Tag: Sara Nelson

City Council, human services, labor, Mayor Harrell, Police, Taxes, Transportation

Council’s Budget Would Preserve JumpStart Spending Plan, Restrict Shotspotter, and Restore Safe Streets Spending

 

By Erica C. Barnett

Last week, Seattle City Council budget committee chair Teresa Mosqueda released a first-draft 2024 budget “balancing package” that includes dozens of amendments to Mayor Bruce Harrell’s 2024 budget proposal—reversing a plan to fund child care and human service worker wages with the JumpStart affordable-housing payroll tax; adding or restoring funding for transportation, eviction prevention, free help with tax pand other services; and placing restrictions on the Seattle Police Department’s future spending on an acoustic gunshot detection system and salary savings from unfilled positions, among many other relatively small tweaks to a budget that Harrell’s office has changed significantly since the council and mayor passed an “endorsed” 2024 budget last year.

As in previous years, the mayor’s office proposed using about $9 million in JumpStart funds—which are earmarked for affordable housing, small businesses, equitable development, and Green New Deal projects—on items that aren’t authorized uses of the tax, including pay increases for human service workers and child care providers, the relocation of a tiny house village in the University District, and startup costs for the new social housing public development authority.

Mosqueda’s budget proposal would change the way those items are funded so that they come out of the city’s general fund, which is authorized to receive up to $84 million in JumpStart revenues in a lump sum this year; by shifting these expenditures to the city’s mainline operating budget, the proposal avoids the need to change the legally binding JumpStart spending plan and avoids making these items dependent on JumpStart funding in the future. Additionally, in response to new projections showing almost $10 million more coming in from JumpStart than expected, Mosqueda’s budget increases spending on a number of JumpStart priorities—including $4.6 million for multifamily housing that the mayor’s budget cut—and contributes $2 million to the fund’s reserve.

Responding to Councilmember Sara Nelson’s comment that the appropriate use of JumpStart funds “seems to be a matter of interpretation,” Mosqueda said that there’s actually “not a lot of disagreement about what the current statute says,” and that if the council wanted to fund items that aren’t allowed under the current spending plan, “we would have had to statutorily amend JumpStart, which the [mayor’s office] also understood and realized in the transmission of their budget proposals.”

Councilmember Lisa Herbold noted that although Burgess told the council there are studies showing that acoustic gunshot locater systems better in concert with camera surveillance, the mayor’s office has not provided any evidence for this; meanwhile, she noted, a study in Philadelphia found that adding cameras to Shotspotter increased police workload without improving outcomes or even confirming more shootings.

The budget still includes funding for Shotspotter—an audio surveillance system that deputy mayor Tim Burgess told the council will be more effective when “married” to CCTV cameras in the same locations—but would now include a budget proviso barring the police department from putting it to use until the city conducts a racial equity toolkit and a Surveillance Impact Report. Ulike the mayor’s proposal, which would do one racial equity analysis and impact report up front and apply it to all future uses anywhere in the city, Mosqueda’s proviso would require SPD to look at each neighborhood individually.

Councilmember Lisa Herbold noted that although Burgess told the council there are studies showing that acoustic gunshot locater systems better in concert with camera surveillance, the mayor’s office has not provided any evidence for this; meanwhile, she noted, a study in Philadelphia found that adding cameras to Shotspotter increased police workload without improving outcomes or even confirming more shootings.

Referring to the same study as well as a review of Shotspotter in Chicago, Mosqueda said the systems have led to “more officers going to neighborhoods on high alert, potentially with guns drawn … expecting to potentially confront a dangerous situation. Given the already tragic number of shootings for our BIPOC community, especially our Black community, by police, this is a recipe for trouble.”

Other potential changes in the council’s budget proposal include:

• A proposal to retain the title “director” for the head of the Community Assisted Response and Engagement department (formerly the Community Safety and Communications Center). Harrell’s budget would change CARE department director Amy Smith’s title to “Chief” to make it equivalent to the police and fire chiefs, but opponents of this change argue that the title change is out of step with efforts to distinguish the CARE department as a civilian response team, not another arm of the police.

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Discussion about this change got surprisingly heated during a budget meeting earlier this month, when Smith insisted Harrell’s title change was “brilliant” because it provides “a level-setting, across public safety to say these are of equal importance and significance” to first responders from police and fire departments. Mosqueda said she had heard “directly from first responders” that their jobs are different because they take an oath to show up in emergencies, which is distinct from the role of the civilian team that will soon begin responding, accompanied by police, to some low-priority, non-emergency calls.

• Funding ($200,000) to expand pretrial diversion programs, which allow people accused of some misdemeanors to avoid charges by attending classes or other programs on a short-term basis. Sponsor Andrew Lewis said enhancing these programs would help the city “continue to have a more just and equitable system of justice”; these light-touch programs not generally appropriate for people with serious addiction or mental health issues, so the money won’t address the influx of new potential clients pouring into  programs like LEAD because of the city’s new drug criminalization law.

• Funding to raise wages for human services workers at agencies whose contracts with the King County Regional Homelessness Authority are funded through the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), not the city. The council passed a Mosqueda-sponsored law in 2019 that requires annual inflationary adjustments to most human services contracts to boost workers’ pay and improve employee retention, but that mandate only applies to city-funded contracts. Increasing other homeless service contracts would bring workers at those agencies to parity, but would create an ongoing annual budget issue.

The proposed amendments include one from Council President Debora Juarez stipulating that of $2.4 million reserved in 2024 for paving non-arterial streets, $600,000 can only be spent paving the streets around the Seattle Storm’s planned practice center in Interbay, which former mayor Jenny Durkan pushed through on her way out the door. Under the agreement, the developers is only “responsible for repaving half the streets”—from the property line to the center of the road—leaving the city on the hook for the rest.

• A one-time, $300,000 transfer to King County’s Department of Community and Human Services to pay for what sponsor Sara Nelson described as “intensive outpatient or inpatient treatment,” including detox, for low-income people who can’t access private treatment through Medicaid. The intent, Nelson said, is to fund treatment at facilit[ies] where they are taken out of their daily lives and detoxed and given some counseling and behavioral therapy nutrition, etc.” Nelson has advocated for the city to fund traditional abstinence-based treatment in addition to opioid use disorder medications and harm reduction, and the council may be more open to the idea if the money flows through the county’s human services department—which will have discretion over how to spend the money—than the city’s.

• A proviso stipulating that of $2.4 million reserved in 2024 for paving non-arterial streets, $600,000 can only be spent paving the streets around the Seattle Storm’s planned practice center in Interbay. Former mayor Jenny Durkan pushed through a special zoning exemption to allow the 50,000-square-foot facility, which is under construction, in an industrial area; under a subsequent agreement, the developers is only “responsible for repaving half the streets”—from the property line to the center of the road—leaving the city on the hook for the rest. The proviso, sponsored by retiring Council President Debora Juarez, would lock up a quarter of next year’s non-arterial street paving fund to pay for the other half.

• About $10 million in restored funding for transportation that Harrell’s budget proposed cutting to account for shortfalls in revenue from traffic cameras, parking taxes, real estate transactions, and vehicle license fees. The balancing package would use the balances sitting in several transportation funds to restore funding for ADA curb ramps, bridge maintenance, greenways for bicyclists, and school safety projects. “We wanted to make sure to fully preserved the investments in transportation in 2024 to avoid broad cuts to Safe Streets infrastructure projects, and prevent pitting communities against each other.

The initial balancing package would also convert $300,000 of a $1 million loan city made to Community Roots Housing, the affordable housing nonprofit, into a grant. Community Roots, formerly Capitol Hill Housing, is supposed to pay back the full interest-free loan by 2025. Earlier this week, Capitol Hill Seattle reported that Community Roots is selling off a 30-unit apartment building that the nonprofit said cost too much to maintain; it’s the second time the organization has put one of its buildings on the market this year.

campaign finance, City Council, Density, Development, Elections, housing

Candidate Ron Davis Signs Anti-Upzoning Pledge, Democrats Blast Bob Kettle’s Misleading Ad; Prosecutors Seek Second Opinion in Police Crash Case

1. City Council candidate Ron Davis, who frequently touts his urbanist cred (The Urbanist called him an “urbanist supervolunteer“) signed a pledge written by the U District Community Council attesting that he will never vote to upzone University Way NE, AKA The Ave, during his council tenure. Davis is running to represent District 4, which includes the University District, against Maritza Rivera, who declined to sign the pledge.

The pledge, which takes the form of a letter to Mayor Bruce Harrell and the city council, says in part:

Preserving the unique quality that small independent businesses bring to the city and maintaining a pedestrian- friendly experience on this narrow street are critical to the sustainable development of this urban center.

You will recall that both candidates for our position on the council in the previous election cycle endorsed a similar letter in support. We will follow their lead and agree to not upzone The Ave during our tenure on the council.

The Ave is a special and historic place. Preserving it provides a serious public good, directly experienced by hundreds of thousands of people every year.

Former District 4 city councilmember Rob Johnson agreed to a plan to remove the Ave from a 2017 upzone that was part of the city’s Housing Affordability and Livability Agenda, or HALA; the upzones increased the amount of density allowed along arterial streets, where apartments were already legal, and modestly increased housing capacity in some former single-family-only areas. Neighborhood activists and small businesses rallied against upzoning the Ave, arguing that taller buildings (and more housing) in the U District’s commercial core would destroy the neighborhood’s character.

“As you know, I’m not a fan of using historic preservation style actions to create private benefits,” Davis told PubliCola. “But I’ve always thought that where preservation creates significant public benefit (in this case, preserving one of our few human scale, walkable, downtown style gathering places in Seattle) and it is open to the public, it makes sense to consider preservation if the benefits outweigh the costs.” Davis added that the rest of the city needs to be upzoned, not just commercial areas, and said downtown Ballard and Pike Place Market were similar areas that “don’t need high rises.”

Earlier this week, Davis sent out a fundraising email lambasting “the giant corporate developers (Master Builders Association) that have done so much to make Seattle expensive” for “dumping upwards of $100K on behalf of Rivera.” The Master Builders, Davis’ email continued, were the same “people who rewrote our tree legislation so it would be easier to cut down trees like Luma the Cedar in Wedgwood.”

Asked why she didn’t sign, Rivera told PubliCola, “I’m not comfortable signing a blanket pledge about this—or any other—complicated policy issue where the policy proposal’s details are unknown. As I told the UDCC, if I’m elected in November, I am committed to bringing a thoughtful approach to reviewing any proposal that is put before me.”

Earlier this week, Davis sent out a fundraising email lambasting “the giant corporate developers (Master Builders Association) that have done so much to make Seattle expensive” for “dumping upwards of $100K on behalf of Rivera.” The Master Builders, Davis’ email continued, were the same “people who rewrote our tree legislation so it would be easier to cut down trees like Luma the Cedar in Wedgwood.”

The claim puts Davis’ position squarely in line with Alex Pedersen, the District 4 incumbent who has been the most vocal opponent of new housing on the council. Pedersen was out on the fringes of the council on this issue; Davis’ mailer echoes the misleading claims Pedersen made back in May when trying to scuttle a tree protection proposal that a supermajority of the council supported.

“Luma,” the name advocates gave to a large cedar tree that a developer planned to (legally) remove to build townhouses, became a rallying point for neighborhood activists who have long opposed new housing in historically single-family areas like Wedgwood—which, as Josh pointed out last month, was originally a dense forest that was razed by white colonizers who wanted to build a new whites-only neighborhood in the area. Pedersen’s attempt to derail the long-negotiated legislation failed 6-1.

The Democrats called Councilmember Sara Nelson’s claim about people dying because Lewis did not initially vote for the bill “unintentionally misleading at best, deliberately lying at worst.”

2. The King County Democrats issued a statement on Thursday condemning District 7 council candidate Bob Kettle for an ad (which PubliCola covered last week) that includes images of encampments and features Position 8 City Councilmember Sara Nelson, who blames District 7 incumbent Andrew Lewis for causing deaths due to drug overdoses by failing to pass her original version of a bill empowering the city attorney to prosecute people for having or using drugs in public.

In the video, Nelson says, “Andrew Lewis’ decision to block my drug bill cost the lives of too many people from fentanyl overdose. I trust Bob Kettle to do the right thing.”

The Democrats compared the ads to similar “Republican scare tactics” used by Sen. Patty Murray’s unsuccessful challenger Tiffany Smiley last year; Smiley’s ads included images of encampments and a boarded-up Starbucks on Capitol Hill.

“Most distressing of all is the use of individuals experiencing homelessness in Bob Kettle’s ad, likely without their consent. It is imperative that we treat all individuals with dignity, especially those experiencing homelessness who already face immense challenges. Using their struggles for political gain is not only ethically wrong but also demonstrates a shocking lack of empathy and understanding,” the Democrats said in their statement. 

The Democrats called Nelson’s claim about people dying because Lewis did not initially vote for the bill “unintentionally misleading at best, deliberately lying at worst.”

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3.  The King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office announced Thursday that it has hired an outside collision reconstruction firm, ACES, Inc., to analyze in-car and body-worn video and other materials submitted by the Seattle Police Department for the prosecutor’s felony traffic investigation into Kevin Dave, the SPD officer who struck and killed 23-year-old student Jaahnavi Kandula as he was speeding to respond to a call nearby.

According to KCPAO spokesman Casey McNerthney, the prosecutor’s office will decide whether to file charges against Dave at some point after they review the video—and, potentially, reconstruct the collision scene itself. McNerthney said the prosecutor’s office will have another update—which could, but won’t necessarily, include a charging decision—in November.

As we’ve reported, the police and fire departments initially claimed Dave was responding “as an EMT” to an overdose nearby when he struck and killed Kandula in a crosswalk, elaborating later that police need to be on scene when the fire department is reviving people who have overdosed because they can be violent. PubliCola’s reporting later revealed that the caller had not overdosed, but was lucid and waiting outside his South Lake Union apartment building when he made the 911 call. As PubliCola reported, Dave was driving 74 miles an hour and did not have his siren on when he struck Kandula on Dexter Ave., which has a 25 mph speed limit.

City Council, Drugs, Elections, homelessness

Burien Mayor Sees No Issue With Distribution of Homeless People’s Private Info, Council Member Blames Her Colleague for Fentanyl Deaths

1. During a debate focusing on homelessness sponsored Wednesday night, Burien Mayor Sofia Aragon, who is running for King County Council District 8, responded to PubliCola’s report that the director of a group called The More We Love that offers private encampment sweeps had shared personal and medical information about vulnerable homeless residents of the city with police, city officials, and a private business owner.

The real issue, Aragon said, was that someone in the city had “leaked” the information to me, not that the person who shared the information, The More We Love director Kristine Moreland, had done so without apparent concern for the privacy of the more than 80 people included in the detailed spreadsheet she created.

“I know that there was some information shared, and I don’t know how that got to the reporter, but I know that you know, things that we share within the city will often leak out,” Aragon said. “I don’t know how that occurred, we definitely would be we would be serious about the protection of health information because in [the nonprofit] industry, that is certainly something important.”

Aragon said it was understandable that Moreland sent her spreadsheet of personal information to the private business owner, Jeff Rakow of Snowball Investment, because he contracted with Moreland’s group to remove an encampment outside a Grocery Outlet property that he owns.

As I reported, I received the information through a routine public disclosure request; Moreland attached the spreadsheet to an email she sent to a city council member, two police officials, and a real estate investor who paid Moreland’s group to remove an encampment on his property. It’s unknown whether, or how widely, Moreland distributed her spreadsheet outside the city of Burien, since only public officials are subject to public disclosure requests.

When debate moderator Scott Greenstone from KNKX noted that I got the information through a records request, Aragon breezed past the clarification, saying it was understandable that Moreland sent her spreadsheet of personal information to the private business owner, Jeff Rakow of Snowball Investment, because he contracted with Moreland’s group to remove an encampment outside a Grocery Outlet property that he owns.

“And what he did, because he did see some success, is he shared that with the city, but that doesn’t excuse leaking out of private information from those who are homeless, and that’s something that needs to be addressed,” Aragon said.

As a side note: Unlike Moreland, I did not publish or distribute any of the private information contained in Moreland’s spreadsheet, because that would be an additional violation of the privacy of the people whose information she distributed.

For context, credible nonprofit homeless service providers do not, as a rule, share their clients’ private information outside their organizations without explicit informed consent, because to do so would violate people’s privacy, damage trust, and potentially break federal laws protecting people’s medical information.

2.In a TV ad for District 7 city council candidate Bob Kettle, Seattle City Council member Sara Nelson accused her colleague, District 7 incumbent Councilmember Andrew Lewis, of being responsible for the deaths of countless people from drug overdoses during the two and a half months when the city did not have a law empowering the city attorney to prosecute people who use drugs in public. Lewis cast the deciding vote against the bill in June, then voted with the majority of the council in favor ot a substantively similar bill in September.

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“Andrew Lewis’ decision to block my drug bill cost the lives of too many people from fentanyl overdose. I trust Bob Kettle to do the right thing,” Nelson said in the ad.

Nelson sponsored the initial version of the bill, which said nothing about treatment, diversion, or overdose prevention, and opposed many of the new provisions in the updated bill that support diversion and crisis intervention training. Lisa Herbold and Lewis sponsored the version that passed, which included language indicating that police should divert people to treatment or other diversion programs instead of jail. Public drug use and simple possession are already illegal across the state, thanks to a law passed in May that made both a gross misdemeanor.

“When you have nothing substantive to say, I guess the only thing to do is resort to Republican-style attack ads,” Lewis said. “I will continue my campaign of bringing people together to achieve real results for the people of District 7.”

City Council, Elections

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

City Council, Environment, Police

Midyear Budget Proposal Adds Funding for Streetcar Study, Police Overtime—and $19 Million for Unanticipated Lawsuit Payouts

By Erica C. Barnett

The city council got a first look at a proposed mid-year budget package that would fund a graffiti cleanup team that Harrell recently rolled out as part of his Downtown Activation Plan; add funding to revive the delayed downtown streetcar connector; increase SPD overtime spending to pay for downtown emphasis patrols, expanded online crime reports, and public disclosure officers; and put an additional $19 million into a fund that pays out for lawsuits and claims against the city, many of them the result of alleged police misconduct.

Every year, the city council has to adjust the budget to reflect new priorities, as well as what the city has actually spent so far that year, in a midyear supplemental budget that’s often hundreds of pages long.

The council denied Harrell’s request to nearly double what the city spends on graffiti removal last year, increasing annual graffiti cleanup spending to almost $4 million. According to council staff, Harrell’s office reversed their decision by using unspent funds from Seattle Public Utilities public hygiene budget, including pump-outs for trailers that provide showers for unsheltered people, to fully the graffiti cleanup crews. Harrell announced the new spending earlier this month as part of his Downtown Activation Plan. Because the city has already executed the contracts, a council staffer explained Wednesday, the council now has little choice but to fund the expanded graffiti program.

To fund other Downtown Activation Plan programs, a central staff memo notes, Harrell has proposed using the JumpStart fund, which includes funding earmarked for small businesses. Ironically, it was the Downtown Seattle Association, along with the Seattle Metro Chamber and other business groups, that proposed temporarily suspending the JumpStart tax—which only applies to the city’s largest businesses—earlier this year.

The memo outlines all the other proposed midyear budget adjustments, which also include $1 million “a delivery assessment of the Center City Cultural Connector”—as the proposed downtown streetcar was recently rebranded—”to determine if the design needs to be updated to reflect the intent of the project.”

“My original idea was, just lift the proviso and let them spend the salary savings on emergent needs,” Councilmember Sara Nelson said Wednesday, adding that the funding limitation “prohibit[s] the uses of salary savings on on expenses that are really important right now for the for Seattle Police Department.”

The council will also have to approve a $19 million increase to the city’s judgment and claims fund—including $14 million from the city’s planning reserves fund and $5 million from insurance—to pay for “higher than anticipated expenses” from lawsuits against the city. A spokesperson for the city’s budget office told PubliCola the city “cannot accurately predict how much money will be spent if the request is approved,” and said the city may not end up using all the money.

Still, the allocation represents a significant increase to the fund, which the city already expanded by $11 million in the 2023 budget last year, when it increased the fund from $30 million to $41 million “to pay for extraordinary settlements against the City.” Last year, lawsuits against the police department accounted for almost half of the $36 million the city spent on settlements, defense attorneys, and other litigation-related expenses, according to a report released in April.

The midyear budget also releases some funding to SPD to pay for improvements to the department’s online reporting system and unbudgeted overtime expenses the department has already made, along with position authority for four new public disclosure officers. Currently, SPD has to get council approval to spend funding allocated to vacant positions, including sworn officer positions the department is unable to fill, on unrelated purposes.

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Although the spending SPD is requesting is fairly limited—about $815,000—budget chair Teresa Mosqueda noted that whenever the city creates new SPD positions—on top of the hundreds of vacant positions that are included in the budget every year—”it compounds our increased costs year over year,” because the new positions become an additional SPD expense in future budget years.

“If there [are] positions that are vacant, that the department intends to hold vacant, that are no longer needed or are not part of the near term planning, it is okay to abrogate positions in order to put funding into other priorities,” Mosqueda said.

Councilmember Sara Nelson, who argued vehemently against restrictions on SPD’s spending authority last year, said another way to solve the annual funding problem would be to just allow SPD to spend salary savings on whatever they want. “My original idea was, just lift the proviso and let them spend the salary savings on emergent needs,” Nelson said Wednesday, adding that the funding limitation “prohibit[s] the uses of salary savings on on expenses that are really important right now for the for Seattle Police Department.” (In fact, it just requires the council to approve those expenses.)

Immediately after suggesting the council has made it too hard for the department to spend salary savings however it wants, Nelson spent 15 minutes questioning a $50,000 expenditure on a “living hotel” pilot that would create sustainable development standards for new hotels. Currently, the city has no way of endorsing or verifying that a hotel that calls itself “green” is actually adhering to green standards such as limiting water usage.

Suggesting that Mosqueda, who proposed the expenditure, was dropping the idea on the council out of the blue, Nelson said, “You make it sound like there’s a lot of talk going on between departments, but I’m the vice chair of the sustainability and renters rights committee, I’m on land use, I’m the chair of City Light, and  the first time I’ve heard about this policy is through some of those form emails coming in.”

“I appreciate that you might know a lot about it,” Nelson continued. “Again, talking about money, that transparency in budgeting ,and making sure that when we allocate money, it’s actually getting spent. So is it premature to be funding this work, given those factors?”

No one took the bait on the glaring contradiction between supporting a blank check for police and scrutinizing a tiny expense for the environment, but Councilmember Lisa Herbold did chime in on behalf of Mosqueda’s add, noting that “it’s really important to guard against greenwashing” by companies operating in the city.

As the central staff memo notes, Harrell’s Downtown Activation Plan includes a special land use change for a proposed hotel in Belltown that will not have to adhere to any green standards, and would extend master use permits for existing downtown hotels, prolonging their exemptions from current environmental rules.

Addiction, City Council, Courts, Drugs

Council Votes Down Drug Bill, But the Debate Over Criminalization Isn’t Over
Council member (and swing vote) Andrew Lewis; screenshot from Seattle Channel recording

By Erica C. Barnett

After a tense, emotional meeting Tuesday, the Seattle City Council voted 5-4 to reject legislation proposed by City Attorney Ann Davison that would have empowered Davison to prosecute Seattle residents for simple drug use and possession.

The bill, co-sponsored by Councilmembers Sara Nelson and Alex Pedersen, would have incorporated most of a new state law making drug use and possession a gross misdemeanor into the city’s municipal code. The state legislature changed the law this year after the state supreme court overturned the state’s felony drug possession law in a decision called Washington v. Blake.

The swing vote was Andrew Lewis, a former assistant city attorney who represents downtown Seattle and is up for reelection this year. On Tuesday, Lewis said he had planned on voting for the bill, but changed his mind after Davison abruptly and unilaterally announced the city would no longer participate in community court, a therapeutic court that did not require people to plead guilty of a crime to participate.

Lewis’ vote, he said, came down to the fact that he didn’t believe Davison would use the law judiciously after she effectively eliminated the city’s only therapeutic court.

“What it really came down to was that I don’t have any guarantee right now, with these misdemeanors, that jail isn’t going to be the primary remedy that’s sought to enforce them” in the absence of community court, Councilmember Andrew Lewis said. “”This infrastructure has to be in place, or at least there has to be a commitment or an outline for what we are going to do, and I ultimately didn’t feel comfortable giving that authority without that.”

“I came out here on the dais today fully prepared to vote for this measure,” Lewis said. “I am not necessarily opposed to incorporating the statute into our [city code], and I was prepared to do this. I think it is generally proper for us to do it. But with the ending of community court, without any additional process, I just can’t do it today.”

On Wednesday, Lewis told PubliCola that what his vote “really came down to was that I don’t have any guarantee right now, with these misdemeanors, that jail isn’t going to be the primary remedy that’s sought to enforce them” in the absence of community court. “It doesn’t exist now, but maybe we could make a successor court” to community court, he said.  “This infrastructure has to be in place, or at least there has to be a commitment or an outline for what we are going to do, and I ultimately didn’t feel comfortable giving that authority without that.”

This afternoon, Lewis announced he would propose a path toward passing a version of Davison’s law, after working to develop a “successor court” to community court, develop and fund treatment-based pre-filing diversion, working “to scale and deploy” an evidence-based response to fentanyl use in Seattle, and “finally, after creating those necessary pathways for treatment and diversion, propose legislation making the Seattle Municipal Code consistent with State Law on possession and public use.”

Tensions were high in council chambers on Tuesday, as dozens of public commenters opposed to the law expressed their grievances with the council in general, and Nelson—who owns Fremont Brewing, a brewery and bar, with her husband—in particular.

“We all know that the Seattle Police Department will not be investigating, arresting, and charging anyone who is doing lines of coke in the bathroom of the Fremont Brewery,” Molly Gilbert, head of the union representing King County Department of Public Defense employees, said. “You are literally a drug dealer!” another commenter quipped.

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Others responded to claims that the proposal was not tantamount to a “drug war,” because it would only make drug use and possession a misdemeanor, by telling the council how their own lives were derailed by misdemeanor drug convictions. Liletha Williams, one of the last people to speak, testified that her misdemeanor convictions in the 1990s “destroyed my life.”

“I’m 62 and I don’t have any retirement,” Williams said. “I have to work. I’m sick. I can’t have surgery because I can’t miss work. This is all because of my drug addiction in 1990.”

Moments after listening to this testimony, Nelson said her legislation had nothing in common with the drug war of the 1990s.

“I believe that equating this legislation to the war on drugs is frankly to diminish and minimize the damages and the heinousness of that stain on our history,” Nelson said. “Those were felonies. People were thrown into jail for years on felony charges having to do primarily with cannabis and coke and crack and heroin, etc. We are talking [about creating a] gross misdemeanor to address the most potent and dangerous drug to hit our streets, ever.”

Juarez—who briefly put the meeting into recess after people objected to her proposal to end public comment before everyone had spoken—also described fentanyl as a uniquely deadly and dangerous new drug.

“Let me be clear,” Juarez said, “fentanyl is poison. The effects are different and more deadly than than we have ever witnessed with other dangerous drugs like cocaine or heroin. There is no such thing as a functioning fentanyl user. You either have treatment or you die. And you die soon.”

In fact, fentanyl has been legally manufactured and prescribed in the US since the 1960s for long-term pain management and is on the World Health Organization’s list of essential medicines, along with many other potentially addictive drugs. (Nor—despite frequent claims to the contrary—can people get high or overdose from secondhand fentanyl vapor, according to the Seattle/King County Department of Public Health.)

“Let me be clear,” Council President Debora Juarez said, “fentanyl is poison. The effects are different and more deadly than than we have ever witnessed with other dangerous drugs like cocaine or heroin. There is no such thing as a functioning fentanyl user. You either have treatment or you die. And you die soon.”

So what happens now? As it has since May, the new state law applies in Seattle, meaning that drug use and possession are both illegal. (This is true despite a false claim from Davison that “Seattle will now be the only municipality in the State of Washington where it is legal to use hard drugs in public.”). Seattle Police Department officers retain their existing authority to arrest people under the state law, and King County Prosecutor Leesa Manion retains her existing authority to prosecute people for misdemeanor drug use and possession. And Davison can continue prosecuting misdemeanors related to drug use, such as shoplifting and trespassing—something that has already been keeping her busy in the absence of broad the broad new authority she sought.

In all likelihood, SPD won’t start rounding up fentanyl users on Third Avenue, and Manion won’t start prosecuting people for simple possession, but that would have been the case even if the legislation had passed. Manion, who supported the bill, rarely pursues even felony drug cases, and SPD has been focusing its resources on people higher up the illicit drug food chain—”the dealers and traffickers bringing this poison into our communities,” as Mayor Bruce Harrell put it in a statement after the vote. Harrell, no fan of drug-war policies, has stayed largely silent on the legislation; in his statement, he said it was “unacceptable for people to consume illegal drugs in public spaces,” but also emphasized “new and innovative approaches to ensure those in need receive the treatment they deserve,” such as contingency management.

Lewis’ potential legislation is the wild card. If he re-introduces some version of Davison’s bill—criminalizing drug use but securing promises from her office about diversion and treatment, for example—it could reignite a largely irrelevant debate about arresting and jailing drug users amid an overdose crisis that cries out for evidence-based approaches, not overheated drug-war rhetoric.
City Council, Courts, Crime, Drugs, legislature

Despite Concerns, Seattle Council Could Criminalize Drug Possession and Use in Seattle Next Week

By Erica C. Barnett

Next Tuesday, the Seattle City Council could adopt legislation to incorporate parts of a new state law criminalizing public drug use and simple possession, adopted during a short special session earlier this year, into the city’s municipal code. The proposal, sponsored by City Councilmembers Sara Nelson and Alex Pedersen and backed by City Attorney Ann Davison, would empower the city attorney’s office to prosecute people for possessing or using illegal drugs for the first time in the city’s history.

The legislature adopted the new law, which makes public drug use and simple possession a gross misdemeanor, during a special session earlier this year. The law is a response to a state supreme court decision known as State v. Blake, which overturned a state law making simple drug possession a felony. The legislature passed a temporary law making possession a felony while it hashed out a more comprehensive proposal, which passed during a special session this year. The new law makes drug possession and public use a misdemeanor, effectively bumping drug cases down from King County Prosecutor Leesa Manion’s office to Davison.

If the council doesn’t pass the new law, Manion would still have the authority to charge drug misdemeanors in addition to felonies, but is unlikely to do so; in a letter to council members, Manion said that even if her office “magically had the staff and resources necessary to take on a new body of work, we would focus those resources on felony prosecutions because the PAO has misdemeanor and gross misdemeanor jurisdiction in only unincorporated areas of King County.  … The City Attorney’s Office is better equipped to handle these cases immediately[.]”

During the year-long period when drug possession was a felony, Manion’s office only prosecuted two possession cases, according to an analysis by city council central staff. That same analysis says that although Davison’s office “has not explicitly stated how they would act upon the authority to charge knowing possession or use of illegal or controlled substances,” a Seattle Municipal Court analysis estimates an additional 700 to 870 cases a year, “based on historical filings before the COVID-19 pandemic” and the state’s own estimate of 12,000 new drug cases annually across the state.

In a letter to the council, the union representing King County Department of Public Defense employees, SEIU 925, called the legislation “an unconscionable abuse by the City Prosecutor, which dismisses solid empirical evidence that the War on Drugs and increased incarceration cause widespread harm throughout our community.

How the new proposals will play out in practice, if they pass, is a matter of significant debate. Opponents say they will empower police to do “stop and frisk” searches and arrest drug users with impunity, clogging up courtrooms and crowding the understaffed county jail. Proponents say the changes will create consequences for people committing crimes and—as Nelson put it in a press statement—”remove any further cause for inaction on the most critical public health and public safety issue of our time.” A third group—let’s call them reluctant proponents—argue that the new laws won’t have much impact, because the city hasn’t prioritized drug cases in the past and shows no sign of changing course now.

In a letter to the council, the union representing King County Department of Public Defense employees, SEIU 925, called the legislation “an unconscionable abuse by the City Prosecutor, which dismisses solid empirical evidence that the War on Drugs and increased incarceration cause widespread harm throughout our community.” Criminalizing drug use at the local level, the letter continued, “would create the same dynamic within SPD which led to the New York Police Department’s ‘stop and frisk’ programs,” which “ultimately led to a class-action lawsuit from public defenders in New York on behalf of their clients.” The letter was signed by all four SEIU chapters in Seattle.

During an online “emergency teach-in” to discuss the proposal on Tuesday, Drug Policy Alliance director Kassandra Frederique said the pressure to re-criminalize drugs in Seattle was part of a nationwide trend toward more punitive approaches to drug use and addiction. “Not only are we criminalizing, or re-litigating, issues that we have decided were inappropriate [for criminalization], we are now creating new crimes in order as a way to deal with the issues at hand,” Frederique said.

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A majority of the City Council would probably agree that criminalizing drugs is not the best approach to the rising number of people using and selling drugs in public. However, the legislation may pass with a slim majority, if Councilmembers Andrew Lewis and Dan Strauss—both up for reelection this year—join Nelson, Pedersen, and Council President Debora Juarez in voting for the law. Both were reportedly still considering their votes this weekend.

Why would council members vote for a law criminalizing drug use in Seattle? Politics. Three council incumbents are up for reelection this year, and two—Andrew Lewis and Dan Strauss—are facing challenges from the right that could push them into voting for the law to avoid handing political fodder to their opponents. (Tammy Morales, in District 2, is also up for reelection but has already said she will vote against the bill). Although neither Strauss nor Lewis has said publicly how they plan to vote—in a recent candidate questionnaire, Strauss told the Seattle Times he was a “maybe” on the law—if they were to vote against the bill, opponents aligned with Davison and Nelson could blame them, and the council generally,  for tying the city attorney’s hands and allowing open drug use to continue. The campaign ads practically write themselves.

While it’s true that the city generally incorporates new state laws into its code, the proposed criminalization bill itself actually breaks from that convention, by picking and choosing which parts of the state law the city should adopt.

On Tuesday, expect to hear the argument that it would be highly unusual for the council not to incorporate new state laws into its municipal code, and the counter-argument that refusing to criminalize drug possession at the local level sends an important message that Seattle’s priorities are different than the state’s.

While it’s true that the city generally incorporates new state laws into its code, the proposed criminalization bill itself actually breaks from that convention, by picking and choosing which parts of the state law the city should adopt. According to the council staff analysis, the ordinance “only adopts some portions of the state bill” because some of the provisions include “work that SPD and CAO are not focused upon.” So the council does have, and is already exercising, discretion when it decides whether to make local laws conform with the state’s.

Even the bill’s proponents have acknowledged that the police and courts are unlikely to prioritize low-level drug cases over more serious misdemeanors, such as domestic violence and DUI; the Seattle Police Department is currently hundreds of officers shy of its hiring goals, and the city attorney’s office, county public defense department, and Seattle Municipal Court are also short-staffed.

The state law encourages prosecutors to refer defendants t diversion and treatment programs, but that would require additional funding beyond what the city has already provided for new adult pre-trial diversion programs. (The funding has been sitting at the Human Services Department, unspent, since the council allocated it in 2021.) The city attorney’s office has said it plans to use those diversion funds, once they’re available, for a different purpose: Taking on cases that would have gone to community court, a therapeutic court from which Davison unilaterally withdrew the city last week.

“Building out the needed infrastructure to be able to address root causes of these issues and get individuals into treatment and services may require time and resources,” the central staff memo notes.

Some—including PubliCola guest columnist Lisa Daugaard, who argues that the outcome of the drug law debate is largely beside the point—are unconvinced that the new law will result in mass arrests, prosecutions, and jail, because the city has already reduced its alliance on punitive strategies, even before the Blake decision forced the legislature to pass a new state law. Mayor Harrell, Daugaard wrote, oversees SPD, “and has gone out of his way to make clear that he has no intention of arresting, jail or referring drug users for prosecution.”

Opponents of the proposed new drug laws say that argument is short-sighted, because priorities can change, but laws are permanent. “It is extremely dangerous precedent for a bill to be passed that criminalizes [drug use] and where our elected officials try to placate advocates and community members by saying that they will that they will be able to manage it,” Frederique said during Tuesday’s teach-in. “Those people are temporary actors. Election happen all the time. And what people will look at is the law.”

City Council, Crime, Drugs, Guest Contributor

Moving Beyond Possession and Public Use: Let’s Be the City That Makes Real Progress on the Drug Crisis
City Councilmembers Alex Pedersen and Sara Nelson; City Attorney Ann Davison

By Lisa Daugaard

Seattle can continue to lead the country toward a productive approach to substance use and related problems. This is true no matter what happens when the City Council votes next week on a proposed ordinance, sponsored by Councilmembers Sara Nelson and Alex Pedersen and supported by City Attorney Ann Davison, creating gross misdemeanors under the Seattle Municipal Code for drug possession and public drug use.

If the ordinance is defeated, its proponents are still correct that we need far more urgency in responding to the drug crisis playing out throughout the city. If it passes, its opponents are still correct that the answer to drug-related problems does not generally lie in jailing and prosecuting people for substance use. Whatever happens next week, the work before us is the same: Take the field-leading models our community has devised to foster recovery for people who are most marginalized and exposed to the legal system, and secure the resources needed for those models to have their full impact.

When responding to problematic drug use, we cannot be satisfied with engagement for its own sake. As necessary as overdose prevention and reversal and preventing disease transmission are, they are not sufficient. We have to tackle how people are living, not just prevent deaths.

As a community, we have long known and broadly agreed on what can work well to respond to individuals who use substances in a problematic way: engagement without judgment; pre-booking diversion and pre-arrest referrals to intensive case management; well-designed low barrier interim and permanent housing options for those who are living unsheltered, as well as long-term case management for people whose use is related to complex trauma and lack of other support systems.

These approaches have been branded under names such as LEAD, Housing First, JustCARE, and harm reduction, but they all share elements of evidence-based, well-researched, trauma-informed care strategies and behavior change theory. Indeed, experts in our midst have quietly been teaching other communities how to implement these approaches, nationally and internationally, for more than a decade.

Seattle led the nation in reducing arrests, jail bookings, and prosecutions for drug possession long before the 2021 Washington Supreme Court Blake decision. The fact that there is an ordinance authorizing arrest, jail and prosecution for an offense does not dictate that it be used in a stupid, counter-productive, and evidence-defying way

What we have never done is bring these approaches to scale. Despite a unanimous City Council resolution in 2019 committing Seattle to make LEAD diversion resources available in all appropriate cases, current funding limits require turning down the majority of appropriate referrals. Nor have we complemented this approach with the housing and income supports many people need to make real breakthroughs. CoLEAD and the JustCARE model, funded by temporary COVID relief dollars, began to fill that gap over the last few years, but their future is uncertain as federal relief funding recedes.

It is absolutely true that, all other things being equal, court cases and criminal charges tend to impede recovery, for complex reasons including stigma, collateral consequences, the challenge of making it to court, and the difficulty of making even well-intentioned lawyers into trauma-informed practitioners. Jail and the inherent trauma it represents, including lack of physical autonomy for people who have often been physically abused, almost always impedes recovery. These should not be the primary strategy or the first resort in our response to problematic drug use. Those objecting to the new proposed ordinance are right to raise these issues.

Yet Seattle led the nation in reducing arrests, jail bookings, and prosecutions for drug possession long before the 2021 Washington Supreme Court Blake decision. The fact that there is an ordinance authorizing arrest, jail and prosecution for an offense does not dictate that it be used in a stupid, counter-productive, and evidence-defying way. We made enormous progress as a community, and developed a consensus approach to these issues, while there was still a valid felony drug possession law in place across the state that was fully available to local officers. Police and prosecutor discretion—and the support of city and county public officials and law enforcement leaders—meant that, while the authority to jail and prosecute existed, it was rarely used.

Mayor Bruce Harrell, who has prioritized action on conditions downtown and in the Chinatown/International District, oversees the Seattle Police Department, and has gone out of his way to make clear that he has no intention of arresting, jail or referring drug users for prosecution. And the authors of the new proposed ordinance making drug possession and public use a local crime were not even proposing criminalizing simple drug possession in Seattle until Governor Jay Inslee pressured the legislature to pass a law creating these crimes statewide. It’s regrettable that lawmakers removed the option of local choice, which would have resulted in de facto legalization of possession and private use in Seattle and King County. But it’s worth recalling that, before Inslee’s choice drove us down this road, Davison, Nelson, and Pedersen, to their credit, were championing only a very narrow role for the legal system.

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We can use best practices with or without the proposed law. In six months, for example, it will be far more important whether the multi-partner Third Avenue Project is still going on—and the 400-plus people who use drugs, live unsheltered, and are having a problematic impact in the Third Avenue corridor received supportive housing and intensive case management— than whether there is formal jurisdiction for the City Attorney to prosecute these two, of many, offenses that people who use substances often commit.

Drug possession and public use are now gross misdemeanors across the state—including in Seattle. Nothing local officials can do now can formally decriminalize either. It’s evident that some local leaders feel that taking an enforcement role completely off the table sends a message that serious drug issues are unimportant or low priority, and it’s also evident that other local officials cannot stomach any steps that formally invoke the prospect of criminal system consequences for what are fundamentally health and wellness issues.

It’s important to recognize that defeating the ordinance would not in itself represent a progressive approach to drug issues. Let’s fight hardest for what will matter most: whether we actually mobilize the community-based care approach that most people in Seattle support, go and get our people, demand the housing and income support that people need to recover, and provide the wrap-around care without which there is nearly zero chance for stabilization and healing. As it stands, regardless of whether this ordinance passes, we aren’t close to scaling the plan we need—even though we know exactly what it is.

Lisa Daugaard is the Co-Executive Director for Purpose Dignity Action (PDA) (formerly the Public Defender Association), a longtime drug policy reform organization that provides project management for local LEAD diversion initiatives, technical support for other jurisdictions implementing pre-booking diversion models, and partners on the JustCARE and Third Avenue Project initiatives.

City Council, Crime, Drugs, legislature, Mayor Harrell

Proposal to Make Public Drug Use a Misdemeanor Unlikely to Have Much Visible Impact
City Councilmembers Alex Pedersen and Sara Nelson; City Attorney Ann Davison

By Erica C. Barnett

Seattle City Councilmembers Sara Nelson and Alex Pedersen, along with City Attorney Ann Davison, proposed legislation on Thursday that would make public consumption of illegal drugs, other than cannabis, a misdemeanor, punishable by up to 90 days in jail and a maximum fine of $1,000.

The legislation comes in the context of the state legislature’s failure to address drug possession in the session that ended Sunday. In 2021, the state supreme court issued a called State v. Blake, which decriminalized simple drug possession—previously a felony. In response, lawmakers passed a temporary law that made possession a misdemeanor, rather than a felony, giving themselves until July of this year to come up with a permanent replacement. Gov. Jay Inslee is expected to call a special session on the issue next month.

Meanwhile, cities around the state are already proposing their own local laws criminalizing drug possession that would go in effect if the legislature fails to take action by July.

The proposal in Seattle does not directly address drug possession. Instead, it focuses on the kind of visible, public use that grabs headlines—people smoking meth or fentanyl on park benches, in doorways, and on public transit. At a press conference announcing the legislation on Thursday, Davison, Nelson, and Pedersen all framed public drug use as a public safety issue and suggested that their legislation would send a signal to drug users that they could no longer use in public spaces.

“Enough is enough. We need to reclaim our public spaces—all of them. We need to intervene in the lives of people who are suffering and to do that we must see them and say that what they’re doing in public is not okay for them, or for us collectively.”—City Attorney Ann Davison

“Our buses are unhealthy to use. Our transit centers feel unsafe to wait in, and people walking down the street feel afraid,” Davison said. “Enough is enough. We need to reclaim our public spaces—all of them. We need to intervene in the lives of people who are suffering and to do that we must see them and say that what they’re doing in public is not okay for them, or for us collectively.”

Nelson said the “economic revitalization of downtown” depended on “giv[ing] our officers a tool to interrupt” public drug consumption. Workers “are afraid to ride public transit to work or walk to their office past people smoking fentanyl on the street,” she said. “Meanwhile, summer’s around the corner, and parents want to be able to take their part their kids to the park without people doing drugs right in front of them.”

Despite all the tough talk, the legislation—if it passes—is unlikely to have much of an impact on public drug use downtown or elsewhere. (Notably, although all of its supporters focused on mitigating harm to children, the legislation is silent on private drug use by parents or caregivers, which causes far more harm to actual children than walking past a stranger smoking fentanyl in the park).

For one thing, as Davison acknowledged, the Seattle Police Department doesn’t have enough officers to enforce the drug laws that are already on the books, including laws against dealing and trafficking. For another, the downtown jail isn’t booking people on low-level misdemeanors, and won’t be starting any time soon—just last month, the county moved 100 people from the downtown jail in because of understaffing.

“I recognize that [SPD is] down 30 percent of their force, and we need to make sure that they’ve got adequate staffing levels to be able to improve the public safety of people and businesses across the city,” Nelson said. “What I’m worried about right now is getting the basics right, and making explicit that we don’t allow the public use of illegal drugs.”

As she did during Harrell’s executive order announcement, Nelson distinguished between “deadly” illegal drugs and alcohol, supporting Harrell’s proposal to legalize “sip and strolls” events where people participating in downtown events can consume alcohol on sidewalks and other public spaces. Prior to the pandemic, alcohol use killed 140,000 Americans every year, according to the CDC, and alcohol consumption as well as binge drinking has only increased since then.

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Davison said she hoped to work with “our diversion partners to get people into treatment. … The goal is always recovery—to disrupt antisocial behavior, to encourage people into treatment, and to make our streets parks and buses safer.”

The city’s primary pre-filing diversion program, LEAD, is not primarily focused on putting people in treatment as an alternative to jail; instead, it provides intensive case management based on a person’s needs, with a focus on harm reduction.

The co-director of the organization that runs LEAD, Purpose Dignity Action (formerly the Public Defender Association), said Thursday that the legislation “could be far worse, as we can see from the bill that was passed by the Democratically controlled Senate.” That bill made drug possession a gross misdemeanor, punishable by up to 364 days in jail, with a treatment alternative that carried harsh penalties for “failure to comply” with mandatory treatment.

“Aside from using the criminal system for what are fundamentally health issues, this legislation doesn’t inflict any additional problems or harm,” Daugaard said.

“I want to see that this legislation was created with appropriate input from impacted communities, law enforcement and first responders, and providers of triage and treatment. Another policy tool helping people accept services may enhance our efforts, but recreating the war on drugs would crater them.”—Mayor Bruce Harrell

In a statement, City Councilmember Lisa Herbold, who chairs the council’s public safety committee, said she would “not consider a local Blake decision fix or any local drug laws” until the legislature has had a chance to meet in special session and come up with a fix. … I remain committed to Seattle’s approach, as outlined as recently as last week in Mayor Bruce Harrell’s Executive Order, to work to ensure people struggling with addiction get the treatment they need.”

As we reported earlier this month, Harrell’s executive order includes support for a new pilot contingency management program that will provide incentives for drug users who abstain from their drug of choice; it also expands the fire department’s Health One program to include a new overdose response unit.

In a statement, Harrell said that although “[i]t is never acceptable for people to smoke fentanyl or consume illegal drugs on Seattle sidewalks and public spaces… it is essential that we advance evidence-based policies, programs, and services that help those in need get the treatment they deserve–and continue focusing on arrests of those dealing or taking advantage of people in crisis, both of which are critical to restoring feelings of safety downtown and for all Seattle neighbors.”

“I want to see that this legislation was created with appropriate input from impacted communities, law enforcement and first responders, and providers of triage and treatment,” Harrell continued. “Another policy tool helping people accept services may enhance our efforts, but recreating the war on drugs would crater them.”

City Council, homelessness, Transportation

Turns Out the City Will Remove Anti-Homeless Eco-Blocks After All—But Only For Their Own Projects

By Erica C. Barnett

On Tuesday, Seattle Department of Transportation crews removed some of the dozens of concrete “eco-blocks,” including many originally installed by Fremont Brewing to prevent homeless people from setting up tents or parking their RVs there, that abut a patch of mulched dirt known as the Leary Triangle.

They did not, however, remove any of the dozens of blocks that still surround the brewery, which is owned by Seattle City Councilmember Sara Nelson and her husband Matt Lincecum. The blocks have sprung up all around the city to prevent people who live in their vehicles from parking in industrial areas, which are the only parts of the city where RVs and oversized vehicles can park overnight. Fremont’s eco-blocks occupy two full block faces and prevent anyone, including neighborhood residents and visitors, from parking on either street without being in the roadway.

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Placing obstructions in the public right-of-way, including sidewalks, curb space, and parking strips, is unambiguously illegal under the Seattle Municipal Code, which authorizes the city to order property owners to remove obstructions at their own expense. However, the city has chosen not to enforce the law; when PubliCola asked about the proliferation of eco-blocks last year, SDOT director Greg Spotts said the department wouldn’t prioritize removing eco-blocks, a point he reiterated later on Twitter.

SDOT is also a partner in the city’s Unified Care Team, a group of city workers that removes homeless encampments and RVs from public spaces.

A spokeswoman for SDOT said the department removed the blocks “as a part of a larger City of Seattle project to reopen Leary Triangle.” After the city is done with its work on site, she said, the area where the blocks once stood will become a four-hour parking zone, to “make it easier for people visiting Leary Triangle and nearby businesses to park for a short period of time.” Removing the eco-blocks from the surrounding streets would create more parking spaces, but turning the area around the new dog park into a four-hour parking zone will have the effect of permanently banishing people who live in RVs or other vehicles.

PubliCola asked SDOT why they didn’t remove the other eco-blocks that surround Fremont Brewing, since they, too, are preventing “people visiting Leary Triangle and nearby businesses” from parkingfor any period. “The concrete blocks were removed in this location due to construction from a larger project to reopen Leary Triangle,” the spokeswoman said. “The circumstances are unique to this location.”