-Hello. I'm your host, Brian Callanan.
What are the City Council's expectations
for new police chief Adrian Diaz?
How will investments in a Green New Deal
impact your neighborhood and our climate?
And how will Seattle deal with a $117 million budget deficit?
Councilmembers Lisa Herbold and Teresa Mosqueda join me
to talk about these questions
and the ones you're sending in, too, next on "Council Edition."
-And we need to figure out how we can make sure
that these lifesaving services are still able to be delivered.
-When a legislative branch passes law,
when we put funding into the budget,
we expect there to be implementation.
-All that and more coming up next
on "City Inside/Out: Council Edition."
♪♪
And here we are, everyone, back in the studio for this program
for the first time in more than two years.
And I'm very happy to welcome Councilmember Lisa Herbold
from the District 1, where I'm in, West Seattle here.
Great to have you here.
Also, Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda,
citywide Position 8.
Thank you very much for being here.
It means a lot to me to have you here in person.
And as fellow West Seattleites,
I'm seeing that glow of feeling the bridge back open.
That's a good thing, yeah? Yeah, yeah.
-Palpable. -Yeah, you can feel it.
You can feel it. I'll jump right to it.
Councilmember Herbold, I want to start with your role
on Public Safety, and you chair that committee.
So the job ahead -- holding confirmation hearings
for the mayor's pick for a new police chief,
which would be our interim chief, Adrian Diaz.
First, your thoughts on the mayor's selection, if you could,
and then talk about this confirmation process.
It's a very important project here,
committee meetings, et cetera.
But it's gonna be happening during budget season
when the Council usually doesn't have those kind of meetings.
So how's this gonna work?
And your thoughts about Chief Diaz to start?
-Sure. Well, I've really appreciated the opportunity
to serve on the mayor's search committee
and really value the time and energy
that other search committee members devoted to this process.
Also really appreciate the public process,
some of which you helped out with.
-I did, yeah, a meeting with all three candidates.
Yeah, it was very interesting.
-As it relates specifically to the confirmation process,
we are likely going to wait till after budget.
-I see.
-Interim chief has been in the role for 24 months.
He can continue serving as interim
for another couple months
until we're through the budget process, is the plan.
-Thank you for updating me on that piece of it.
Councilmember Mosqueda, I wanted to draw on your experience
as Budget Chair here, 'cause you're looking right ahead
at this over the next month or so,
and just a budget issue connected to SPD.
I remember last year, during the budget process,
there was this push to try to take the money saved in salaries
when the SPD didn't reach its hiring goals,
put that towards other public safety priorities.
It's looking like the SPD
will not reach its hiring goals again this year.
So I'm trying to figure out,
what do you want to see happen with those excess dollars?
-Well, for the last two years that I've been Budget Chair,
every single individual who SPD thought they could hire
received the funding from this Council.
This Council has stood with the hiring plan
to ensure that we funded the ask
that the department had asked for.
However, we were not interested in having millions of dollars
sit in the coffer for the possibility
of a retention number that could not be met.
Again, we don't see that retention number
being met this year around,
and I anticipate that we will receive a budget
that has a higher-than-possible retention number planned.
We are going to continue on with what the Council passed,
I believe led by Councilmember Herbold,
to make sure that we're investing in retention
and hiring strategies.
But also, as we consider our budget,
I want to make sure that every dollar that is available
that we know could today go to important services upstream,
like housing, health services,
caring for our most vulnerable, that we deploy those dollars.
So I think we'll continue to right-size those investments,
continue supporting the hiring plan,
and where there is pockets that look like they may be unspent,
we may proviso those and see what else we can do
with those dollars in the meantime.
-Okay. Thanks for the preview there.
Maybe I can take this conversation down this path,
following up with public safety, specifically the idea
of building up some alternative responses for 911 calls.
Mayor's office has presented a term sheet to the Council here
outlining this plan to create a framework
for these alternate responses by the end of the year,
actual pilot program next year.
Councilmember Herbold, I know you're doing a lot of work
behind the scenes on this.
Tell us what's going on, if you can,
and why you're working on this, too.
-Sure. So, the department --
the police department is going through an analysis
called a Risk Managed Demand Analysis.
And that's based on last year's NICJR report
that identified an estimate on a percentage of calls
that could be handled by a non-sworn-police response.
The Risk Demand Analysis looks at how calls were resolved,
not just how they were originally classified,
to determine whether or not there is a risk
for particular call types to be sent elsewhere.
Because this work is work
that is going to be continuing through 2023,
this analysis, we are gonna get a preview of it in committee,
the Public Safety and Human Services Committee, this week.
We felt really strongly, we on the Council felt really strongly
that we needed to do a pilot... -Right.
-...on a particular number of call types.
Like, just pick a couple types, like person down,
wellness checks. -Yes. Okay.
-And let's just do a pilot response --
alternate response with just those calls
while they do the risk analysis
for the hundreds of other call types.
-Okay. Okay.
-And I was in a position of reporting back
in my committee on sort of the progress
on the larger analysis
and kept telling my colleagues, telling the public,
"We're on the verge of working together with the executive
on identification of goals and timelines,"
but I didn't really have a product.
And so this idea of the term sheet
would sort of memorialize our shared goals,
and we're hoping to really get something up and running
early 2023.
-And maybe, Councilmember Mosqueda,
I can bring you in here.
What do you want to see out of
an alternate 911 type of program?
-I'd like to see the programs that we invested in deployed.
I'd like to see the funding that we allocated
over the last two years implemented.
I appreciate that our lead on Public Safety,
Chair Herbold, has worked on a term sheet
with this new administration,
but you asked what it symbolizes.
What does this mean for the future?
I think it symbolizes the effort to try to create trust again
between the executive and the legislative branch.
But I also hope it symbolizes
and signals to future administrations
that when a legislative branch passes law,
when we put funding into the budget,
we expect there to be implementation.
What I hope that this signals to future administrations
is that when a law is passed, there will be follow-up
to ensure that those dollars are deployed.
We are doing this work right now,
led by Councilmember Herbold,
with the good partnership of this new administration,
the Harrell administration,
because of the past failures of the Durkan administration.
They did not deploy the funding that we allocated.
They failed to implement the strategies
for alternative 911 policing efforts.
And so here we are trying to rebuild trust
not only between branches of government,
but with the public,
to show that there will be future action.
I am hopeful that this is a strong indication
that the past policies and past approach
to ignoring statute and ignoring funding
will not continue no matter who is in these seats.
-Councilmember Mosqueda, back to you for some thoughts
about the Green New Deal
that the mayor just signed into law --
$6.5 million towards that program.
Where's the investment going, and how does the city
get to that big goal of getting all the city buildings
off of using fossil fuels by the year 2035?
Because that's coming right up.
-Yeah. Thank you so much for flagging this.
This is $6.5 million that's coming directly
from the JumpStart progressive revenue investment.
I want to applaud the Council from 2020 and 2021,
who not only passed progressive revenue,
the highest progressive revenue policy we've ever seen,
into statute, but collectively, unanimously,
we codified the spend plan.
Part of the spend plan was to make sure
that at least 9% of the funding
went into Green New Deal investments.
So I want to give the total number for this year.
For the year 2022, the total number
of Green New Deal investments is $14.5 million.
Next year it will be near $20 million.
The year after that, over $20 million.
And so when we look at $6.5 million,
I just wanted to put that into context
of the larger investments that we're making.
The reason $6.5 million is important
is because these priorities come directly from the community,
the Green New Deal Oversight Board,
who was representative of frontline workers,
frontline workers in industries
that see higher levels of toxins and pollutants
in their work sector,
and fence-line communities,
folks like the folks that we visited
in Duwamish Valley and South Park,
who have more proximity to freeways
and high-pollution industry and traffic ways.
So this body really came up with the recommendations.
It's going to go into creating greater safeguards for buildings
so that people have safer places to go
when there's high levels of smoke, heat, and cold.
It's going to make sure that we're investing in workforce
so that we can lead a just transition
to a green new economy.
And I'm really excited about the opportunity for us
to create jobs as we also create a greener economy.
-Thank you for breaking that down.
And, Councilmember Herbold, talking about South Park here,
it's where the mayor signed the legislation.
It's in your district here.
He actually made a point to say,
"Life expectancy is eight years shorter
in that neighborhood than the Seattle average,"
which was a shocking number to me.
What impact do you see this Green New Deal having
on South Park and maybe the whole Duwamish Valley?
-Yeah, I think the work
that they're planning on doing around resiliency hubs
focused on these impacted communities,
communities that have been impacted for generations
from the industry in the area,
for the fact that it's a Superfund site
and really trying to focus these investments
on not sort of giving in
to the fact that climate change is happening,
but really building off of the resiliency
that we already see in this community.
And so resiliency hubs -- really exciting.
I also want to just shout out for the fact that we're having
some AC upgrades in our library in District 1.
So that's really, really great news, as well,
for places to go when we need to cool.
-Yeah. Cooling centers. It's a huge piece.
-And if I might. -Yeah, please.
-A huge shout-out, as well, to the labor partners
who are part of the Green New Deal Oversight Board.
One of the really exciting investments in this
is making sure that we're investing
in the Clean Heat program
to get homes off of oil-burning furnaces
and into more greener options.
The folks at IBEW, for example, were part of this task force.
And this is not only good for the individuals in those homes,
for our climate, it's also good for job creation.
So it's a wonderful investment.
-Gonna be very interesting to see how that rolls out.
I'm gonna move on to a big vote this week on the Parks District,
where the City Council serves as the Parks District Board.
There's a proposal to just about double the property tax levy
that funds our parks.
Councilmember Mosqueda, I'll start with you.
I know the Council's heard some concerns
about the price tag here.
Throw one more on the pile. We had a viewer write in this.
An answer, if you can, to that question as best you can.
And why are these extra dollars needed, I guess?
-Yeah, well, I think Seattle can be very proud.
We have incredible oversight over our public levies.
We have spent the last few months
having these deliberations in public with community,
led by central staff and the department directors, as well,
to show exactly that -- where the funding is going.
What we're talking about right now
I think amounts to just over $2.50 a week
in terms of additional cost to our residents.
And the value of that is immeasurable.
We're talking about investments in public parks across our city.
We're talking about opening up the 128 bathrooms in our city,
which Erica Barnett points out, at any point in Seattle's time,
only about half of those bathrooms are currently open.
We know that we need restrooms, we need playgrounds,
we need place spaces, green spaces,
and more investments in the opportunity
for people to have a livable, walkable neighborhood.
As we promote density
and we want more people to live in the city,
those parks are our backyards.
This is the places where kiddos will learn how to play,
walk for the first time,
like my kiddo did at the Delridge Community Center
and at the street that we closed down over in Alki.
We're creating public places
for people to really have an enjoyable opportunity
to live in the city.
And so I think the value of what voters
will be able to take away from these investments
is going to be, as Councilmember Herbold noted,
investments, as well, in green buildings,
safer places for people to go,
and investments that I think we will all be able to enjoy,
like trees and restrooms. -Got it.
Councilmember Herbold, I want to make sure I focus
on one part of this legislation with park rangers.
Gotten a lot of headlines here.
Some advocates raised concerns that these rangers would be used
to conduct sweeps of homeless encampments.
I want to make sure we clear the air on this topic,
break down what these rangers will be doing,
what they won't be doing, because I think the legislation
the Council's looking at is very specific about this.
-It is.
So, many years ago,
a lot of members of the public,
advocates, civil rights attorneys,
were very, very concerned about the Parks Exclusion Ordinance,
a Sidran-era ordinance.
-Yeah, yeah, yeah.
-My prior boss, Nick Licata, we tried to amend it in 1999.
We were not successful.
Legal defense attorneys, legal advocates,
social service advocates succeeded in 2012
doing what we were unable to do legislatively,
which was to convince the Parks Department
to enact a legislative rule
that constrained the park rangers' abilities
to enforce the Parks Exclusion Ordinance
and instead focuses not on problematic people,
but problematic behavior.
So it allows the park rangers to give warnings
but very, very, very much limits the instances
where they can give exclusions.
And those exclusions are not just for somebody
who received a warning being back in the park,
but they have to be violating a rule again.
And we've seen how the Parks Department
has really embraced this focus
and used it to really shift what the park rangers do, right?
It's more about making the parks a welcoming place for everybody
and less of an enforcement emphasis.
So, you know, this administrative rule
is an administrative rule that was filed
with the City Clerk's Office.
It was restated again in 2014
and then again in 2016
when the Council passed the park smoking ban.
So Parks is all in on this approach.
And I don't think people have to worry
about going back to this bad Sidran-era law.
And I know that there are some folks who are interested
in making a change to that law for once and for all.
But I'm really confident
with Superintendent Williams' commitment,
because he helped get this in place in 2012,
that this is gonna be a positive way forward.
-Got it. Thank you for that.
Can I stick with you for a second?
I wanted to ask about the Third Avenue Vision plan
the Council's -- You talk about welcoming places.
There's some concern that this transit corridor
isn't healthy for businesses or pedestrians.
The Seattle Times called it also
"a persistent underground economy
built around addiction and poverty."
We had a viewer write about this, too.
And the CBRE numbers that I saw,
downtown Seattle closer to 23% vacancy.
Downtown Bellevue at 8%. Just throwing it out there.
You get the point.
I'm trying to figure out, basically,
this balance that you're looking at with Third Avenue,
making sure you have a Third Avenue
that's good for transit,
but also making sure it's good for businesses there
and people who want to walk there, too.
-Yeah, I mean, I think it's really recognizing the fact
that this is a street
that we want to do a lot of different things.
It happens to be one of the most successful transit streets
in the nation. -Right.
-But in its success fulfilling that mission,
it is de-emphasizing the sorts of eyes and ears
and active use of the street that are necessary
just to have it healthy and full of lots of uses.
So I know one of the things that they've really looked at
is things like the sidewalk width,
you know, things that can help activate a space.
One of the things I'm really focused on is making sure that
while embracing other uses of the public street right away,
not privatizing it, but public street right of way.
is that we don't make sacrifices on the fact
that this is a transit through a fair
that's a workhorse for the city and for the region.
So I'm really trying to emphasize the fact
that we need to identify the transit capacity needs,
even with light rail coming and make sure we don't --
We have an agreement that we're not going to lose that.
-Got it. Councilmember Mosqueda, any thoughts on Third Avenue?
This is a big one.
-I mean, first, I think we need to wholeheartedly
reject the notion that transit or transit riders
somehow are a nuisance.
When we actually increase transit
and increase the capacity for individuals
to be able to ride busses and wait for busses,
It activates the streets.
We need to be creating more opportunities for people
to have safe shelters from the rain,
park benches so they can sit and wait.
Today, I got off the bus and had a cup of coffee and a bagel
After I got off the bus this morning and watched elders
wait for the bus across the street on Third Avenue
without a place to to sit and wait for the bus there.
We need to make this a comfortable riding experience
for everyone so that more people use transit.
And when more people use transit,
there will be more eyes and ears on the street,
more activation and opportunity for people to pop into a shop
and shop local.
And we can also make sure
that it's a beautiful place with more trees,
more public area for people to walk, supporting businesses
who maybe want to have more outdoor dining.
And to the degree that we can include bike lanes
along with transit, I'm all in.
So I just want to make sure that we lift up the possibility
of how we enhance ridership,
how we enhance the vision of Third Avenue
being a pro-bus corridor
and see that as a real positive for local businesses.
So I think we're both in alignment with what the TTC,
the Transportation Choices Coalition executive director
has put out there, which is we have to really be supporting
and embracing transit, versus seeing this
as somehow an opportunity for us
to mitigate transit on that corridor.
Transit is a pathway towards making this street more active.
-Is the downtown Seattle Association --
They're a partner in this.
I mean, they really were pushing for this plan.
I just want to make sure that I'm clear on
what businesses should expect out of this,
because it's definitely going to be some transit down there.
-Yeah. I mean, I think what should be expected
in the near term is sort of seating a table
and making sure that all of the stakeholders are at the table,
business owners as well as transit advocates,
as well as residents of a lot of our nonprofit
housing providers in that area
who have public space needs that aren't well met.
So I just think in the near term,
what we're talking about is setting a table
that will lead to a conversation
about how to make that corridor work
more effectively for all of its uses.
-And we're in post-COVID, and it's not post-COVID.
I want to remind you people we're still
in the midst of this, and get your vaccine booster.
We need to really think about in this moment
as we are getting more accustomed to emerging
from our neighborhoods and our homes,
what it means to draw people downtown.
It might not be that those buildings
or storefronts are going to be occupied
by office space, and that's okay.
We have put funding in through JumpStart progressive
payroll tax to invest in economic revitalization.
I know Councilmember Herbold's
been a supporter of arts and culture.
We can activate our public spaces
and those storefronts in more creative ways.
It is not necessarily a bad thing
that we're second in the nation
in terms of the amount of people who want to stay home
and continue to do the work from home.
Congratulations and applause to the employers
who are encouraging and allowing people
to stay home and work from there.
That's probably great for their work/life balance,
but we can figure out ways
to activate those office spaces in new ways
and do that in partnership with TSA as well.
-Got it. Thank you. I need to move on.
And I didn't save enough time for this.
I want to make sure that we do a lot of
budget talk at the end here.
Real quick, on cannabis equity, could you talk about this?
It's some big stuff happening here,
a milestone in passing it,
but it really seems like the work
is just beginning on cannabis equity.
Can you give us the less than a minute version, if you can?
-Yeah, the real big takeaway is what you just said.
This is just the beginning.
10 years ago, the city began being on the front line
of legalizing cannabis, making sure that we were not
criminalizing the use of cannabis
and medical marijuana.
Here we are, 10 years later,
and we've seen other jurisdictions
add into their legalization efforts and equity lens.
So in partnership with what the state is doing,
we are saying we are ready, we want to be a good partner
and we want to quickly deploy funding
and opportunity for communities
hardest hit by the war on drugs and make sure that the dollars
go to small businesses and frontline workers,
workers of color who can help make that industry thrive.
-Thank you for breaking that down.
Can you briefly talk about the work you're doing
with regard to abortion protection?
A really big situation you were working on
with Councilmember Morales earlier this summer.
Talk about what's going on right now.
-Sure. So the council
has recently passed several pieces of legislation.
The first was sponsored by Councilmember Sawant,
which identifies Seattle as a city
that will not use its policing resources
to enforce the laws of other states or other jurisdictions
that are in conflict with ours, as far as abortion access.
This might be seen as a symbolic measure,
but I have noticed that there are jurisdictions
all over the country that have passed similar laws.
So it's one of those things where we are supporting
one another in our support
for full access to reproductive health rights.
And it's important, it's important to show
that solidarity.
As it relates to the other bills,
there are three other bills that I co-sponsored
with Councilman Morales.
One creates a protected class for people who are seeking
full access to reproductive health care
so a person can't be discriminated against.
-Yeah, okay. -Another bill that we passed
relates to the ability of people to exercise their free speech
rights outside of clinics,
but to do so in a way that doesn't interfere
with the ability of people accessing health care.
And then the third bill relates specifically
to centers that are masquerading as medical centers
and making sure that they are not permitted
to give out information that is misleading
or otherwise harmful to people
who are seeking access to reproductive health care.
-Thank you. A lot to cover there,
and some very important issues.
I do want to make sure we get to budget priorities
with a couple of minutes we have left here.
Councilwoman Mosqueda, I want to talk
specifically about JumpStart.
I know last year, more than a third of it
went to the general fund for pandemic relief,
which was not the original intent.
Help me out with this.
Are you concerned the mayor is going to lay out
some other priorities again for the money
coming in from JumpStart?
What's your approach to that tax revenue year in 2022?
-Well, I do want to correct something.
Actually, part of the JumpStart spend plan
for the first two years was dedicated funding
for COVID relief. -Right.
-So it actually was very much within the confines of what
the council had allocated $85 million in 2021 and 2022
for helping us respond to the crisis
that COVID had worsened in our community.
Making sure that we prevented against austerity
budgeting and cuts to programs
for our most vulnerable communities
who needed it in the midst of the pandemic.
We are very, very appreciative
that those payers have worked with our Finance
and Administrative Services department,
the city as a whole, to comply with JumpStart.
And now we have seen higher than anticipated revenues
for the year 2021
and higher than anticipated revenues for 2022.
We know that those higher than anticipated revenues
will continue for the next biennium as well.
I think that the priority for council
is going to be looking at the budget,
making sure that the spending amounts that we codified
for 2023 and 2024 are adhered to.
And then if there's additional revenue
that we had not projected, the higher
than anticipated revenue, I want to see how we can
use those dollars to prevent against austerity,
to prevent against cuts.
If we don't prevent against cuts and we've just look
at where the operational deficit currently is,
we'd be looking at $141 million
in net operational deficit in 2023
and over $150 million in 2024.
That is unattainable.
That is unconscionable to think
about that level of cuts
as we try to create a more equitable economy,
as we try to house and care for people
and as we try to invest in health and safety.
So my priority is going to be making sure
that we're investing in the housing
and the homeless services that we need in our community.
Second is that we need to make sure
that we are investing in an economy
that works for all workers and workforce development
and our local businesses.
And lastly, I want to make sure
that we invest in the health and safety of our community,
and that means mental health care, food assistance,
diaper care was a big issue in the past, and this year as well,
it's going to be reproductive justice as well.
-Yeah. Councilwoman Herbold, we're just about out of time,
but I want to make sure I get some of your budget priorities
with the minute we have left here.
We're talking about $117 million budget gap you have to fill.
Let's try to do this and talk about it
to round out the show, your priorities.
-I think, for me, one of my biggest priorities
is not just our city workforce,
but the folks that the city contracts to provide
lifesaving services, our human services contractors.
All you have to do is open up a paper to see the fact
that the the number of people doing those jobs
has decreased with great resignation,
just like every other job sector.
And we need to figure out how we can make sure
that these life saving services are still able to be delivered,
and how we can make sure that there's a workforce to do it.
We need to figure out how to recruit
and retain that workforce
because it's really struggling to see --
challenging to see that there are so many needs
and services that we funded,
but we don't have people out there delivering them.
-Okay, we're going to hear a lot about this
during the budget priorities here
as they get laid out over the next couple of weeks.
Thank you both for joining me.
We're out of time right now, but we will see you
next time on "Council Edition."
♪♪