Tag: Debora Juarez

City Council, Mayor Wilson, Police

Councilmembers Blame Mayor For Delayed SPD Press Conference, Criticize Removal of Former Chief Barnes

By Erica C. Barnett

When interim police chief Andre Sayles, mayoral public safety director Alison Holcomb, and SPD Captain Randy Hunt came to this week’s City Council public safety committee meeting to provide a “quick look” at the city’s response to the  recent shooting at Seattle Center, the briefing was scheduled for 15 minutes. It ended up taking well over an hour, as council members grilled Holcomb about why a press conference on July 26 didn’t happen until almost five hours after the shooting.

The meeting—which began with Rob Saka repeatedly bellowing, “Is there a killer on the loose?”—was largely political theater: The council wants the public to see them as tough and concerned with public safety.

But the tense session also revealed how eager some council members are to blame the mayor for any P.R. screwups on the night of the shooting—and absolve the police, including former chief Shon Barnes, who was out of town when gunfire broke out at the Bite of Seattle, as were Sayles and his fellow deputy chief Yvonne Underwood.

Debora Juarez, who was appointed to Cathy Moore’s seat after Moore quit the council last year, hammered away at Holcomb in a Court TV-style interrogation.

“I can call you Alison? Thank you,” Juarez began. “Because I want to be clear, I don’t want to do a gotcha moment. I’m not trying to humiliate anybody. I just want to understand.” Juarez then attempted to get Holcomb to agree that “the communication problem was between the mayor’s office and SPD,” that Wilson was “not allowing” an SPD public information officer, Brian Pritchard, to testify before the council, and that Wilson’s office “was not communicating with Seattle City Council” on the night of the shooting.

A timeline Kettle released this week shows that Wilson’s office was in touch with the council within less than a hour. That timeline also includes a text from Barnes saying he was working to get a conference call together shortly after 8, followed by a conference call that ended around 9:23, more than three hours after the shooting.

“I’m going to submit to you, Alison, and we both know how this works: I don’t think we need an investigation,” Juarez said. “I think you could tell us right now why there was a five-hour delay.”

Juarez also suggested that no one had any idea where Wilson even was, because she had her camera off during a Teams call the night of the shooting. “I’m not trying to create some cloak and dagger, but if I were the mayor, I would have [turned my camera on],” Juarez said. Then she suggested that Wilson asked the city’s Office of Inspector General to review the events of July 26 as a distraction from the fact that Wilson herself delayed the press conference five hours so that “dignitaries”—Senator Pramila Jayapal and Governor Bob Ferguson—could get there.

“We’re hearing… that some of the people in the mayor’s office didn’t know the difference between a mass hysteria, ‘we need a press conference now to calm people down’… and then later on you do the fancy political press conference and wait for dignitaries to arrive,” Juarez said.

PubliCola’s own reporting on the incident suggests the delay had multiple causes. Initially, SPD still considered the area an active crime scene with a potential shooter at large. Barnes, who was at a conference in Dallas, reportedly wanted a full briefing before he would allow SPD officials on the ground to address the press. Several of SPD’s media relations staffers were out of town, leaving one detective, Brian Pritchard, to answer questions at the scene. And finally, Ferguson and Jayapal wanted to be at the press conference, even if—as both have said—they did not ask the city to wait for them to get there. The balance of these forces, and any other reasons for the delay, will be among the subjects of the OIG’s report and a more detailed committee briefing on September 22.

Holcomb said the mayor’s office and public were less interested in why a press conference was delayed than “why didn’t the public receive more information sooner. … That’s a very different question about why didn’t a press conference happen on site at a certain time. Which, frankly, because you and I both know what’s happening here, is a political question. We’re concerned about public safety right now, and that’s what we’re focused on.”

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Councilmember Dan Strauss then jumped on the anti-Wilson bandwagon, echoing Juarez’ claim that Holcomb could easily tell the council what happened the night of the shooting if she really wanted to. “We don’t need to have an OIG investigation. We could answer those questions right now,” Strauss said.

“No, we can’t, because in fact I don’t know the answer to that question, and as I indicated in my answers to Councilmember Juarez, there were dozens of people who were texting and calling each other with lots of information that evening,” Holcomb responded.

A casual observer might wonder why the city council is making such a big deal out of a press conference that took place more than two weeks ago. After all, both SPD and the mayor put out information about the shooting on social media and via press release prior to the press conference and kept Kettle in the loop in real time.

But as the council monologues went on, it was clear that the council believes the mayor isn’t communicating sufficiently  with them before she makes major decisions, including executive decisions like firing the head of city departments.

“I’m going to talk now about the police chief being asked to resign, because it was similar in the way that [former Seattle City Light director] Dawn Lindell was asked, was fired, was asked to resign,” Strauss said as the brief passed the one-hour mark. “That same set of experiences that I had with Dawn Lindell being let go from the city occurred with Chief Barnes last week.”

As far as he could tell, Strauss continued, Wilson asked Barnes to step down as a fall guy for communication issues after the shooting. “The mayor asked the police chief to resign with very little information, and so the best that I can do is surmise that because there was some communication difference or difficulty, that the chief was asked to resign,” Strauss said.

Wilson signed a settlement agreement with Barnes that included a mutual nondisparagement clause, which almost certainly limits the extent to which she can badmouth the former chief’s performance. Instead, she has said that she has more insight into what’s going on at SPD, an executive department, than the council and outside observers.

That comment rubbed some councilmembers the wrong way. “When the mayor says, “You know, we have I have a better window” into the police chief’s performance, Kettle said, “what’s clear here is that she does not have a better window. She does not have a better window than I do. She does not have a better window than probably the majority of the council.”

As we’ve reported, there are many potential reasons Wilson may have let Barnes go, beyond his frequent trips to his family home in Chicago or his inappropriate response to a question about his travel schedule.

City Council, Elections

Council Appoints Juarez to Serve Out Cathy Moore’s Term, Accusations Fly Over Democracy Voucher Collection

1. In a vote that was as much of a foregone conclusion as their decision to appoint unsuccessful former candidate Tanya Woo to fill Teresa Mosqueda’s old seat in 2024, the Seattle City Council chose former District 5 councilmember Debora Juarez to take over for Cathy Moore, who stepped down this month after just 18 months in office. Juarez decided not to run again in 2023, clearing the way for Moore; she said she decided to return to public office after seeing footage of federal agents taking down US Sen. Alex Padilla for asking a question about immigration.

The decision, which could have theoretically taken multiple rounds of voting as council members nominated other candidates among the six so-called finalists, took just one vote. Seven council members voted for Juarez; only one, Alexis Mercedes Rinck, chose another candidate—former Cathy Moore opponent Nilu Jenks.

Explaining her support for Juarez, Council President Sara Nelson (who’s up for election this year), said she understood the need to pay attention to drug use and related issues in the North Seattle district.

“There are a lot of services for low-income and homelessness advocacy organization up there and what I hear from District 5 constituents, and businesses, but constituents, is… we’ve been calling it a homelessness emergency for years and years and years, etc., and it seems to be getting worse and what is the city going to do about that?” Nelson said. Juarez is “somebody who’s fully aware of that issue and is willing to look at what we’re doing right now and if it’s not working to do something different.”

Of the five other candidates who made it to the final round, at least three—Jenks, Julie Kang, and Robert Wilson—have said they plan to run for the seat next year. Because Moore dropped out right after the filing deadline for this year’s elections, Juarez will get to serve about as long as Moore was in office, without being selected by the voters. She’ll join fellow council appointee Mark Solomon, who replaced Tammy Morales after she stepped down at the end of last year; Rinck defeated appointee Tanya Woo handily last year.

2. Winpower Strategies, the consulting firm for District 2 council candidate Jamie Fackler, filed a complaint with the city’s Ethics and Elections Commission alleging that another D2 candidate, Jeanie Chunn, hired multiple canvassers to collect democracy vouchers for her campaign, in violation of legal limits on the number of people campaigns are allowed to hire for this purpose.

“Jeanie has verbally told Eddie Lin and Jamie Fackler (two of her opponents) that several individuals, beyond the number allowed by the program, are being paid to collect Democracy Vouchers for her campaign,” the complaint, filed by a staffer at Winpower, reads. “It is unclear through financial filings how many individuals are being paid to collect.”

Chunn denied the allegations and said her campaign hired “one person for the sole purchase of collecting vouchers until the middle of July.” She did hire “folks from Community Passageways to canvas for me and drop literature” on July 16, she said. “As I’m sure you know, we are only allowed to have two paid folks to collect democracy vouchers.”

Chunn’s campaign reported raising more than $37,o00 in democracy vouchers from more than 400 people on July 11.

Democracy vouchers are a form of public campaign finance in which every Seattle voter gets $100 in vouchers to spend on the candidates of their choice. In 2023, the ethics commission placed limits on campaigns’ ability to collect these vouchers, after then-mayoral candidate Andrew Grant Houston paid canvassers to collect democracy vouchers from people on the street; these paid contractors purportedly used misleading tactics to collect the vouchers, bringing in nearly half a million dollars for a race in which he received fewer than 5,500 votes.

In her financial disclosure statement, Chunn reported earning between $60,000 and $99,000 in consulting fees from Noisy Creek, the parent company of the Stranger. We’re told Chunn’s work was related to Everout, the Stranger’s listings page, and a potential collaboration between the company and restaurants and arts organizations, not the paper’s news or editorial content.

Still, it’s standard practice for publications to disclose anything that might give the appearance of a conflict of interest. The Stranger didn’t disclose the financial relationship between Chunn and Noisy Creek in its endorsements, coverage of the District 2 race, or at its annual candidate forum.

 

City Council, Elections, Mayor Harrell

Harrell’s “Emergency Housing” Claims Don’t Stand Up to Scrutiny, Council Hopefuls Quizzed on Crime, Renters Commission Appointments Will Get a Vote After All

1. Mayor Bruce Harrell, who’s trying to fight off a strong challenge from labor organizer and Transit Riders Union general secretary Katie Wilson, claimed in a recent campaign mailer that he had created “Nearly 3,000 units of new emergency housing” during his first term.

On its face, this claim is impossible. Seattle has fewer than 3,000 shelter beds—also known as emergency housing—in the entire homelessness system system, and has actually lost several shelters since the pandemic, including critical beds for youth and young adults. Almost all of the remaining beds have existed since before Harrell took office.

Contacted this week about the numbers in the campaign flyer, Harrell’s office said they “appear to be in reference to the shelter and supportive housing units created, funded, or in production under our administration, as available on the Homelessness Action Plan.”

Even assuming Harrell’s campaign misspoke and was actually using the term “emergency housing” to refer collectively to all forms of emergency housing, long-term shelter like tiny house villages, and permanent housing, that number is still misleading, or off, by at least 500 beds,

First, the Homelessness Action Plan page credits the Harrell Administration with 16 projects, including tiny house villages, an encampment, and an emergency shelter, that opened between 2018 and 2022—Harrell’s first year in office. Of this group, 10 were new permanent housing projects that began construction before Harrell took office. Some, such as the Chief Seattle Club’s 2021 ʔálʔal project, opened so long ago that former mayor Jenny Durkan already took credit for them. Other projects that opened in 2023 were also underway long before Harrell took office, like Plymouth Housing’s Toft Terrace and Blake House projects, both funded by a capital campaign that ended in 2019.

Other projects Harrell is counting toward his success rate on “emergency housing” are still under negotiation, like a 45-unit permanent housing development on Sound Transit-owned land in the University District; are mere relocations of pre-existing shelter beds that Harrell is double-counting toward his “new beds” total (such as 77 tiny house village units); are projects that never happened—like the expansion of a Salvation Army shelter in SoDo that was thwarted by NIMBY activism; or are no longer open, like LIHI’s Salmon Bay RV lot, which shut down earlier this year to make way for new indoor pickleball court.

Wilson, who campaigned for last year’s social housing measure, has made housing (and progressive revenue to fund it) the centerpiece of her campaign. Harrell, in contrast, served as the face of the Seattle Chamber-backed campaign for Proposition 1B, which would have funded traditional affordable housing using existing city funds in lieu of a new tax for permanently affordable social housing.

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2. PubliCola continues to hear that most of Seattle’s eight sitting City Councilmembers plan to support former District 5 (North Seattle) Councilmember Debora Juarez for appointment to the seat just vacated by Cathy Moore, who resigned after serving just 18 months.

A more openly law-and-order candidate, Julie Kang, has impressed some council members with her advocacy for small businesses and vocal support from community candidates—but, to paraphrase a headline we ran before former councilmember Tanya Woo was appointed to replace Tammy Morales, these forums amount to pretending the fix isn’t in for Juarez already, and that all six candidates have an equal shot.

Juarez, who chose not to run for reelection in 2023, said during the city council’s lone public forum earlier this week that she decided she “wanted to get back into this business because [of], viscerally, the emotion that I had watching a US senator [Alex Padilla], a Latino man … in a federal building where he’s shouting out, I’m a US senator, and he’s being cuffed. That could have been my dad, my husband, my brothers.” Juarez is Mexican American as well as a member of the Blackfeet Nation.

In response to questions about how she would address sex work on Aurora Ave. N, Juarez pointed out that there are just seven beds in the city for women exiting the sex trade—a comment that highlighted Moore’s insistence on handing. up to $2 million dedicated to “receiving” beds for former sex workers to an out-of-town nonprofit, The More We Love, that takes women from North Seattle and moves them to shelter beds in Renton, miles south of Seattle.

At a community forum at North Seattle College the night before the council hearing, the questions—posed by former council candidate and Unified Outreach program manager David Toledo—skewed classic NIMBY: Do you support “free-range zoning”? The proposed comprehensive plan fails to support trees; how will you address that fact? “There are a lot of small businesses that are suffering with lots of violence and theft. What will you do about that? If you were convicted of a crime, would you resign?

In response to the two crime-related questions, Juarez—seeming slightly exasperated—noted that there are many types of crime, and a big difference between violence against business owners and someone walking out without paying for something. “Violence, absolutely, that’s crime against a person,” Juarez said. With theft, she continued, there are gradations. “We have jail capacity issues. … We simply can’t take people in for … low level crimes when we have rapists and murderers” who should be in those cells.

Kang, in contrast, said “we need to be strict and firm” with shoplifters who steal things they don’t really need.

As for the question about resignation, Juarez said it really depended on what kind of offense it was—”If I killed somebody, absolutely, but you know, if I, by accident, picked up a salad at QFC and didn’t know was in my cart, I’m not gonna resign.” Later, after everyone else said they would resign if they were convicted or pled guilty to even the lowest-level crime, Juarez amended her answer to “yes, I would resign.” Kang, responding to the same trick question, said that “being an educator, I stay away from trouble.”

The council will vote on the appointment at a special meeting at 9:30 Monday morning.

3. Later that same day, the council will take up 14 appointments to the Seattle Renters Commission that were thwarted earlier this week after Council President Sara Nelson and Councilmember Rob Saka did not show up at a meeting of the Housing and Human Services Committee, declining the committee of the required three-person quorum. (Former councilmember Moore, as chair of the committee, had refused to put the long-delayed appointments on the agenda for the entirety of her term, and drafted legislation to replace the renters; commission with a joint landlord-tenant group).

In a statement announcing her decision to move forward with the appointments on Thursday, Nelson said, “I want to acknowledge the frustration my excused absence contributed to the lack of quorum at yesterday’s HHS committee meeting and apologize to the people who took the time to show up for the committee vote on their appointment to a board or commission, including the Renters’ Commission. I am grateful for their willingness to serve our city, and delays in the appointment process serve no one well.”

Nelson did not say how she planned to vote on the appointments, which the committee’s vice chair, Mark Solomon, put on the agenda after talking to renters’ commission nominees and learning that their appointments and reappointments have been delayed as long as a year and a half.

Nelson told the Solomon, that she would be absent one day before the meeting. Multiple council sources said Saka was in his office with the door closed while the committee met just feet away in council chambers. In a statement, Saka told PubliCola he couldn’t attend the meeting because of “unexpected personal conflicts.”

 

 

City Council, Elections

Former Councilmember Juarez Applies as “Caretaker” for Vacant Council Seat, Along with 21 Other Applicants

By Erica C. Barnett

Former City Councilmember Debora Juarez has submitted her application and resume for the open District 5 City Council position that was just vacated by Cathy Moore, who quit after just a year and a half on the council. Juarez reportedly already has the support of a strong majority (perhaps as many as eight) council members for the appointment, making her selection effectively a fait accompli.

Juarez—the first Indigenous Seattle City Councilmember—served two terms on the council, including one as council president, and was replaced by Moore in 2024. During her second term, Juarez repeatedly expressed frustration at the tenor of council meetings (frequently dominated by then-councilmember Kshama Sawant’s supporters) and the 2020 protests (which included repeated demonstrations outside her home).

No one has protested outside council members’ homes in several years, but Sawant and her supporters recently started showing up again at council meetings, shouting and marching around council chambers to protest legislation like a proposal to lower conflict of interest standards for council members.

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The city clerk just published the entire list of applicants for the appointment on the council vacancy website, which has been in heavy use over the past year and a half with the departures of Teresa Mosqueda, Tammy Morales, and now Moore, at the end of the day today.

In her cover letter, Juarez wrote:

“The question I am sure many are asking is, ‘why return?’. It’s simple: I was called to serve. I understand the challenges our city currently faces—from housing affordability to public safety to protecting residents from the harms of the Trump Administration and federal funding cuts. I am ready to step in immediately and work alongside my fellow Councilmembers to ensure that our city remains a vibrant, welcoming, and innovative place for all residents. I would be honored to bring my “Elder Auntie” experience, wisdom gained with no regrets, and vision to this important role once again, this time as a caretaker of the seat until a new Councilmember can be elected.”

The list of candidates for the position, which were just posted on the City Clerk’s website Friday morning, include three people who ran for District 5 in 2023: Nilu Jenks, Shane MacComber, and Justin Simmons.

The council will narrow down the list of candidates to a set of “frontrunners” over the next week. They’ll discuss the appointment and hear from candidates at meetings on July 17 and July 22; a public forum, which will reportedly be held at North Seattle Community College (although the city’s website still says “TBD”), will be held on Monday, July 21.

Under the city charter, the council has 20 days after the day a council member leaves office to appoint someone to fill that position. Because Moore’s resignation took effect on July 8, the council will take a vote on July 28.

Because Moore announced her resignation after the filing deadline for this year’s local elections, voters won’t be able to choose her replacement until 2026, the next general election. As a result, District 5 will be represented by someone people in the district did not elect for about 16 months, until Moore’s permanent replacement takes office in November 2026.

City Council, Elections

Rules Change Would Mandate In-Person Council Meetings; Port Candidate Was Sued for Alleged Role in Ponzi Scheme

1. City Councilmember Sara Nelson has proposed changes to council rules that would require all members to attend council meetings in person except in a limited list of circumstances, such as: If a council member has an infectious disease, if the meeting is at night or off-site, or if they are taking care of a sick family member or friend. Nelson’s proposed rule change would also require members who attend a meeting remotely to turn their video on during votes.

During a meeting of the council’s governance committee last week, Nelson said she appreciated the convenience of remote meetings but worried that they violated the spirit of the state Open Public Meetings Act. “Witnessing one’s representative or the governing body on screen is is not the same as seeing them in person, watching interactions among members, being able to share a glance or a smile with someone at the dais, and maybe even interact before the meeting,” Nelson said.

Remote attendance also discourages people from coming to see council meetings in public, Nelson added, “because why would somebody schlep all the way to City Hall when they could just watch a meeting on on Seattle Channel and then make a make public comment by phone?”

Committee chair Debora Juarez, who is immunocompromised and has attended council meetings remotely for most of the pandemic, said she agreed that in-person meetings are ideal but noted that exposure to COVID is still a safety issue, especially for people who are at higher risk of serious illness. “As a matter [of] principle, I don’t think that I can physically make eight people physically come to work every day and physically show up on the dais,” Juarez said. “I’m going to have to appeal to their judgment and defer to them.”

Juarez also noted that remote attendance has made life easier for council members with young children to balance their kids’ needs with their obligations as public officials, and has made public comment accessible to a more diverse group of voices, including people who are disabled, those with jobs they can’t leave in the middle of the day, and people who don’t want the hassle and expense of paying to park or using public transit to get downtown.

A work group that considered the proposed rule changes, including another rule (backed by Juarez) that would restrict public comment in council committees to items on the agenda, kept Nelson’s proposal on the table but did not include it in the underlying legislation, meaning Nelson would need to convince her colleagues to put the language in the bill. The committee rejected outright a separate proposal that would have required the Seattle Channel to broadcast the faces of people who comment remotely.

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2. The campaign website for Jesse Tam, a former banker who’s running for the Port of Seattle Commission seat currently held by Fred Felleman, touts Tam’s financial and banking experience, noting that he “successfully organized and launched the first international private banking practice in the State of Washington” and “provided services for his banking clients between the Pacific Rim and many European nations” before “departing from the banking industry” for a new career in real estate.

In an email to PubliCola, Tam called the lawsuit a “frivolous civil lawsuit that was filed by a foreign unknown organization” and noted that it was dismissed with prejudice. The terms of the settlement are still confidential.

That description omits the incident that preceded Tam’s departure from banking: A massive lawsuit, filed on behalf 4,200 Indonesian investors, alleging that the bank Tam founded, Regal Financial Bank, helped promote a massive Ponzi scheme that defrauded clients of up to $600 million. The investors sued Tam and his bank for $175 million for their alleged involvement in the scheme. Tam’s bank settled for an undisclosed amount, and Tam has consistently denied any wrongdoing.

In an email to PubliCola, Tam called the lawsuit a “frivolous civil lawsuit that was filed by a foreign unknown organization” and noted that it was dismissed with prejudice. The terms of the settlement are still confidential.

According to a report from the Seattle P-I in 2009, Tam founded Regal Financial Bank in 2001, aided by money from a firm called Dressel Investments, which won over clients, many of them new to investing, by promising incredible returns of 24 to 28 percent. But “during the six years that followed, nearly all of the at least $300 million taken in by the company was used to repay other investors,” the P-I reported—a classic Ponzi scheme.

The lawsuit claimed that Tam “had full and complete knowledge” of the Ponzi scheme, traveled to Indonesia with a Dressel partner, and used the money Dressel took in from these investors to start his bank in 2001. “Dressel continued to be an important client at the bank until 2006, when the alleged Ponzi scheme began to collapse,” Northwest Asian Weekly reported in 2011.

Tam left the bank in 2009 and says his departure came “during the midst of the global financial crisis and had no association with the lawsuit. Regal Financial Bank was merged with Northwest Bank in Seattle in January of 2015 and it is currently operating in downtown Seattle,” he said. Tam currently runs an financial management consulting firm.

City Council, homelessness, legislature, Mayor Harrell

City to Sweep Sites of Recent Shootings; Unclear When In-Person Council Meetings Will Resume; Homelessness Authority Frustrated by Chopp Money Grab

1. The city plans to remove two encampments on Friday, including one in a vacant hillside lot along 10th Ave. S between S. Weller St. and Dearborn Ave. S where a 43-year-old homeless man, Arkan Al-Aboudy, was shot to death on March 17. Currently, there are about 50 tents at the 10th Ave. site, which spills out into 10th Avenue itself and down the hill to Dearborn. The area has been the site of encampments for many years, and marks the northern boundary of an infamous encampment known as the Jungle that the city removed in 2016.

The vacant land where the encampment is located has been owned since the late 1990s by Christopher Koh, a developer and landlord whose company, Coho Real Estate, also owns and operates a number of apartment buildings in the University District and the International District. A small city park called Beacon Place is located in the middle of the property.

According to the Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections, the city can’t require fencing around private property, and the property owner has no plans “in the short term” to fence in or otherwise secure the site.

Contacted by phone, Koh said he supports the encampment removal and has no plans “in the short term” to fence in or otherwise secure the site, which is adjacent to a Seattle Housing Authority apartment building and the Seattle Indian Health Board clinic.

“At one time, there was a discussion with the city about placing a fence” around the property, Koh said, but the city decided not to do so because it could impede emergency response to the area. “I recall [the Seattle Police Department] saying it can be dangerous for the police to go into an area where it’s completely fenced off like that—where there isn’t visibility,” Koh said. SPD did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The city often prevents new encampments from cropping up on land it owns by erecting fences around the area; you can see them all over the city, from underneath the Ballard Bridge to City Hall Park in downtown Seattle. According to a spokeswoman for the Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections, the city can’t require fencing around private property, and the city’s Vacant Building Monitoring program only applies to properties with buildings, not vacant lots.

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The city will also remove a small encampment at I-5 and 45th Ave. NE where Santo Zepeda-Campos, 38, was fatally shot on Sunday, March 20.

A spokesman for Mayor Bruce Harrell’s office said both encampments “are being removed to address immediate public safety issues” in response to the shootings. REACH, the city’s outreach contractor, has been doing outreach at the site, and “will decide based on [the] situation whether they come in Friday,” according to REACH director Chloe Gale.

The encampment is located a block away from the Downtown Emergency Service Center’s Navigation Center shelter, which is one of the receiving sites for HOPE team referrals.

UPDATE Friday, March 25: Mayoral spokesman Jamie Housen said Friday that about 20 people living at the 10th Avenue encampment received referrals to shelter from the city’s HOPE team before parks department workers removed the encampment Friday morning.

Housen said encampment residents received referrals to Jan and Peter’s Place (a women’s shelter), Otto’s Place (a men’s shelter run by the same organization, Compass Housing Alliance), the Navigation Center, the Roy Street men’s shelter, and the True Hope tiny house village in the Central District. All four shelters are are congregate emergency shelters, meaning that people sleep in common sleeping areas; only the Navigation Center allows all genders, although people sleep in gender-segregated areas.

As we’ve reported, most of the city’s shelter “referrals” do not result in a person actually checking in at a shelter and sleeping there. People decide not to enter emergency shelter after receiving a referral for a variety of reasons, including the desire to stay with a partner or pet, not wanting to relinquish bulky possessions, or other barriers imposed by a shelter, such as strict rules against using drugs or alcohol.

2. Although employees in most city departments began returning to their physical offices on March 16, the mayor’s return-to-work directive doesn’t apply to the legislative branch, which is returning to the office more slowly and won’t resume in-person council meetings any time soon.

In an email sent Friday, March 18, City Council President Debora Juarez told city council staffers that they would need to return to the office or work out alternative work schedules by April 27, six weeks after the rest of the city. (Bargaining with unions representing two sets of legislative staffers was one of the reasons for the slower timeline.) Juarez has reportedly been reluctant to return to in-person council meetings, and her email suggests that future council meetings might happen either “onsite in Council Chambers or in a hybrid remote meeting style.”

According to council staff, the department hasn’t figured out the logistics of conducting hybrid meetings, and it’s unclear whether “hybrid remote” refers to meetings that would continue to be entirely remote, or whether some council members would return to council chambers while others tapped in from home or their offices. Juarez did not respond to a request for clarification, and a staffer said any decision about whether to return to in-person meetings was not part of the overall return-to-work announcement.

In her email, Juarez encourages legislative staffers who do return to the office to wear a red, yellow, or green wristband “to communicate your level of comfort with respect to close contacts.” According to Juarez, the idea came from a staffer in Councilmember Alex Pedersen’s office. “I also feel the wrist bands are an excellent way to say ‘Welcome Back’ to the workplace,” Juarez wrote. “Having a sense of personal safety is important to all of us.” The mayor’s office has distributed similar wristbands, but the trend hasn’t trickled down yet to departmental employees, who make up the majority of city staff.

3. The Seattle Times reported today that State Rep. Frank Chopp, who co-founded the Low Income Housing Institute, intervened to apportion $2 million from the state budget to LIHI tiny house villages that did not make the cut for funding in a competitive bidding process conducted by the King County Regional Homelessness Authority.

As we reported earlier this week, the regional authority allocated about $4 million in federal and local dollars (including federal Coronavirus Local Fiscal Recovery dollars allocated through the state budget) to three non-congregate shelter projects. Chopp’s unusual intervention reversed funding for two of those projects—an expansion of Catholic Community Services’ Pallet shelter on 15th Ave. W and a new tiny house village operated by Chief Seattle Club in collaboration with LIHI—to fund LIHI projects elsewhere. Continue reading “City to Sweep Sites of Recent Shootings; Unclear When In-Person Council Meetings Will Resume; Homelessness Authority Frustrated by Chopp Money Grab” →