♪♪
-It's great to be here at Rainier Beach
at the South Shore K-8 school.
I want to thank the K-8 principal, Justin Hendrikson,
for hosting us,
and also thank our sign language interpreters,
Karen Carlson and Elizabeth Rothman.
Today is a day of opportunity for Seattle's streets,
neighborhoods, and communities.
It's the day the Mayor unveils his draft
transportation levy proposal for a month of public dialogue.
The Mayor's levy proposal offers a balanced
and practical set of investments
to maintain and modernize our streets and bridges.
Informed by the Seattle Transportation Plan,
our Asset Management Strategy,
and our Strengthen Vision Zero program,
the proposed investments will produce a safer,
better-connected, and more reliable
transportation system for all.
And now it is my great pleasure to introduce the Mayor
of Seattle, Bruce Harrell.
-Thank you, Greg. I notice the people in the rain
aren't clapping as enthusiastically
on a great April day. I'm very excited to be here.
I'm going to say a few words
about what we're actually celebrating,
the start of a discussion.
This -- let me say a few things first.
Escott, you rock. You rock. Thank you to Greg Spotts.
And, you know, this levy that we're here to talk about
was designed from what I'll just sort of describe
as a wonderful One Seattle approach.
We took input from every diverse community we could be in.
We are particularly here in this particular zip code
because we know in this side of the town,
like other parts of the town,
we have issues of equity and issues of safety.
And so we wanted to be here to recognize
that this is the work
that we signed up to do as public service.
We took input from diverse communities, neighborhoods,
everyone that uses different modes of travel,
to combine it into what we think is a great package.
The folks here today represent neighbors,
and businesses, and unions, and construction trades,
bike and pedestrian advocates, champions of transit,
environmental leaders.
If they can yell, they're part of our team.
Because we want to yell and we want to listen
because we are passionate about making sure Seattle is
a safe place,
and that we get from A to B for our families
and for our friends.
To create a vision for One Seattle,
we really need that input from everybody.
Our Transportation department has been working on this
for over a year, 12 months of discussion.
And it was this vision for our future that we hope to create,
because we know that we need a transportation system
that works for everybody.
When I was running for office a few years ago,
we had an office out on the North End,
and a young lady showed up to help.
And she was blind
and she showed up with a bad abrasion on her forehead
and she said she had to take three buses
to get to our headquarters to help.
And when I walked her back to the bus stop,
and this is a few years ago,
I realized that in order to be a good transportation leader,
we have to look at it from all lenses,
even from those who cannot see, those who are disabled,
those who use one mode of transportation over the other.
So as mayor,
we wanted to create a city that is safe for all people,
whether we're talking about public safety in terms
of crime or transportation safety.
It is all about making sure we can be who we want to be
in a safe environment.
Families, workers,
visitors should be able to travel easily and safely
to live, work, and shop and have fun together,
regardless as to how they get from A to B.
This bashing of modes of travel
will not happen under One Seattle approach.
We need safe, reliable,
and connected transportation systems
that will recognize that.
Now, our current levy funds nearly 30% of Seattle's
budget for transportation mobility.
We know that it expires at the end of this year.
Past levies, we must recognize,
largely because of the work of you all.
I've only been a mayor for a couple of years.
I have been a city employee for a long time,
but I'm not going to take any credit.
Past levies delivered 500 lanes of paving,
345 blocks of new sidewalks, 261 safe routes to school projects,
and raise your hand if you had anything to do with that.
Raise all your hands, because all you did.
They made Seattle greener with 9,000 trees,
accessible with over 3,000 curb ramps,
better connected with over 300 transit improvements.
But dare I say, that's in the past.
I only look in the past a little bit.
Now we're looking forward.
Our proposal now, an eight-year, $1.35 billion levy renewal
that we're laying out right now.
And I need to make this clear,
because we've briefed the media
and we've talked to a lot of you,
this is something we've developed.
That this is clearly the biggest levy in our history.
This is big ball for what we're trying to do,
reflecting what we need to do and what kind of investments
we need to have to make sure our future is safe.
The proposal reflects community input and cost
to maintain and rebuild our infrastructure
and build projects that will move our city forward.
I must make it clear,
and I think many of you know how the levy process works.
This is the beginning of a discussion.
This is the result of 12 months of --
and I said this
when we announced the East Marginal Way Project yesterday
from the old levy.
Note to self, muffler law must be on the books.
I said that this is the beginning of a discussion.
We listen, and we'll continue to listen.
We are laying this out for the public to see,
but we certainly did not do this in a vacuum.
Our proposal is designed to move you safely,
reliably, and sustainably to keep our economy humming.
This levy will -- is critical for our future, as we said.
Now, let me break it down a little more into a few buckets.
Let's talk about safety.
We will repair 34,000 urgent sidewalk defects
and construct 250 blocks of new sidewalks and 10,000 curb ramps.
We will improve bike network with barriers,
maintenance, and closing gaps.
One of the things I've talked about publicly
is that when we look at different modes of travel,
such as bicycle safety,
we can't -- have to be in front of allowing that.
In other words, we have to make sure it's safe for everybody.
So we're building safety project corridors on streets
where we recognize there have been the most crashes,
most collisions. Reliability.
No matter how you travel,
we will repave 15 of our busiest streets
and improve lighting and crosswalks.
We'll update signals on 40 corridors
and install more to improve flow and safety.
A conversation about transportation
cannot omit bridges, the bridges that our city relies on,
and all of us have watched with perhaps fear
of what happened in Baltimore.
And I've had an exchange with the Baltimore mayor
on what they're going through over there.
We have to address the maintenance backlog
of Seattle's bridges
and improve the conditions of this critical infrastructure.
Seattle has 135 bridges connecting neighborhoods
over water and valleys, whether stationary or movable.
All travel modes or only some,
with no matter how you're traveling,
these bridges keep Seattle moving
and support our vibrant economy.
And that's why you'll see how we're recognizing that.
The average age of a Seattle bridge is 60 years old.
And if you're my age,
that seems sort of young.
But for bridge talk, that's not young.
That's compared to 47 years nationally.
And we have multiple bridges over 100 years old.
So our investments to upgrade the mechanical systems
to keep our bridges working,
to prolong their lifespan, to be proactive,
to reduce closures, and unscheduled outages.
So that's part of what we're trying to do.
I want to talk about connected neighborhoods.
We will improve walking and biking connections to schools
and light rail stations,
improve public spaces for people to walk, play,
and enjoy outdoors.
Again, we want to thank our educators
and our administrators.
We have to protect our children,
and again that's why we on this beautiful -- yes.
We have to protect our children,
because surely we know how important they are
to a great thriving city.
Sustainability and reduction of emissions.
We will install electric vehicle charging stations
and create low-pollution neighborhoods
in a very strategic way.
We'll expand tree canopy and tree species
in terms of their diversity.
Now, why would we do that in this particular levy,
I've been asked.
SDOT plays a vital role in keeping the Emerald City green
and supporting our One Seattle tree plan,
with over 100,000 trees lining our streets and sidewalks.
So, part of this levy we will extend
and create more neighborhood greenways which create,
again, safer and calmer routes for people walking and biking.
We'll build over 160 projects
that improve transit reliability, equity,
and once again, safety.
Now in doing this, this is part
of our economic recovery and supporting of good jobs.
We're looking downtown on our 3rd Avenue corridor.
We'll make critical safety improvements down to 3rd Avenue.
And again, freight.
You've heard me do a lot of talk
this week about freight improvements.
And indeed, when we look at what happened in Baltimore,
that was one of the serious economic effects,
is how it affected freight.
So we are planning and getting ahead of that type of situation
with our freight improvements, paving,
and focusing repairs on major truck streets to support
the delivering of goods and services and businesses.
For the last 18 years our voters have supported levies,
and they've made essential investments and improvements
to our sidewalks, bridges, and signals, and even more.
So this particular draft levy proposal,
and I emphasize draft again,
because we're still working on this.
Again, it's based on community input and
research into our needs.
Again, we understand affordability for residents.
We understand that because of a lot of the work we did.
In fact,
this week almost every night my executive team is in meetings,
8 o'clock, 9 o'clock,
looking at how we can keep our city more affordable.
That is always a challenge that we're trying to get in front of.
But the fact of the matter is, is our city budget,
like cities throughout the state,
we cannot keep pace with the cost of materials,
labors, and growth, so we try to calibrate,
or balance this levy with the needs of people
who will ultimately pay.
We have to prove to them, make the argument,
if you will, as to why this is needed to keep our city safe.
Now, again, this proposal is not the end of the discussion,
but the start of a new conversation.
Your input and engagement
is essential to defining the future
of our transportation system.
So we're going to ask you now to please share
your feedback and ideas
with SDOT leadership and SDOT members over the next month.
We'll plan to share this plan
and I will be personally meeting with many of the stakeholders
and the advocates,
and we'll use that input to form our final levy proposal
which will then go to the council next month.
And we look forward to collaborating
on a shared commitment with the Seattle City Council to a safe,
reliable, connected and sustainable Seattle.
And again, now you see, this is a sign.
It stopped raining when I started talking.
That's a sign that the city is ready for this impressive levy
that we put the work in
and I want to thank all of you for listening to me.
Start this discussion and the discussion will continue.
And with that, Greg Spotts, I think I'll hand it over to you.
Thank you very much.
-Thank you so much, Mayor Harrell.
Let the sun shine, let the rain stop.
Before I introduce the next speaker,
I'd like to recognize some people who've worked very,
very hard on this proposal.
Deputy Mayor Adiam Emery, thank you for your leadership
and your support.
And I'd like to thank some of my team at SDOT,
the executive sponsor of this project,
Senior Deputy Director Francisca Stefan,
project leader Megan Shepard, project team members Megan Hoyt,
Emily Reardon, Dan Anderson, Serena Lehman, and Katie Olson.
Thank you all so much.
And on Adiam's team, Elliot and Adonis,
thank you guys too as well.
One of the priorities in our levy proposal
is making investments in the streets
that connect us to current and future light rail stations.
So now I would like to introduce one of the region's
longstanding transportation leaders
and a good friend of SDOT, Goran Sparrman,
Interim CEO of Sound Transit.
-Thank you Greg, for that warm greeting
and good afternoon
everyone on this beautiful Seattle afternoon.
It's pretty nice, isn't it? I want to thank Greg
and I want to thank Mayor Harrell for inviting me
to give some brief comments here today,
and I would remind everyone not only
is Mayor Harrell a key leader for the City of Seattle
when it comes to leading
the Seattle Department of Transportation
and everything the city does,
he is also an absolutely key board member
on the Seattle Transit Board.
Mayor Harrell, I appreciate your strong leadership.
-Not a problem.
-As some of you know,
and I know many people in the audience here,
I've pretty much dedicated my career to improve
how people get around.
And I know how essential this transportation levy,
especially this transportation levy that funds
so much of the Seattle Department of Transportation,
how that supports Sound Transit's mission,
my agency's mission,
of connecting more people to more places.
That is the core function that my agency is working on,
and we have a very large, massive program
that will play out over decades to make that vision a reality.
Transit links people to jobs, housing, and most of all,
to opportunity,
and that is a key issue for everyone's well-being
in the central Puget Sound region.
And remember, Sound Transit is a regional agency,
but Seattle is at the heart of that regional system.
Over the next 15 years,
Sound Transit will be expanding the light rail to West Seattle,
to Ballard
and adding a station in the Rainier Valley at Grand Street.
And I don't want to steal Greg's thunder here,
but I will mention
that there was a press release this afternoon
setting the opening date for a light rail extension
from Northgate to Lynwood.
And that is happening on August 30th.
That's the ribbon cutting for that.
Thank you.
And I will also pile on a little bit on April 29th,
no, 27th, April 27th,
we're opening the East Link starter line
that is connecting the South Valley Park
and Ride to basically the high technology center
on the Microsoft campus.
So that is happening very soon,
to be followed by connecting the rest of East Link
across Lake Washington to Line 1 in the International District.
So, a lot of very exciting projects
are happening over the next few years.
But back to what's really important
and what we're here to talk about today,
which is the Seattle Transportation Levy.
This transportation levy will provide critical funds
for projects that give people safe
and convenient access to Sound Transit's new
and current light rail stations. And let's face it,
without that accessibility to my system's stations,
we are wasting our money building it,
because it's all about giving people access to use the system.
It's absolutely critical.
This levy builds on an 18-year legacy of transportation levies
that Seattle has been doing,
working in partnership with Sound Transit,
King County Metro,
to build out this comprehensive system that works for everyone
and is aligned with the growing light rail network
that I just described.
I really applaud Mayor Harrell and the SDOT Director Spotts
for supporting transit investments,
and most especially for their vital partnership working
with my agency to achieve a true regional vision
that establishes a sustainable and thriving
and connected region.
So my thanks to everyone
who's been working so hard on this effort,
and I look forward to the continuing conversation
to come up with a really good strong levy
that passes the voters this November.
Thank you all. -Thank you so much.
The kids are coming out.
We were hoping that this was going to happen.
It happened at just the right moment.
Watch this.
Cities thrive when it's safe and attractive
for kids to walk, bike, and use transit to get to school.
And levy funding supports Seattle's
award-winning Safe Routes to School program.
So, now I would like to introduce Tonie Talbert,
Principal of Dunlop Elementary. -Well, hello everyone.
So, you know, I'm used to those voices out there.
I am Tonie Talbert,
the proud Principal of Dunlap Elementary School.
You can't see us,
but if you took a safe walk around this building,
you would see Dunlap.
I am here to support safe routes,
healthy streets for our kids and schools,
with the support
of the Transportation Department and SDOT.
We have been involved with SDOT last year and this year.
We have a magnificent PE teacher, Molly Blair.
You may not know that name, but put it in your pocket.
She has been at Dunlap for 30 years.
SDOT has supported her in the Let's Go! Project.
Yeah, and I'm going to tell you about it.
SDOT has funded bikes for our 4th -- our 3rd,
4th, and 5th graders.
You may think that all students know how to ride bikes,
but our physical education teacher, Molly Blair,
taught every 3rd grader, every 4th grader,
and every 5th grader how to ride a bike
in the Let's Go! program.
It's not just at Dunlap.
It's at every single elementary school in Seattle.
And hopefully, middle school as well.
We want everyone to be active with riding and safety.
Some of our parents will drive their students to school
because they don't know about our safe routes.
But now, thanks to SDOT and transportation,
we have been walking -- it's called the walk,
bus, and the bike bus.
We started last year walking and biking.
I even took out my old 10-speed bike.
I dusted it off.
And to support the Safe Routes to School,
we would meet them on Ella, and I rode my bike
to school with the students and the parents.
It's a healthy route. We have speed bumps.
We have signage.
And what's so important about the Healthy Routes,
because it's the signage that's really important,
the cars stop for us.
The parents know their students are safe.
I know the students are safe.
So, for our future of our kids,
safety is of the utmost priority for us.
Without the transportation levy and the support of SDOT,
we wouldn't have safe routes in our schools.
We want our children to feel safe when they walk,
roll, or ride a bus.
We want them to know that when they are anywhere
in the neighborhood, they will feel safe.
It's called healthy,
because we don't want them to think about anything dangerous.
We have kindergarten through 5th grade students,
from the little ones to the larger ones.
So for the future of our students,
please think about our transportation levies
and the support of SDOT.
Thank you. -Thank you very much.
Our next speaker is one of Seattle's most passionate
and knowledgeable advocates for low-carbon mobility,
and he also has an encyclopedic knowledge of the bus system.
I'd like to introduce my friend, Kirk Hovenkotter,
Director of the Transportation Choices Coalition.
-Hi, all. Thank you, Greg. Thank you, Mayor Harrell.
I'm Kirk Hovenkotter.
I'm the Executive Director
of Transportation Choices Coalition.
And personally, it means a lot to me
to have this levy be announced here next to Dunlop Elementary.
Back in 2009,
I taught pedestrian safety education to 2nd graders
at that very school.
Tragically, the reason we were there was
because a student was hit by a car nearby.
I knew that no matter how good of an educator I was,
the thing that was going to make those schoolkids safe
were sidewalks and crosswalks between their neighborhoods,
their schools, and their community centers.
We've come a long ways since then,
and we still have work to do.
Today, I'm honored to stand with the Mayor and community leaders
to announce a proposal that will help make our city safer
and more connected for those 2nd graders who are now in --
graduating college, which is wild.
For a whole other graduation of schoolkids
and for every resident of Seattle.
Transportation Choices Coalition is the advocate for safe,
sustainable, and equitable transportation
across Washington State. We know that Seattle's
transportation needs are enormous.
This levy proposal is a big commitment
towards meeting those needs.
It is the largest levy in the city's history.
I want to commend the Mayor and the city leadership
who took on this challenge,
the staff who have shaped this levy over the last year,
and the community of transportation advocates
across Seattle
who are working tirelessly to make our city streets better.
Seattleites understand there's an urgent need
for these big investments.
The number of people hurt biking or walking is trending upwards.
The majority of our climate emissions
come from people driving.
And every day, buses are stuck in traffic,
making people late to school pickup
and drop off, and health care appointments.
Nine years ago,
our organization was honored to lead the campaign
that won the passage of the previous Move Seattle levy.
All around the city at this very moment,
people are benefiting from those investments.
Today, we can bike safely on the new Greenlake Path.
We can also bike along the bustling Westlake Trail.
Neighbors can walk
and roll along 250 blocks of sidewalks and curb ramps.
And working families can better rely on buses like the 7
to get them home on time thanks to new bus lanes,
signals, and bus stops.
It's hard to imagine that all of those didn't exist back in 2015
when the last levy was passed.
By the end of this levy in 2032,
this proposal will build more of those investments in streets,
trails, and transit
that bring people joy and make it safe for them to get
where they need to go.
The Seattle Transportation Levy will make
the city more affordable, accessible, and inclusive.
But we recognize that the need is enormous.
We look forward to working with the Mayor, the Council,
and staff to ensure this levy does as much as it can
to build safe sidewalks, bike routes,
make buses run more reliably, and connect more neighborhoods
with accessible routes to light rail.
Transportation Choices commends Mayor Harrell
on this levy proposal
and we're excited to work with the Mayor and Council
on these finishing touches on it.
Thank you for your time.
-We have one more speaker,
and she has to do with how all this work gets done.
And let's hear it for the workers
who work out there on the streets in all weather,
building and maintaining our transportation infrastructure.
I'm known at SDOT
for showing up unannounced at the construction site
on a public transportation.
I get off the bus and greet everybody.
And I'll tell you, up in this region,
you have to be willing and able to work in all conditions
to do street work up here,
where it rains 165 days a year. But additionally,
when we make investments in our transportation infrastructure,
we're producing local jobs with excellent pay and benefits.
The money we invest in our infrastructure
goes right back into our communities,
and to the people who own homes and pay taxes.
It just has a multiplier effect in our economy.
So, I'm proud to introduce Katie Garrow,
Executive Secretary-Treasurer at MLK Labor.
Thank you so much for joining us.
-Good afternoon.
My name is Katie Garrow and I lead MLK Labor, AFL, CIO.
I would like to thank first the members of print,
broadcast and TV media for being here today,
members of CWA, SAG-AFTRA, IBEW and IATSE
for telling our stories and ensuring
that voters know the truth.
I have the great honor of representing thousands
of workers who pave our roads, build our bridges,
install electric vehicle charging stations,
drive truck, drive the bus,
drive your Uber, pick up the garbage,
and hundreds of thousands more who drive, bus,
and walk to work every day here in King County.
Working Seattleites don't need studies or PowerPoints
to convince us that our roads, bridges,
and sidewalks are in bad shape.
We live it every day.
Some of us, known as super commuters, people
who drive more than 90 minutes each way to and from work.
Three hours of unpaid labor we give every day.
This morning,
I drove an hour and 47 minutes from my home in Federal Way
to a meeting in North Seattle. Every day, I hold my breath
as I drive across the 1st Avenue Bridge
to the Labor Temple in Soto,
because I think about the bridge collapse,
a stark reminder in Baltimore,
that only 26% of our bridges
are considered good condition according
to standardized national measures.
On winter nights leaving my office,
I drive 10 under the speed limit to ensure
that I don't clip a pedestrian in the Soto neighborhood
where there are not good crosswalks or signals.
Fortunately, traffic and transportation
are not like the weather.
They are not beyond our control.
We can improve commute times.
We can prevent tragedies.
And we can help children get to school safely on foot.
Working people in our region
are willing and ready to do our part
to address the woefully inadequate transportation
infrastructure of our region.
We know that you cannot, in fact, get more with less.
This is a serious problem in our region,
and it demands serious and substantial investment.
We look forward to reviewing the Mayor's $1.35 billion,
put a b on it,
billion-dollar plan
and advocating for substantial improvements to Seattle's
biggest nuisance.
Thank you. -Paul Heim.
Nine years ago when you were on city council,
you specifically amended the transportation levy
to include the accessible Mount Baker full revamp.
Is it still a priority for you to get that project done?
-So I've been advised --
thank you for reminding me that's an outstanding project,
not particularly to comment on specific projects at this phase.
Because again,
the next month we're going to be very project-specific.
I'll leave it there,
unless someone else wanted to comment
on the Mount Baker project.
Did you want to hum a few bars --
-No, I think we can -- I think that's good.
-Okay, so we'll -- we're going to have those conversations.
We're going to be very project-specific here
in the next month.
And I'll just leave it at that, thanks for the question.
And I did want correct one other thing during the presentation.
Greg Spotts said it rained so many days.
I say it doesn't rain over 200 days here in Seattle,
that's how I look at it.
Go ahead, David.
-There were some --
it felt like Move Seattle had made some overpromises.
They needed to do a reset at one point.
What is -- how is the process different through this levy
that will guarantee that there's not sort of an overpromise
that the things that are in this will actually be delivered?
-Yeah, I'll hum a few bars and someone could take it from here.
But I've been very candid about the last levy.
I carry with me almost every levy,
whether it's our levy, the county levy,
the school district levy, you look at the map of levies.
We had a very unfortunate pandemic
that affected the world.
It hurt a lot of people in many ways,
and it caused a supply chain challenge and unfortunately,
we didn't meet some of the expectations that people had.
I want to again applaud SDOT
that in the last couple of years,
I think they've had a sense of urgency in completion.
But one thing about a capital project,
you don't want to rush it.
You want to do it right.
And what I appreciate about Katie's remarks is
how much we continue to value our laborers.
And so as we have a discussion
to get this new levy we are proposing passed,
we're going to just be open and transparent
about some of the hiccups we had during the past levy.
But again, those are almost --
those are conditions that no one even imagined.
And quite candidly, I've been a little critical of the city
when I wasn't working with the city,
because I was wondering what could have been done
from a planning standpoint even
while we were dealing with COVID.
A lot of the work we're doing,
a lot of the systems work we're doing,
we could have done it during COVID,
but I'm not going to second-guess anyone
that were in any positions.
Right now, as I said earlier, we have to move forward.
We have to convince the voters that we know
how to work efficiently and effectively.
I believe in my labor force, I believe in my management,
I believe in my leadership,
and that's what we're going to tell the voters
when they continue to question what happened in the past levy.
-Mayor, the budget shortfall is looming.
It's growing as a result of the passage of the bill
this week, to $245 million.
You've asked departments to cut back on their spending,
hiring freezes.
It's been said that the Move Seattle levy was 30%
of the transportation budget,
so are you going to be asking the Department of Transportation
to cut back on their spending at the same time
you ask voters to increase spending?
-That's a good question, Chris.
That's not how we're approaching it,
that is not how we describe what we're trying to do.
Two separate issues.
Forget about the budget shortfall for the moment.
This is the right thing to do for this city,
regardless as to our budget challenges.
This is the right thing to do.
It's the right amount of money, we think.
But again, I'm just being candid.
I'm known for my candor and my transparency.
We're still talking to groups.
This is a proposal.
The budget shortfall is another issue.
And my executive team working with department heads,
we are rolling up our sleeves to figure out
how to keep things effectively moving forward
without jeopardizing the essential services
that the public wants.
That is our job. We don't run from that.
We are prepared for that.
I have smart people, much smarter people than me
that I surround myself with to figure this out.
So, we have ideas that we'll work through,
and I'm very proud of the city coalition of unions,
of the deal that we reached
and the Council passed for our employees.
I believe in my employees.
If I'm not willing to invest in them,
then I better get another job.
And so I say that the budget challenges that we have,
we are working very feverishly on them.
We'll present a balanced budget to the Council,
and we collectively, in a One Seattle manner,
will reach progress and victory together.
That's the work.
That's why we were literally in our office
last night until 9 o'clock looking at this.
This is real strategic work and, quite honestly,
gives us the opportunity to re-evaluate
how government works.
That's the beauty of what we're doing.
So, we're not panicked.
We are looking at this strategically,
and I need my employees to know that's
how we're going about this.
That's how we're going about this.
So, one doesn't offset the other and that's not
how we're approaching the project.
Okay, we'll take no more questions, hopefully.
Yes. -Madison from King 5.
-Yes, Madison.
-Question for people who are struggling to meet ends meet,
those who see the price going up
for a median homeowner about $12.
What is your message for those
who do not want to pay more every month?
-Let's talk about that a little bit.
That's a great question.
The amount of the beginning of the discussion, $1.35 billion.
That wasn't pulled out of thin air.
We've talked to everyone, realizing the price of bread,
the price of gas, the price of eggs,
what people want. We realize we're a growing city.
We could have asked for a 2 billion, a 3 billion,
a 4 billion,
so we tried to reach amount with that lens in mind
for that veteran that's on a fixed income, for that teacher
that's teaching our kids, that struggle.
So we think this is the ballpark of the correct amount,
being sensitive to the needs of people
that still have challenges with their property taxes.
Separate from that,
I do work very closely with the county
on looking at who are exempt from certain taxes
and how we can make sure that those on fixed income
and on reduced income can have relief when they need it.
In addition to the fact that if you look at one of the projects
we undertook since I've been mayor, our city forum,
what we're showing the people
that are struggling to live in Seattle,
we're showing them one form
where they can get a reduction on their utility bills,
a reduction on their power bills,
a reduction on their water bills,
a reduction on certain fees charged to the community center.
We are aggressive there, because my mom and dad,
many of you know, they weren't of a high-income situation
and so when I look at these little kids
that come out of these schools,
I see myself growing up in Seattle Public Schools.
So, we think we reached the right balance
as we roll out this proposal, with that lens in mind.
Thank you for that question.
Okay, we're good?
Chris, I know you've got a Sonic question for me.
No Sonic question? Okay. Three...
-Gonzaga! -...two, One Seattle.
Thank you very much for being here.