-Hello. I’m your host, Brian Callanan.
How’s the Seattle City Council responding after a shooting
near a Central District high school
that has families scared and frustrated?
And how is the council planning to hire more police officers
and raise officer salaries
while facing a significant budget deficit?
I’m talking with council members Tanya Woo and Rob Saka
about these questions
and the ones you’re sending in, too
next on "Council Edition".
-I am committed to making sure we responsibly...
responsibly reimagine public safety in the city.
-Was this long line of people waiting to talk to me,
to give their thoughts and opinions
about the comprehensive plan,
and what I’m hearing is that people want to see more density.
-All that and more coming up next
on "City Inside/Out: Council Edition".
♪♪
Public safety, transportation, city planning, you name it --
we have a lot to cover here
on this episode of "Council Edition".
And to help us dive into these issues,
I’m joined by Citywide Council Member Tanya Woo.
Thank you very much for being here.
-Happy to be here. Thank you.
-And I’m also with Councilmember Rob Saka,
who represents District 1.
Councilmember Saka, good to see you, too.
-Hey, good morning. Happy to see you as well.
-Thank you. -Let’s do this thing.
And I want to start with public safety here
because there’s a lot of focus that’s been happening recently
on a shooting that was near Garfield High School
in the Central District recently.
Police are investigating this --
a 17-year-old girl who was shot by someone she didn’t know
while she was waiting at a bus stop there.
She was taken to Harborview Medical Center,
has since been released.
There was a second shooting just hours later,
about a half mile away,
where a 37-year-old woman was killed.
Police say it’s unrelated.
You just have a lot of families in the C.D.
and around the city, I would have to say.
Several shootings near Garfield last year as well.
Councilmember Woo, what do you tell these families,
these parents who are saying, "We’re scared"?
-It’s heartbreaking what’s happening,
especially when it comes to young people.
And so, basically, we just have to listen.
And people who are closest to the problem have the solutions.
And so, I went to a community meeting on this past week,
listening to Garfield parents talking about
what solutions they want to see,
especially around and inside their schools.
And so, came back with a whole list of notes of things
to talk about with the mayor’s office,
with council members --
-And with the school district, too, maybe.
-Yes, yes. And so, it’s going to take a group effort
to be able to provide some relief,
because it took us years to get this point.
It’s going to take us a couple of weeks, months,
years to get to a place where people can feel safe.
-Okay. Alright. Thank you for that.
And, Councilmember Saka, if I could,
I’d like to draw on another shooting
that unfortunately happened in your district
that you’ve said in council chambers
has weighed heavily on you.
I’m talking about the shooting death
of 15-year-old Mobarak Adam
at the Southwest Athletic Complex
and Teen Life Center in West Seattle.
It was Seattle’s first homicide of the year.
It happened back in late January.
Recently, you announced some new security cameras
have been installed in this facility.
But this has been a really frustrating case.
It’s been difficult to figure out what happened,
who’s responsible. What’s going on with this?
-Yeah. So tragically,
Mobarak Sharif Adam was, as you noted,
Seattle’s first homicide victim this year.
And 15 years old,
student of Chief Sealth International High School.
There’s been a lot of frustrating elements
of this particular case.
And, you know, some of it relates to the city,
some of it relates to the school district,
some of it relates to broader state law.
And I am committed to making sure
that the family has the answers that they need.
I am here to demand justice for Mobarak,
and make sure if any accountability
needs to flow from that, we have that.
But one of the most frustrating elements of this,
I’ll be honest, Brian, is that, you know, under a new state law,
which is modeled substantially after a Seattle City ordinance,
it provides for legal representation for youth,
basically, before --
-People who are under 18. -Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Which I support the principle.
I think this particular law as written kind of
even goes above and beyond the Seattle standards
and requires it in certain cases.
And at least the interpretation requires it
in cases where police aren’t necessarily
seeking someone as a criminal suspect in a particular matter.
-Usually for information. -They just want
basic information. -Yeah. Yeah.
And unfortunately, you know, I think what happened here
was a miscarriage of justice where we’re at today.
And so, I’m committed to doing what it takes
at the city level,
principally working with my colleagues
and, you know, state legislative colleagues at the state level
to hopefully address this -- -Yeah.
-...statutorily in Washington State.
-Yeah. And there was --
there was a part of this that bothers me, too.
And I’ve been talking with the Office of --
Office of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs about this.
There have been a number of young people
who are maybe first generation,
second generation immigrants to our city
who end up getting caught up in these shooting cases
and these -- unfortunately, these murder cases.
And I don’t know if you have a take on that
because this is a very
potentially vulnerable part of our community
that’s becoming the victims in these cases.
Any thoughts there that you wanted to share?
-Yes, I think every case is different and unique.
But in a way, I think we need to do more engagement outreach,
especially to our communities of color, immigrants,
refugees, non-English speakers.
And how do we get people involved, or parents involved
in their children’s schools who, you know,
most of the time, the children are the ones
who are running the household because they interpret
and speak English for their parents.
-Yeah. -How do we get parents
more involved in their schools?
How do we get more parents involved in government processes
so they could see
what’s happening in their child’s lives?
And then, how do we allow for more programing,
not only just for children and community centers and libraries,
but for parents as well to interact
and build that strong family structure?
-Yeah, always a challenge.
Any thoughts on that, Councilmember Saka?
-Yeah. Look...
I am the son of a Nigerian immigrant,
and so, I come from -- directly from an immigrant
and refugee background myself, and we need to do better.
And if those stats bear out, like,
that people from immigrant refugee backgrounds
are disproportionately impacted by gun violence,
it would not surprise me, sadly.
I’m here to do better, and I’m here to demand justice
for victims of gun violence and violence,
regardless of whether that came from police or a criminal actor.
-Okay. -And we need to do better.
-And I’m here to serve, so... -Thank you.
And I know it’s a very frustrating issue, too.
I can hear it in everyone’s voice here.
I did want to point out,
as reported in the West Seattle Blog,
at least with the West Seattle situation,
a public safety meeting with City School,
other representatives will be happening
at Chief Sealth High School on April 16th in the evening,
if you’d like to check that out.
I wanted to go bigger picture, if I could,
with you here, though.
The mayor recently held what he said
would be the first of many
public safety forums around the city.
The first session was at the downtown library.
Featured not only the mayor, but our chiefs of police,
fire, the CARE Department --
Community Assisted Response and Engagement --
that 9-1-1 alternative,
plus Human Services there as well.
I was really struck by a poll
taken by the crowd there and online as well.
It’s not scientific, but it showed
that 76% of the people polled
were either a victim of crime or knew somebody that was.
Councilmember Woo, I just wanted to get some thoughts about that.
Was that something that jumped out at you?
What did you make of what you heard at that forum?
-Oh, I believe it.
Well, I was talking to a group of Boy Scouts,
or Cub Scouts who are about to become Boy Scouts --
young, young people,
and they’re on Lake City, Aurora,
and they’ve seen dead bodies
because of the fentanyl drug addiction issue.
Kids in front of Summit Sierra High School,
12th and Jackson.
And so, unfortunately, you know,
we try to protect our kids from these,
but they see it, they see what’s happening on our streets.
And so, I think it’s just trying to find out these hot spots.
How do we, um, I guess address the issue.
And fentanyl is a very deadly drug. It’s exploding.
I really appreciate, um -- Last week, also,
Fire Chief Scoggins debuted a program --
-Yeah. -...where they’re offering
you "pruphine" -- -Buprenorphine.
We’re going to touch on that a little bit, yeah.
-Okay, great. -Put a pin on that
for just a second, but I promise
I will come back to that.
Maybe Councilmember Saka, I can draw you in here, too,
because we had a viewer question come in about public safety
on a larger scale. Here it is.
"I realize this process requires renegotiation
of the SPOG contract,
but that is presently in process."
Thank you very much for that e-mail coming in here.
And I’ve talked with all three of Seattle’s
public safety chiefs about this.
Our emergency response is changing.
That’s the message that I’ve heard here.
But to answer Bill’s question, does that mean redefining
what police are used for or how they’re deployed?
What do you think? -First off,
don’t ask me to pronounce that word.
-Buprenorphine is a tough one.
I just kind of blaze right past it.
-I’ll butcher the heck -- -It’s a tough one.
-But it’s an excellent question.
And yes, I am committed to making sure we responsibly...
responsibly reimagine public safety in the city.
And that means sort of modifying
subject to the collective bargaining process,
but modifying the type -- the scope of calls
and responses that officers traditionally respond to,
and shifting some of those more sort of low acuity calls
and matters to ones -- -That are less serious.
-Yes. Yeah. Yeah. To civilian-led responders.
The CARE Department, led by Chief Amy Smith
is a great example of that, where we have responders,
social workers responding to people in crisis, in need,
that they need some sort of response,
but it’s not necessarily a badge
and, you know, gun response that they need.
-And so... -Yeah, person down in a doorway
or something along those lines, yeah, yeah.
-And so, that capability is great.
We’re operating the CARE Department today
under a, you know, limited pilot program,
under a narrow, fairly narrow corridor of the city,
more specifically, in certain parts of downtown
where the need is greatest, or in certain hours.
So my goal over time is to grow,
scale, and expand the CARE Department
to make sure it’s a citywide
365, or 24/7 365 operation.
And we have that kind of response capability.
It’ll take some time to get there,
but we need to do better.
-Okay. Alright. Thank you very much for that.
I want to move on to a related topic
of hiring more police officers.
And I know the council has been talking about this as well.
The amount of sworn officers in the SPD --
just had a presentation about this --
913 officers right now,
the lowest number it’s been since the 1990's.
And it appears the incentives the city has been offering
even as much as $30,000 for these lateral hires --
officers coming in from other departments --
that’s not having the impact the council has been hoping for.
Councilmember Saka, you were talking about this
with Chief Diaz at a recent public safety committee meeting.
He brought up the idea of increasing salaries
and possibly some other incentives.
Here’s a brief clip of what he said.
-Sometimes pay is a good thing,
but it’s those extra incentives that show
that we’re investing in our people.
And sometimes it’s education,
sometimes it’s the vehicles,
sometimes it’s a master police officer program
where they feel like that helps --
it helps them in their career movement as well.
-Hiring more officers I know was a big part of your campaign
last year when I was talking with you --
all the council candidates were talking about this --
is raising officer pay the answer
to this issue of our police shortage?
Is it other incentives? What’s your plan?
-It’s all of the above. -Okay.
-And we need a holistic, comprehensive approach
to address the hiring needs.
And by the way, yes, make no mistake,
we need to hire more officers.
And we’re not going to alternative response our way
out of our responsibility to offer --
to hire more officers to restore our department
to full staffing levels.
But that said, some of the things
that we’ve been trying so far,
uh, haven’t been working as well,
including the existing incentives.
So we need to go back to the drawing boards
in large material respects,
and consider other alternatives, incentives.
And we learned about a few of those just now
and during that committee meeting.
I also think -- and we’ve done some great things
so far with marketing,
and just to get more people interested.
-Yeah. -That’s yielded some good
initial results.
I’m here to help build upon that work.
But I think the greater opportunity right now, Brian,
is related to two things.
One, the process for how we source, the intake process
and how we kind of funnel them along
from the time they apply to the time they’re ultimately hired,
if that’s what happens at SPD.
It’s currently very bureaucratic.
It’s not at all in line with our peer jurisdictions,
many of which are competitors for talent.
-Right. -And then the second thing
is officer morale.
And, you know, Chief -- -The Chief brought that up
a lot. -Yep, yep, yep, yep.
Chief Diaz holds many, you know, responsibilities.
One of them, I think, is, uh,
he’s the chief morale officer of SPD.
So I’ll be looking to the chief's wise judgment, uh,
partnering with the mayor’s office, my fellow colleagues,
to find some solutions -- -Yeah.
-...to meaningfully address officer morale.
-Okay. Thank you. That’s definitely a piece of this.
Councilmember Woo, maybe I can guide this
with another viewer question.
Which is up over $100,000.
Some thoughts about this, please?
-Yes. I think it’s going to take
a lot of different aspects
to be able to solve the situation.
Like Councilmember Saka said, you know,
setting the tone and morale going forward.
And I remember this meeting.
There were a lot of ideas thrown out there,
but I don’t know if they were viable.
I remember councilmember -- a couple council members
suggested, um, annual housing subsidies.
-Right. Mm-hmm. -And so,
I think these are great ideas
and we should explore all of them.
-Okay. -But also, I think
we should try to solicit ideas
from community members. -Okay.
-I was really enlightened to see that, you know,
a lot of our young people, our children, um,
are interacting with officers in a very positive way.
And so, how do we -- are we able to, you know,
bring up the next generation of police officers
in the community who are from community,
I think is going to be especially important
to making sure we do that outreach and engagement.
-Got it. I need to ask the tough question, though,
of -- I’m hearing this idea of offering more money,
more bonuses, things of this nature.
But the city is facing a $230 million budget deficit.
Help me out. This feels like a pretty tough math problem.
And I just wanted to get some thoughts about this.
How do you do that, Councilmember Saka?
-Yeah, we have a responsibility to balance the city’s budget
and spend -- and make sure our tax dollars are spent
and invested wisely, and we’re seeing outcomes
for whatever -- whatever we’re spending.
And yes, we need to hire more officers.
I’m committed to doing that.
We need to expand, grow the CARE Department.
Committed to doing that.
Public safety is very, very, very important.
As we look to this $250 million
and growing budget deficit,
I’m committed to prioritizing public safety.
I will say that right now.
And you know, that is the greatest --
singular greatest need, I think, for our city right now.
I’m committed to prioritizing that.
And, you know, we need to look
for other opportunities for consolidation, Brian.
-Okay. -The canonical example
that my coll-- our colleague, Councilmember Strauss
always provides is like, okay,
maybe there might be arborists in the Parks Department and SDOT
and, you know, some other agencies,
but do we need 17 different departments with arborist,
or can they sit under one parks, for example, whatever it is?
-Yeah. -But we need to better kind of
consolidate our functions, services, our lines of business,
avoid duplication of efforts.
I think we’ll achieve some great savings
through that as well, but public safety
is really important and I’m committed to prioritizing
that through these budget conversations.
-Thank you. Councilmember Woo,
some thoughts on budget, the deficit.
-What have we got? -Yeah.
So I believe budget's policy, it’s also a moral document.
And we have to set our priorities,
and public safety is one of them.
And that’s just being able to work together
to find out what, you know, Councilmember Saka said,
find the redundancies
and how can we work cohesively together.
And it’s going to be a lot of tough choices.
And so, I think there’s going to be
a lot of really rough decisions and conversations to be had.
But I think, you know, we’re ready,
and we are going to focus on this
in the later half of the year. -Yeah.
And I know it’s in the back of your mind right now.
That’s why I’m asking about it here in the springtime.
But is the idea of new revenue off the table,
or how do you look at that?
And we’ll both have you chime in, if you could.
Councilmember Woo, could you start?
-Oh, I know we’re looking
at the Progressive Revenue Task Force very closely
and looking at those options they proposed,
seeing if they’re viable.
And, you know, this was a group of people
who have come together from all walks of life.
And so, we’re leaning very heavily on them.
And so, I’m open to it, but wanted to make sure
that we also hear from the greater community as well.
-Okay. Alright. Councilmember Saka.
-Everything is on the table, from my perspective.
That said, we need to be very, very thoughtful
about every single thing we do
and be mindful and look around corners
and be able to anticipate potential implications
and impact of what we do.
Because, you know, I’m here to move away
from well-intended ideas only.
We need to see results,
and we need to be able to contemplate what’s going on.
That Progressive Revenue Task force
or Revenue Stabilization Workgroup
or whatever the branding is called,
it was a committee of experts who got together
and, you know, collaborated across differences
and came up with a number of terrific ideas.
And I applaud the leadership and service of everyone
on that commission.
I think some of the ideas in there --
and this is through no fault of their own --
but some of the ideas -- and having some conversations
with our central staff and budget experts --
aren’t actually implementable, operationalized,
like, able to be operationalized at the city
because of state law preemption issues.
And so, some of those ideas
that were presented as options in Seattle,
like for example, the vacancy tax
and, you know, CEO tax, a number of other things,
you know, they didn’t have legal review.
And as a result, those -- a few of those things,
including a few things that during the campaign,
many of us suggested,
"Hey, we’re open to exploring", aren’t actually doable.
So we -- Everything is on the table.
But I want to help set expectations
about some of those options being presented
as options that aren’t, unfortunately, truly options
through no fault of anyone that served on that committee.
-Okay, it sounds like
there’s a lot more to sort through there,
but I’m looking forward to that conversation.
While we’re talking budget, let’s talk transportation
and Councilmember Saka, maybe I can start with you here.
You chair this committee, and you’ve been hearing
recently about the state of our bridges.
I wanted to talk about this first.
Just kind of going up the ladder here.
9% are in poor condition, 57% are in fair condition,
34% -- only a third of them are in good condition.
SDOT essentially told the city the 10.5 million
that the city has set aside every year
to keep our bridges maintained isn’t quite cutting it.
Councilmember Strauss brought up the idea of maybe
we just need a levy to pay for
bridge repairs and maintenance.
I just wanted to talk about that, that idea
and what this means for the transportation levy
the council is hoping to renew
when it expires at the end of this year.
-Yeah, so I represent District 1,
which includes West Seattle, who, you know --
Look, I represent a community of people
and constituents, myself included,
who are still traumatized from the devastating impacts
of having a protracted two-and-a-half-year closure
of the West Seattle Bridge. -Right.
-And -- -That impacted Georgetown.
Other parts of your district, too, yeah.
-Every part of the city, our region.
-Yeah. -And so, we have some --
a huge opportunity to do better for our bridges
and make sure they’re more functional.
We invested in preservation and maintenance
and modernization efforts for our bridges.
Because, Brian, there’s over 100 bridge assets across the city.
-Right. -And as we know,
as you noted, many are in a state of disrepair.
So, regardless of the size or scope of this renewal levy,
even if we dedicated 100% of that
towards bridge maintenance and preservation efforts,
it still would not meet the need.
So we need to think creatively
about other funding sources -- -Yeah.
-...leverage heavily, work heavily in, you know,
shared investments from our federal partners
and federal grants, state, county, etc.
Transportation is really a shared responsibility
because we all benefit, the economy benefits,
and people benefit when we keep people,
goods, services moving safely and efficiently
throughout the city. -Okay. Thank you.
Councilmember Woo, I want to bring you in here.
And if I could, I’d like to talk about your role
as Chair of the city’s Sustainability Committee,
which deals with the city’s environmental goals,
because we had a viewer question that kind of related to this.
Robin asked this.
Robin, thanks a lot for the question.
Some thoughts about this? This is really an intersection
of some of these environmental issues
and these transportation issues, too.
-Yes, I agree that’s a really important question
and something we’re really looking into and examining
because we want to meet our goals,
and we realize the goal is quite ambitious,
but how do we do it gradually?
These things don’t happen overnight.
And so, but really excited that, you know,
Seattle, we’re a leader in innovation
when it comes to green technology
and climate goals.
And so, really honored and proud to be able to delve deeper
and figure out a plan on how we get there.
-Yeah. And I know this work is just starting.
Councilmember Saka.
-They're just starting at the early end.
Some initial thinking from my perspective,
we have an opportunity in this new levy
to invest heavily in three core high level areas --
-Okay. -...bridge, road maintenance,
preservation, modernization efforts,
uh, safety, a safe, uh, mobile experience for all pedestrians,
cyclists, uh, vehicle traffic. -Yep.
-And part of that, you know, I want to help bring to life
a once-in-a-generation investment
in new sidewalk infrastructure.
We learned -- Happy to talk about that opportunity more.
27% missing sidewalks throughout the city.
-Unacceptable. -Right.
-And finally, we need to take bigger,
better, bolder climate action,
and -- including by bringing to life
new EV charging infrastructure throughout the city.
-Okay. -And I actually just had
a briefing from SDOT
and people from City Light yesterday
on this specific topic,
and I’m looking to work with my colleagues to make sure
we are responsible in our commitment to the city,
to the environment, and bring that to life.
-Okay. Thank you. -All of it.
-Thank you for that. I wanted to move on, if I could,
to some concerns about the crisis of homelessness
and our region’s opioid crisis.
The City of Seattle recently launched a program
to allow paramedics from the Seattle Fire Department
to administer buprenorphine in the field.
This is the drug that helps stabilize patients
being treated for an opiate overdose.
And this is a look at the recent press conference
we’re seeing right here.
Why is this program needed?
I wanted to add some perspective here.
I talked with Jon Scholes
of the Downtown Seattle Association.
He explained to me recently here at the Seattle Channel,
our drug crisis is impacting our homeless people severely.
-Well, in King County last year, we saw
a record number of people die from drug overdoses.
It’s now the leading cause of death of folks
that are living unsheltered in our community.
That wasn’t the case two years ago.
So more than 300 people died outside
that were living unsheltered, from drug overdoses
in King County.
And this crisis is really centered in Seattle.
-Councilmember Woo, you were at this press conference here.
How’s this program going to help?
-I think it’s going to help immensely.
I am very excited about this program.
And so, basically, the base of the program is,
is that when firefighters go to the scene of an overdose
and they’re able to revive this person,
they’re going to give them this drug.
-I cannot pronounce it. -Buprenorphine. Yeah.
-Buprenorphine, yes, thank you. -I’ll keep trying to help
as best I can, yeah. -And so, this helps them.
You know, fentanyl really changes somebody.
They’re not themselves.
They’re just craving their next hit, basically.
So this puts -- This drug puts them in a place
that will subside their addiction cravings
and be able to make decisions
on how they want to see their life heading.
And I heard their amazing statistics.
Was it, like, eight people since this program started,
within a week -- -They’re getting out there.
-Yeah, getting out. They agreed to go into treatment.
And then, I think it was three out of the eight...
I remember it was quite amazing.
-So having them stabilized is that first step. Okay.
-To make that choice. -Okay.
-I think that gives us a fighting chance.
-Yeah. -Like, my group we --
my volunteer group, we go out in the streets,
12th and Jackson, and we've administered Narcan.
We've administered CPR,
and it’s just an ongoing issue these last two years.
And this helps. I think this will help a lot.
-Okay. Looking forward to seeing that.
I’m going to try to jam in a conversation
about the Comprehensive Plan in three minutes.
See how we do here.
I just wanted to talk about this because
there’s a lot of public hearings
going on about this right now.
This is basically the road map to growth and density
in the City of Seattle over the next 20 years.
There’s a document that’s going to be due out
at the end of this year.
You guys are working on the council,
and maybe Councilmember Woo, I can talk about this with you.
The mayor just came out with his proposal about this.
It would add at least 100,000 housing units
to our supply over the next two decades.
I know there’s been a little bit of pushback on that.
Critics say we need a lot more.
The mayor says this is a floor, not a ceiling.
Says we’ll have plenty of capacity for growth.
I know you recently went to a community meeting about this.
I wanted to touch on this. What did you hear?
Where do you want to guide this conversation about growth?
-Yes, I went to the Comprehensive Plan Open House
this past week. -At Cleveland, right?
-Cleveland High? -Yes.
And so, yeah, it was quite amazing.
People are really invested in this.
And so, there was this long line of people waiting to talk to me,
to give their thoughts and opinions
about the Comprehensive Plan.
And what I’m hearing is that people want to see more density.
And so, how do we take --
I know that this is the draft plan.
And so, the mayor’s office is taking in all these comments
and going to produce the final plan,
which the council won’t see until about the end of the year.
-Right, right.
-And so, I’m planning to go to all of the meetings
and listen to what people have to say about it.
But it was quite interesting because, you know,
we had the Transportation Plan, that was 600 pages.
-Right. -And then we had
the Comprehensive Plan. -Some light reading there.
-Yes. -[ Laughs ] Councilmember Saka,
just to wrap up on this thought about the Comprehensive Plan.
I know this is an important issue in your district.
It’s all over the city here.
Some thoughts about where you want to guide
this conversation. -With the Comp Plan?
-Yeah, please. -Yeah. So Comp Plan --
-Which I know intersects with the Transportation Plan.
-Oh, yeah. So make no mistake.
Growth and land use policy is tightly interwoven,
connected with transportation policy.
And you know, I have right here a, uh,
for visual depiction -- -Yeah.
-Illustration purposes. -Look out.
This is a copy of the Seattle Transportation Plan,
the draft, proposed Seattle Transportation Plan.
-That was almost too hot for Seattle Channel. Keep going.
-Yeah, yeah. 600 plus page document.
I have it earmarked here. This is, by the way,
front and back, printed, uh, two pages per sheet.
-Right. -And in the Comp Plan,
there is a transportation element
that I’m still working my way through.
-Okay. -But both of those things,
the Comp Plan --
So, you know, growth policy and transportation policy
are tightly interwoven.
And I think, with respect to the Comp Plan,
we need to let the process play out.
We have a number of great community sessions lined up.
Communities are already sharing their feedback.
And yeah,
I think we need to look what’s been done historically --
-Yeah.
-...and the successes or failures of that.
And as we plan ahead for the next 10, 20 years ahead.
And yeah, growth is not a bad thing in and of itself, so...
-Yeah, we’ve got a lot to look at here.
-Yes. -Thank you both for your input.
And we will see you next time on "Council Edition".
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