1. Seattle council member-elect Alex Pedersen, whose campaign received about $70,000 in independent backing from the Seattle Metro Chamber’s Civic Alliance for a Sound Economy PAC, has reportedly made his first hire—neighborhood activist and longtime anti-density crusader Toby Thaler. Thaler, a fixture on the Fremont Neighborhood Council, was a leader of SCALE, a group that spent two years appealing the Mandatory Housing Affordability on the grounds that increased density in the city’s urban villages would destroy neighborhood character, trample the neighborhood plans of the ’90s, and harm the environment.
Thaler has also argued against density on the grounds that development only benefits wealthy interests. Neither Thaler nor Pedersen returned emails seeking confirmation and comment.
The hire confirms the sheer magnitude of CASE’s defeat in the November 5 election. Not only did all but one other Chamber-backed candidate lose to a more progressive opponent (Debora Juarez, an incumbent whose opponent was a firebrand conservative, was the highly unusual exception), the one winner they backed, Pedersen, is more likely to align with the dread socialist Sawant on anti-development measures like impact fees than to vote the Chamber’s interests.
Pedersen is also opposed to the downtown streetcar, which CASE supports, referred to the Housing Affordability and Livability Agenda as a “backroom deal for real estate developer upzones,” and opposed the most recent Sound Transit ballot measure on the grounds that the “biggest businesses” should pay their “fair share.” Sound familiar?
2. Mayor Jenny Durkan’s office sent out a press release Thursday touting a new “Affordable Seattle” portal that will “Help Residents Easily Determine If They Qualify for City of Seattle Discount Programs.” (Believe it or not, that’s less wordy than a typical Durkan press release subject line). The portal, which replaces a website Durkan rolled out in 2018 in at the same URL, is the first project to come out of the mayor’s much-touted Innovation Advisory Council, a group of local tech leaders brought together the summer before last to suggest tech- and data-based approaches to addressing problems such as homelessness and traffic.
I went to the portal (created by Expedia), plugged in my income (above the qualifying income for any assistance programs other than homeownership help), my household size (one) and a Southeast Seattle ZIP code and pressed the button marked “find services.”
My children can’t take advantage of free bus fare because they don’t exist. I’m not low-income and I don’t own a car, so I don’t qualify for the low-income RPZ program, which isn’t available where I live anyway. And even if I did qualify for Comcast’s low-income discount (I don’t), the company doesn’t serve the ZIP code that I provided at the beginning of my search.
The next page, titled “Your Program Eligibility,” suggested I might be interested in four programs: A low-income restricted parking zone permit for my car; college assistance for the graduating high-school seniors in my household; a low-income Internet assistance program from Comcast; and the ORCA Opportunity program, which is open to middle- and high-school students as well as certain public housing residents. When I entered an income of $120,000 a year, I got the same results.
As a household of one, my children can’t take advantage of free bus fare because they don’t exist. I’m not low-income and I don’t own a car, so I don’t qualify for the low-income RPZ program. If I had qualified, additional links provided on internal pages inside the portal (one of which is broken) would have reminded me that the permits are limited to specific areas, and that my neighborhood is not among them. And even if I did qualify for Comcast’s low-income discount (I don’t), the company doesn’t serve the ZIP code that I provided at the beginning of my search.
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I asked mayoral spokeswoman Kamaria Hightower why this portal—the very first deliverable from the IAC since it was announced to great fanfare well over a year ago—produced such unhelpful results.
Hightower says the system is programmed to tell everyone about all four of the programs recommended to me on the grounds that they might be eligible, and that it’s up to users to then follow the links to read more about the eligibility requirements for each individual program. Put a different way, it sounds like Expedia didn’t include income-based exclusions from certain programs, didn’t account for people who live alone (about 40 percent of all Seattle residents, as of the most recent American Community Survey), and didn’t bother linking services to the ZIP codes, much less street addresses, where they are actually available. They also don’t ask if users own a car, although several of the potential benefits are linked to car ownership. Continue reading “Confirming the Chamber’s Colossal Loss, the “Innovative Affordable Portal” That Suggested Low-Income Bus Passes for My Nonexistent Kids, and More”→
Mayor Durkan announces her plans for spending Mercer Megablock proceeds.
I’m back from vacation, the council has almost passed a 2020 budget with aggressive edits to Mayor Jenny Durkan’s proposal, and the election is officially all-but-over (results will be certified on Friday). Here are a few items that are worth your attention.
1. Semi-final election results: Although the local and (to a much lesser extent) national press has fixated on the fact that incumbent Kshama Sawant came back from behind to defeat Amazon-backed challenger Egan Orion by more than 1,750 votes, an equally fascinating late-voting story has played out in Northeast Seattle’s District 4, where neighborhood activist and former Tim Burgess aide Alex Pedersen, who was backed by both the business lobby and Burgess’ People for Seattle PAC, is poised to defeat Democratic Socialists of America candidate Shaun Scott by fewer than 1,400 votes.
Sawant’s swing was more dramatic, but for Scott to come so close in a district that is less than 3 percent African American—Scott is black—and with so much less money and institutional funding was a sign, perhaps, that District 4, which includes the University of Washington along with a number of higher-turnout precincts with views of Lake Washington and incomes to match, wasn’t entirely convinced by Pedersen and Burgess’ appeals to “Seattle Is Dying”-style populism. Or that students were compelled to actually turn out for a charismatic, hard-campaigning, issue-oriented socialist; we’ll know more once precinct-level data becomes available.
Egan Orion’s loss to incumbent Kshama Sawant has overshadowed Shaun Scott’s comeback in District 4.
2. Council pushes back on Durkan’s budget: Before I left, the council had already indicated it planned to alter Mayor Jenny Durkan’s budget proposal pretty dramatically.
I reported on many of the changes back when they were still in the proposal stage, including:
• Amendments redirecting millions in proceeds from the sale of the Mercer Megablock to fund housing and bike lanes in South Seattle (which has no uninterrupted safe bike connections to downtown);
• A proviso requiring the Human Services Department to provide quarterly reports on what the encampment-clearing Navigation Team is up to;
• The elimination of funds to relocate a tiny house village in Georgetown that both neighbors and the city agree is working well;
• Cutting the size and scope of a proposed program that would help homeowners build second units and rent them out as moderate-income housing and requiring that the city do a race and social justice analysis of the proposal;
• Reducing or freezing funds for Durkan’s plans for dealing with “prolific offenders,” including a proposed expansion of probation;
Out of an unknown number of individuals contacted by the Navigation Team as the result of 124 officer calls, nine people “accepted” a referral to shelter, and an unknown number of those nine actually showed up at shelter.
• Repurposing some of the $3 million in soda tax revenues Durkan had proposed setting aside to fund capital improvements to P-Patches, including gardens in Ballard and Capitol Hill, for other initiatives to promote healthy food in low-income communities most impacted by the tax, and stipulating that any soda tax revenues that go to the P-Patch program must be spent in designated Healthy Food Priority Areas; and
ª $3.5 million in funding for the LEAD program, whose planned expansion Durkan did not propose funding. The new money, along with a $1.5 million grant from the Ballmer foundation, will allow the pre-arrest diversion program to manage its ever-expanding caseloads in the coming year.
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In addition, the council adopted a number of smaller-ticket items and placed conditions on some of the mayor’s spending proposals, including:
• A request that the Human Services Department survey service providers that provide case management to homeless clients who wear Bluetooth-enabled “beacons” provided by a company called Samaritan, which created an app enabling donors to read up on the personal stories of beacon wearers in the area and give money to businesses and agencies on their behalf. Homeless participants can access the donations in the form of goods or debit cards, and are required to participate in case management and report on their progress through the app. The proviso asks HSD to find out what kind of burden the app is placing on agencies that provide case management, since the company requires its clients to participate in case management but does not fund any actual case managers. Continue reading “Council Reshuffles Durkan’s Budget, Cop Encampment Training Led to Just Nine Shelter Referrals, and Shaun Scott’s Near-Win”→
1. Tuesday night’s election was a major blow to cities like Seattle and transit agencies like King County Metro and Sound Transit, which will have to drastically cut back on long-planned capital projects and eliminate bus service if the statewide Initiative 976, which eliminated funding for transportation projects across the state, hold up in court.
The Puget Sound’s regional transit agency, Sound Transit, stands to lose up to $20 billion in future funding for light rail and other projects through 2041, forcing the agency to dramatically scale back its plans to extend light rail to West Seattle, Ballard, Tacoma and Everett.
So where was Sound Transit’s director, Peter Rogoff, as the election results rolled in?
On vacation in Provence, then at a conference on global health in Rwanda, which his wife, Washington Global Health Alliance CEO Dena Morris, is attending.
Rogoff posted on social media about his trip, which began while votes were being cast in late October and is still ongoing (Rogoff will return to work on Monday).
Screen shots from Rogoff’s Facebook page. On the right: The Sound Transit CEO displays Washington Nationals regalia in Provence.
Geoff Patrick, a spokesman for Sound Transit, said Rogoff took the trip to France because “he has not vacationed for a while,” and said the agency was in the “very capable” hands of deputy CEO Kimberly Farley. As for the women in health conference in Rwanda, Patrick said, “this is a conference that he wanted to attend with his wife and it’s an important conference,” adding that Rogoff was “attending the conference with every confidence that the agency is being well run” in his absence.
Asked what Farley, the deputy CEO, has done to reassure Sound Transit employees about the future of the agency in light of an election that could gut its funding, eliminating many jobs, Patrick said Farley emailed everyone on staff and told them to keep focusing on their work. “There’s no impact whatsoever [from Rogoff’s absence] to the agency’s operations,” Patrick said.
Rob Gannon, the general manager of King County Metro, reportedly visited all of Metro’s work sites in person to answer employee questions; I have a call out to Metro to confirm this.
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In the late 19th century, Washington state was still largely untapped wilderness and the area surrounding Lake Union was modest and sparsely populated. Immigrants from Scandinavia, Greece and Russia, as well as East Coast Americans, traveled west to live in humble workers cottages as they sought their fortunes in coal, the new railway system, and a mill.
Amazon’s characterization of Washington as “largely untapped wilderness” waiting to be civilized by immigrants from Europe is jarring in 2019, when tribal-land acknowledgements are customary at public meetings and when most people living in Seattle are at least dimly aware that the West wasn’t actually vacant when “settlers” moved in.
I have reached out to Amazon and the Seattle Times and will update this post if I get more information about who wrote the sponsored piece.
For those who want to learn more about the past and present of the tribes that existed in what is now Washington state when Europeans arrived in the mid-19th century and are still here, here are a couple of helpful articles. One is from HistoryLink. The other is from the Seattle Times.
3. Council member Mike O’Brien, who raised his hand to co-sponsor council president Bruce Harrell’s proposal to fund an app-based homeless donation system created by a for-profit company called Samaritan, now says he’s “almost certain that [a $75,000 add to fund the company] will not be in the final budget.”
Amazon’s characterization of Washington as “largely untapped wilderness” waiting to be civilized by immigrants from Europe is jarring in 2019, when tribal-land acknowledgements are customary at public meetings and when most people living in Seattle are at least dimly aware that the West wasn’t actually vacant when “settlers” moved in.
The app equips people experiencing homelessness with Bluetooth-equipped “beacons” that send out a signal notifying people with the app where the person is. An app user can then read the person’s story—along with details of their mandatory visits with caseworkers, which may include medical and other personal information—and decide whether to “invest in” the person by adding funds to an account that can be used at a list of approved businesses. People can get “needed nutrition and goods” (tech-speak for groceries, apparently) at Grocery Outlet, for example, or “coffee and treats” at the Chocolati Cafe in the downtown library. Continue reading “Sound Transit CEO Takes Election Vacation, Amazon’s Revisionist History, Stranger May Lease from ICE Landlord, and More”→
1. Egan Orion, the former Capitol Hill Chamber of Commerce director who’s challenging District 3 City Council incumbent Kshama Sawant, has filed amended reports indicating that the campaign retroactively paid Uncle Ike’s pot shop owner Ian Eisenberg $500 a month for the use of a former Shell station owned by Eisenberg as its headquarters.
Under state and Seattle law, expenses like rent have to be reported in the same month in which they’re incurred, and the campaign treasurer has to update the campaign’s books to reflect expenditures within five days. After I broke the news that the campaign had not reported its use of the space as an expenditure, the campaign filed several amendments to its expenditure report, including two changes filed late last night.
The first amendment filed yesterday retroactively reported debts of $500 in rent for September and October—an amount that appears to be significantly below the average market rent for the area where the office is located, at 21st and Union in the Central District. (Olga Laskin, Orion’s campaign manager, said the office includes 350 square feet of “usable” space and was in poor condition when the campaign arrived. It has since been upgraded and painted with a large street-facing sign for the campaign.) The second change, filed as part of a report covering a longer time period 18 seconds later, reports the same $1000 as having been paid on October 28, along with another $500, presumably for November’s rent. One person has already filed a complaint at the state Public Disclosure Commission about the initial lack of reporting, which the campaign has called an oversight.
Eisenberg, who initially refused to comment on whether or how much he was charging the Orion campaign to use the space, has since gone on a Facebook rampage aimed at me and this website, calling me “fake news” for reporting factually (via Twitter) on the campaign’s use of the space he owns. (In his initial refusal to comment, Eisenberg politely told me that the rent he charges on the space was none of my business.) Failing to report an expenditure in a timely fashion, or undervaluing the office space, would amount to a campaign finance violation and could result in a fine. The Orion campaign has already paid one fine of $1,000 after the Public Disclosure Commission determined that the campaign had failed to report who paid for an ad it ran on the cover of the biweekly Stranger newspaper, as required under state campaign finance law.
The Orion campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
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2. Speaking of Eisenberg, the Central District and Capitol Hill business owner is one of the top five funders of a group called “District 1 Neighbors for Small Business,” which recently sent out a mailer that featured a list of “neighborhood mom & pop small local businesses” (including Uncle Ike’s) who are supporting Phil Tavel over incumbent council member Lisa Herbold. Eisenberg’s name appears on that list, with about 20 other people who either are not small business owners or who do not own businesses in the district. Eisenberg has an outlet called Ike’s Place in White Center, just outside Seattle city limits.
Also on Tavel’s list of small local businesses: Roger Valdez, a lobbyist for developers who does not live in the district; one of the owners of Smarty Pants and Hudson, two restaurants in council District 2; several partners at downtown Seattle law firms; Ryan Reese, one of the employee-owners of Pike Place Fish Market in downtown Seattle; and seven people who list their occupation as “retired.”
Besides Eisenberg, the top contributors to the District 1 Neighbors PAC are developer Dan Duffus; NUCOR PAC (the political arm of the local steel company); Seattle Hospitality for Progress (the political arm of the Seattle Hotel Association and the Seattle Restaurant Alliance); and Donna and Ken Olsen, who are retired). The top three contributors to the PAC contributors are Vulcan, the Washington Hospitality Association, and Hyatt hotels.Continue reading “Campaign Crank: Complaints and Accusations Fly in Final Week Before Election”→
This year’s council races include an unusually high number of open seats, an unprecedented amount of outside spending, and eight first-time candidates. To help voters keep track, I’m sitting down with this year’s city council contenders to talk about their records, their priorities, and what they hope to accomplish on the council.
Today: District 5 incumbent Debora Juarez. Juarez, a former public defender and pro tem Seattle Municipal Court judge, has served on the council since 2015, and has developed a reputation as a blunt-spoken, fierce advocate for her district. We sat down the same week that a conversation about criminal-justice funding devolved into a debate about why women become sex workers, and we started our conversation talking about that.
The C Is for Crank (ECB): A recent conversation about whether to expand the Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion program went off the rails when the deputy police chief, Mark Garth Green, said some women who engage in sex work aren’t good candidates for LEAD because “aren’t necessarily substance abusers” and do sex work for fun. Unlike your colleagues Teresa Mosqueda and Lorena Gonzalez, you didn’t make any comments during that discussion, so I wanted to ask you what your reaction was.
Debora Juarez (DJ): My reaction was the same as council member Mosqueda and council member [Sally] Bagshaw. We still have this misunderstanding about what sex workers and trafficking, and that it isn’t a victimless crime. They are victims. I’m not outraged. I’m more afraid that if that is what frontline officers think, that affects their ability and their discretion in how they do their jobs. So it could’ve been any officer sitting there saying that. And I’ve heard that [sort of talk] when I was a public defender and a judge.
ECB: It seemed like the larger context that got lost in that discussion was the discussion about whether offering sex workers access to LEAD would be a more effective approach than SPD’s new policy of arresting women on Aurora Ave. And what SPD and the mayor’s office seemed to be saying that there are some people for whom LEAD just doesn’t work. What do you think of that?
“LEAD is just an example of a lot of do-no-harm philosophies that this city has embraced, [though] not in the beginning. I remember when I was a public defender and we started doing needle exchanges and everyone was mad. We had the same arguments then. ‘You’re enabling;’ ‘Drug addicts are going to come from everyone.’ Well, that didn’t happen and now it’s [considered] a public health issue.”
DJ: There is some truth that LEAD doesn’t work for everybody, but I would say overall, it does work if you have a bed ready. If you have somewhere safe for them to go, it does work. And I hate to get into this whole patriarchy thing, but you really need some women in leadership that understand it from a DNA level that sometimes [sex work] is [women’s] last way to take care of themselves. And I would say the majority of women are amenable to LEAD.
ECB: So you think that LEAD needs to be expanded?
DJ: There’s no doubt. I think everyone agrees that it works, that it should be expanded, and that LEAD is just an example of a lot of do-no-harm philosophies that this city has embraced, [though] not in the beginning. I remember when I was a public defender and we started doing needle exchanges and everyone was mad. Now it’s normal stuff, right? We had the same arguments then. “You’re enabling.” “Drug addicts are going to come from everyone.” Well, that didn’t happen and now it’s [considered] a public health issue.
ECB: So do you think LEAD should be funded at the level they’re requesting, which would require an additional $4.8 million?
DJ: I think we just have to land on a number and I err on the side of more than less.
ECB: You’ve supported expanding the Navigation Team, even though a lot of what they do now is just removing encampments and telling people to move along. Do you think that the problem has gotten so bad that just clearing encampments is a worthwhile thing to be spending money on?
DJ: Yes, I do, because I think you have to do something. And I know people don’t want to hear this, but what I’ve seen, particularly in our district, [is that] you have 27 tents and not one person wants to accept services or housing. Or we have these tents and we know that they’re doing sex trafficking and selling drugs. My philosophy has been this: If somebody in Pinehurst is selling drugs out of their house, they should be arrested. If they’re selling drugs out of their tent, they should be arrested. That’s really what I think. We have to do something. Looking away from that issue isn’t good enough.
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ECB: When you say, ‘We’ve offered them all the services,’ I think that the counterargument would be that there aren’t enough treatment beds or even enhanced shelter beds available.
DJ: I’m physically out there [talking to people who refuse services]. I know what I saw. On the flip side, I have also seen where we have offered services and we’ve had success, mainly when we’ve people into enhanced shelters. That is more palatable [to people living in encampments], and that’s what we need more of. That’s been my big push.
ECB: Do you think the region needs more revenue to address homelessness, in addition to the new regional homelessness authority?
DJ: Yes, in a general sense. Absolutely. And in fact, my original thought six months ago was, I wanted them to also have a part in building housing, not just [providing] services. I wanted them to be able to assume debt and issue debt and actually build housing stock, along with the social service piece and the enhanced services piece. Maybe we can get to that point, because I think there’s a lot of for-profit and nonprofit developers that would feel more comfortable writing a check to a [Public Development Authority] than to the city of Seattle or the King County. That’s what I’m hearing from the private sector.
ECB: Would you be open to revisiting any of the recommendations that came out of the city’s Progressive Revenue Task Force, besides the head tax?
DJ: I wouldn’t;. I’m going to be candid with you on that. That was seven months of not our finest hour. You know, I wrote this memo deconstructing the progressive revenue task force’s report. My position had always been from the beginning that that should be a voter initiative and I wanted it on the ballot. I worked with Mayor Ed Murray when we were looking at imposing a tax, and then you saw what happened—he and the county executive [Dow Constantine] said the people are tax-weary [and dropped it]. It was ready to go, raising $52 million a year for five years.
1. Compass Housing Alliance, a nonprofit housing and shelter agency, was charging men $3 a night to sleep at the Blaine Center shelter on Denny Way until last month, when the city’s Human Services Department informed them that charging for shelter violated the expectations of their contract with the city.
The city became aware that Compass was charging shelter clients when a former shelter resident contacted council member Sally Bagshaw to complain. (The specific details of the resident’s claims are in dispute). Meg Olberding, a spokeswoman for HSD, says the department was unaware that Compass was charging its residents what amounted to $90 in monthly rent until officials talked with the Blaine Center client in late September. At that point, Olberding says, “we instructed Compass that charging a shelter fee was a violation of their contract expectations and that they must stop the practice immediately. Secondarily we communicated an expectation that Compass refund every person in the shelter the entirety of the payments that have previously been collected.”
Compass’ chief advancement officer, Suzanne Sullivan, says the agency used the $3 nightly charge as “a teaching tool about managing finances” and says residents get the money back in the form of a check once they find permanent housing
Olberding says that every resident who paid money to stay at the Blaine Center—or other charities, such as the Millionair Club, that paid the fees on their behalf—was reimbursed in cash. “Since receiving the complaint, the HSD Contract Manager has spoken with Compass leadership to reflect the concerns that they are implementing rules and policies inconsistently,” Olberding adds.
Compass’ chief advancement officer, Suzanne Sullivan, says the agency used the $3 nightly charge as “a teaching tool about managing finances” and says residents get the money back in the form of a check once they find permanent housing. “A lot of people who are in Blaine Shelter are employed, so it was an element of helping them to figure out how to budget their money,” Sullivan says. She does not know precisely how long the Blaine Center has charged for shelter, but says that no one is turned away from Blaine Center if they don’t have the money to pay.
However, charging for shelter creates, at a minimum, the perception of a financial barrier that could lead unsheltered people who don’t know about the shelter’s fee waiver policy to stay away. And the promise that any nightly fees will be paid back in the future, if and when a person gets permanent housing, does not alleviate the burden of coming up with an extra $3 a day in the short term.
Most shelters do not charge fees or rent for service, and HSD says it is unaware of any other city contractor that does so. The Emerald City Resource Guide published by Real Change indicates that one other shelter charges for beds—the Bread of Life Mission men’s shelter (which charges $5 a night, according to the resource guide.
2. District 3 city council candidate Egan Orion’s campaign, which was just fined $1,000 for failing to properly identify the campaign as the sponsor of a controversial ad on the front cover of the Stranger, has failed to report its use of a property owned by Uncle Ike’s pot shop owner Ian Eisenberg as an in-kind contribution to the campaign, The C Is for Crank has learned. The campaign moved into a former Shell station owned by Eisenberg at 21st Ave. and East Union Street back in September. The free office space should have been reported either as an expenditure or an in-kind contribution by Eisenberg to the campaign.
City council contributions, including in-kind contributions, are limited to $250 for candidates participating in the city’s Democracy Voucher public-financing program (as Orion is). The Shell property has a taxable value of $1.8 million, according to King County Tax records. Kshama Sawant, the incumbent Orion is challenging in District 3, pays $1,558 a month to Madrona Apartments, LLC for her office space.
Orion campaign manager Olga Laskin says the campaign’s failure to report an expenditure or contribution for the use of Eisenberg’s space “was an oversight on the part of our treasurer. She is amending the C4 [expenditure report] so we should be set.” The campaign did not respond to a followup question about the fair-market value of the space. Wayne Barnett, the head of the Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission, says that any campaign office space that has a fair-market value has to be reported as an expenditure or in-kind contribution.
Eisenberg responded to questions about Orion’s use of his space by saying, “I don’t think it is appropriate to talk about tenants and their leases.” In fact, state campaign-finance law requires campaigns to report all contributions and expenditures, including rent.
This article has been edited from its original version to remove a reference to the YWCA charging women to stay at the Angeline’s Center enhanced shelter. A representative from the group contacted me to say that the information in the Real Change Emerald City Resource Guide linked above is inaccurate, and that some residents voluntarily put 30% of their incomes into savings accounts held by the agency.
1. KIRO Radio program director Bryan Buckalew confirms that Carolyn Ossorio—the reporter who posted a video of herself entering and walking through a trailer that was parked in front of city council member Lisa Herbold’s house without the owner’s permission—is no longer with the station. A source close to the station told The C Is for Crank that Ossorio was fired for the stunt, which Ossorio performed at the behest of conservative KIRO personality Dori Monson.
Monson, who praised listeners who showed up at Herbold’s house, “protested” outside the RV, and covered it with spray-painted slogans including “DORI FOR PRESIDENT,” has not apologized for encouraging his listeners to vandalize and break into the vehicle and is still on the air.
The day before the RV appeared, Monson had unsuccessful District 2 city council candidate Ari Hoffman on his show. In that conversation, the two men endorsed the idea of parking locked, garbage-filled RVs in front of council members’ homes to drive the point home that “drug RVs” were destroying Seattle. When the RV showed up at Herbold’s house, Monson assumed it was in response to his radio show, calling it a welcome sign that people were “fed up with Seattle leadership.” “I had nothing to do with this,” Monson insisted. “But am I enjoying it immensely? Yes, I am. I can’t hide that.”
Monson, who praised “protesters” who showed up at Herbold’s house and covered the RV with spray-painted slogans including “DORI FOR PRESIDENT,” has not apologized for encouraging his listeners to vandalize and break into the vehicle and is still on the air.
KIRO Radio sent Ossario to the scene, where she talked to “protesters” and neighbors who, she said, supported the “protest.” This is when she filmed herself walking through the RV, which had been locked, and making disparaging contents about its contents. “The council has trashed the beautiful city I grew up in, and reduced it to being a haven for heroin addicts and meth-heads,” Monson said. “Now at least one person has said that enough is enough.”
There was just one problem with Monson’s narrative: The trailer, it turned out, was owned not by a “protester” but by a pregnant woman and her partner, who had parked it temporarily near a relative’s house and were planning to move it to a campground outside the city. When the woman, Briar Rose Williams, showed up at the trailer, someone threw a bottle at her and threatened her with a knife, the Seattle Times reported.
Monson never apologized for the stunt. Instead, he invited Williams and her family onto his show, where he peeled a hundred-dollar bill from his money clip (saying, “here’s a hunski”) and told her to split it with her partner and godfather. “You seem to understand the irony and the exquisite, delicious, unbelievable odds of parking it in front of a Seattle city council member’s house!” Monson declared, adding, “That hundred dollars is for baby food!”
2. In the final few weeks before election day, mailboxes around the city are filling up with mailers from independent groups backed by big money from business, labor, and other interest groups. Here’s how those groups are spending the millions they’ve collectively amassed to influence Seattle’s local elections:
• Civic Alliance for a Sound Economy, the Seattle Metro Chamber of Commerce PAC, has raised well over $2 million ($1.45 million of it from Amazon). In the last two weeks, it has turned that money into nearly $900,000 worth of canvassing, TV ads, direct mail, and phone banking calls on behalf of Heidi Wills (D6), Jim Pugel (D7), Phil Tavel (D1), Egan Orion (D3), Mark Solomon (D2) and Debora Juarez (D5). Those numbers are listed in descending order based on how much CASE has spent on each candidate.
• Civic Alliance for a Progressive Economy, a labor-backed group that presents itself as an antidote to CASE, has spent a much smaller amount—less than $125,000 so far—supporting (again in descending order) Dan Strauss (D6), Lisa Herbold (D1), Tammy Morales (D2), Shaun Scott (D4) and Kshama Sawant (D3).
People for Seattle, the PAC formed by former city council member Tim Burgess, just spent more than $350,000 on direct mail and TV ads supporting Heidi Wills, Egan Orion, Alex Pedersen, Jim Pugel, Mark Solomon, Phil Tavel, and Debora Juarez.
•
Moms for Seattle, which bombarded voters with Photoshopped mailers of playgrounds filled with tents and trash during the primary election, has made just a couple of major spends in the general—$15,000 each to support Jim Pugel and Heidi Wills. The group had only about $25,000 in the bank as of mid-October, and has raised around $30,000 since then.
• Neighborhoods for Smart Streets, the PAC formed by activists who opposed (and ultimately killed) a long-planned protected bike lane on 35th Ave. NE in Wedgwood, spent $7,000 on mail backing Debora Juarez and $20,000 on mail supporting Alex Pedersen in District 4.
This year’s council races include an unusually high number of open seats, an unprecedented amount of outside spending, and eight first-time candidates. To help voters keep track, I’m sitting down with this year’s city council contenders to talk about their records, their priorities, and what they hope to accomplish on the council.
Today: District 2 candidate Mark Solomon. Solomon, a longtime crime prevention coordinator with the Seattle Police Department (a civilian position) is running against Tammy Morales to represent District 2, the southeast Seattle district that has been represented sisnce 2015 by Bruce Harrell, who has been on the council since 2007. Solomon is the only council candidate with the official endorsement of Mayor Jenny Durkan.
The C Is for Crank (ECB): You’ve talk about wanting to bring back community policing. What does that look like to you?
Mark Solomon (MS): When I say [we need] more community policing, what I mean is having enough of our staff so that we can engage in more community policing programs as well as relational policing programs. It’s about building relationships like the Community Police Academy, like the Immigrant Family Institute, Detective Cookie’s chess club, and other places where police and community can interact. It’s not just about urgency, it’s about building relationships and building trust, where officers are working on long-term ongoing issues in neighborhoods and not just responding to 911 calls.
ECB: Would you have voted for the current police contract if had been on the council during the vote, and do you have any thoughts about how to get the department back in compliance with the federal consent decree?
MS: Yes, I would have. I think it’s important to recognize the strides that have been made regarding training and policies and towards constitutional, unbiased policing. So let’s not forget that part. When it comes to the accountability thing, I think what we all want is an accountability system that works, that everyone has trust in.
Just looking at the reports I’ve been seeing, it seems that the city actually is doing pretty well and trying to meet all the consent decree requirements and being a model for other cities.
ECB: The Seattle Police Department has had significant problems with both recruitment and retention problems at SPD. Other than paying recruitment bonuses, which the city is already doing, do you have any thoughts about what could be done to improve retention and recruitment?
MS: One of the things that I would like to do is recruit our next generation of officers from inside the community. Because I believe that when people from the community are actually involved and are more reflective of the communities that they serve, there’s going to be better understanding.
“Just looking at the reports I’ve been seeing, it seems that the [Seattle Police Department] actually is doing pretty well and trying to meet all the consent decree requirements and being a model for other cities.”
What I’ve heard in terms of retention is, it’s not necessarily the hiring bonuses that’s really going to bring people in. It’s feeling supported and the impact of the senior leadership in letting the officers or first responders know that their work is valued. Now, that doesn’t mean that [you shouldn’t] hold law enforcement accountable for negative behaviors. But I do feel that there is a role that leadership plays in morale and attracting people to come into this profession, which is a hard profession.
ECB: What do you mean by leadership? Who do you think officers feel is not supporting them?
MS: Some officers I talked to refer specifically to the city council. Some of the comments that have been made regarding officers’ conduct have negatively landed. And again, I’m not saying that you excuse negative behaviors, not at all, but when people show up to work every day doing their best and they don’t feel like their city has their back, you know, that does wear on you.
ECB: The mayor recently rolled out a plan to expand probation, create a new position inside the jail to direct people to services, and implement other proposals aimed at addressing so-called prolific offenders downtown. How would you address the issues caused by this population?
MS: Just cycling people in and out of jail is not fixing the problem. And I know that what’s been proposed is a different approach to try to wrap our hands around. But I think there’s some of the programs that we already have, if they’re properly resourced, can help with that. I think specifically of Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion. That program has had some success. And as staff there have told me, the peanut butter is spread too thin. The case loads are too large. So one of the things that I would want to do is increase their funding so they can increase staffing to expand the amount of work that they’re doing.
“Just allowing people to stay where they are, in the conditions that I’ve seen and experienced, is not humane. It’s not compassionate. I also understand that, you know, just moving people from one side of the street to the other is not humane or compassionate [either].”
At the same time, we do need to address those who are committing criminal behaviors. Again, you can hold somebody accountable but still make sure they get the help they need.
ECB: What do you think of the proposed regional homelessness authority, which would merge the King County and Seattle homelessness divisions?
MS: I do believe that we have a regional problem that requires a regional solution. But when I looked at the proposal, one thing that I think is missing is people who are actually doing the work on the ground, like service providers and outreach workers. As we’re trying to craft solutions for how we’re going to best address the issue, let’s have folks who not only have that lived experience, which is proposed, but also the folks who are on the ground doing the work. They’re the ones with the expertise, who are doing the outreach and having that one-on-one contact with people who are experiencing homelessness.
ECB: The Georgetown tiny house village just got a permit extension, but the mayor’s office wants them to leave their current location in less than six months. What do you think is the best approach to tiny house villages? Should they have to move periodically, and should the city be permitting more of them?
MS: Those who are using the tiny house villages have good success rates in transitioning to permanent housing. So I do see them as part of the solution—not the complete solution, because the ultimate solution is moving someone from homelessness into housing. But when you’ve got a place that you can lock and store your stuff, and you don’t have to leave at seven in the morning, you have a little bit more stability. For me, the key is those wraparound services, those case management services, that’ll help people move from that particular situation to something that’s more permanent and durable. Continue reading “The 2019 City Council Candidates: Mark Solomon”→
This year’s council races include an unusually high number of open seats, an unprecedented amount of outside spending, and eight first-time candidates. To help voters keep track, I’m sitting down with this year’s city council contenders to talk about their records, their priorities, and what they hope to accomplish on the council.
Today: District 1 candidate Phillip (Phil) Tavel. Tavel, an attorney, is making his second run at the West Seattle seat, after being defeated in 2015 by Lisa Herbold. Like last time, Tavel was endorsed by the Seattle Times; this time, he also has backing from groups like the Seattle Metro Chamber of Commerce and former council member Tim Burgess’ People for Seattle PAC.
The C Is for Crank (ECB): You’ve talked about being someone who will listen to everyone, not just the “vocal minority.” What vocal minority do you think has too much influence, and who do you believe they’re drowning out?
Phil Tavel (PT): That comment actually came from some of the times I’ve been down at city hall. There was one particular time, I think it had to do with the police contract, when Sawant had had a lot of followers in their T-shirts, and they waited to put out the table for signups until their crowd kind of jumped right in and got in front of a lot of people. And so they were able to stand up and yell and shout and get very vocal in city hall. And it seems like they get listened to as the other people just sort of get pushed out and when they stand up, they get shouted down.
And a lot of times it’s the very energetic activist crowd that will be there, be in front and they will champion their issue, which is a wonderful thing. You want it to be that way. But the way Seattle can be sometimes is, the voice that just wants to say, ‘What’s going on?’ or ‘I don’t agree with this,’ but they don’t do it in that same vocal manner, kind of gets pushed to the side.
ECB: You think it’s kind of intimidating?
PT: Well I know from talking to some of those people, they literally feel intimidated out of the room. I don’t bring up Sawant for any reason other than that she is that poster child for the loud voice, which I’ve got to admit, when she ran against Richard Conlin, I thought it was awesome. But what I think has happened is that loud crowd takes over, and then a lot of the more moderate voices and a lot of the people who are just citizens that care because their life’s been affected, but that’s not their entire life, [aren’t heard]. They still have a job and a family and other things. And so it feels like those people kind of get pushed to the side.
ECB: At the Human Services Coalition forum, you said that you think the city has enough funding for homelessness; they just need to spend it better. Can you elaborate on where you think the city could find efficiencies?
It’s not that they have enough, so much as that it feels like there could be enough, but until we know what’s actually spent and what’s returned and what’s that gap, we don’t know. This is partially from my own sense as just a citizen, not as a candidate. And then the people I talk to say, come on, we have $6 billion, and we’re not talking about caring for a quarter of a million people living on the street or even the size of LA’s problem. It seems that if we marshaled our resources better, that would go farther.
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ECB: When you say $6 billion, you’re referring to the total size of the city’s budget?
PT: Yes, $5.9 billion.
ECB: But a lot of that is capital spending that the city council can’t touch and that has nothing to do with services.
PT: Yeah, and I do recognize that. But again, this is just from that general public standpoint of, we are a very rich city. The amount of money we have to spend on these things does keep growing and we just need to have a better understanding of what’s there. What are we getting back? It was [National Alliance on Mental Illness founder] Eleanor Owen, actually, at the NAMI panel that we did, who sort of chastised all the candidates [by] saying, ‘You do realize who’s making out in this whole thing? It’s the providers. Look at how much money we spend on administration and bureaucracy that doesn’t get to that person who’s really in need.’ And that resonated with me and I had a really long conversation with her about that.
Go take a look at the and look at the number of providers that are not meeting the county standards. And you know, a lot of it is self-reported. When Tim Burgess was mayor briefly, I remember reading an article that he wanted to see the service providers give quarterly reports as to what are their targets, what are their goals? Are they meeting them? And that type of thing has not happened. We haven’t seen that followup. After having gone through some of the things with the SCALE group [which filed multiple appeals to stop the Mandatory Housing Affordability plan, and of which Tavel was a member], we weren’t getting accurate information back from the city. And also I hear it from people in city departments. I mean, I get people from multiple departments coming to me saying, we spend our money badly and they give me examples of how much we’ve wasted.
I’ve been in meetings where I’ve had the city throw up statistics, then tell us they won’t answer questions, and then walk away. And you know, you’re sort of left with this [feeling of], ‘Well, wait a minute, okay, there are stats and numbers, but I’m dubious about where they comes from.’ I mean, I worked at the National Science Foundation, where every time you did a press presentation about a program, you had to make sure you’d triple checked everything. And I don’t get that same sense out of Seattle.
“For the last couple of years, I’ve been primarily doing private [cases]. But I’ve still got a handful of public [conflict] cases. I identify as a public defender because for 13, 14 years, that was 95% of the legal work I did.”
ECB: You’ve been supported by the Seattle Metro Chamber of Commerce, which opposes the employee hours tax that your opponent supported. How closely do you align with the Chamber on taxes, and would you propose an alternative to raise revenue for homelessness?
PT: I’m opposed to the way [the head tax] was put out. I’m for talking to [businesses] first about contributing to this issue. I don’t feel that any conversations ever took place between the council and the largest, most successful companies to say, Hey, you know, we’ve got a choice. We can either attack you or maybe we can step up and work on something together. A couple of the larger food distributors said, ‘Our margins are pretty thin, we will pass 100 percent of this on’ [to consumers] and we’ll end up with a $25 hamburger in Seattle. I think we should looked for a higher threshold. And if we had gone out to those large companies and they were like, ‘No, we’re not going to chip in,’ fine, then let’s pick a good number and tax their net profits because clearly they’ve got enough to spend. I just didn’t like the fact that there was no real plan for how that money was going to be spent, what it was specifically needed for, and no early conversations with those people to say, would you work with us first?
ECB: You went on Saul Spady’s show and agreed with his idea of putting people on “regional homeless farms.” [Editor’s note: On his show, Spady praised the Malaysian government for its approach to “really, really low-level crime,” including prison farms. After summarizing the Malaysian policy as he understood it, Spady asked Tavel if he supported this approach. Tavel replied, “Oh, absolutely, in fact, I do,” then went on to describe the program he described to me.] I want to give you a chance to elaborate or explain what you meant, in case something got lost in translation.
PT: So a friend of mine down in southern Oregon, they had a really successful program where there was a neighborhood farm that took families where the parents were having real substance abuse issues and brought them into this cooperative model. This was just a program that where you get services, you get classes, you get daycare, you participate in this farm, you learn the farming side of things, you learn about sustainability and conservation and you’re dealing with your substance abuse issues. And if there’s associated mental health issues, they’re also taken care of. So it was basically that idea of the cooperative community model for helping people, where it was providing some work and some fresh food for the neighborhood.
I think I remember that Saul had mentioned his idea, which was like a foot-long [idea]. And he said, how do you feel about farms, which was one inch long. And so as I answered that question. It made me think about what my friend had been involved with and so I said, yeah, that’s cool. I wasn’t supporting his entire idea. I was saying that I actually do think you could have these cool cooperative models that do things that are really good for both the community and for the environment and for the people.
“My feeling is, you break the law, you get arrested for committing a crime, you are then charged with a crime you’ve committed. Because if you don’t arrest and you don’t charge, you’re sending a message that all of these things are just no longer crimes.”
ECB: You also proposed a transitional program for people coming out of jail, which sounds similar to what the city and county have proposed for responding to so-called prolific offenders downtown. Why does there need to be a program inside the criminal justice system, and would this be in lieu of expanding Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion [LEAD]?
PT: Over the years I have had literally hundreds of clients in this position where, you know, they end up getting arrested for something they’ve done attached to kind of the life that they’ve gotten on the street and impacted by the people they’re surrounded by. So they go to jail for a week to a couple of months, they come out, and they’re still in that same position. And so instead of having that cycle, the jail would [offer] a place for you to go that is close enough to social services, where there’s case manager, where there’s someone who is going to become your support mechanism. So you would either have housing available near the jail or enhanced shelter.
We have to find a way to help the people that want help. The ones that have those moments where they’re like, yeah, if there was a bed for me tonight, I would take it and I would get into services to start that path. Because once you take care of those people who will voluntarily take this assistance and get into that path going up, you’re going to then be left with that group of the longterm substance abusers, the longterm undiagnosed mentally ill, the longterm people with criminal problems. The program I’m talking about is something that would take everybody that wants a chance [and say] they get a chance.
I think we missed the opportunity to use the criminal justice system as the safety net. We’re pretty good with the cooperative courts, but they could be expanded. But it’s that when someone’s released that moment is such an opportunity to help people because all of a sudden it’s like, ‘Aw, man, I did something wrong. I ended up in jail. I don’t want to be here. I’ve been released. I want something better for myself.’ Continue reading “The 2019 City Council Candidates: Phil Tavel”→
I’ll be rolling out my remaining city council candidate interviews, with Phil Tavel, Mark Solomon, and Debora Juarez, this week. (Kshama Sawant and Alex Pedersen did not respond to repeated requests to sit down for an interview, and Ann Davison Sattler canceled our interview and has not yet responded to a request to reschedule.)
In the meantime, a quick roundup of campaign news from the past week:
• Heidi Wills, the former city council member who’s running to represent District 6, held a fundraiser last week that was hosted by a who’s who of anti-Burke Gilman Trail, anti-transit, anti-authorized encampment, and anti-worker interests, along with some elected officials and neighborhood activists.
Among the sponsors:
Pacific Merchant Shipping Association director Jordan Royer, who was a spokesman for Save 35th, the group that fought to kill a planned bike lane on 35th Ave. NE in Wedgwood;
Sonja Foster, the former vice president ofEnterprise Washington and current Seattle director of the Associated General Contractors, which gave $25,000 to the Seattle Metro Chamber of Commerce’s political action committee. AGC is currently suing to overturn the state’s new prevailing wage law;
Ballard Alliance director Mike Stewart, who once called on Ballard residents and businesses to flood the city’s Find It Fix It app with reports of homeless encampments; and
Former Seattle Times reporter Marty McOmber, who organized a meeting for people opposed to a city-authorized encampment in Ballard and created a petition blaming current District 6 council member Mike O’Brien for homelessness and crime in Ballard.
Both Wills and her opponent, Dan Strauss, oppose completing the Missing Link of the Burke-Gilman trail as originally planned; Wills wants to go back to the drawing board and build an elevated pathway, while Strauss supports a plan, endorsed by the business-backed group whose court challenges have stalled the trail’s completion for years, to add a bike lane to Leary Way in lieu of the trail.
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• As I mentioned above, District 4 council candidate Alex Pedersen did not respond to my repeated requests to sit down for an interview. Turns out I’m in good company: Pedersen has failed to appear at a number of events, and respond to a number of questionnaires by, groups ranging from the Seattle Human Services Coalition to the Seattle Police Officers Guild. Laura Loe Bernstein of Share the Cities has been keeping a running tally.
The groups Pedersen has failed to respond to also include the MASS Coalition (Pedersen skipped their forum); Citizens for a Progressive Economy, sponsored by Working Washington, OneAmerica, and other progressive groups (Pedersen did not respond to their questionnaire); Rooted in Rights and Disability Rights Washington (Pedersen skipped their forum); and Seattle Subway and the Urbanist (Pedersen did not respond to their questionnaires). Continue reading “Election Crank: Three Weeks Out”→
