Tag: soda tax

City Council, City Hall, Featured, Health, homelessness, housing, Mayor Durkan, Morning Crank

Council Overrides Mayor’s Soda Tax Veto, More Shakeups at the City, and Reframing the RV Crackdown

1. For those keeping track of the wave of departures from the mayor’s office and city departments, there’s a big one coming: Deputy Mayor David Moseley, who has been with Mayor Jenny Durkan’s office since the beginning of her administration (and who is married to Durkan’s longtime associate and frequent city consultant Anne Fennessy) is reportedly leaving at the end of the year. Moseley, the former head of Washington State Ferries, came out of retirement to take the job in 2017, so his departure isn’t a huge surprise, but it could engender a shift of power in the mayor’s office, depending on whether Durkan decides to appoint a new deputy (Moseley is one of three deputy mayors, along with Mike Fong and Shefali Ranganathan) or redistribute his responsibilities. Among other issue areas, Moseley oversees the mayor’s response to homelessness.

Durkan’s policy director, Edie Gilliss, recently left the mayor’s office for a job at the city’s Office of Sustainability and the Environment; her replacement, Adrienne Thompson, was previously Durkan’s labor policy advisor. Kiersten Grove, who advises the mayor on transportation, will leave Durkan’s office next month to become deputy director of the city’s Department of Finance and Administrative Services. And Michael Shiosaki—a Seattle Parks division director who’s perhaps better known as former mayor Ed Murray’s husband—reportedly lost his job at Parks last week, and will be transferring to a position at Seattle Public Utilities.

Support The C Is for Crank
Sorry to interrupt your reading, but THIS IS IMPORTANT. The C Is for Crank is a one-person operation, supported entirely—and I mean entirely— by generous contributions from readers like you. If you enjoy the breaking news, commentary, and deep dives on issues that matter to you, please support this work by donating a few bucks a month to keep this reader-supported site going. I can’t do this work without support from readers like you. Your $5, $10, and $20 monthly donations allow me to do this work as my full-time job, so please become a sustaining supporter now. If you don’t wish to become a monthly contributor, you can always make a one-time donation via PayPal, Venmo (Erica-Barnett-7) or by mailing your contribution to P.O. Box 14328, Seattle, WA 98104. Thank you for keeping The C Is for Crank going and growing. I’m truly grateful for your support.

Meanwhile, the homelessness division of the city’s Human Services Department—whose director, Tiffany Washington, is leaving for a position at the Department of Education and Early Learning next month—just got a new director: Diana Salazar, the former director of Imagine Los Angeles, an organization that helps homeless families in LA with case management and mentorship, started this morning. HSD director Jason Johnson’s announcement to staff on Friday reportedly coincided with the resignation of Ali Peters, the city’s planning and performance director for homelessness, who just came to the office in May. Jackie St. Louis, who headed up the Navigation Team and reportedly applied for the director position after Washington said she was stepping down, left last month.

The churn at the homelessness division comes as the city and county prepare to consolidate countywide homelessness operations into a single regional agency, with many city jobs moving over to that agency. According to city documents, the new regional authority will take over all programs having to do with homelessness prevention, outreach and engagement, diversion, day and hygiene centers, shelters and tiny house villages, rapid rehousing, transitional housing, data collection, and services associated with permanent supportive housing. The city would retain control of a handful of homelessness-related responsibilities, including the Navigation Team and building permanent supportive housing.

 

Image via Wikimedia Commons.

2. After a tense hearing last week over Mayor Durkan’s legislation that would allow the city to confiscate derelict vehicles and fine anyone who “allows” another person to live in one, city council members indicated this morning that the bill is unlikely to pass without significant amendments. Council member Mike O’Brien, who has proposed helping people living in RVs by creating “safe lots” for them to park en masse, said he would propose using surplus budget authority to create a $100,000 fund to assist people displaced from vehicles the city deems uninhabitable whether or not the council ultimately passes the underlying legislation.

“I asked the mayor’s folks last Friday, are there spaces available right now? Could we identify places for people to go that are 24/7 if we were to say you can’t live in this RV? I didn’t get a ‘yes’ answer.”—Council member Sally Bagshaw 

The mayor’s legislation, which would require RV “landlords” to pay restitution directly to their former tenants, does not guarantee payment and includes no funding to increase access to enhanced shelter or “tiny house village” encampments, which allow people to remain with their partners, pets, and possessions and are basically always at full capacity. Instead, the mayor’s staff said that vehicular residents displaced by the program would be shelter and services by the city’s Navigation Team, and acknowledged that just 10 to 15 percent of RV residents “accept” those services. Continue reading “Council Overrides Mayor’s Soda Tax Veto, More Shakeups at the City, and Reframing the RV Crackdown” →

City Council, Health, Mayor Durkan, Morning Crank, Taxes, Transportation

Afternoon Crank: Mayor Vetoes Soda Tax Bill, Council Plans to Override, and Streetcar Faces New Hurdles
Image via Pixabay.

1. On Friday, as I first reported on Twitter, Mayor Durkan vetoed council legislation that creates a dedicated fund for excess revenues from the sweetened beverage tax, and stipulates that this money can only be used for new or expanded programs benefiting the low-income communities most heavily impacted by the tax.

In her veto letter, Durkan reiterated her claim that by stipulating what the tax can be spent on, the council is “cutting” funding for previously existing programs that Durkan funded last year by using revenues from the tax to supplant general-fund dollars that had previously paid for the programs and re-allocating those general fund dollars for other purposes. “I agree that the Sweetened Beverage Tax is regressive and should be used only for the purposes set forth in the adopting ordinance, and to further expand important City investments for our most vulnerable population,” Durkan wrote. “Every one of the programs funded in the adopted and endorsed budget met these requirements. Council has now changed its mind and only wants to fund new programs.”

In fact, the council’s legislation will “require that all SBT revenues be used to expand existing programs or create new programs that align with the spending guidance” (emphasis added).

“I think the veto is really more about a statement against this mayor wanting to see her executive power curbed, as opposed to the substance of the issue.” – Council member Lorena Gonzalez

At its briefing meeting this morning, the council made plans to override the mayor’s veto this coming Monday. (Overriding a mayoral veto requires a 6-vote council majority; the legislation passed 7-1, with Abel Pacheco voting “no” and Debora Juarez absent).  Because the council is about to go on its annual recess, next Monday’s meeting is the only opportunity the council will have to veto the bill within the 30-day window specified under city law.

Council president Bruce Harrell, one of seven council members who voted for the soda-tax legislation, called Durkan’s veto “just a complete waste of time,” adding, “I’m not sure of the substantive reasons to do this, other than to make us revote a vote that was not even a narrow vote.” Council member Lorena Gonzalez added, “I’m disturbed by some of the rhetoric coming out of the mayor’s office, but also her agencies,” about the impact of the legislation. “I think the veto is really more about a statement against this mayor wanting to see her executive power curbed, as opposed to the substance of the issue. … It’s clear that the sugary beverage tax has always been intended … to ensure that the dollars were going to be spect in exactly the manner that we have now indicated that they should be spent.” Continue reading “Afternoon Crank: Mayor Vetoes Soda Tax Bill, Council Plans to Override, and Streetcar Faces New Hurdles” →

City Council, Equity, featuredslider, human services, Mayor Durkan, Politics

“We Are Intentionally Tying Our Hands”: Council Passes Soda Tax Spending Plan with 7-Vote Majority

 

The simmering tension between the mayor’s office and the city council boiled over this afternoon, as the council passed (and Mayor Jenny Durkan immediately vowed to veto) legislation sponsored by council member Mike O’Brien that creates  a dedicated fund for excess revenues from the sweetened beverage tax, and stipulating that this money can only be used for new or expanded programs benefiting the low-income communities most heavily impacted by the tax. The vote was a veto-proof 7-1, with Debora Juarez (D5) absent and interim District 4 council member Abel Pacheco voting no.

“We are intentionally tying our hands,” O’Brien said Monday afternoon, by “making a clear policy statement that this money should be off limits except for the stated purposes” laid out in the legislation.

This debate has a long history. In 2017,  the council passed the controversial tax with the stipulation that the revenues from the tax would be poured back into programs promoting equitable food access in the communities most impacted by the tax—low-income communities and communities of color that lack access to affordable, healthy food. One year later, with soda tax revenues coming in higher than anticipated, Mayor Jenny Durkan proposed (and the council approved) a budget that used those “extra” dollars to fund food-access and education programs that had previously been funded through the city’s general fund. The budget swap came with a caveat: By 2019, the council said, Durkan needed to come up with a plan to ensure that soda tax revenues were used to fund healthy-food initiatives, not used to free up funding for other mayoral priorities.

Durkan expressed her “disappointment in the City Council’s vote to pass legislation that creates a significant hole in the City’s budget and cuts funding for critical low-income programs”

That didn’t happen, which brings us to the latest impasse. Last week, Durkan’s departments of Human Services and Education and Early Learning sent letters to providers warning them that the council planned to “cut” their funding. As I reported, dozens of service providers responded with letters rejecting this framing, condemning the mayor for (as they saw it) holding their funding hostage to a political battle over revenues that shouldn’t have been used to supplant general-fund dollars in the first place. On Monday, representatives from these groups showed up at city hall to support O’Brien’s legislation. For Durkan “to end funding for basic needs and services is the unthinkable and simply cruel,” El Centro de la Raza human services director Denise Perez Lally told the council—an especially blunt, but by no means isolated, assessment of Durkan’s position.

At the same time—and completely unbeknownst to the council—the Senior Action Coalition, a group that represents Chinese American seniors with limited English proficiency, showed up in force to oppose O’Brien’s legislation. It was unclear how many of the dozens of seniors who filled the council chambers were familiar with the details of the proposal. Several spoke generally, in English, in favor of preserving funding for food banks, but there were no translators for the non-English speakers in the crowd. “We weren’t told they were coming,” a surprised-looking council staffer said. Tanika Thompson, a food access organizer with Got Green, addressed the group directly during public comment. “I want you to know that the mayor has the power to fund your programs and is working on her budget right now,” Thompson said. “This is a scare tactic to pit our united organizations against each other.”

Pacheco, who was appointed to serve the remainder of former council member Rob Johnson’s position back in April, tried to introduce an amendment that would push back the effective date of the legislation until 2021, arguing that because the council “endorsed” a tentative 2020 budget last year as part of the normal budget process, any changes now would amount to “cuts.” (This is exactly the argument Durkan has made, arguing that O’Brien’s legislation “directly cuts” programs funded through 2020 in the endorsed version of the budget.) In fact, the mayor proposes a new budget every year; the “endorsed” second-year budget always changes—sometimes dramatically—based on a mayor’s priorities, available funding, and spending obligations created during the intervening year, making this an unusual and arguably tenuous argument that ignores the ordinary push-and-pull of the annual budget process.

“I don’t think that those of us who are sitting here now imagined a world in which we would be put in this unfortunate situation of manufactured division among communities of color and disadvantaged communities.” — Council member Lorena Gonzalez

After his amendments failed, Pacheco apologized to human services providers on behalf of the council for failing (before he was appointed) to secure long-term funding for the programs Durkan moved out of the general fund last year. This prompted a stinging rebuke from council member Lorena Gonzalez, who said, “The only apology that I’m going to give to the community is that we didn’t catch this when we passed it back in 2017, because it has always been our intent to have this be a dedicated revenue source.” Back then, Gonzalez continued, “I don’t think that those of us who are sitting here now imagined a world in which we would be put in this unfortunate situation of manufactured division among communities of color and disadvantaged communities and the pumping out of terribly inaccurate information that has resulted  in creating a tremendous amount of fear in community-based organizations.”

In her statement after the vote, Durkan expressed “disappointment in the City Council’s vote to pass legislation that creates a significant hole in the City’s budget and cuts funding for critical low-income programs” and promised to veto the legislation “in the coming days.” If the council’s seven-vote majority stands, the council will be able to easily override the veto (which requires a six-member council supermajority.)
A bit of trivia for the wonks: In the past ten years, there have only been two mayoral vetoes, both by former mayor Mike McGinn. The first, of former council member Tim Burgess’ ordinance banning “aggressive panhandling,” was successful; the second, of agreements allowing the waterfront tunnel to move forward, was not. The lone vote supporting the mayor on the tunnel veto? Then-freshman city council member Mike O’Brien.
Support The C Is for Crank
Sorry to interrupt your reading, but THIS IS IMPORTANT. The C Is for Crank is a one-person operation, supported entirely—and I mean entirely— by generous contributions from readers like you. If you enjoy the breaking news, commentary, and deep dives on issues that matter to you, please support this work by donating a few bucks a month to keep this reader-supported site going. I can’t do this work without support from readers like you. Your allow me to do this work as my full-time job, so please become a sustaining supporter now. If you don’t wish to become a monthly contributor, you can always make a one-time donation via PayPal, Venmo (Erica-Barnett-7) or by mailing your contribution to P.O. Box 14328, Seattle, WA 98104. Thank you for keeping The C Is for Crank going and growing. I’m truly grateful for your support.
City Council, City Hall, Equity, headliner, human services, Mayor Durkan

Will Durkan’s High-Stakes Gamble With Soda Tax Revenues Pay Off?

On Monday, the city council is poised to pass legislation sponsored by council member Mike O’Brien that would require any unanticipated revenues from the sweetened beverage tax (SBT) to be spent on their intended purpose—increasing funding for healthy food programs in the low-income communities most impacted by the soda tax.

Mayor Jenny Durkan has portrayed the move as a “cut” to programs that have historically been funded through the city’s general fund, but which the mayor’s 2019 budget started funding with the new tax, allowing her to use the “excess” general fund money to pay for other things. After Durkan and her department heads contacted human services providers last week to let them know that their funding could be eliminated if they didn’t help defeat O’Brien’s legislation, dozens of organizations—and the city’s own soda tax advisory board—rebelled, sending emails to Durkan and the council denouncing the hardball move. UPDATE: As of Sunday night, the groups opposing Durkan’s position—and supporting the idea that soda tax revenues should be spent on new or expanded programs, not used to backfill funding for existing ones—included groups representing the city’s farmers markets, human service providers, advocates for equitable investment in South Seattle, the Sweetened Beverage Tax Community Advisory Board, and 27 food banks.

Council member Mike O’Brien proposed the legislation after Mayor Jenny Durkan balanced her budget last year by taking away $6 million in general-fund spending on healthy-food initiatives (like food banks, Fresh Bucks, and school-lunch-related programs) and replacing that money with soda tax revenues; Durkan’s budget switcheroo went against the intent of the soda tax by using soda tax revenues to fund the city’s existing healthy food programs rather than expanding them or creating new ones. Effectively, Durkan’s budgetary sleight-of-hand eliminated the race and social justice compromise embedded in the tax: Instead of reinvesting the tax in the hardest-hit communities, the new budget maintained those programs at existing levels. Put another way, a regressive tax with a race and social justice component became just a regressive tax. O’Brien’s legislation would prevent this from happening in the future, by stating that (as a council staff memo puts it) “no SBT revenues could be used to supplant (i.e. take the place of) General Fund (GF) monies or other funding sources.”

In a letter to human services providers urging them to testify against O’Brien’s legislation Monday, interim Human Services Department director Jason Johnson Johnson wrote, “Your contract is in jeopardy because of a recent Seattle Council legislative action.”

Although O’Brien made clear a year ago that he planned to propose this legislation (giving the mayor’s office ample time to make their case against it), Durkan didn’t respond publicly until this week, when she sent out a blistering press release “denounc[ing]” and “condemn[ing]” the council for “a proposed plan … that would cut $6.3 million funding they had approved for critical programs that provide nutrition assistance, child care for struggling families, and nursing care for low-income pregnant women.” (Durkan’s public statement followed a letter her budget director, Ben Noble, sent to the council making many of the same points late last month.)

Durkan’s press release went on to enumerate some of the previously existing programs that the city, under her budget, began funding with soda-tax revenues instead of general fund dollars last year, including the Fresh Bucks food voucher program, food banks, child care assistance, and the Nurse Family Partnership. (The council approved the budget 8-1. Durkan’s letter cites this vote to suggest that the the council supported this specific aspect of the budget, which many of them did not).

Council members O’Brien, Lisa Herbold, Lorena Gonzalez, and Teresa Mosqueda responded with a letter of their own, arguing that the legislation merely codifies what the law already said—that new soda tax revenues should go toward new programs promoting healthy food, not be used to supplant general fund revenues used to fund existing programs. “Community advocates led the fight to ensure sweetened beverage tax revenue have a direct community benefit for the most impacted community by this regressive tax,” the council members wrote. “[T]he very programs the Mayor claims would be ‘cut’ should see increases in funding to expand those programs in the Mayor’s proposed 2020 Budget, assuming she does not chose to once again raid those funds for alternate priorities.”

Support The C Is for Crank
Sorry to interrupt your reading, but THIS IS IMPORTANT. The C Is for Crank is a one-person operation, supported entirely—and I mean entirely— by generous contributions from readers like you. If you enjoy the breaking news, commentary, and deep dives on issues that matter to you, please support this work by donating a few bucks a month to keep this reader-supported site going. I can’t do this work without support from readers like you. Your $5, $10, and $20 monthly donations allow me to do this work as my full-time job, so please become a sustaining supporter now. If you don’t wish to become a monthly contributor, you can always make a one-time donation via PayPal, Venmo (Erica-Barnett-7) or by mailing your contribution to P.O. Box 14328, Seattle, WA 98104. Thank you for keeping The C Is for Crank going and growing. I’m truly grateful for your support.

Durkan’s lobbying efforts didn’t stop at the council; her deputy mayor, Mike Fong, directed interim Human Services Department Director Jason Johnson and Department of Education and Early Learning director Dwane Chappelle to send letters to the agencies whose operations were funded by the tax last year informing them “that they should commence contin[g]ency planning as soon as possible” and urging them to show up and testify against the proposal during the council’s public comment period on Monday. In his letter to providers, Johnson wrote, “Your contract is in jeopardy because of a recent Seattle Council legislative action.” (Bolds in original.)

Johnson’s letter continued:

Last November, the adopted and endorsed 2019-2020 Biennium Budget, passed by an 8-1 vote and signed by the Mayor, allocated Sweetened Beverage Tax revenues to support food and education related assistance programs. The law currently permits soda tax revenues to be used for food and nutrition programs, education and child-based programs, job retraining and placement programs for workers adversely impacted by the tax. Unfortunately, the Council has now changed its mind and would rather have this $6.3M in revenue support unspecified new programs next year while providing no funding to back-fill the cuts to currently funded programs.

This legislation is scheduled for the vote of Full Council at its Monday, July 22 meeting, which starts at 2:00 p.m. Councilmembers will take public testimony on the legislation before final action.

The effort appears to have backfired. Instead of agreeing to show up and lobby on the mayor’s behalf, the Seattle Human Services Coalition and Got Green, an organization that fights displacement and promotes economic opportunity and equitable investment in South Seattle, wrote letters of their own denouncing the mayor’s tactics. UPDATE: Four more organizations representing farmers’ markets, including the Pike Place Market Foundation and the Seattle Farmers Market Association, have signed a separate letter condemning the mayor for blaming any future budget cuts by her office—which writes the budget—on the council. To do so, the groups wrote, “assumes that we are uninformed of the City’s budget process and the funding sources used to support the totality of our programs.”

“If the mayor does not propose funding in the 2020 budget from a source other than [Sweetened Beverage Tax], as your Council Bill would direct, it would be the mayor who is proposing the cut, not Council.” —Letter from the Seattle Human Services Coalition about Durkan’s response to the council’s soda tax legislation

The Human Services Coalition, which represents nonprofit human services providers, wrote that they are “disappointed by the communications from HSD, DEEL, and the Mayor’s Office to our organizations. … Characterizing this legislation and its impact as ‘jeopardizing’ 2020 contracts to current, successful services is at best misleading.

“It is the Mayor’s role in our three-branch system to implement policies which City Council legislates, and so up to the mayor if she will propose cutting the services instead of identifying an alternate fund source from the $6 billion annual revenue that comes into the City of Seattle.  If the mayor does not propose funding in the 2020 budget from a source other than SBT, as your Council Bill would direct, it would be the mayor who is proposing the cut, not Council.”

“It is entirely in the Mayor’s power, and in fact, is her responsibility, to find an appropriate, more stable funding source for the programs where SBT revenues were used to supplant general fund dollars.”—Letter from local farmers’ market organizations

Separately, Got Green urged its members and supporters to show up Monday to support the legislation and prevent Durkan from “pull[ing] millions of dollars that the council and previous mayor had promised for Food and Early Childhood Education programs and dump[ing] it in the general fund (where it becomes impossible to track and she can spend it on whatever she prioritizes.”

The email calls Johnson’s letter to providers an “ultimatum that organizations will have funding reduced unless they show up at a council meeting on Monday to provide public testimony against the ordinance to protect Food Security and Early Education Dollars.”

“Efforts to portray this legislation and its impact as causing funding cuts to organizations in POC and low income communities is not only misleading, but intentionally deceptive,” Got Green’s letter continues. “As community-based organizations working tirelessly to serve vulnerable Seattle residents, most are allied and will refuse to take your bait in attempting to pit our organizations and our issues against each other in the name of scarce funding and funding cuts.”

The farmers’ markets’ letter notes that the soda tax is an unpredictable funding source (increasing when soda consumption is up and decreasing when it is down) that should be used for one-time programs, not to fund ongoing needs that would ordinarily be paid for by the more stable general fund. “In order for programs to establish themselves, show impact, and grow to meet the rising need for food security in the City of Seattle, reliable and consistent sources of funding for these critical programs are needed,” their letter says. “It is entirely in the Mayor’s power, and in fact, is her responsibility, to find an appropriate, more stable funding source for the programs where SBT revenues were used to supplant general fund dollars.”

The mayor’s office has confirmed that she plans to veto the legislation, which means it will eventually need the support of a veto-proof six-member majority to override her veto even if it passes with just five votes on Monday. If the council does decide to call the mayor’s bluff, it will mark a major shift in council-mayor relations: Although this council has frequently fought with Durkan over spending, they’ve typically gone along in the end—voting, for example, to kill the controversial “head tax,” which Durkan opposed, after passing it last year. Lately, council members (particularly Gonzalez, Mosqueda, and Herbold) have been pushing back on Durkan more forcefully—including last week, when the three called on the mayor to reopen police contract negotiations in light of a judge’s finding that the city is partially out of compliance with federally mandated reforms.

The council’s soda tax legislation passed out of committee unanimously, with five votes, on July 10. I’m calling around to council offices and will update this post if I find out more about how the remaining council members plan to vote.

City Council, Development, Equity, Historic Preservation, Mayor Durkan, Parks, Taxes

City Budget Roundup, Part 1: Soda, Short-Term Rentals, and Legacy Businesses

I’m leaving town just in time for election day this year (one more year, and it’ll be a trend), but before I do, I wanted to give a quick rundown of what’s happening with the city budget—specifically, what changes council members have proposed to Mayor Jenny Durkan’s budget plan, which holds the line on homelessness spending and includes a couple of controversial funding swaps that reduce potential funding for programs targeting low-income communities. None of these proposals have been passed yet, and the council has not started publicly discussing the cuts it would make to the mayor’s budget to fund any of their proposed new spends; this is just a guide to what council members are thinking about as they move through the budget process.,

This list is by no means comprehensive—the list of the council’s proposed budget changes runs to dozens of pages. It’s just a list of items that caught my eye, and which could cue up budget changes or future legislation in the weeks and months ahead. The budget process wraps up right before Thanksgiving, but the discussions council members are having now could lead to additional new laws—or constrain the mayor’s ability to spend money the council allocates, via provisos that place conditions on that spending—well into the coming year.

Sweetened Beverage Tax 

As I reported on Twitter (and Daniel Beekman reported in the Times), council member Mike O’Brien has expressed frustration at Mayor Jenny Durkan for using higher-than-expected revenues from the sugar-sweetened beverage tax, which is supposed to pay for healthy food initiatives in neighborhoods that are most impacted by both the tax and health problems such as diabetes and obesity, to balance out the budget as a whole. In a bit of budgetary sleight-of-hand, Durkan’s plan takes away general-fund revenues that were paying for those programs and replaces them with the “extra” soda tax revenues, which flatlines spending on healthy-food initiatives (like food banks, Fresh Bucks, and school-lunch-related programs) aimed at reducing consumption of unhealthy food… like soda.

“The intent was pretty clear when we passed the legislation last year about how the funding would be spent,” O’Brien said last week. “What we saw in this year’s budget was [a proposal] that may have technically met the letter of it, but certainly not the spirit.”

O’Brien’s proposal would create a separate fund for soda-tax proceeds and stipulate that the city should use the money from the tax in accordance with the recommendations of the advisory board that was appointed for that purpose, rather than reallocating them among the programs the tax is supposed to fund, as Durkan’s budget also does. (See chart above). The idea is to protect the soda tax from being used to help pay for general budget needs in future years, and to ensure that the city follows the recommendations of its own soda tax advisory group.

Airbnb Tax

When the city passed a local tax on short-term rentals like Airbnbs, the legislation explicitly said that $5 million of the proceeds were to be spent on community-led equitable development projects through the city’s Equitable Development Initiative. This year, state legislators passed a statewide tax that replaced Seattle’s local legislation, but council members say the requirement didn’t go away. Nonetheless, Durkan’s budget proposal stripped the EDI of more than $1 million a year, redirecting those funds to pay for city staff and consultants, prompting council members including O’Brien, Lisa Herbold, and council president Bruce Harrell to propose two measures restoring the funding back to the promised $5 million level and creating a separate equitable development fund that would include “explicit restrictions” requiring that the first $5 million generated by the tax go toward EDI projects, not consultants or overhead.

“I think the mayor did this intentionally,” O’Brien said last week. “I don’t think she doesn’t like the equitable development initiative—I think she’s just struggling to make the budget balance—but this is a priority. We’ve seen with the sweetened beverage and the short-term rental tax that …  when we say we are going to impose a new revenue stream and here’s how we’re going to dedicate it, and then less than a year later someone says we’re going to dedicate it a different way, I think that is highly problematic on a much larger scale than just these programs.”

The council appeared likely to reject a separate, tangentially related proposal by council member Rob Johnson to exempt all short-term rental units that existed prior to September 2017, when the council first adopted rules regulating short-term rentals, from the new rule restricting the number of units any property owner could operate to a maximum of two. Currently, this exemption only applies to short-term rental units downtown and some units in Capitol Hill and First Hill; by providing the same exemption to short-term rentals across the city, Johnson said, the council could provide some certainty that the city would actually bring in $10.5 million in annual revenues, which is what the state projected and what Durkan assumed in her 2019 budget.

O’Brien, who drafted the original short-term rental regulations, suggested Durkan had jumped the gun by assuming the state’s projections were right before the legislation had even taken effect. “Typically, we try to be conservative when we have new revenue sources,” he said. Sally Bagshaw, who represents downtown and Belltown, said she had heard from constituents who bought downtown condos as retirement homes who told her their buildings have turned into 24/7 party hotels with few permanent residents. “The idea of opening this up just for budget reasons is disturbing,” Bagshaw said.”

Totem poles

Photograph by Rick Shu via Wikimedia Commons

As Crosscut has reported, local Native American leaders want the city to remove the totem poles erected in Victor Steinbrueck Park, because they have nothing to do with the Coast Salish people who have long populated the area in and around what is now Seattle. Other totem poles in Seattle, including the Tlinget pole in Pioneer Square, are similarly controversial. Council member Debora Juarez, a member of the Blackfeet Nation, is sponsoring an item that would direct the city’s Office of Arts and Culture to address the issue—not by simply removing the offending poles (which is controversial among some historic preservationists and Pike Place Market advocates) but by reviewing and making recommendations about all the Native American art on all city-owned land in Seattle. In response to Juarez’s proposal, budget chair Sally Bagshaw cautioned that she didn’t “want to get bogged down” in a massive study if the problem of offensive or inappropriate art could be addressed on a case by case basis “when they come to our attention. Otherwise,” Bagshaw continued, “I can imagine someone [stalling the process by] saying, ‘Well, we haven’t looked at our 6,000 acres of parks.'”

Legacy Businesses 

In announcing a proposed $170,000 add for the legacy business program—a plan to protect longstanding neighborhood businesses by providing cash assistance and incentives for landlords to keep renting to them—council member Lisa Herbold called it the policy for which she is willing to “fall on [her] sword” this year. Previous budgets have provided funding to study such a program, but Herbold’s proposal this year would actually get it off the ground, by providing startup and marketing costs for the program. “Much like landmarks are a bridge to our city’s culture and history because of their physical form, sometimes businesses as gathering places are also a bridge to our city’s history and culture,” Herbold said.

Support

Critics have said Herbold’s proposal, like similar programs in other cities, could prevent the development of badly needed housing by saving struggling businesses out of a misguided sense of nostalgia.

In response to a question from council member Teresa Mosqueda about whether the program might allow businesses to relocate or reopen in new developments, Herbold said yes, citing the Capitol Hill writers’ center Hugo House as an example. However, it’s worth noting that the Hugo House is a nonprofit, not a for-profit business, and it was “saved” not by government intervention but by the  private owners of the old house in which Hugo House was originally located, who promised to provide the organization with a new space when they redeveloped their property.

 

City Hall, Density, Development, Election 2017, Equity, Mayor Murray, Morning Crank, race, Women, zoning

Morning Crank: Keep Seattle What Now?

 

1. In announcing plans for a 1.75-cent-per-ounce soda tax last week, Mayor Ed Murray emphasized what he considers the nexus between sugary soda consumption (which has disproportionate impacts on low-income and minority communities) and what the tax will fund (programs that attempt to close the education and opportunity gap in those communities). As he did during his State of the City speech in February, Murray placed a particular emphasis on improving outcomes for young black men in Seattle Public Schools, by expanding mentoring programs aimed at keeping black male teenagers in school and out of the school-to-prison pipeline. The city’s program, Our Best, is based on an Obama-era program called My Brother’s Keeper that was widely criticized for focusing on male achievement while ignoring the specific, and different, challenges facing young black women. For example, African American Policy Forum director Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw wrote in the New York Times that young black women are more likely than other young women to be victims of sexual violence, become pregnant at a young age, get suspended from school, die violently, and be victims of sex trafficking than other girls. “The disparities among girls of different races are sometimes even greater than among boys.”

Crenshaw notes that “supporters of My Brother’s Keeper use the analogy of ‘the canary in the coal mine‘ to justify both a narrow focus on individual-level interventions — as opposed to systemic policies to narrow the persistent racial gaps in education, income and wealth — and the exclusion of women and girls. Black boys are the miner’s canary, the argument goes, and so efforts to save them will trickle down to everyone else.”

When I asked Murray last week why he, like Obama, planned to emphasize young black men to the exclusion of young black women, his response was straight out of the Obama playbook. “Lots of the programs I listed—STEM, extracurricular activity programs, and other programs that will be enhanced—those are for young men and young women in our high schools,” Murray said. “They’re not limited to just men.”

Dwane Chappelle, director of the city’s Department of Education and Early Learning, jumped in. “At Aki Kurose Middle School, they are doing My Brother’s Keeper for young black men, but they’re also focusing on young black women and Hispanic women as well, making sure that students are all taken care of. They just use the My Brother’s Keeper framework” for both boys and, Chappelle said. But when I asked Chappelle whether the Aki Kurose program focuses on problems that are specific to girls, like teen pregnancy, he said he didn’t know the specifics.

2. A neighborhood effort to prohibit a four-story, 57-unit apartment building from going in along a commercial stretch of Greenwood, where the zoning has allowed apartments for many years, has passed the point of absurdity and is becoming downright surreal. Neighbors of the development, which is located right next to the frequent Route 5 bus line, argue that its residents will have to have cars because they won’t have access to transit, that by building small apartments, the developers are trying to “force” people to live in “Soviet-Union-like” dwellings, that it is “inhumane and unacceptable” for people to live without air conditioning in Seattle, and that a small garden on the roof would be an invitation for renters to “party” and cause disturbances.

Encouraged by a city planning and development department that subjects small projects like this one to design review, and the passivity of a design review board that failed to challenge or reject any of their complaints (virtually none of them the province of design review), the residents filed a challenge to the building under the State Environmental Policy Act, arguing, among other things, that the apartments will inconvenience neighbors by making it harder for them to park their cars.

livablephinney.org

Last week, the group opposing the building, which calls itself (of course) Livable Phinney, released the list of witnesses they would like to hear from and exhibits they hope to introduce at their first appearance before the city’s hearing examiner. (That hearing examiner, Sue Tanner, recently found in favor of Queen Anne homeowners who argued that allowing people to build mother-in-law apartments would harm the environment by, among other things, making it harder for people to park their cars.) A typical witness list might include five or six witnesses; Livable Phinney’s includes a dozen, plus 47 separate exhibits. The proposed witnesses include a Metro employee who will testify that Metro’s Route 5 is often behind schedule, making it less than “frequent,” an architect who will testify that the new apartments will create shadows on a nearby high-end condominium complex, a resident of that complex, and several nearby neighbors who oppose the project. The hearing, which is expected to last three days, starts on Tuesday.

3. Washington State Wire, which “relaunched” in January after several years as a conservative-leaning blog whose chief writer, Erik Smith, now works for the Republican-led Majority Coalition Caucus, has given consultant John Wyble a weekly column, where, last week, he tried to explain his client Mike McGinn’s perplexing campaign slogan, “Keep Seattle.” Says Wyble: “It simply means keep Seattle a welcoming place for all.”

Wyble continues: “I understand that this shorthand phrase could be confused with nostalgia. I remember riding in my Dad’s Ford Falcon along Boeing Field in the early 70s when Seattle was a blue-collar scrappy fishing town and SeaFair was the biggest event of the year. While I remember that fondly, this campaign knows that cities evolve and change. But for who?

“This is a campaign about keeping the promise of a great city for every person who lives in it.”

I guess that… clears that up?

Washington State Wire editor DJ Wilson says Wyble will write a total of eight columns for the website. No word yet on whether they plan to give equal time to consultants or spokespeople for the other mayoral campaigns.

4. David Preston and Harley Lever, two of the activists behind the Safe Seattle Facebook group, announced on their Facebook page that they plan to announce their candidacies for unspecified city offices this afternoon. (I’m guessing council Position 8 and mayor.) Anyone who reads my Twitter feed has a pretty good sense of my thoughts on Preston, who has mocked me relentlessly and even filed a frivolous city ethics complaint after I published a public record that showed another activist in an unflattering light, but you can find out even more about him by Googling his name and checking out his web page, which is a pastiche of conspiracy theories, images of city council aides and other private citizens lifted from their Facebook pages and Photoshopped, and overwrought imitations of hard-boiled journalism, minus the journalism.  You can also check out the video of his appearance before a flabbergasted Ethics and Elections Commission, starting around the two-minute mark.

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