-Hello. I'm your host, Brian Callanan.
The Seattle City Council's budget process
is finally complete.
So what programs were approved and what didn't make the cut?
Plus, how is the city's new drug possession law working out?
And what impact will an agreement
with the Police Officers Guild have on public safety
and an officer staffing crisis?
I'm with Council member Andrew Lewis,
who will be talking about these issues
and reflecting on the ups and downs of his time in office
after his reelection bid came up short.
It's all next on "Council Edition".
Do you wish you had that decision back?
-No, no, I think I made the right decision.
I don't take it back at all. -All that and more, coming up
next on "City Inside/Out: Council Edition".
♪♪
And here he is, Councilmember Andrew Lewis,
representing District 7,
also Chair of the council's Committee on Homelessness.
Thank you very much for being here.
-Thanks, Brian. -And I know we have a lot
to reflect on today, but I did want to start
by updating our viewers
on the budget the council just passed
and what you were able to accomplish there.
I wanted to focus in on your amendment
to increase funding for homelessness services contracts.
This was a key issue here.
What impact do you see coming out of this increase in pay
for these service providers?
-Yeah, so one of the big struggles
that we've had on public safety
is the fact that service providers
are dramatically underpaid
to what they should be receiving.
And actually nationally, looking at a U-Dub study
that was conducted recently,
we're less competitive than a lot of peer regions
and what we pay people to do this critical work.
That leads to lots of long-term
service disruption challenges that we've been seeing.
It means that we can't staff our tiny house villages,
we can't staff our emergency shelters,
we can't staff our emergency medical services
that serve folks in these vulnerable populations
if they can't find the people to do the work.
So, by raising the level of pay and by raising the benefits,
we're able to retain talent here,
and we're able to attract talent nationally
to fill this really critical void.
And that's a really big investment
that we've made in this budget and really excited about it.
-Yeah, and really something that crosses over
between what you want to focus on with regard
to homelessness and public safety, really,
it really does seem like it bridges both of those issues.
-Absolutely, you know, if you can get somebody inside,
you know, you make a massive amount of progress
in terms of the public disorder
and the public safety challenges that we see in the city.
And that's really what we're trying to get at,
is how can we really invest in those best practices
and make sure that the people at the front lines
who are doing that work are adequately compensated,
and that we're a place they want to come to,
they want to put down roots. -Got it.
I wanted to talk about another public safety issue with you,
and this was one of the more contested votes on the budget --
the gunshot locator technology, sometimes known as ShotSpotter.
Mayor Harrell has been interested in this
for about a decade since his time on the council.
He presented a $1.5 million proposal to the council
to include the audio element of locating where shots are fired,
as well as some closed circuit TV cameras
and license plate readers.
So some community members have been supportive
of this technology, while others,
including your colleague Councilmember Lisa Herbold,
have a lot of concerns after different cities
have had mixed results, at best. -There's a study
in Philadelphia that shows no better outcomes
when it comes to usefulness to address --
respond to gun violence,
or to hold perpetrators accountable.
When we talk about false positives,
that means that police officers
are going to a location when they're not needed.
And when we have such a staffing crisis in this city,
why would we want to do that? -That was Councilmember Herbold
talking with me last month about this on "Council Edition".
This measure passed in November with a 5-4 vote.
So why did you support this gunshot detection proposal,
and why do you think results will be positive in Seattle
when they really haven't been in many other cities nationwide?
-Well, what we did, Brian, is we put the money --
well, we kept the money in the budget
that the mayor had proposed
to explore this proposal, but we provisoed it.
So what we want to really see as a council
is what the Racial Equity Toolkit
says about this potential program.
-'Cause it still has to go through that process.
-Right, we want to see what the surveillance ordinance
has to say when it goes through that scrutiny.
-There's going to be public hearings, all that kind --
-Right, So the council will make a final decision
on this sometime next year.
Personally, I mean, I don't know,
in terms of the final decision next year on, like, you know,
up or down on this technology.
You know, I won't be on the council next year,
so I don't know how I would vote on that
'cause I don't have the information in front of me
from -- I don't have a racial equity toolkit.
-Sure, sure. -But I do think
that the executive deserves the deference
of at least being able to try and provide that information
to the council for a fully informed decision.
And that's what we did in the budget.
We kept that money. We put a proviso on it.
I thought the executive was very responsible
in the source of that money,
taking it from the police department.
So it wasn't like they were taking
from some other general fund priority.
They were taking salary savings from the police department
saying, "We want to invest in some of these
technology-based enforcement tools
pending all of this other information."
So, you know, I knew with confidence
that in the spring, probably of next year,
that, you know, we would be able to make a final decision
on this, on the merits of the proposal
with all the information.
So we'll see how that comes.
I mean, now, Councilmember Herbold, obviously,
and I mean, I respect her decision
and respect the decisions of the skeptics of this proposal.
Why didn't you just make the decision now?
I felt like she had enough information.
-I see. -Just wanted to say
let's,you know, let's not even go down this road.
-'Cause the Council has not approved this
in many budgets in the past. -Right.
But I felt like given how the executive had come forward
with the proposal in a thoughtful way,
given the source of the money, that they deserve the chance
to go do all their due diligence,
make a pitch next year for up or down vote.
And I would have made my decision on that
based on the information available
after that process next year.
-Okay. And that will be months in progress.
Thank you for breaking those pieces down.
I did want to point out also, as the budget was wrapping up,
there was another 5-4 vote on the Council
to reject transportation impact fees.
A "yes" vote would have allowed these
to be part of next year's comprehensive plan process.
Developers essentially pay these fees when they build,
and the money goes towards transportation infrastructure.
Transportation impact fees are authorized by the state.
Dozens of cities around Seattle use them.
Councilmember Peterson was pushing for this
to bring in revenue for the way behind schedule work
that needs to be done on our bridges here.
Why were you a "no" on this?
What were your concerns about this?
-Well, we're in a housing crisis in the city of Seattle.
We're the fastest growing city in the nation.
We are experiencing a lot of the challenges
of being a popular place, right?
I mean, we forget that homelessness
is something that afflicts affluent communities.
It afflicts places that people want to move to.
when there's finite housing, lots of demand for housing,
it forces a lot of people out on the streets.
You have a homelessness crisis,
you have an affordability crisis.
There was some journalism recently from Danny Westneat
in his column talking about the cost of living.
-Yeah, 100,000 bucks minimum. -Yeah.
And a big driver of that is housing costs
in the city of Seattle.
We have high interest rates.
It's getting more expensive to buy property.
That makes it more expensive to rent that property out.
-Sure. -So you look at all of
those conflicting challenges,
and is this really the right time
to put another disincentive on building housing,
to put another fee on building housing?
And that is just something that,
given all of these compounding crises,
I couldn't get behind. I can't -- I don't --
I cannot put another fee --
Now, in a different environment, you know,
if we were in a place where housing was more abundant,
or we were figuring out ways to streamline the production
of housing with different combinations of incentives
and rules and inflation, you know,
inflation and interest rates were lower,
if it was a different economic climate,
maybe impact fees would be a good tool.
You know, like, you know, 10, 15 years ago,
transportation impact fees, when we had an environment
of low inflation and low interest rates,
might have been an attractive way
to have that kind of tool and that kind of investment.
But right now, when we are seeing permits go down --
-Building permits, right? -...less people want to build,
people are sitting on their property --
adding one more disincentive on the pile
is not something that we need right now.
We need to be producing tens of thousands,
hundreds of thousands of more housing units
in the city and in the region.
-Can I take a quick sidebar here and talk about a very recent
housing issue here at Fort Lawton?
This is a project that's been in the works for,
shoot, almost 20 years here.
I remember talking about it with Councilmember Mosqueda
right here on the set about four years ago,
when it looked like everything was all set and ready to go.
Now, it looks like there's a deadline in place from HUD,
the federal agency that's working with the city
to try to make this happen here, and there's some issues.
It sounds like the mayor is very concerned about putting
a new infrastructure, what that's going to cost.
When you brought up those points about issues with interest rates
or whatever else, it really made me think about that.
And I would love to get your insight
on what happens in Fort Lawton in your district.
There are some concerns about this.
-Yeah, so, I mean, this has been discussed
ever since I was in high school.
It's been a very, very long time,
and I continue to think
that it is the most appropriate thing
for there to be some kind of public housing
and park and open space, mixed development
in that federal lot at Fort Lawton,
the last piece of public property that is on that campus.
And as you're well aware, as your viewers might be aware,
the Council did pass a proposal in 2019
that was going to be a combination
of park expansion and public housing.
-That's right. -A couple hundred units,
mostly to support seniors and veterans.
That proposal, from what I understand, at this point,
doesn't pencil because of these same market forces
we've been discussing -- cost of labor,
cost of materials, cost of the land.
-Different scene now than in 2019 for sure.
-Right, so the feds are asking us
to figure out a way to make this pencil,
and that might mean we need to include more units
than the initial proposal.
I think that that's something that we should be looking into.
I think it would be a huge waste of an opportunity.
I know that a lot of the folks in the Magnolia neighborhood
have been skeptical about this project.
The only thing I would say,
'cause I know a number of them may be watching the segment --
the only thing I would say is, you know, this is part
of the base relocation and closure process
that the federal government has.
The federal government wants to get rid of this parcel.
-Yeah. -If we cannot come up with a bid
that is a real bid, and that would be housing,
they will go on the private market
and try to decommission this.
Housing is going to that lot regardless.
There is no way that an alternative
that isn't housing is going in to that parcel.
Trust me, you know, I chaired the parks committee.
I chaired the Metropolitan Parks District.
There is no way there is enough money that the city has
to go in and buy that parcel for a park expansion.
It's not going to happen.
And the feds will go to the next best deal,
which is going to be a private development.
So I think that that's really the choice.
It's going to be what kind of housing.
Do you want to have a public amenity
that can serve the people,
that can get people off the street,
that can provide much needed affordable housing?
Or do we want a market rate, suburban style subdivision?
And I think the answer to that is really easy.
I think we want public housing.
It might mean we're going to have to put in more units
than originally planned.
I think that we should embrace that.
I think that's a good idea. -Yeah.
-So I look forward to seeing how Mayor Harrell
and the new Council grapple with that,
because if that opportunity is squandered,
it would be horrible.
-Great observation, I appreciate that.
Let me jump back to the budget here,
another big budget item that I saw here --
the city funding a new agreement
with the Seattle Police Officers Guild
to allow civilian parking enforcement employees
to direct traffic at large events like football games.
Now, if police officers end up working these shifts,
it's an extra $225 per shift,
which works out to about $8 million in police overtime
over the next two years.
The agreement also laid out plans for police involvement
in the dual dispatch program, as you know,
which you've been a champion of, and expands the use
of non-police park rangers to all city parks.
I wanted to break down this because I've heard
from a few critics who say this is giving the police union
too much influence on these non-police alternatives.
How do you look at this agreement?
-Well, you know, people ask me all the time
because I've been advocating for an alternative 911 response
for years and years and years
since the beginning of my time on the council.
-Right. -I consider it to be one of my
greatest accomplishments on the Council,
that we got this over the finish line
and we are going to have the CARE response system,
is something right now, actually --
-It's in progress. -...that's on the streets.
As of the end of October, it's on the streets
and responding to calls.
The reality is, I'll say to the critics of this,
you know, when people ask me why it's taken so long,
you have to bargain it.
And this is Washington State,
where we have very, very strong labor laws.
And as someone who comes from a union household,
as someone who's been in two unions,
I'm glad that Washington has strong labor laws.
But sometimes, it has this result
that a lot of my progressive friends don't like,
where you have to bargain with a union you might not like,
which is the Police Officer's Guild.
But the reality is,
if those are calls they currently respond to
and we want to send someone else,
that has an impact on their working conditions
in Washington State.
Under the state law, you have to bargain it.
If you don't like that, go to the state legislature
and ask them to change it.
You know, but that's just the reality of the law.
We can't just impose it. So you have to come to terms.
And I think we came to an equitable agreement
with the Seattle Police Officers Guild.
#There was one more component to that, Brian.
We can more broadly assign alternative civilian staff
to event staffing and traffic direction as well
as part of this agreement.
So what the city gets, what we get are three things.
We get their agreement not to contest
this new dual dispatch 911 alternative response,
which over time, can evolve to be
a fully independent 911 alternative response.
We get the ability to send our new park rangers --
a program that I created through the Metropolitan Park District,
or reinvigorated.
We had two rangers. We are now going to have 28.
We get to send those park rangers to any park
in the city now, instead of -- -Right, not just Downtown.
-...instead of just the downtown core park.
We also get to essentially break the monopoly
on event staffing that the police have had.
In exchange for those things,
when police do the event staffing,
we have to pay them a premium, we have to pay them more money.
That's just the reality of the law and the state.
I think it's an equitable agreement.
You know, I think that we get a lot for this
and a lot of the flexibility that community
has been demanding to be able to have
a broader civilianization of some of these
public safety roles that historically have been held
in monopoly by the police.
If you want to make progress on these things,
that's what you have to do to reject this deal,
would be to go back to square one.
To reject this deal would be to continue
to have the police do all of those functions.
So, you know, you have to make a deal.
There's no way around making the deal.
And we made the deal, and it's a good one.
-Fair enough. I want to work
on another piece in the budget where you were able
to secure $200,000 for pre-filing diversion programs.
This is all about finding alternatives to jail
for people committing lower level crimes.
But I didn't see anything else in the budget
that substantially increases funding
to these types of alternatives,
which I know were a key part of the debate
over revamping our city's drug possession law this fall.
What impact is $200,000 going to have?
-So, it's going to have a significant impact.
Pre-file diversion is a very, very affordable way
to resolve criminal legal system challenges.
It diverts folks, at the point,
where a prosecutor might be charging somebody with a crime
to a community-based organization
for some kind of alternative programing
based on whatever they're accused of doing.
And keep in mind, for people viewing at home,
this is all for low-level stuff. -Yeah.
-This is all for misdemeanors
that happen in the city of Seattle,
and almost entirely, nonviolent misdemeanors.
So, this is for, you know, if someone has --
has shoplifted a small amount,
or if somebody has trespassed somewhere,
this is an alternative way for them to be held accountable
and to engage with some kind of constructive programing,
to get a second chance as an alternative
to the traditional criminal legal system.
There's a couple of really big advantages.
First, the person can avoid being charged
at all, in the first place,
and a charge, people often forget,
is a criminal record.
Like, even if you're charged, and it's dismissed,
it'll still show up in public record that you were charged.
This is a way to avoid being charged,
because it's before the filing decision.
-Mm-hm.
-Another advantage is it doesn't bog our court system
down with a bunch of small, more minor things.
So then, the court system can spend more time
on more serious offenses -- domestic violence,
driving under the influence, assault, violent crimes.
Those things can take up a bigger volume of time
in the court, because we've been able to resolve
a lot of these smaller things over here.
When I worked for City Attorney Pete Holmes,
I was one of the prosecutors that worked on setting up
our initial pre-filing diversion programing.
-Yeah. -It's been immensely successful.
The primary thing in the criminal legal system
that we use to determine success should not be conviction rate
or how many people we incarcerate.
It should be recidivism rate.
That's the thing that we should really be looking at.
Like, how often are people not coming back to the system,
not getting arrested again, not going back to the court?
Well over two-thirds, I think, even higher
than that of the people that go through pre-file diversion,
do not commit new offenses.
It's an extremely successful program,
way higher than people
who go through the normal criminal legal system.
And it's about 1,000 or so dollars per diversion
for the folks that we contract with to do this work.
So, I think, it's going to make a big difference.
It's also an additional $200,000
that builds on several hundred thousand dollars
that we put in the mid-year supplemental,
as well as several hundred thousand dollars
from last year's budget.
So, it's an accumulation,
where we're getting to the point of pushing
$1 million for pre-file diversion,
which is a huge increase over what we've historically done.
The only other thing I would say, too,
in terms of our interventions
around the intersection of drug use...
-Yeah. -...is we did protect
and enhance the work of the Third Avenue Project,
which has been one of our key interventions
and something that's being covered quite a bit
in the news recently, which is great.
I'm very, very proud of bringing the parties
together for the Third Avenue Project.
I'm glad it's kind of expanded beyond its pilot form,
and now it's becoming sort of a more permanent institution.
The challenge that they're facing,
and this is what --
the next level of what we need to do
to fund interventions for this work
is provide more places for people to go.
-Yeah. -There was not really --
None of the providers we were talking to
really wanted some additional outreach resource.
We had the means to provide it.
That was not something that they were really looking for.
What they were saying is, "Look, we have plenty of people
who are doing outreach.
The challenge is we don't have places
on the back end to send people to."
So, you know, the challenge
that's going to face the next council,
and the challenge that, you know, that I was prepared
to be very engaged in, continue to be engaged in
had I been reelected, is going to be to provide
those back end places for people to go.
-Yeah. -And that's really what we need
to do to go to the next level.
And I think that that's work that, you know, the mayor,
the King County Regional Homelessness Authority,
all of these folks are committed to,
and that's the next step.
-Thank you, I want to keep going down
this path with the criminal legal system,
and talk about what's next for you,
and look back on this drug law discussion
from June of this year when you were all set to vote, yes,
on the first iteration of this law.
But because the promise of a pretrial diversion program
wasn't fully fleshed out, along with other concerns,
you said you couldn't vote, yes.
-I just can't,
because I've worked in these systems.
And I owe it to everyone involved
to bring my experience on that,
sincerely to the table and to daylight it,
I just do.
It's more important than whether I stay on this dais.
Because real -- Because real public policy matters
on how we take care of this.
-I think, you seem to know, even then,
this decision could cost you your job,
and your reelection bid did indeed come up short.
Do you wish you had that decision back?
-No, no, I think, I made the right decision.
I don't take it back at all.
You know, I went to law school at a time when we were seriously
reexamining a lot of our preconceptions
that have undergirded how we deal with addiction.
I mean, we used to criminalize addiction in this country
with horrible, horrible results, you know, more drug use
and dealing and drug crime than ever.
But also ruining the lives of millions of our fellow citizens
by taking away their rights, putting them in prison.
And I do think that we're, unfortunately,
on the precipice of trying to deal with these challenges
in the same way again.
And I was acknowledging the political vulnerability,
because, you know, people are scared, right?
I mean, I just went through a campaign
and talked to thousands and thousands of my fellow citizens.
You know, it's a, you know, going door-to-door.
And so you talk face to face with a lot of people.
And, I mean, I get that people are scared, like,
I'm a parent in this community. -Mm-hmm.
-You know, I definitely have issues
raising my daughter in this community,
in a place where she is going to be exposed to
and see people who are, you know, using drugs
and people who are in extreme poverty.
But I think that what that really requires
is that we really center
how we're going to successfully move forward on this
and not repeat the mistakes of the past.
I do think that the proposal we came up with,
with Mayor Harrell, which we have seen in earnest,
start getting enforced in October,
is striking the right balance.
We're referring people to treatment,
to the extent, that people are entering
the criminal legal system.
It's for warrants, for other matters,
or it's for dealing and trafficking in drugs,
not just using them.
People are getting referred to LEAD.
These are all things that weren't
in the original proposal.
I think it's a better proposal. -Yeah.
-But I think that at a broader cultural level,
I think that it's --
we're getting to a dangerous place now
where we are tiptoeing back
into this place that, you know,
has been thoroughly rejected, thoroughly debunked,
that just criminalizing these behaviors
is somehow going to change them.
-And I just want to throw in this email,
because I think it goes down this path.
Brit wrote us this.
You really took a stand on this legislation.
We've heard about this, I guess, how do you hope the council,
the city, follows up on this in the years ahead?
-Yeah, I mean, I hope that they make decisions
that are based in evidence.
I hope that we don't go down a pathway
where we're responding to the fear in the community,
just with pandering and things
that aren't going to actually fix the underlying problem.
-Yeah. -That takes a lot of courage.
I mean, part of it is, you know, I have the luxury
of being able to have courage,
because I have a law degree, I'm an attorney.
I'm still barred. -Yeah.
-I've got plenty of offers and opportunities
to go back to practicing law, and I'm looking forward to that.
-Okay. Okay.
-But I do think that you can be
in a difficult place in politics
where people are so dependent on their job in politics
that it leads you to a place where you're not willing
to bring your better judgment to bear and lead.
It's not our responsibility just to knee-jerk pander
to whatever the fear in our community is.
Part of our responsibility is to take our background,
our experience, things we know to be true,
and try to guide public opinion
towards a way to actually fix them
and come to grips with our challenges.
You know, you want to solve public drug use,
you know, you have to really invest
in a Housing First proposal.
You have to really invest in harm reduction.
You have to invest in some of the stuff
that we saw proof of concept with through Just Care.
Those are the kinds of things that are going to fix
and move forward on this.
Um, just, uh, um --
But I understand that it is easy for people to just say,
"If we put all these drug users in jail,
we won't have to see them anymore."
I understand that it's easy for a politician to say that.
It's part of the reason that we shouldn't.
-I see, I guess, just looking back
on your 4 years in office,
I know a lot of people are going to remember that decision,
but what do you hope people remember you by?
-Yeah, I mean, we accomplished
a really, really big volume of work in one term.
And that was part of my goal,
right, is like, because you never know
if you're going to get reelected, obviously, right?
So, it's like, do as much as you can
with the time that you have.
And we did a lot. I mean, we saved the Cinerama.
We got an investment in place
to completely rebuild the Queen Anne Community Center.
We dramatically increased our park ranger program.
We put in place a capital plan to restore
and decarbonize half of our community centers
in the city of Seattle.
We...
put together a massive capital plan
for the aquarium expansion for the Overlook Walk
to make sure that was done on time and on budget.
We brought back Bumbershoot and added
a workforce development component to that work.
Something else from the budget that I'm very proud of is,
you know, building on last year,
when we put in an initial 100,000 or so dollars
for the new Bumbershoot to dip its toes in the water
of doing a workforce development program for young people.
-Yeah. -We more than doubled
that this year to continue that work,
because they had a cohort of 16 young people,
taught music promotion,
music mixing. -Right. Right.
-You know, those kinds of skills.
They want to do it again,
increase the cohort, keep that work going
as part of a year-long activation
of the new Bumbershoot, super proud of that.
We were able to get that work done.
-Yeah. We were able to bring,
I mean, just continuing to go down the list.
-Yeah. -We're going to have
ranked-choice voting primaries now,
which is something that my office led on
and got over the finish line. -Yeah.
-You know, I mean, there's so many ways that my team,
and I want to give a shout-out, you know,
to Jacob Thorpe, my Chief of Staff,
you know, Kamilah Brown,
Parker Dawson, Maliq Phakdymanivong,
Daniel Suarez, Katherine Sims.
My legislative aides over the past 4 years,
I mean, just worked themselves ragged
to get all of this stuff done with me.
And we just showed up every day saying, "What can we do today?"
And it's a huge, huge volume of work.
I mean, every time I go to the Cinerama
and watch a movie there, I'm going to be like,
"Man, like, you know, we got this done."
-Sure. -Every time I'm voting
in a ranked-choice voting election in a primary,
I'm going to be like, "Man, we got this done."
-Yeah. You know, go into the aquarium.
I mean, you just like go down the list.
And there's a lot that we did.
And it wasn't easy,
because we had the hurdle of
the first half of the term
was overwhelmingly dominated by the impact of the pandemic.
-Right. -The...
You know, and then the fallout of that
continues to be a really big problem.
-Yeah. -But I'm really, really proud
of the massive volume of work we got done.
And just really look forward
to seeing the impact of that over the next several years.
-All right. Thank you very much.
Councilmember Andrew Lewis,
I appreciate working with you. -Yeah. Of course.
-Good to see you. -Thank you. Thank you very much.
And we will see everyone else next time on "Council Edition."
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