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”→
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 7 candidate Andrew Lewis. Lewis, who got his political start as campaign manager for former city council member Nick Licata’s reelection bid in 2009, now works as an assistant Seattle city attorney.
The C Is for Crank (ECB): What is a recent vote where you disagreed with the current District 7 representative, Sally Bagshaw?
Andrew Lewis (AL): This isn’t a vote, but I do think the lack of attentiveness to a replacement for the Magnolia Bridge is one where I disagreed with council member Bagshaw. I went to the town hall in March of 2018 on the Magnolia Bridge, at the church over there near Magnolia Village, and there was not a single city council member there. Council member Bagshaw should’ve been there.
There was a room full of angry people who wanted to hear a plan. You know, they understand that the bridge is falling apart, and they understand that the bridge is going to have to be decommissioned. What they wanted was, you know, what’s the action plan, where are we going to do? And what I hear from a lot of the folks that I’ve talked to out in Magnolia is there has not been strong leadership from our district council member on that issue.
ECB: You’ve talked about a “one for one replacement” of the Magnolia Bridge. What do you mean by “one for one replacement,” and is there a breaking point for you in terms of cost?
AL: I do support a one for one replacement to the bridge that will meet the same level of service that the bridge currently provides to the city. For me, it’s about the impact that [tearing down the bridge] would have on public transportation—the 265 buses use that bridge on a daily basis. As I’ve gotten out to Magnolia and talked to folks who are in some of the more renter-dominated quadrants of Magnolia, I’ve actually been very surprised that there are corners of Magnolia that have a pretty high amount of housing density, and all of those communities are extremely dependent on bus service that goes between Magnolia and downtown. It would be extremely difficult to reroute those buses onto Dravus, onto Emerson, due to a lot of limitations of those entryways to Magnolia. So that’s what builds my sense of urgency for it.
Even though I say one for one, I do think that the new bridge should have some multimodal kind of components to it. I think we should have protected bike lanes or even grade-separated bike lanes on a new Magnolia bridge. I think that we could incorporate that into a new design of the bridge.
In terms of cost, I think that a lot of districts are going to have a similar conversation. As a region, what we’re increasingly seeing is a lot of our deferred infrastructure challenges are going to cost money and we’re going to have to figure out a way to meet those obligations through some kind of long-term bonding strategy.
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Without belaboring the details of everything that goes into these interviews, let me tell you: It’s a LOT. From prep work, to the interviews themselves, to transcribing and writing up each post and getting it in shape for publication, each interview can take 6 hours or more to complete. I can ONLY afford to spend as much time as I do creating this content because I’m supported entirely by readers like you. If you enjoy reading my conversations with council candidates, along with breaking news, exclusive investigations, and thoughtful analysis of local news, please consider supporting this work by kicking in a few bucks a month, or a one-time donation. You can find all the details on my support page. I’ll let you get back to reading now. Thanks for your support!
ECB: The National Guard is getting ready to move out of its armory property in Interbay, freeing up land there for potential development. One idea that’s being discussed is a hybrid industrial-residential model that would include housing mixed with light industrial uses. What do you think of that proposal?
AL: Preserving industrial lands within the Ballard Interbay industrial area is super important to me. I don’t want us to lose industrial land to gentrification that we’ll never get back, especially not industrial land that abuts the water. So whenever I look at a plan to redevelop or do something to property within the [Ballard-Interbay Manufacturing and Industrial Center], I always take a really careful look at it. I would be more hesitant to encroach on land that has historically been used for some kind of maritime industrial purpose.
However, while the armory is in the BINMIC, I don’t consider it historic industrial land. It’s been an armory for decades. It’s not like we’re displacing Ballard Oil or something. This is a publicly owned armory that happens to be in an industrial area. It is also really rare that we acquire plots of land that are this large that we can play with to get some kind of public housing. I think one thing we should be looking at doing is replicating the formula that we have nailed down with Fort Lawton, which I think is excellent project. There are some people who are saying that Interbay is the next South Lake Union. My preferred vision is that it be more like Georgetown where you have areas that are carved out for housing, and that housing be workforce housing.
“I think that what often happens is there’s at least a perception that the city comes into these conversations with a proposed route already in mind, and I think that contributes to a sense of polarization and to a sense of concern amongst business owners that they weren’t consulted, that they didn’t have a hand in shaping the route.”
ECB: Was the mayor right to postpone the Fourth Avenue bike lane, and would you push for completion of that bike lane?
AL: I’m not completely familiar with what the controversies are, if the businesses and neighbors have concerns specifically about the proposed route. One thing that I think we should be doing more of is having a process about protected bike lanes where we start with a Point A and point B without a proposed route in the middle. And then we start a process with the neighborhood, with the business owners, with the community, with stakeholders, in the biking activism community and environmental groups. And we sit down and say, we got a Point A, we got a Point B, how are we going to connect them? I think that what often happens is there’s at least a perception that the city comes into these conversations with a proposed route already in mind, and I think that contributes to a sense of polarization and to a sense of concern amongst business owners that they weren’t consulted, that they didn’t have a hand in shaping the route. Continue reading “The 2019 City Council Candidates: Andrew Lewis”→
Without belaboring the details of everything that goes into these interviews, let me tell you: It’s a LOT. From prep work, to the interviews themselves, to transcribing and writing up each post and getting it in shape for publication, each interview can take 6 hours or more to complete. I can afford to spend as much time as I do creating this content for you because I’m supported entirely by readers. If you enjoy reading my conversations with council candidates, along with breaking news, exclusive investigations, and thoughtful analysis of local news, please consider supporting this work by kicking in a few bucks a month, or a one-time donation. You can find all the details on my support page. I’ll let you get back to reading now. Thanks for your support!
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: Dan Strauss, a legislative aide to retiring District 7 council member Sally Bagshaw and nearly lifelong Ballard resident who is running to replacing District 6 representative Mike O’Brien, who’s leaving the council after 10 years. We sat down at Ballard Coffee Works on NW Market Street, which becomes pertinent a couple of times during this interview.
The C Is for Crank (ECB): When you’re knocking on doors, how do you respond to complaints that the city isn’t doing enough to address visible homelessness in District 6, particularly in Ballard?
Dan Strauss (DS): I talk to them about the need to be able to provide everyone who is experiencing homelessness the opportunity to come inside four walls with a door that they can lock, that’s connected to the services that they need. I mean, that’s the baseline of what we need to be doing. And it’s a travesty that we aren’t providing enough enhanced shelters or places for people to be able to keep their things during the middle of the day, that folks are pushed out of their overnight shelters very early in the morning and haven’t gotten a good night’s sleep, and so now they’re sleeping during the day. That’s what we need to be focusing on. And that’s how I direct their commentary.
When I was growing up, there was a single resident occupancy hotel [in Ballard], which burned down in 2000. That was a place where people would be able to have four walls and a door that they could lock if rent was short that month, or if they were off of a fishing boat for a minute, or something like that. And so I think that’s something that is sometimes lost when we’re talking about what’s going on in Ballard—there have always been people experiencing homelessness in our community.
“In my perfect world, we would be bonding against our existing tax streams, using our total bonding capacity to build the housing we need today.”
ECB: You’ve also mentioned that you supported safe consumption sites. It’s been more than three years since the King County Opiate Task Force recommended opening two safe consumption sites in the county, and obviously it hasn’t happened. Are you just stating your values, or are you planning to actively push for safe consumption if you’re elected?
DS: There’s not a legal pathway given the federal government’s current position. So these are values I hold, because I know that harm reduction models work. This is the most extreme harm reduction model available, and there’s other ways that we can reduce harm in our communities. We know that there are drug addiction is a medical disease and it can be treated with medical interventions.
ECB: You said at a recent forum that you don’t support sweeping homeless people from place to place. What would you do with the Navigation Team, and is there more nuance that you weren’t able to express in that yes/no question?
DS: The nuance with that is that the Navigation Team, in its essence, is supposed to navigate people to services and to a safe, warm, dry place to live. And the problem is that we don’t have enough of those resources, right? So if we did have enough places with four walls and a door that someone can lock, that has the services on site, the Navigation Team would be effective.
ECB: In the absence of that, what would you propose to address people’s short-term needs?
DS: In the short term, we need to treat this like the emergency that it is. The fact that it’s taking three to five years for the modular houses from King County to come online—that’s not satisfactory. We know what the solutions are and that we need to get going, and we need to put this at the front of the queue.
“All [the Office of Police Accountability] does is file complaints and grievances. We should also be giving commendations and saying, ‘You did a good job.’“
ECB: You’ve mentioned finding efficiencies in the system as one way to save money and be able to invest more in things like housing and shelter. Do you think that there needs to be a new revenue source as well?
DS: I mean, at this point, especially for the capital side of things, there’s no way around that. The ride share tax that [Mayor Jenny Durkan just proposed]—that’s another revenue source. I would love to see the state do more. I’d love to see the county do more. I’d love to work with my colleagues to develop good proposals that aren’t putting the burden on property or sales tax. What I would love to see is us fully use our bonding capacity. In my perfect world, we would be bonding against our existing tax streams, using our total bonding capacity to build the housing we need today. We’re in an emergency—we’re just straight-up in an emergency. If there is any untapped [bonding] capacity, that needs to be used.
ECB: What do you think of how the mayor has proposed allocating the revenues from the ride share tax, splitting it between housing and the streetcar?
DS: I think we’re at the point where we’re going to need to connect the streetcars or rip them up. It’s just such an example how Seattle does things halfway. And we’ve had such a long history of doing things halfway. And that’s one of the reasons that I decided to run. I’m tired of seeing it done that way. We need to have Yesler Terrace connected to South Lake Union and South Lake Union connected to the International District. The frustrations that I have with the streetcar is it needs to have dedicated lanes, and we need to have a connected system. It’s also frustrating that this was a premier mode of transportation when it was first proposed and we never got behind it and now we’re behind the times.
