♪♪
-Hello. I'm your host, Brian Callanan.
What's the latest on implementing Seattle's goal
to have zero traffic deaths or injuries by the year 2030?
What challenges are involved
as the city expands its preschool program
and begins work on social housing?
Plus, what's community wealth building,
and how could it impact you?
Council member Tammy Morales joins me
to answer these questions and some of the ones
you're sending in, too.
Next on Council Edition.
-The point of social housing
is to ensure permanent affordability of rent.
That's what it's for.
-All that and more coming up next
on "City Inside/Out" Council Edition.
♪♪
And I'm here with council member Tammy Morales from District 2.
Thank you very much for being here.
I wanted to jump right in
with the work you're doing with Vision Zero,
the city's plan to have zero traffic deaths or injuries
by the year 2030.
The council recently heard a top-to-bottom review
of this program from SDOT,
the Seattle Department of Transportation,
and I read it in your press release right afterwards.
You were glad to see SDOT provide this study,
but you also had some big concerns, too,
especially because so many deaths and injuries
are happening in your district, District 2.
Let me know about those concerns
and just some opening thoughts on Vision Zero.
-Sure. Well, I thank you for having me.
I do want to acknowledge first that SDOT can get it right.
Very often, they do.
You know, when it comes to safety, for example,
they made some quick changes to 4th Avenue
to deal with the many challenges that are happening there.
They, you know, installed a temporary bike lane
when the Spokane Bridge shut down.
So these are examples of the sort of quick action
that we need to see safety improve across the city.
I am concerned, you know, I have the highest fatality rate
for traffic related deaths in District 2.
And I will say that my kind of big takeaway
from the Vision Zero report was that there's a lot of work
for the department to do internally.
I appreciate the new director's focus on safety.
I do think that that is a priority for him,
and my understanding, my takeaway from the report
is that they're really shifting internal workings
in incorporating safety as a priority through every division
within the department, which is great.
It can't happen too soon. -Yeah, yeah.
Now we've got to see some action, right.
I've received a ton of feedback from Seattle Channel viewers
about Vision Zero,
and I wanted to share two pieces with you, if I could.
Josh wrote this --
Got that one.
And then here's one from Eric, who wrote to me
about the idea of banning right turns on red lights
in some intersections throughout the city,
which you've been supportive of as a safety measure.
He says this --
Thanks to both of you for those emails there, Eric and Josh,
and I'm really seeing two issues here, Councilmember Morales.
One, where and how can the public give feedback
on where intersections need fixing in Seattle,
and two, maybe if you could touch on this
"no right on red" idea.
-Sure, well, you can contact the department,
I mean, each part of town has a liaison from SDOT
and I can get that information back for you to post.
-You bet.
-But I think, you know, in terms of the "no right on red,"
I do think that that's important.
One of the things it's important to understand
are the kind of principles around Vision Zero, right?
So the three key principles are that traffic fatalities,
traffic injuries are preventable,
that humans make mistakes,
and that this isn't the success of the Vision Zero goals.
These efforts aren't going to be tied
to individual behavior, right?
This is about designing a system
that makes it easy for people to do the right thing.
And so, for example, you know, road diets, no right on red,
keeping streets -- crosswalks, signal timing,
the kind of things that can help slow people down
are going to be important.
And the no right on red is an example of, you know, enforcing,
hopefully -- enforcing the law, enforcing the road design,
the road signals so that people stop and look
and pay attention to who's in the crosswalk,
who's coming through the intersection
and just giving people, you know,
a moment to be observant about their surroundings
so that people don't get injured anymore.
-Right, and we've seen these situations
where the pedestrian "go" sign heads out -- goes into action
before the green light actually goes.
These are the types of measures we're talking about here.
But I wanted to ask a question beyond this one,
which is what will it cost to implement some of these ideas,
and how will the city pay for that?
Which is always part of the discussion here.
SDOT director Greg Spotts said he had a $5 million gap
in federal funding he's facing.
You said you'd partner with him to work on that.
Reconstructing roads is expensive
and I just wanted to talk about this
and how the city would pay for that.
-That's a great question.
This does require a lot of funding.
Most of it is federal funding, you know,
transportation infrastructure funding coming from the Feds
is how we -- is how we pay for this.
Most of the city budget for transportation
comes from the federal government,
and a lot of it is grant funded.
So I'm working with Councilmember Pedersen,
who's the Chair of Transportation,
to try to fill that gap so that we can fund the --
I think there was something like 130 projects
in that last $27 million grant that we received.
The gap means that there are some projects
that are currently not funded,
so we are trying to figure out how we close that.
You know, Councilmember Pedersen is also interested
in observing or -- exploring the impact fees --
-The impact fees, yeah. I was gonna ask you about that.
-to try to create a revenue source
for some of these projects, um...
-And just real briefly on that, folks,
this is a situation where developers would pay into a fund
when they're working on big projects
such that the city could pay for infrastructure
like transportation.
Go on, what's the deal with this?
-Yeah, so there is already a project list of priorities
that the department has should funding become available.
And these are safety improvements,
signal improvements, curbs, sidewalks.
And so the funding from a transportation impact fee
or the additional funding that we're looking for
to fill that gap,
those are the kinds of priority projects
that would be completed if that funding becomes available.
-Got it. Thank you for that.
You mentioned enforcement earlier,
and I saw an interesting counterpoint to this issue
in the Seattle Times a few weeks ago
from Danny Westneat.
He expressed some concern that the city is moving away
from using police enforcement to change driver behavior
to changing the structure of our roads.
He wrote this, here's an excerpt --
-- so a lot fewer tickets being written here.
I just wanted to talk about that overarching issue
of police enforcement.
What role should it play when it comes to achieving Vision Zero?
-So I think we can't conflate things like minor traffic stops,
which very often we've seen across the country
can lead to escalation into injury or death for some people.
I think when we're talking about enforcement,
the question is what are we enforcing, right?
So those kinds of broken tail light, those sorts of things.
-And are we doing it equitably? That's a huge part of it.
-And then -- This is the essential question, right?
And so when you hear people say they don't want police involved
in traffic enforcement,
it's because of incidents like that.
That is not to say that reckless driving,
driving under the influence,
things that can really result in harm
or traffic fatalities shouldn't be enforced.
They absolutely should.
From my perspective, adding things
like traffic camera enforcement
is something that can help mitigate some of the interaction
that could lead to escalation
and is also something that we can use
to make sure that people are paying attention.
You know, we know that if people are issued a warning
with a traffic light, very often they don't get a second warning.
And so it is one way to move us toward
having people become more aware of their surroundings,
understand that there will be enforcement,
even if it's just a traffic camera,
and can really start to reduce the number of incidents
and the number of traffic violence --
the amount of traffic violence we have.
-Thank you. And I wanted to talk about just one final issue here
with Vision Zero with regard to where this work needs to happen.
It's not just a downtown issue,
and I think a lot of people might think that.
Can you talk about that?
Because D2's definitely got some issues,
there's issues all over the city.
-There are, you know, Rainier Avenue, MLK,
I personally see lots of speeding,
lots of people running red lights.
But we know that the same is true on Aurora,
it's true on 15th Avenue.
So, you know -- And the reason it happens on those roads
is because of the way that they are designed.
And so I think when it comes to Vision Zero
and the work that the department has to do,
yes, they need their entire department
internally to be focused on safety,
and very quickly, we need to shift
to changing the way we design our roads
and to changing the existing road design
so that we can start to see traffic calming measures
across the city.
-Yeah. Thank you for that.
One last transportation message
I received from a viewer about Sound Transit
and the choice it's making now on how to have light rail go
through the Chinatown-ID neighborhood in your district.
The writer says this --
"CID 4th Station" --
He's referring to 4th Avenue here --
Thank you for sending that message in here.
There's a lot of disagreement, I know,
about this 4th Avenue option.
It would be a great transit connection,
but it would be really disruptive
to the neighborhood to build it.
So it looks like Sound Transit is pursuing another option
at this point to build stations
on the north and south ends of the CID
to avoid that disruption.
Critics would say it's not as efficient
from a transportation perspective.
It sounds like you've been supportive
of that north and south option.
I just want to talk about that real quick.
-Sure, well, you're right.
The 4th Avenue option is going to be very disruptive.
So the proposal is to build two stations
on either side of the district --
of the Chinatown-International District.
And I think, you know,
the decision that Sound Transit made was to study both.
The north and south is being advocated
as the preferred alternative,
but that doesn't mean that the 4th Avenue Shallow
will not also be studied, and we'll see.
You know, this is not a final decision for either situation.
It really is going to take a deeper assessment and analysis
of the geographic issues, the geologic issues.
You know, 4th Avenue is on fill, and so, you know,
there are a lot of decisions to be made still,
and it will depend on what these assessments say.
-Race and social justice issues, too.
Can you talk to me about this, just this whole balance
between making sure you don't disrupt a neighborhood too much,
and CID has been through a lot
when you talk about transportation infrastructure
that's run through there, then you balance it
with the need to have a great system
that everybody wants to use.
Help me out with that.
-Absolutely, you know, we all know the challenges
that the neighborhood has had between the stadiums and the I-5
and, you know, all of the things
that have completely disrupted the neighborhood.
And so it is problematic to expect
that that district is going to happily bear the burden
of yet another government infrastructure project.
And it shouldn't be the case that we expect this neighborhood
to just accept being sort of collateral damage
in this project.
So, you know, nobody is saying that we don't need
a very vibrant transit system and we want to make sure
that whatever we do,
it allows for people to move through the region
safely and quickly and efficiently,
and we can't keep asking communities of color
to bear the burden of creating these systems
and not have something to say about it.
-Thank you very much for that.
I wanted to move on to another topic here
with generational wealth.
You just held a forum on this issue
in the Neighborhoods, Education, Civil Rights & Culture Committee
that you lead.
Can we start with a definition for people
as to what this term means
and what you're trying to do with this effort?
-Sure, yeah. So in my committee,
we had folks from Richmond, Virginia, and from Chicago
come and talk to us about the work that they're doing.
What this is really about is community wealth building.
So rather than focus on on an individual's wealth
or a household's wealth, this is about shared ownership,
so shared control of an asset.
And what some cities are doing
and what Seattle is actually researching right now
is how do we move -- how do we create the opportunity,
for example, for an entire neighborhood
to buy shares in a block of buildings?
It's very similar to some of the work
that Africatown is doing right now
where we have limited-equity housing co-ops,
we have worker-owned co-ops.
We have the ability for neighbors to buy back lots
that their neighborhood may have lost
so that we can bring people back to the neighborhood.
And it's really an effective community economic development
strategy for addressing the displacement
that many communities have seen.
So we had folks come in from Chicago and Richmond.
They talked about the work that they're doing.
And it really is an exciting opportunity
to create a more democratically-owned
ownership model for neighbors across the city.
-I wanted to dive into -- specifically from Richmond,
you heard from the Deputy Chief Administrative Officer
for Human Services, Reginald Gordon is his name,
who said his city's program
has helped a lot of people gain employment
and control of their economic future,
but it's not as many people as the city had first hoped.
I wanted to play a clip of what he said.
-You know, so we can serve hundreds of people that way.
Our original goal was to get thousands of people
out of poverty each year.
We've pivoted because we knew
that was not going to serve any of us well
to keep using that language because of systemic issues.
And there are people who were --
everyone had a different starting point.
-I wanted to bring this up just to consider the challenges
of building generational wealth.
When you hear about the people you're trying to serve
having different starting points,
as Mr. Gordon pointed out there,
some of them need a whole host of wraparound services, too.
So I'm trying to figure out who you're reaching out to
in your vision of generational wealth.
Is it people who are already employed, or --
Where do you even start with this?
-Well, again, I think there was a really --
There are really different approaches
that Richmond and Chicago are taking,
and that's kind of the point that we were trying to make.
So the Richmond approach
is really about individual households.
Moving people into job training,
giving them educational opportunities.
And that is, in some ways, a much bigger task
because you're talking about thousands of households
that you're trying to serve.
-And a very intensive effort.
Yeah, mm-hmm. -Yeah.
The work that Chicago is doing is a little bit different
because this is about systems and it's about creating,
for example, financial mechanisms,
financial tools that allow community members
to invest in a property.
It's about providing the opportunity for a community
to buy something.
And so they are -- it's the difference
between individual and shared neighborhood wealth.
What we're doing here in the city of Seattle,
our Department of Neighborhoods has been studying,
researching these different models for the last year or so.
And so we do have a generational wealth initiative
that the department is piloting several of these ideas
to see what might work here in Seattle.
You know, can we start another community land trust?
Can we start a community investment vehicle
that allows people to buy shares in a property?
Can we support small businesses with, for example,
a worker owned co-op model?
So this is a little bit sort of higher level of intervention
rather than individual households,
and I think there's an opportunity to scale it
a little bit better.
-Thank you.
And is there any legislation that you're working on?
I thought I read that you were trying to incentivize
some developers to get involved here. What's cooking?
-Well, so there's, as I said, several things.
We've got projects that are being piloted right now.
My office, for example, invested a little bit of money
in doing a feasibility study for a community investment tool.
So how can we create some sort of crowdsourcing vehicle
for people to buy shares?
That work is still underway. It's one of the things
that the Department of Neighborhoods is looking at.
But it really is about providing these opportunities,
and the challenge that we have in Washington
is that our Constitution
prohibits the gift of public funds to business --
-You can't just give them away, that's right.
Which in Chicago, you can. That's a big difference.
-Yeah, so if you watched that committee,
the woman from Chicago was like, "Oh, that's --
-We don't have that problem. Right. [ Chuckles ]
-"That's not a problem for us."
So we do have some things
that we're going to have to work around.
And, you know, where I might be going with this
is to really just try to create an Office of Community
Wealth-Building in the city to start bringing people together
in a really systematic way to start trying to crack that nut.
-Fascinating process.
And I wanted to take a brief segway, if I could,
because the whole concept of wealth and income inequality
was a big part of the debate over Initiative 135,
which voters approved back in February
to establish a public development authority
to create social housing, so public affordable housing.
You recently put out a video
on Seattle City Council's YouTube channel
to help explain the city's role in building out this program,
and there are two big priorities that I'm seeing here.
The first is getting people to serve on the PDA board.
Those applications are due March 31st if you're interested.
It's crunch time here, folks.
The second is the city's requirement to pay
for the startup of the PDA for at least the first 18 months.
Can you give us an overview of what's happening
with social housing right now?
How's the council involved?
-Sure. So as you said, the first job is to seat this board.
The board is comprised -- will be comprised of 13 members
and the City Council is responsible
for appointing only two of those.
So we've been convening all of the appointing entities
just to make sure everybody understands
what this process is.
So, for example, the Seattle Renters Commission
is appointing seven,
the Green New Deal Oversight Board is appointing one,
the mayor gets one appointment.
And then we want to make sure that there are folks on
who already understand what affordable housing
financing looks like,
what affordable housing production looks like.
So for this initial board, El Centro de la Raza
gets to appoint an affordable housing developer seat,
and then the council is appointing somebody
who is an urban planner
and somebody who is familiar with nonprofit finance.
And development.
So that's a lot of different hands in the soup.
But we're all on the same page about, you know,
we need to appoint -- this board needs to be seated
by April 30th,
And they need to have their first meeting by May 30th.
So that's where we are right now.
-That's light speed for city government.
-Getting all of that done. -For sure.
-And then your second question is about the funding.
So when the initiative passed,
there's language in the initiative
that said that the city would provide funding
for the first 18 months.
And it can be in-kind, but the language said
would also pay for the first two staff people.
What we are learning is that the city charter
requires that we wait until the next budget cycle
to change a budget that has already been adopted,
which we did last year.
So for now, what we will be doing
is trying to get some money in our supplemental budget
to help get things started.
We can provide in-kind office space and supplies,
that sort of thing,
and then we will probably have to wait until the 2024 budget
to actually be able to provide the funding
for the staff positions.
That said, we've also been working
with the state legislature
to try to get some funding from the state operating budget
to help provide that support.
-Frank Chopp's been working on that.
-Yeah, we've been working with Frank Chopp,
and it's got a lot of support from the Seattle delegation,
so we'll see those conversations are happening.
I think the decisions will get made this week,
and I'm hoping for good news.
-And we will follow up on that one.
I just wanted to really talk about this with you,
Councilmember Morales, because you've been a champion
of social housing on the council.
You talked about these issues
during a public online forum earlier this month,
moderated by Real Change, the news outlet
which helps provide a voice for low income and homeless people.
I just wanted to ask that big overarching question
of where do you see social housing going in the long term?
How is it going to help Seattle?
-The point of social housing
is to ensure permanent affordability of rent.
That's what it's for. And the way we do that,
the way it's done in other cities and countries,
is that the land itself is publicly owned land, right?
So that takes a huge cost out of the production
and it allows for cross-subsidization,
for the rest, right?
-The higher-rental people helping the lower.
-Yeah, and so in that way, it is very different
from the traditional way that we do affordable housing
because this isn't intended just for low income people.
People from across an income spectrum can rent.
The other benefit of it is that, you know,
in traditional affordable housing,
if you qualify for that, but then you get a promotion
or you get a better job and your income goes up,
you're kicked out.
With social housing, that doesn't happen.
And because it can, you know --
it is for people across the income spectrum.
And so it ensures affordability,
it ensures stability for families
so they don't have to worry about getting pushed out
and moved around, and it really is another way --
We were talking about household wealth or individual wealth.
It really is a way for people to have the kind of stability
that they need to be able to focus their energy
on other ways they can build their own assets
and build stability for their families.
So really looking forward to this.
We're at the very beginning stages of it.
It's going to take some time to actually get it --
get to the production phase, but I'm very hopeful
that this is going to be kind of a game changer for the city.
-Very interesting to watch this play out.
Thank you for that.
I wanted to talk about your recent meeting
with Mayor Harrell and Dwayne Chappelle,
director of the Department of Education and Early Learning
at La Escuelita Bilingual School in Columbia City,
to talk about the expansion of the Seattle Preschool program,
which is funded by the city's
Families, Education, Preschool and Promise Levy.
So this is one of seven new sites as I understand it,
SPP sites in Seattle for the upcoming school year.
Can you talk to us about the growth of this program
and what it means?
-Sure, well, as you mentioned,
the Seattle Preschool Program is funded by the FEPP Levy,
and part of the investment strategy of that levy
was to spend just over $300,000
over the seven years of the levy.
So for this particular program, it started at, I think,
$38 million for the 2019, 2020 school year.
And then every year after that,
we add another two, three, $4 million.
So for the '23, '24 school year, we're now at $48 million.
And what that means is that we've been able to --
or we will be able to expand the number of classrooms,
particularly the number of dual-language classrooms,
which I'm very excited about.
-You had a daughter that went to --
-My daughter went there, yeah, as a preschooler,
and she still speaks Spanish.
-Bueno. All right.
-Well, a little bit. -Yeah.
-And so it really is an important way for us
to make sure that Seattle's children
have access to high-quality early learning,
and in the case of some of these classrooms,
at least, that if they speak another language
or if their parents want them to learn another language,
they have the opportunity to do that, too.
-Okay. And this really feels like a part of your background.
I remember the trip you took a couple of years ago now
to Nantes, France
and just talking about the 15-minute city,
meaning you're this close to daycare,
you're this close to transit.
This sort of plays into that theory, it feels like.
-Yeah, absolutely.
I think it is really important for families
to be able to access their essential goods and services
without having to get into a car.
You know, that's the goal of a 15-minute city
for all kinds of reasons,
not the least of which is it just makes
for a more neighborly community.
If you can walk to preschool, walk to the grocery store,
get to know your neighbors, run into folks,
you know, it just makes for a more vibrant community
and a little bit more community cohesion,
which I think right now, we all need.
-We could use, yeah. And always good to learn
from a sister city here.
One quick piece here, just a challenge here.
We've seen a lot of headlines recently about layoffs
for central staff for Seattle Public Schools
or talk of consolidating some schools.
And I know that's that's a separate budget, folks.
That is the school district's job.
It is not the Seattle City Council's job there.
But do those concerns about the near-term future
of lower enrollment for Seattle Public Schools,
does that have an impact on what you're doing with SPP?
-Well, to the extent that we really need
to make sure our teachers are well funded.
-Yeah, right.
-I mean, so, you know, across the economy,
we're dealing with retention issues.
-Yep, worker shortages, you bet.
-There's worker shortages everywhere.
That is particularly true for industries
that have traditionally been thought of as women's work.
So things that are in the care industry,
and teachers certainly fall into that.
So I do think it's important if we want to make sure
that our that our students, that our young people
have access to high-quality educators
that we are paying them well, that they get good benefits.
You know, with the Seattle Preschool Program in particular,
we're offering quality coaching and training
so that they get the support that they need,
not just the lead teachers,
but the assistant teachers, as well.
So there's certainly a lot of work to do.
Retention is an issue across the education field,
and teachers are certainly no exception.
-Absolutely. One piece to wrap up here,
we have just about a minute,
and I wanted to talk about a presentation
you're working on with your Seattle Within Reach
town hall program there with regard to arts
and the comprehensive plan.
I know I'm only giving you a minute here,
but this sounds like a fascinating topic.
-The point of this is to talk about the comprehensive plan
so people understand why it's important.
This particular conversation
is about the intersection of the arts community,
the creative sector, and land use.
So we're going to have a great panel of speakers
to talk about how to make sure
that we have affordable housing for artists,
that we have affordable commercial cultural space
for production and performance and rehearsal,
and really how we make sure
that our artists are able to stay in the city,
so I'm really looking forward to it.
-I am, too.
Well, that's Councilmember Tammy Morales.
I'm Brian Callanan.
Thanks for joining us on Council Edition.
We'll see you next time.
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