, and recommitment to the essential services that residents demand.”

Courts, Elections, Uncategorized

PubliCola Questions: Seattle Municipal Court Candidate Nyjat Rose-Akins

Nyjat Rose-Akins campaign photoBy Erica C. Barnett

Seattle Municipal Court races tend to fly under the radar at election time, buried under higher-profile campaigns for statewide and local legislative offices. Not this year. Two seats on the court are currently up for grabs (along with five other races where incumbents are uncontested) and the people running for each seat could hardly come from more different perspectives.

In Position 9, assistant city attorney Nyjat Rose-Akins is challenging incumbent Judge Damon Shadid, who got crosswise with City Attorney Ann Davison after she demanded that he exclude a list of so-called “high utilizers” of the criminal justice system from community court, which he oversees. When Shadid asked for more time to discuss Davison’s proposal with his colleagues, Davison went around him and got the full court to agree to her request; not long after that, Rose-Akins jumped into the race. Rose-Akins has focused on community court, arguing that the court should stop automatically releasing people from jail when they enroll and suggesting that therapeutic courts should be restricted to people accused of only the lowest-level crimes.

Shadid has overseen the SMC’s three therapeutic courts, which provide alternatives to the mainstream court system for some veterans, people with mental illness, and low-level offenders who agree to participate in a program that might include classes, treatment, or enrollment in health care.

PubliCola sat down (virtually) with Seattle Municipal Court candidates in September and October.

PubliCola (ECB): Tell me a little bit about your experience as a prosecutor and in a pro tem judge, and what you’ve learned in those roles that would that you’d bring to the job of Seattle Municipal Court judge.

Nyjat Rose-Akins (NR): I was a prosecutor with the city attorney’s office for six years, and in that role, I basically did all the rotations. I did specialty court, which included mental health and community court, I did domestic violence court, I did the regular trial track, I was in charging. So I really was able to get a full understanding of all the things that are done in Seattle Municipal Court. And [a previous iteration of] community court was one of the first rotations I did in the city attorney’s office in 2010. And it was really interesting to observe and see just how alternative courts can really help and assist people.

As a pro tem judge in King County, I have done jail calendars, probation calendars, and arraignment calendars, as well as the first appearance calendars. And it has really been an interesting and rewarding experience over the last few years. As a prosecutor, I’ve been on one side, whereas as a judge, you have to consider all the individuals who are involved in the criminal legal system. It’s not just necessarily just the victim, but it’s the defendant, it’s the community, it’s everyone who is involved.

“The way community court is constituted right now, it doesn’t really hold people accountable. I think we can still be compassionate and hold people accountable, while also really getting people the services they need.”

So as a judge, you really do have to make some tough decisions sometimes, looking at the facts and the law and what each party is telling you. I’ve learned that if you are if you understand the dynamics of what’s happening, in the sense of looking at the case, looking at the history, and really listening to the parties, you can create solutions that may not necessarily make everyone happy, but balance out some of the things that are that are happening. And what may work for one group or one individual may not necessarily work for another defendant.

ECB: You’ve been critical of community court as it’s being run by your opponent, Judge Shadid. What has changed between the previous incarnation of community court and the current one, and why do you think it’s gone off the rails?

NR: When I did it in 2010, it was a smaller subset of cases, and people only had a certain amount of times to go through community court— I think it was no more than three cases. And the thought was that first case was your first opportunity, and then, maybe a year or six months later, you had another case. So it was a bit more structured. Whereas now, looking at the community court dockets, an individual can have five or six cases at one time. And I think that can be somewhat problematic.

If you’re in community court with four, five, or six cases at one time, and you opt in [to community court], the court is only going to take 14 days to adjudicate the case. But then after that, there’s nothing, really, that you have to do other than potentially make an appointment. And I don’t think that’s very helpful to people, if we’re seeing this as the group of people that really need resources and really need help. If you’re just going to make an appointment, and then not have to do your community service hours, I don’t know if that really sends a message of “We are here, we believe in you, and we want to really help you stop committing this sort of behavior.” I just don’t think it’s very helpful. And it’s really not doing much of anything, in my opinion.

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ECB: If you’re elected to this position, you could have the ability to implement changes to community court. What kind of changes would you want to see?

NR: A lot of the cases that are in community court are theft cases. And in my job as an assistant city attorney—working in the community, working with businesses, working with other government department—I see the other side of just the rampant thefts that are happening downtown. I work close to Third and Pine and I often just walk down to that area. And so I would increase the time [people spend engaged with the court], because if we’re really talking about providing people with resources and helping them, then we need a little bit more time to do that.

When I took community court in 2010, as I said, the charges were very limited. It was really only thefts and maybe criminal trespass in the second degree. Right now, the charges that can go into community court are about 20 to 23 [types of] cases. I think that could be fine, except a few charges they may not be appropriate for community court, but I think people need some more time and more probation resources. A number of individuals who commit crimes may need a little bit more hand holding. And the way community court is constituted right now, it doesn’t really hold people accountable. I think we can still be compassionate and hold people accountable, while also really getting people the services they need. And I like the idea of really having a one stop shop, where multiple providers are in the court resource center at one time to really connect people. Zoom and calling in—sometimes that’s what we have to do. But I think it can also just disconnect people. A warm handoff, I think, is what most people need.

“We need to address [low-level misdemeanor] cases quickly. Are they the crimes of the century? No. But there are crimes that affect most all of us, especially if you live in the city. I’ve seen people stealing in the grocery stores, I’ve experienced or seen people trespassing— those are things that we all see on a daily basis.”

ECB: A lot of times people will fail to show up in court when they’re supposed to, especially if they’re unstably housed or have behavioral health conditions that make it especially challenging to make appointments. When you when you see that an individual has a lot of failures to appear on their record, what does that say to you, and is that a reason to penalize them?

NR: With COVID, we realized that we can do some of this stuff via video. And I think we do need to have some of those options, especially if we’re doing a review hearing or other certain types of hearings where people can maybe just pop in via Zoom. But looking at failures to appear—they do matter to me. Now, if they’re all failure to appears from many years ago and I see that someone’s been consistent since then, I am not going to hold that against someone. It is an individual by individual basis. But I do look at failure to appear, and it does matter, especially if someone has multiple cases and multiple failure to appears. And if they’re in different jurisdictions—not just Seattle, but also Pierce County or Snohomish County—then that, for me, signals that maybe there’s other things going on, and we’d love to see that person in court. So maybe bail is warranted at this time, because, you know, we’ve done multiple to orders to appear, and the court still hasn’t been able to get you into court.

My point is we need to address those cases quickly. Are they the crimes of the century? No. But there are crimes that affect most all of us, especially if you live in the city. I’ve seen people stealing in the grocery stores, I’ve experienced or seen people trespassing— those are things that we all see on a daily basis. And we’re getting to a place where people are now engaging in self-help. And that’s what’s concerning to me from a community perspective, when people are now saying, “I have to take matters into my own hands and take care of this myself,” because the court isn’t working and the police aren’t working to address it. And that’s what’s beginning to really concern me. Continue reading “PubliCola Questions: Seattle Municipal Court Candidate Nyjat Rose-Akins” →