Tag: city council

Arts, City Council

An Interview With the Creator of the Seattle City Council Sock Puppets

By Erica C. Barnett

City Hall has been speculating for months about who’s behind a series of short Youtube videos featuring the members of the Seattle City Council as sock puppets—each meticulously designed to highlight or scrutinize some aspect of each council member’s character.

The vertically shot videos are deceptively simple—each Muppet-style puppet speaks in turn, lip-synching to audio of a council meeting—and often include visual jokes that range from subtle (a tiny Maritza Rivera can barely get her eyes above the dais) to blunt, like the most recent video featuring books the council might be reading on their two-week summer vacations. (Former Councilmember Cathy Moore, who frequently became indignant when people opposed her politically, is reading a copy of White Fragility at the golf course. Layers!)

One of my personal favorites came from a meeting when Rob Saka, unprompted, brought up a supposedly untranslatable Finnish concept called sisu, then proceeded to translate it, at great length, while the rest of the council just kind of sat there. In the video, Saka—the son of a Nigerian dad and a Finnish mom—bobs around in a tiny replica of the dashiki he wore during his 2023 campaign as the Finnish flag unfurls behind him and the Finnish national anthem plays in the background.

The identity of the “The Seattle Channel” puppet master has been a topic of fierce speculation at City Hall. As recently as primary election night, an elected official told me they knew for a fact that it was someone who works for city government, and they were so confident, I believed them. But they were wrong.

“The puppets,” as they’re referred to at City Hall, are the product of a group of people, but the project was launched by one person—a longtime visual artist who lives on Capitol Hill and has never worked at City Hall. We asked for an interview earlier this year; this week, the originator of the puppet channel finally said yes, on the condition that we not reveal his identity. The following conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

I love the puppets. What made you decide to start doing these videos?

My story is that I started really tuning in to local politics, I think like a lot of people, in 2020, with the Black Lives Matter/George Floyd/Breonna Taylor uprising in my neighborhood, on Capitol Hill. Through that experience of those protests and the experience of having police bombing my neighborhood and seeing all of that firsthand, I got involved in some local activist groups [like Solidarity Budget and Stop Surveillance City] that are are particularly focused on the mayor and the city council and local politics—groups that are really focused on trying to push the city toward an idea of public safety that’s much more about solidarity and human services and less on policing and courts.

Through that work I started tracking city politics and the city council. When they started with the original legislation proposing CCTV, I was really frustrated at how this particular council seems to be extremely uninterested in listening to public feedback and data and taking in information. Especially with the surveillance bill, because there was such a huge amount of skepticism expressed by the public and the official surveillance working group recommended not passing it. There were lots of reasons they should not have passed that bill and they did it anyway

There are so many amazing details in your sock puppets that I feel like it takes a keen observer of the city council to notice—like the fact that Bob Kettle’s eyebrows are the same color as his skin. What’s your process for identifying and including all those details?

At first, I was trying to find socks at a thrift store to try to match the complexion of the council members. I think of Kettle as being a very, very white man, and somehow one of those athletic socks just seemed appropriate. I love making things. I’ve only made some of the puppets. Some of them were made by other people who are also very talented puppet makers. The thing about puppets that’s amazing as an art form is, it takes so little to turn an inanimate object into something animate. You just put some googly eyes on a sock and it suddenly has a personality.

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I’m obsessed with the way you chose to do Sara Nelson’s hair—it’s somehow exactly her hair, even though the yarn is a bunch of tangled-up colors and her actual hair is gray.  

She was the first puppet I made and I think it’s partially just kind of the materials I had on hand. It seemed like it worked.

Tell me more about your goals for this project.

The group that is working on the puppets is a group that has been going since 2020. We make all sorts of media for different kind of activist campaigns. The question is, how do you take complicated issues that the city is facing and distill it down in a way that’s poppy enough that it catches somebody’s attention that may not be following it closely and doesn’t simplify and flatten it. We’ve done a lot of stuff on social media to try to get people to pay attention to what is happening. This puppet project is in that same spirit. Puppets as a metaphor for politicians who seem to be beholden to interests that are not in the public interest.

In terms of process, there are actually several people in the immediate group who make it with me, and a larger group of people who are regular watchers of the council through the official Seattle Channel because of the activist work that we do. So people send me bits and suggestions. Originally they were going to be much shorter and kind of sillier, which is how they started, but increasingly we got this idea of really trying to base it on whatever happened in the council the week before. And then, obviously, we take audio from the Seattle Channel’s recordings of the meetings

Councilmember Joy Hollingsworth has complained that she doesn’t have a puppet. Do you only make puppets for the “bad guys”?

I mean, kind of, yeah. The ones who seem like they’re acting the worst are going to get puppets—the ones that seem most unwilling to think about public opinion and be swayed by what people in Seattle really want.

Have you gotten any feedback from anyone featured in your videos?

No, I haven’t really heard from anyone. The only person who really provided feedback from any government position was [CARE Department Chief] Amy Barden. There was video of a meeting where she presented [and was represented by a Barbie doll], and she posted “career highlight!”  Because it’s all anonymous, the only feedback I get, really, is from my friends.

Everyone at City Hall watches your videos. I mean, everyone.

Oh my god! That’s so funny to hear.

I love that it’s become such a thing in City Hall, and also among the people who follow your reporting closely. I would love to try to reach a broader audience. It’s hard to get people’s attention. There’s so much stuff going on and it’s hard to get people to tune in. We’re all so overwhelmed by things that are happening nationally and internationally, but in terms of ways that we can really survive this upcoming time, where I think things are going to get really bad, I think [we should be] focusing locally on city and state politics, and trying to make sure we have a representative democratic government that is focused on how we keep people safe and housed and fed.

The video I think about the most is the one where Bob Kettle says “happy birthday” to Sara Nelson in a bunch of different languages, and then you see the top of Maritza Rivera’s head pop up above the dais and add “and Feliz Cumpleaños!” 

That’s one of my favorites ever. Their interpersonal dynamics! We were talking the other day—is the genre sort of like The Office? It’s the same cast of characters, they come in every day and have their little spats and it just repeats, just like a workplace comedy.

 

City Council, immigration

New Council Committee Shines a Light on Bleak Impacts of Trump Funding Cuts
Kids In Need of Defense managing director Jessica Castellanos

By Erica C. Barnett

As Trump’s funding cuts begin to hit local organizations that rely heavily on federal funds, Seattle officials have said little publicly to indicate they’re prepared for, or more than generally aware of, the deep cuts that are coming for every local organization that relies on federal funding.

With a new revenue forecast showing a dramatic drop in revenues from the JumpStart payroll tax and other funding sources, the city is behaving as if the coming shortfall was the only budget problem they need to prepare to address—ignoring the other side of the ledger, where federally funded programs are at risk for closure.

The council’s most recently elected member, Alexis Mercedes Rinck, said she started thinking last summer about the potential impact a new Trump administration could have locally. “It dawned on me one day that there was a [possible] reality where I won my election and Trump won the election,” Rinck said. “So I spent some time reading through Project 2025 and what the prospects were like for Washington State and they were really grim.”

After Rinck won in a landslide, she decided that the way to pull together all the information that was flooding council offices from organizations and people impacted by the barrage of new federal policies and funding cuts was to set up a committee where the whole council could get briefed, in public, on what was going on. “There’s efficiency, information symmetry, and transparency that I think the committee offers, and there’s so much happening in given day that I do think getting read in is an important starting place to talk about what we are going to do.”

So far, her Select Committee on the Federal Administration and Policy Changes has met twice—once for an overview of Trump policies impacting LGBTQ+ rights, reproductive health care access, and immigrants, and a second time to discuss how tariffs and federal funding cuts will impact housing construction, homeless services, and legal defense for immigrants. Upcoming meetings will cover transportation, emergency management, City Light, and other areas of the budget that stand to lose funds or become far more expensive. The committee, like the council’s other special committees on the comprehensive plan and the families and education levy, includes all nine council members.

During the second half of the most recent meeting, groups that provide legal services to unaccompanied minors talked about the elimination of all federal funding for their programs—including one, Kids In Need of Defense, that is being forced to shut down next month after 22 years.

A “welcoming city” resolution, sponsored by Rinck, would commit the council to include $300,000 in next year’s budget for immigration defense—$150,000 to expand the Office of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs’ [OIRA] existing services, and $150,000 for direct legal assistance, enough to help dozens of people, including minors, avoid deportation.

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If the full $300,000 went just to legal defense, KIND managing director Jessica Castellanos said, it could provide representation for 60 kids.

“We are withdrawing from almost 250 children’s cases, and there’s only 55 of those cases that remain that we are not withdrawing from, and that is because of OIRA’s investment in the representation of unaccompanied children and immigrants in general,” Castellanos said. The Northwest Immigrant Rights Project also provides legal representation to immigrants and receives some of its funding from the city.

Committing in advance to even a small amount of funding could be a challenge in a year when the is facing huge, previously unanticipated budget shortfalls. Councilmember Maritza Rivera called the Trump administration’s action “hateful, irresponsible, disgusting,” but added that the council is going to be facing major budget challenges this year that will require balancing many different interests.

“We all know we have a budget deficit. The county has a budget deficit, the state has a budget deficit. So I think there’s strength in numbers and all of us working together to see what we can do,” Rivera said.

Rinck told PubliCola one of her goals with the committee is to impress on her colleagues the need for more revenue to pay for critical services that will otherwise vanish amid federal cuts.

“I only hope that my colleagues take that seriously— like, taxing the rich isn’t just a slogan, it’s actually the most practical and realistic solution,” Rinck said. “I’m committed to exploring every avenue to make sure the wealthy pay their fair share, and this committee is us taking steps toward us having those conversations.”

So far, council members have been showing up to the committee, which requires a quorum of five members to meet. (The original quorum was three, but Council President Sara Nelson changed it to be consistent with other special committees, which have also had occasional trouble making quorum.) “I’m certainly hopeful that my colleagues see the value that this committee can provide,” Rinck said. “We have a lot of leaders and experts coming it to brief us, and I would be very disappointed if we weren’t able to meet.”

City Council, podcasts, Police

On Hacks and Wonks, We Discussed Ferguson’s Tax Aversion, Seattle’s Performative Anti-“Defund” Pledge, and Cathy Moore’s Funding Directive

By Erica C. Barnett

I went on Crystal Nicole Fincher’s Hacks and Wonks podcast this week to discuss recent state and local news, including Governor Bob Ferguson’s steadfast refusal to consider wealth taxes on the very richest Washingtonians to help close a $1 billion budget hole; the Seattle City Council’s recent performative vote denouncing the very existence of  never-realized proposals, in 2020, to fund alternatives to police; and Councilmember Cathy Moore’s recent decision to halt a competitive bidding process and direct the city to give $1 million to a group called The More We Love to expand its Renton “receiving center” for women escaping the sex trade.

I don’t mean to be alarmist or overstate the impact of Moore’s move, which I covered at length late last month. The result of Moore’s directive (which the mayor’s office agreed to; the Human Services Department is an executive department and it wouldn’t have happened if they didn’t), in the most literal sense, is that a group of Seattle-based organizations that work with commercially exploited sex workers on Aurora Ave. N. will not be able to move forward with the plans they were making to use the money most effectively, and it will go to an untested nonprofit best known for wresting a homeless outreach contract from REACH in Burien instead.

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But there’s something undemocratic about a single official, elected by an 8,600-vote margin in 2023 to represent one of seven City Council districts, deciding that work the city had been directing to help underfunded Seattle nonprofits apply for city funds was no longer necessary, because—according to Moore’s emails to HSD officials—she visited The More We Love’s Renton shelter and found it impressive. There’s also something unseemly about the executive branch agreeing, with few or no questions asked, to halt a competitive bidding process—for funds designed to help some of the most vulnerable people in the city—just because a legislator said so.

All this stuff is technically legal. But at a time when the separation of powers is a joke at the federal level, it’s disturbing to see a legislator discarding the work of organizations that had been going through a competitive that they believed could lead to an expansion of their work, just because she decided she liked one specific group best. These are our tax dollars, and while $1 million isn’t much in the scheme of the city’s budget (especially compared to, say, the half-a-billion dollars we spend on the never-defunded police department), we should have some confidence that they aren’t being spent on a whim.

City Council, Mayor Harrell

Seattle Nice: Is This the “Do-Nothing” Council?

 

By Erica C. Barnett

It’s been nearly six months since most members the new city council took office (the exception, Tanya Woo, was appointed on January 23), and so far, they haven’t proposed or adopted a single substantive piece of policy legislation—or even managed to overturn any of the laws they criticized the previous council for passing.

Despite coming in with what some of them described as a mandate to make swift, dramatic changes, the new council has spent huge amounts of its public meeting time getting briefed on what various city departments and offices do—homework they arguably could be doing on their own time, or have done in the two months between last year’s election and their inaugurations.

Even the legislation council members have proposed, or are in the process of developing, is focused on reversing previous policies, rather than constructively creating new ones. Reversing a brand-new minimum wage for “gig” delivery workers, rolling back renter protections, bringing back loitering laws and laws that prohibit people arrested for drug offenses from being in certain areas of the city, like downtown—these are all ways of saying “no” to laws and policies adopted in very recent times—a purely negative agenda. And in any case, most of these ideas are still in the discussion phases—the only one that’s made it in to legislation, Sara Nelson’s proposal to reduce delivery workers’ minimum wage, has stalled.

So what’s going on with this new council, and is it fair to expect first-time council members to propose original legislation by this point in their terms? In preparation for the podcast, I looked back at the most recent pre-COVID election in which all seven districted council seats were on the ballot, 2015. (The council elected in 2019 had just over two months on the job before COVID hit, making 2016 the last “normal” first year for a new set of district council members).

The council elected in 2015 had five rookie members. By around this time the following year, that council had proposed, considered, or passed legislation barring landlords from raising the rent on apartments with maintenance violations; requiring landlords to rent to the first qualified person who applies for a unit; limited deposits on commercial leases; limiting security deposits and move-in fees, expanded access to the city’s Utility Discount Program, and banned “conversion therapy” for LGBTQ+ youth, among other legislation.

Even the new 2020 council (with four rookie members) passed substantial legislation during and after the COVID pandemic hit the city in mid-March, including a ban on independent expenditure contributions from companies partly owned by foreign investors; legislation expanding the maximum number of tiny house village shelters in Seattle; the JumpStart payroll tax on big businesses (which has provided hundreds of millions of dollars for affordable housing and other priorities every year since); legislation repealing laws against “drug loitering” and “prostitution loitering”; and a law (which the police have failed to follow) barring cops from questioning children until they’ve spoken to an attorney. That’s on top of all the local COVID relief laws the 2020 council began passing in March of that year.

Sandeep and I are usually on opposite sides when it comes to the current council, but even he acknowledged that this council has not been particularly productive, although he suggests that the mayor, not the council, may be to blame. We discussed this theory, along with how well Council President Nelson has stuck to her vow to use her “supermajority” to bring “big changes” to city hall, on this week’s episode.

City Council, labor, Mayor Harrell

City Council Staff Ordered Back to Office Four Days a Week; Workers Hold Out Hope for Earlier Retroactive Pay

1. City Council President Sara Nelson told legislative staffers this week that they will be required to work in the office four days a week, rather than the two-day citywide minimum, starting on June 24.

“Councilmembers have reported to me that they are most productive when the staff who support them are available for in-person meetings and impromptu consultations,” Nelson wrote in a memo to staff. “Moreover, professional relationships, which are essential for a legislative body to thrive, are best developed and maintained in an atmosphere where key staff are available onsite for direct person-to-person contact, whether scheduled or serendipitous.”

“Given the significant advantages associated with being in the office, and after lengthy consultation with my fellow Councilmembers and Legislative Department division heads, I am writing today to announce that the Legislative Department will be transitioning to an increased in-office presence of four days a week to more effectively meet internal and external business needs,” Nelson wrote. “This new policy will acknowledge the specific circumstances of individual employees and their roles in the Department, and each supervisor will have the flexibility to address such circumstances, on a case-by-case basis.”

PubliCola asked Nelson whether there was data to back up the statement that working from an office has “significant advantages” for legislative staff, but has not heard back yet. A number of legislative employees, including the city clerk’s office, have unionized over the past few years; one issue clerk’s office raised in their union drive was a new requirement that they commute to downtown Seattle two days a week regardless of their job duties, how far away they live, or whether they could do their jobs more effectively from home.

Although Nelson and Mayor Bruce Harrell have suggested that downtown recovery depends on city employees coming back to their offices and spending money in the area, the cost to city employees isn’t just the price of lunch. The pandemic made many workers aware of how much unpaid time they lose to daily commutes, and many discovered they were more productive when they worked from home. Adding cars to the roads also counteracts the city’s climate efforts, and works against efforts to achieve Vision Zero—the city’s goal of zero traffic deaths or serious injuries by 2030.

It’s unclear whether the return-to-office mandate is a working condition that will require additional bargaining for unionized legislative employees. Nelson’s memo says “a policy change of this nature should not be implemented without the Department’s leadership engaging in discussions with PROTEC-17, which represents staff across the Department”—though not individual council members’ staff.

PubliCola reached out to PROTEC17 and Nelson and will update this post if we hear back.

2. City employees and their unions have expressed dismay over the slow timeline for their retroactive pay increases, which represent back pay for 2023 and 2024. As PubliCola reported earlier this week, thousands of workers finally got a contract earlier this month, but won’t see their retroactive wages until October. According to emails HR managers sent to employees in various city departments Monday morning, the delay is purportedly related to the implementation of Workday, the city’s new payroll and finance system. City employees will receive the regular pay increases included in the contract, which amount to a total of 9.5 percent, next month. Continue reading “City Council Staff Ordered Back to Office Four Days a Week; Workers Hold Out Hope for Earlier Retroactive Pay” →

Arts, Business, City Council, Economy, Maybe Metropolis, Mayor Durkan, Transit, Urbanism

Maybe Metropolis: Night Vision

by Josh Feit

Mayor Jenny Durkan’s proposed 2021 budget eliminated a position that the city’s cultural community believes is essential, particularly as the COVID-19 crisis is strangling city nightlife: The Nightlife Business Advocate, also known as the Night Mayor. Fortunately, city council member Andrew Lewis took quick action to restore the position last month, getting four more council members—a majority—to sign on as cosponsors to his budget amendment.

The $155,000 save is on track to be part of  next week’s budget deal. I point out Lewis’ pivotal role because he’s the youngest council member (he just turned 31 this week), and still values nightlife as an attribute of city life. “It’s always bothered me that nightlife is seen as something that needs to be managed,” Lewis told me. “I think it’s something that needs to be cultivated.”

That’s essentially what the position, a formal liaison between nightlife businesses and city regulators, was created to do: Nightlife Advocate Scott Plusquellec helps music venues navigate the city’s complex licensing and permitting bureaucracy as well as helping with state regulators such as the Washington State Liquor and Cannabis Board. (Plusquellec was a legislative staffer in Olympia before coming to work at the city.)

The position was created in 2015 and housed in the Office of Economic Development’s Office of Film + Music under the office’s then-director Kate Becker. A veteran of Seattle’s music scene (and its storied battles against things like the Teen Dance Ordinance), Becker was both a founding member of all-ages venue the Vera Project and the Seattle Music Commission. When Becker left in early 2019 to take a job with King County Executive Dow Constantine as the County’s first Creative Economy Strategist, Plusquellec lost his high-level ally.

Becker was never replaced. After Becker left, Plusquellec reportedly had to write up a memo explaining his position to Mayor Durkan’s new OED director Bobby Lee, who started heading up the department in the summer of 2019. Judging from the mayor’s proposed cut, the new regime was not convinced.

Continue reading “Maybe Metropolis: Night Vision” →