Tag: Rob Saka

City Council, homelessness, Transportation

Saka’s Messy Transportation Bill Gets Messier; Controversial Group We Heart Seattle Makes City’s Official Volunteer Day Roster
Councilmember Rinck wanted to know why Saka gave the council just one day to propose amendments to legislation he hasn’t even formally introduced yet.

1. While much of the city council was on vacation, transportation committee chair Rob Saka apparently spent his two-week summer break padding out his already messy Vision Zero legislation, which is now much longer—but no more substantive—than the draft he introduced as an “information item” in late August.

Saka first rolled out his three draft bills one day before Mayor Katie Wilson issued several substantive executive orders on traffic safety, in what seemed like a clear attempt to get ahead of the mayor’s announcement. (Saka declined to participate in the mayor’s event, which two of his colleagues attended). At his committee meeting on Tuesday, Saka emphasized the fact that his legislation technically came out first.

“I suppose great minds can arrive at some of the same intersections as we appear to have done and aligned on from a legislative and executive perspective, and that’s a good thing. I’m pleased to see additional complementary actions from the mayor,” Saka said. 

But Saka still hasn’t formally introduced his legislation, which remained an “informational item” on Tuesday’s agenda. And his latest draft bills remain almost entirely nonsubstantive, requesting reports from the Seattle Department of Transportation, issuing recommendations on truck side guards to protect cyclists and pedestrians, and giving SDOT the “authority” to do various things that it already has the authority to do. Even sections that appear to require SDOT to produce various reports are essentially just requests, since SDOT does not answer to the city council. (Generally speaking, if the council really wants a department to do something, they pass a budget “proviso” that conditions funding on whatever action the council wants.)

One thing that can be said for Saka’s legislation: It’s definitely longer now, with more statements of purpose than there are letters in the alphabet. Ordinarily, these kinds of statements are known as “recitals” and they occur at the beginning of a bill to establish the purported reasons the legislation is necessary. (See, for instance, the 23 “whereas” clauses used to justify the 2024 ordinance reinstating a ban on “prostitution loitering.”)

But in an unusual twist, Saka is proposing to give each of these individual statements more force by including them in the bill as official findings, which could be used in the future to interpret whether legislation complied with the council’s intent.

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To put this in concrete terms: Saka’s proposal, everything from A., affirming that Vision Zero is “effective,” to Z., stating that 26 percent of streets lack sidewalks, to CC., affirming that the city supports union labor, would have the force of law. Item L., affirming that “Each life lost or constrained due to crashes represents not only loss and grief for affected loved ones but an individual’s unrealized potential,” would be become part of the ordinance itself.

Editor’s note: This story originally said the findings section of Saka’s Vision Zero ordinance—the one with Sections A through CC—would go into the Seattle Municipal Code. In fact, they would become part of the adopted ordinance, but not the municipal code. Findings have more weight than recitals, but less than a law such as a speed limit. We regret the error.

Saka wants to pass his bills out of committee on September 17, which means that even though he hasn’t formally introduced them yet, any amendments are due today. Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck, sounding incredulous, said yesterday, “I’ve never seen an amendment deadline for a piece of legislation that has not formally been introduced yet.”

Councilmember Eddie Lin said he would like to hear from SDOT before voting on the bill, but Saka said there was no need. “In fact, it’s pretty standard practice, when we talk about who’s at the table, to have our central staff at the table, sometimes community at the table, but not having the executive branch. This is a legislative effort. This is a legislative effort, I want to underscore,” Saka said. The rest of the council will now have to decide if they want to give Saka his way or put the legislation off until after the budget—or indefinitely.

2. This year’s citywide day of service—rechristened “Show Up, Seattle!”—includes an encampment “cleanup” event hosted by We Heart Seattle, a local group whose founder, Andrea Suarez, regularly teams up with right-wing influencer Jonathan Choe on videos where they harass and shame unsheltered people.

Former mayor Bruce Harrell’s office rejected We Heart Seattle’s initial application to participate in the day of service in 2022, but since then, they’ve gotten the OK every year.

That’s despite a controversial reputation and accusations that they frequently throw away people’s possessions and occupied tents.

In addition to arguing that homeless people “refuse” treatment, Suarez has railed against Narcan distribution and argued for “banning tents” on the grounds that they “enable” homeless people to keep living outside with addiction. (A 2022 story in Willamette Week quoted Suarez saying that giving people food and clean needles amounted to “coddling” a baby in his “crib.”)

The group’s Gresham, Oregon-based co-founder, Kevin Dahlgren, pled guilty last year to identity theft, theft, and misconduct after stealing from at least one unsheltered person as well as the city of Gresham.

We Heart Seattle is currently under a state investigation for allegedly failing to train its volunteer staff on how to properly pick up and dispose of hazardous materials, including needles. Suarez has portrayed herself as a victim of state overreach, using the investigation as an opportunity to fundraise for the group.

A spokesperson for the Department of Neighborhoods, which now sponsors the day of service said We Heart Seattle met the criteria to qualify for its day of volunteerism.So far, just four people have signed up, although don’t be surprised when the group posts—as it did last year—that the city-sanctioned event was a “truly epic” success.

City Council, Transportation

Wilson Proposes Substantive Vision Zero Improvements—One Day After Councilmember’s Hasty Attempt to Upstage Her

By Erica C. Barnett

Mayor Katie Wilson signed an expansive, substantive executive order last week directing the Seattle Department of Transportation to implement and expedite a list of, Vision Zero projects designed to improve public safety by building new protected bike lanes, improving pedestrian visibility at intersections, prioritizing projects on “high-injury” streets like Aurora Ave. N and Rainier Ave. S., and installing more automated speed enforcement cameras, along with at least a dozen other executive actions.

The legislation also directs the city’s lobbyists to support a grab bag of potential state legislation that includes granting legal immunity to cities that make street improvements after a fatal crash (as Seattle Bike Blog noted in their coverage, the potential for liability can prevent cities from making safety improvements, which could be seen as an admission of guilt) as well as lower drunk-driving limits and local authority to prohibit right turns on red.

Speaking on Friday outside Cleveland High School, not far from a recently “daylighted”  intersection where SDOT removed parking to make crosswalks more visible, Wilson called it “especially meaningful to be here near Cleveland High School, where the safety of young people traveling to and from school is top of mind.” 

One question Wilson politely deflected—although it appeared to be top of mind for many of the reporters at the press conference—was why city council transportation committee chair Rob Saka wasn’t at the event. (“I look forward to working with the transportation committee chair,” Wilson said.) Committee vice-chair Alexis Mercedes Rinck, along with District 2 Councilmember Eddie Lin, was there, but the putative transportation leader for the executive department was nowhere to be found.

 

In fact, Saka declined to participate in the press conference. He even rolled out his own traffic safety legislation, in the form of two draft proposals introduced as informational items because they were still unfinished, one day before Wilson’s announcement. It sure looked like an attempt to upstage the mayor’s executive orders, and Saka’s pointed absence from Wilson’s event only highlighted his rushed attempt to shine the spotlight on himself.

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Saka said the draft bills will look different when he actually introduces the bills in September, and a commitment to introduce a third bill mandating safety guards on city contractors’ trucks to protect pedestrians and cyclists from potentially deadly side-impact crashes.

Saka’s legislation, which got coverage on KOMO, Seattle Bike Blog, and KIRO’s John Curley Show, among others, is mostly nonsubstantive. It “authorizes” the SDOT director to do things like “incorporate, as appropriate, traffic safety best practices consistent with Vision Zero and the Safe System Approach” and gives SDOT’s chief engineer the “authority” to make various safety improvements to city infrastructure.

It also codifies a change Bruce Harrell’s transportation director, Greg Spotts, made in 2023, designating SDOT’s chief engineer as the person in charge of traffic safety, and would put 19 statements about transportation in the Seattle Municipal Code, including a statement about the value of human life and one affirming that the city values partnerships with other transportation agencies.

During a meeting about Saka’s proposals last week, Rinck and Councilmember Dionne Foster both questioned Saka about what his legislation would actually do, and why he proposed adding what amount to statements of principles, like a commitment to Vision Zero and the Safe Systems approach, to the municipal code. (Ordinarily, these kinds of statements are included in recitals—”whereas” clauses—or nonbinding resolutions.) Saka responded that “the intent here is to codify the current existing policy as the new baseline, as the new baseline that SDOT is fully free to… iterate, improve, make better.”

Asked if she considered her proposal more substantive than Saka’s, Wilson smiled and said she thought the two were compatible. “I look forward to working the transportation committee chair… to improve road safety.”

City Council, Courts

Aide to Councilmember Saka Sought Restraining Order Against Constituent

Photo of Councilmember Rob Saka in council chambers

Saka called Police Chief Shon Barnes to ask what to do about a resident who contacted his office repeatedly about a potential park in his backyard.

By Erica C. Barnett

A former chief of staff for City Councilmember Rob Saka, Elaine Ko, attempted to get a restraining order against Saka constituent Bruce Steinberg, after Steinberg called and emailed Ko and others at Saka’s office relentlessly over a conservation easement in his neighborhood.

King County Superior Court Judge Lisa Paglisotti denied Ko’s request last November, saying she believed Steinberg did not know he was calling Ko’s personal number and that his emails and calls about the easement may have been annoying but did not constitute personal harassment.

During her testimony, Ko revealed that Saka called Seattle Police Chief Shon Barnes directly on her behalf. According to Ko, Barnes told Saka that “yes, that was over the line when you start getting phone calls on the personal line” and said Ko should contact Southwest Precinct commander Krista Bair, who advised her to call 911 and file a police report about Steinberg’s calls and emails.

Saka, along with a representative of the City Attorney’s Office, was present in court during the hearing in November. He responded to our questions with a statement that did not address our questions about his call to Barnes.

Saka’s predecessor, Lisa Herbold, had to pay a $500 fine after she texted then-police chief Carmen Best with concerns about a trailer that someone had parked near her house in 2020, at the height of protests outside councilmembers’ homes. (Herbold, who believed the trailer was placed there as a stunt, acknowledged violating a rule against using her public position for private benefit). No complaint has been filed about Saka’s phone call, according to Ethics and Elections director Wayne Barnett.

Steinberg told PubliCola he was just trying to get Saka to pay attention to a project located in a wetland in his neighborhood, which straddles the line between Seattle and unincorporated King County. A local church sold King County a conservation easement for about five acres it owns adjacent to Seola Pond, a wetland and county wastewater facility in Roxbury Heights, which the county plans to develop into a neighborhood greenspace.  Steinberg and some of his neighbors worry the project will cause flooding and traffic problems and result in more homeless people living near his house and, he said, eating area ducks.  (I asked him if he was serious about the ducks and he said yes.)

The land is not on City property; emails show that King County’s Department of Natural Resources and Parks sent Steinberg a detailed explanation of the work that has been happening on the property.

In addition to the emails he sent to Saka’s office, Ko noted in court that Steinberg called her 66 times after she hung up on him and blocked his number. (Ko said she confirmed the additional calls by requesting records from her phone company).  “I was quite upset. I felt harassed. I felt bothered by it all, and I did hang up. There was no point in continuing that call,” she said, according to a recording of the hearing.

In his response, Steinberg presented evidence that showed Ko initially called him from her personal number to set up a walking tour of the area in September, which is how he said he got her number. Ko acknowledged that she may have called Steinberg from her number and agreed that he didn’t threaten or attack her directly. But, she argued, he was so rude and insistent that his behavior constituted harassment. “[The emails] were very harassing, negative, rude, disrespectful emails, and that is the truth,” Ko said in court.

In his statement, Saka said the calls to Ko’s phone and the emails to his office “went far beyond the robust engagement we typically receive from some passionate constituents. This was a unique situation involving targeted harassment, bullying, and intimidation that crossed onto personal devices and deeply impacted an employee’s sense of personal safety and mental health.”

Steinberg he believed all along that he was calling Ko’s work cell phone. “If [she] had come back and said, ‘Bruce, this is my personal line,’ I would have stopped immediately,” Steinberg told PubliCola in an interview. “I’m crazy, but I’m not rude in that way.”

PubliCola reviewed dozens of the emails we received in response to a records request. None are threatening or obscene, although several insult Ko and two men who used to work for Saka by calling them bad at their jobs.  And many are pushy, bordering on manic.

In an email last August, for instance, Steinberg wrote, “I have started calling EVERY phone member of the council members incessantly and will continue to until we get the meeting we are requesting. I work from home and have ALLLL day to call and leave messages and fill up your inbox. This is not a threat or hate or anything else you guys want to spin but I will bury your voice mails on EVERY single phone line I can find until Rob puts his boy pants on and reaches out to the people who pay his salary.”

Steinberg acknowledged calling and emailing city officials and staff, including Ko, incessantly about the easement. (In one of the emails PubliCola obtained, he claimed to have contacted Saka’s office “no less than 1,000 times.”)

“I understand where people might not like my style,” Steinberg said, but he’s spent years bugging elected officials and city and county staffers about flooding and other issues in his neighborhood and hasn’t been satisfied with the results. “Sometimes, to get attention, you have to act like a four-year-old.”

He also copped to openly mocking Ko during the walking tour, “sort of mimicking her and pushing her buttons,” which led to a confrontation between the two and ultimately Ko’s departure from the tour, which itself became another point of contention. But he said he never harassed, stalked, or threatened her personally or spoke to her about anything other than city business—something Ko acknowledged in court.

Saka told PubliCola that Ko’s case was “ultimately dismissed purely on a technicality, not based on the sheer volume and scope of the harassing messages at issue.”

In fact, Judge Paglisotti said Steinberg’s actions were exactly the kind of behavior public servants should expect when their job involves responding to constituents. “It is reasonable to expect that this type of pestering, if you will, or persistence, comes with the territory,” Paglisotti said. “The persistence and the advocacy that the respondent was engaged in was not just to you specifically. It was to the whole [Saka] office.”

Ko, who is in her 70s, retired earlier this year. Saka suggested her decision was related to Steinberg’s pestering. After the hearing, he told us in his statement, “my employee made the difficult decision to retire after many decades of selfless service to our city and community.” In an email to staff published by the West Seattle Blog in February, Ko did not connect the two events, saying her plan had always been to work for Saka’s office for two years andretire. When contacted by phone, Ko declined to comment for this story.

City Council

SPD Chief Barnes Hires Two Harrell Staffers to Executive Positions, Saka Hires Ex-Cop Who Ran for Council

1. On Monday, Seattle Police Chief Shon Barnes announced permanent replacements for the two civilian command staff members he fired late last year, along with a newly created position of deputy chief of staff. The two fired staffers, ex-general counsel Rebecca Boatright and ex-chief operating officer Brian Maxey, have filed a tort claim against the city alleging Barnes retaliated against them for giving advice he and his inner circle disagreed with, and discriminated against Boatright based on her gender.

Among the advice Boatright and Maxey gave Barnes and his chief of staff ewre a suggestion that they take concerns from the LGBTQ+ community more seriously including pushback over police raids at a longstanding nude beach. To that suggestion, Barnes’ chief of staff Alex Ricketts allegedly responded, “We’re not here for the gays.”

Two of the new staffers will join Barnes’ team directly from former mayor Bruce Harrell’s office.

Maxey will be replaced by Sarah Smith, a public safety advisor to Harrell who previously worked as a policy staffer for Jenny Durkan. In addition to her time at Harrell’s office, Smith’s resumé includes a brief stint at the fire department, where she “ideated, organized, and executed EMS staffing for events,” according to her LinkedIn page. Before that, she worked as a program manager at the YMCA and a manager at Specialty’s, a now-defunct bakery in downtown Seattle.

Another Harrell staffer, Cindy Wong, will become deputy chief of staff under Alex Ricketts, a new position. Prior to former chief Adrian Diaz, SPD had not had a “chief of staff”  since 2001, when an assistant police chief held the job as an informal secondary title. Wong is the author of a children’s book with a background in human resources who had worked for Harrell since 2023.

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SPD did not respond to questions.

Boatright will be replaced by her former deputy, Cherie Getchell. “Please join me in welcoming each of these women to their new roles,” Barnes wrote in an email to all SPD staff. “Their extensive experience and deep commitment to public safety in our community will be instrumental in guiding us through SPD’s next chapter.”

Combined with the five new positions Barnes added when he came on as chief last year—Ricketts, new Assistant Chief Nicole Powell, executive director of crime reduction Lee Hunt, new Deputy Chief Andre Sayles, and Chief Communications Officer Barbara DeLollis, all making well over $200,000—Barnes now has the largest executive staff of any police chief in recent memory.

Mayor Katie Wilson’s office had no comment on Barnes’ hiring of the two Harrell staffers.


2. Across the street at City Hall, the new year began with two departures from City Councilmember Rob Saka’s office, where no staffer (other than chief of staff Elaine Ko) has lasted longer than 16 months. On Monday, a new Saka staffer started work—former SPD lieutenant Brendan Kolding, who will be Saka’s policy director.

Kolding’s name may be familiar. In 2019, he ran for City Council against then-incumbent Lisa Herbold and later endorsed Phil Tavel, a conservative two-time candidate for the position, on a platform that included setting up FEMA-style camps and moving unsheltered people into them. (He lost in the primary). Although Kolding told reporters he quit SPD to run for council, the Seattle Times reported that he actually resigned in lieu of termination after an investigation concluded he had harassed a coworker and lied about it to the police chief.

Some of Kolding’s political views appear to be at odds with some of the lofty rhetoric Saka adopted when he voted against the Seattle Police Officers Guild contract last year. His most recent post on X, from 2024, is a reposted SPOG endorsement for then-Republican gubernatorial candidate Dave Reichert. Kolding has also reposted content from SPOG leader Mike Solan,  Turning Point USA activist Jonathan Choe, and former city councilmember Sara Nelson. 

Kolding was also fond of posting photos of his ballots, including votes for Nelson, former city attorney Ann Davison, and—whoops—Phil Tavel, who ran against Saka in 2023.

City Council

Council Finally Seats Renters Commission, New Council Rules Allow Longer Public Comments

1. After an overload of drama last week, the Seattle City Council quietly approved all 14 nominees to the Seattle Renter’s Commission—an advisory body that has had just five members (all of whose terms are now expired) for the past 18 months. The appointments were part of the council’s consent agenda, and all seven council members who were present (Maritza Rivera was excused) voted to approve them, along with several other nominees to unrelated commissions.

As we reported last Wednesday, Councilmembers Sara Nelson and Rob Saka skipped out on the housing and human services committee meeting at the last minute, depriving the committee of a quorum and wasting the time of the nominees who showed up in person and online expecting to finally receive their long-delayed confirmations. Solomon and Alexis Mercedes Rinck held a “community discussion” of the appointments and other business on the committee agenda in lieu of the scheduled committee meeting.

Nelson told Solomon she wouldn’t attend the meeting on Tuesday, after receiving an email from former councilmember Moore urging her to not let the appointments move forward.

Saka, who was cc’d on a late-night email from Moore touting her proposed alternative to the renters’ commission, which would have added seven landlords to the mix, told Solomon he wouldn’t be attending the meeting just minutes before it started, citing unspecified personal matters for his unexcused absence.

During a council briefing meeting on Monday, Saka told his colleagues that “right before that meeting, on the bus to City Hall, I got some uncomfortable calls and and that really impacted my ability to to show up in a public meeting … and so in any event, I make no apologies for the decision.” Saka dismissed suggestions that he sat out the vote in order to deprive the committee of a quorum as a “grand conspiracy” with no factual basis.

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2. Also Tuesday, the council passed a new rule that will effectively prevent the council president and committee chairs from cutting public comment short just because they feel like it.

Currently, the person who’s chairing a meeting can decide, based entirely on their own feelings in the moment, to restrict comments to one minute instead of the standard two and to limit the amount of time allowed for public comments, depriving people of the opportunity to speak to their representatives.

This broad discretionary power has caused major problems in the recent past, as Council President Nelson has repeatedly shut down public comment and closed down the council chambers after would-be commenters have loudly protested being cut off. (Moore, who often took umbrage at critical public comments, once suggested that a group of people who had been locked out of council chambers planned to rush the dais and assault the council because they were pounding on the walls.)

The new public comment rule, proposed by frequent Nelson antagonist Dan Strauss (who will, if Nelson isn’t reelected this year, be the council’s most senior member and a contender for council president), increases the minimum time allotted for public comment from 20 minutes to an hour and stipulates that if there are fewer than 30 commenters, they will each get two minutes to speak. If the number of commenters is between 30 and 60, they’ll get a minute, and if there are more than 60, they’ll still get a minute unless the council president or committee chair sets a lower time.

City Council

Renters Commission Appointments Thwarted by Saka and Nelson’s Last-Minute Absence from Their Own Committee

By Erica C. Barnett

For 18 months, under former city councilmember Cathy Moore’s leadership, nominees to the Seattle Renters Commission did not receive a single hearing. Moore, whose job as housing and human services committee chair included confirming appointments and reappointments to volunteer city commissions under the committee’s purview, refused to seat the Renters Commission even as she worked on legislation to dramatically reduce eviction protections, an issue the commission would have worked on if it was ever allowed to exist.

After Moore resigned, the vice-chair of the committee, Mark Solomon, approached the renters’ commission members and unconfirmed nominees and told them that before Moore’s replacement—likely former councilmember Debora Juarez—takes over next month, he would finally appoint as many renters’ commission nominees as possible, said Kate Rubin, whose membership on the renters’ commission expired in February.

Thrilled, commission appointees showed up at City Hall Wednesday morning—only to learn that their appointments would continue to be delayed: About three minutes before the committee was scheduled to start, Councilmember Rob Saka sent a message down from his City Hall office that he would not be attending.

Before Solomon adjourned the meeting (and re-convened the same gathering as an informal “community discussion” to avoid breaking council rules), Rinck went to Saka’s second-floor office to see if he was there. Saka’s staffer disappeared behind his closed inner-office door, emerged a few minutes later, and told Rinck that Saka wasn’t available because he was meeting with his chief of staff, Elaine Ko.

In a statement Wednesday, Saka told PubliCola, “This morning I was unable to attend the Housing & Human Services committee meeting due to unexpected personal conflicts. I understand this may have caused undue frustration and inconvenience for attendees and I will work with my colleagues to discuss next steps to carry out necessary committee business.”

The previous day, Council President Sara Nelson, who reportedly got an email from Moore asking her not to allow the appointments to move forward earlier in the week, had reportedly asked Solomon to remove the appointments from the committee agenda. That same day, Nelson reportedly told Solomon she would not attend the meeting, leaving the committee with less than the three-member quorum required to meet.

On Tuesday, at 2:30 in the morning, Moore sent an email to Solomon, cc’ing Saka and Nelson, expressing apparent surprise that there was “a slew of appointments to the Renters’ Commission scheduled for a vote on Wednesday.”

Before she resigned, Moore had suggested replacing the Renters Commission with a joint landlord-tenant commission with seven landlords and eight tenants.

“When we spoke several weeks ago, you mentioned you were interested in my proposal to revamp the commission into a rental housing commission composed of renters and housing providers,” Moore told Solomon.

The renters’ commission is the only city body that works and advocates on behalf of tenants. Rubin said that if Moore’s legislation moves forward, it will inevitably be dominated by landlords. “Having worked in those spaces, I can tell you that the renters would have been shut out,” Rubin said.

 

 

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Nelson confirmed that she told Solomon Tuesday afternoon that “I wasn’t going to be here, so they already knew.” She declined to comment further about why she wasn’t present.

Solomon told PubliCola he was “disappointed” in the lack of quorum, adding, “I believe it’s common-sense good governance to promptly seat all vacancies on City commissions. It’s what constituents should expect from our work. These commission volunteers took time out of their day to show up both in person and online, to talk about their qualifications and lived-experiences as renters in Seattle, and to share their vision for their work on the Seattle Renters Commission. I am grateful to everyone who showed up and enjoyed learning more about these qualified nominees.”

During the meeting, commission nominees expressed frustration at what many of them described as Saka and Nelson’s callous disregard for people who showed up to accept appointments to a volunteer commission.

Commission member Julissa Sánchez, the advocacy director at Choose 180 and a former advocate at the Tenants Union, said she was”very disappointed that we did not meet quorum, because we have been waiting for two years to expand the Seattle Renters Commission.”
Sanchéz, whose term expired in February, said, “I’m here to be reinstated into the Seattle Renters Commission, because … renters [for whom] English is not their first language, or who may not speak English at all, are often left off the table or out of access to different resources.”

“I am so furious,” Rubin told PubliCola on Wednesday. As the only paid staffer for the renters’ advocacy group Be: Seattle, Rubin said advocating for the renters’ commission “is pulling me away from my actual job, seemingly for no reason,” given that the council appears to have no interest in seating the commission.

“It’s so disrespectful to waste our time in this way we’re not being paid to do this work and there’s no real voice for renters at city hall other than Councilmember Rinck. … It’s hard for renters to show up to testify. It’s been just awful.”

Rinck, who became visibly emotional while expressing her frustration Nelson and Saka from the dais, echoed Rubin’s sentiment about disrespect when we spoke a few hours after the meeting ended.

“It’s my job to sit in this seat. I had the time on my calendar dedicated to be there. It’s my job to be there. Everyone else in the room was there on a volunteer basis,” Rinck said. “We want people to be engaged in our local government and have trust and have a collaborative relationship with our commissions, so what I’m struggling with is the disrespect to those folks that [Saka and Nelson] displayed by just not even showing up to committee.”

Many of the renters’ commission appointments were from Mayor Bruce Harrell; a spokesperson for the mayor told PubliCola his office was “disappointed that the Council’s Housing and Human Services committee was unable to reach quorum today, given we had commission nominees who we had asked to attend, and the agenda contained important legislative matters, including our proposal to protect constituents from predatory homebuying practices.”

In addition to the renters’ commission appointments, the committee was supposed to approve appointments to the Disability Commission, the Seattle Housing Authority Board, and the Seattle Social Housing Public Development Authority Governing Council.

And it was supposed to adopt an annual action plan for $16 million in federal Housing and Urban Development funding that has not been canceled by the Trump Administration. Delaying that action plan won’t put the funding at risk in itself, but Rinck said it speaks to the absent committee members’ priorities that they allowed such an important vote to slip.

Members of the renters’ commission planned to attend a meeting tonight of an ad hoc group called the Safe and Stable Housing Working Group to discuss potential reforms to Moore’s draft legislation, which would have ended the winter and school-year eviction moratoriums, eliminated limits on fees for late payment, and overturned a law allowing tenants to add new roommates without prior approval, among other changes.

“Councilmember Solomon said his intention was to ensure that nobody was forced out of their housing and to make the nonprofit landlords whole,” Rubin said.

Now, the meeting may end up focusing on the council’s refusal to seat the renters’ commission.

In an email to committee members on Wednesday, Seattle/King County Coalition on Homelessness director Alison Eisinger said the council’s refusal to seat the renters’ commission in the last scheduled housing committee meeting before the council goes on its August recess “undermine[s] not only that group’s ability to convene and meaningfully carry out its role” but contributes “to the sense that ‘government’  has no interest in solving problems of the people, by the people, and for the people. There is work to be done in this city regarding housing and human services, and it’s reasonable to expect that City Council Committee meetings are one of the places where it gets done.”

Saka’s office sent an automated response to Eisinger and others who contacted his office about his absence, which included a link to “Eviction Assistance.” That link leads to a 404 Error page.