♪♪
-New leadership at City Hall.
Hear how six new council members plan to take on
Seattle's most pressing issues.
That's next, on Seattle University Conversations.
Now your hosts, Professor Larry Huddle and Joni Balter.
[ Applause ]
-Welcome to Seattle University's
Conversations Program.
Tonight we will talk with all six new members
of the Seattle City Council, in two groups of three.
Together these newcomers represent the biggest change
on the council in more than a century.
We begin with Rob Saka, District 1,
Joy Hollingsworth, District 3, and Maritza Rivera, District 4.
Dr. Larry Hubbell, take it away.
-Rob, we'll start off with you.
Council Member Saka, the pieces are all in place,
it's show time for the mayor and the new city council
that he largely agrees with.
How will the new city council operate
differently from the last city council,
and could you please give us some real examples?
Something that citizens will actually notice.
-Yeah, so first off, thank you Seattle University,
I'm honored to be here today
with you all and share this space
alongside my fellow council member colleagues.
Quick, I just want to quickly,
before I get to that excellent question,
I want to set expectations.
I heard some very flattering things
about a very distinguished panel, at least for me,
I'm just, you all hosted world class leaders
in various distinguished fields,
and I'm literally just trying to be the king of potholes
in Seattle. That's it.
So, just want to set expectations there.
But, so if I understand the call to your question, Dr. Hubbell,
correctly, what am I, how am I going to be different
than previous iterations of the council?
I'll say a couple things;
one, I am here laser focused on results.
And I think that is one thing
that we've somewhat lost sight of recently.
I have, I spent the last 10 years
of my professional career helping businesses
of all sizes be successful for that law school,
for that 10 years in the Air Force and Air Force Reserves,
and so I am here to treat my work,
our shared work, like a business
where we set ambitious smart goals if you will,
we closely track and monitor progress against those goals,
and we hold people and organizations,
individuals, including ourselves,
accountable for those results. So that's number one.
The next thing I would say how I,
excuse me, specifically intend to be different
is I intend to bring a more collaborative approach.
Rather than figure out ways to dumb it,
like to pick fights with the mayor,
or any of my fellow council members,
it is true that I think the mayor's agenda
is substantially aligns with my own and my own priorities,
but rather than, and we're not always going to agree,
same thing with my fellow council members over here,
but rather than pick ways that we can disagree
and look for fights and look for quarrel,
I'm looking for collaboration. Collaboration first.
It's not me versus you, or us versus them, it's we together.
So, those two things and more,
are how I intend to be differently,
and also making sure that we make decisions
that are fully transparent, fully informed by community,
and making sure communities feel listened to and heard,
but doing the right thing for the greatest,
greatest number of us. So that's how I'd answer that.
-Thank you.
Next one is for you, Council Member Hollingsworth.
Let me put the same question another way,
what do you think the previous city council did wrong?
-That's a terrible question. But thank you.
-Got to get a tough one in there.
-Okay, so I will say what one of the biggest changes
that I think people will see from our council
is us being in the office.
I think that is huge. That has changed the tone,
that has created connection, comradery,
you're able to get a lot of stuff done
not sending emails every day, but just going down the office,
going down the line and being able to talk
to Council Member Saka or Council Member Maritza,
or hey, you just pass someone in the hall,
hey, can we talk about this legislation real quick?
You're able to do that in-person
and I think that's what the previous council
potentially was missing, and I think that's one thing
that we're bringing to the table.
-Thank you. Council Member Rivera,
you've got six newcomers on the council.
Do you see yourself as a voting block
and is there enough cohesion among the new members
to produce noticeable change in the city?
-Thank you for the question,
and thank you to Seattle University for hosting us,
it's really great to be here.
I would say yes, we have enough cohesion
because we all have mutual respect for each other,
we understand that voters voted us
to come here to work together,
and to collaborate, to agree to disagree when we can't agree.
But to hopefully have more agreement than not.
I wouldn't say we're necessarily a voting block,
excuse me, that remains to be seen.
We haven't really voted on much yet.
But I do, as Council Member Saka pointed out,
and Council Member Hollingsworth,
we are very collaborative already,
we built relationships before we came,
we started at council
and so already you're seeing us working together in the office
and really making a concerted effort to build relationship
so that when we have to take the tough votes,
we have a relationship, professional
and collegial relationship that we can fall back on
when we at some point may disagree on something.
But I have no doubt that whether, that if we disagree,
that we will move forward together
because we all are interested in making sure
that this city is progressing in a positive way,
and that I believe to my core, that we all have in common.
-Council Member Hollingsworth, you have been a big supporter
of the Seattle Police Department,
particularly the East Precinct,
the target of many public protests as we all know.
Why is it so important for you to support that precinct
specifically and SPD in general?
-Yeah, we've had a ton of,
we have to recognize a lot of the public safety issues
that are going on in our city
and one of those are being our low number in police staffing.
And so at any point in time at the East Precinct,
we have 10 officers that are responding
to all the calls in their area,
and that's definitely concerning so we understand
that we have to increase our staffing, retention,
recruiting as well, also officer morale,
and there's also that accountability piece as well.
And that's a two-way street,
ensuring that our officers are really building trustful
and meaningful and transformational relationships,
not just transactional, but transformational relationships
with our community.
They know the people, they connect with the people,
they understand the community,
they're guardians of the community.
And I think that's really, really important as well.
And so that's where that respect comes from,
our police department and understanding
that they are tasked with a significant job
with being first responders,
including our Seattle Fire Department,
including our Care Department,
and our Gun Violence Prevention Programs,
I mean there's a whole list of people
that are responsible for public safety in our city,
and we understand that we have to be,
it's a multi-pronged approach.
-Perfect segue to the question for you, Rob Saka;
what is the right number of police officers for Seattle?
I saw something like one number
currently deployable officers, 937.
I also saw 950.
But what is the right number and how will you help the city,
which is really having trouble recruiting?
How will you help the city improve that?
-The right number is,
I don't know if there is a magic right number.
And I think, to be honest, I think--
-Neighborhood of number.
-I think all of us collectively and individually,
we get too hung up on numbers.
What is the right number of officers?
We're like yeah, how pro-cop are you?
Like how many cops do you want to hire tomorrow?
Or how anti-police are you?
Like, how many are you going to take away?
I think, I think, I think, respectfully,
I think that's the wrong question.
I think, I look at officer staffing from the lens of what,
what should be our ideal response time
for a priority one, a priority two,
and a priority three call? -Okay.
-And figuring out-- and then, working back and backing
in staffing to that. So, but--
-Let's do it your way and start with the response time
that we currently have and at least address the shortfall.
-Yeah. -On that.
-Yeah, so response times today
are not where they can or should be.
We need to do better,
and priority one call response times are decent,
the priority two and three and like worse, they're horrible.
I've sat, I've taken volunteer shifts, sat side
by side 9-1-1 frontline call center operators
and I've seen the, and I've listened into the calls,
and I've seen the mounting queue of calls
that ideally wouldn't warrant,
would get some sort of police response,
but because of lack of staffing and personnel,
it was going to take hours and in some cases, days to respond.
So all that is to say,
I think the better question as we talked about,
is what are the response times
that the community deserves and expects?
And as I understand it, I think for a city of comparable size
and geographic scope of Seattle,
we should have between 1,400 and 1,500 deployable officers.
I do support the mayor's plan to hire 1,400--
or to make sure we have 1,400 deployable officers.
-Council Member Rivera,
we have learned recently that female police officers
are having some difficulties working at SPD.
How can the city improve their working conditions
and the retention on the force? What do we need to do?
-That's a great question, and as you all know,
we all started not that long ago in our roles,
so I believe this report recently came out, yesterday,
and I want to learn more about the experiences
of our female police officers in the department,
obviously our police department should be inclusive to women
and people of color, when our police force
should be representative of the citizens of the city,
and so I want to dig in and learn more about
why the situation is the way that it is
and work together to find solutions to really make sure
that we are addressing the needs of the officers
that are already working at the department,
because this goes to something
that Council Member Hollingsworth raised,
which was the retention issue,
or maybe Council Member Saka, you raised it as well,
and so we really need to have conversations
and learn more about the situation
and how we can all work together
with the department and the mayor, to resolve it.
-Council Member Rivera, got another question for you.
The city faces a $230 million deficit,
should this deficit be addressed primarily by reducing costs
and thereby cutting back on some programs,
or primarily by raising revenue?
-I think always the knee jerk reaction is to raise revenue,
I've been a big proponent of accountability
to the city budget,
I think that we need to look at the programs or departments
and the programs that they're administering
and making sure that we are using taxpayer money wisely,
and I think it's going to be a combination of things
at the end of the day, because two hundred
and almost 50 million dollars is a lot of money,
I do think that we haven't done a great job
as the city of Seattle
to really look at the programs that we're administering
and making sure they have the outcomes that were intended
when we made the investments in those programs,
and that's what I'm very laser focused on is making sure
that we have accountability to the taxpayer dollars
as we're engaging in this budget exercise
and not have the knee jerk reaction
to just raise another tax in order to fill the gap.
Because it doesn't matter how many taxes you raise
if a program is not doing well,
we're not utilizing taxpayer money well.
And we should be.
-Council Member Saka, if there are cuts,
what discretionary programs would you fight to protect?
-Quickly I want to finish closing out that question
because it, I think it's instructive of kind of
how I think and approach these, whatever, insert your issue,
I start with what is the specific goal,
outcome, or objective, that we hope to have?
In the policing context, understanding priority
like what kind of response times people expect
is really important, also making sure that we restore
and build trust between police and communities
and there's just no way
you're going to be able to do that if we're,
if police are constantly on a response and reactive posture,
showing up when times are not good.
We need more proactive policing, community oriented policing,
and bike patrols and foot patrols, and et cetera.
So like that's my starting point.
But back to your question,
and if I understood correctly was on budget,
did you ask, help me understand.
-If they are cuts that have to be taken,
what programs would you fight to protect?
-I'll fight to protect all of them
that are aligned with the priorities of this council,
not councils from last year or 10 years ago,
I will fight to protect programs
that are showing initial results,
and capable of further progress,
I will fight to work collaboratively with communities
to make sure,
to fully understand the community's perspective
in all of this.
Difficult decisions are going to have to be made,
and that's going to require a mixture of consolidation
and making sure that our spending is,
we're avoiding duplication of efforts
and we don't have like analyzing our various lines of businesses
and if we have one agency doing two or three iterations
of substantially the same thing over here,
and two or three agencies,
we need to better harmonize and consolidate that,
so it's going to, it's going to be a complex exercise.
Not just one thing.
-But at this point, can you give us any specific programs
that you would, you think are so important
that they shouldn't be cut?
-I am committed to learning more, like five weeks in,
so I am committed to learning more,
I don't even sit on the budget committee.
But I'm committed to learning more about the opportunities
that we all collectively have together
to solve this $250 million-plus,
budget deficit that none of us contributed to,
but now we are thrust into a position
of helping to course correct.
And I'm committed to doing that work alongside
every last person on this stage, sitting down there,
and not represented here, and the mayor's office.
-Council Member Hollingsworth,
should we change how the Jump Start Tax is used?
Currently it goes to low income populations, excluding housing.
Do you see it as a possible solution to the budget deficit?
-Can you repeat that one more time?
-The Jump Start Tax.
-Yeah, okay, and your question is?
-If it should be used in another way.
-That's something that we're going to have a discussion
about when we're talking about budget.
I think everything is on the table
but one of the things that I know
we'll be definitely focused
on protecting just from our office is arts and culture,
anything that is engaging with youth,
anything that has youth empowerment,
that is a part of the public safety piece,
that I think we often miss,
because we're so focused on police, fire,
EMT, care, like the first responders,
but we're really concerned about the preventative piece
and ensuring that our kids have stuff to do,
ensuring that they are engaged, connected,
and also that they have additional resources,
when we talk about mental health,
we also have to talk about arts and culture,
it's not just about them seeing a therapist,
it's also about arts and culture,
and engaging them in those positive activities.
So those are something that our office will be centering
and ensuring that we're fighting for.
-Council Member Hollingsworth, moving along to graffiti.
Oh, did you want to jump in? Go ahead.
-May I add something,
actually because as Council Member Saka said,
it is about five weeks in,
but I will say that we can talk about priorities
and this is something we've all talked a lot about
and to Council Member Hollingsworth's point,
public safety is the number one priority for all of us.
And the programs that are addressing public safety
are ones that we all have in one way or another,
agreed need to be a priority and in terms of the youth,
I mean Council Member Hollingsworth
and I have had many conversations
about the importance of programs that will--
preventative programs, that will address public safety
and specifically gun safety, because we know, for instance,
sadly, a child got killed in Council Member Saka's
district a couple weeks ago, just Friday there was a mugging
in Council Member Moore's district,
at Ingraham High School,
involving Ingraham High School kids all of them,
and then we also had,
we saw muggings in Ballard and at Roosevelt,
so really across the city.
And so we really need to be preserving programs
that will address public safety, student safety,
and address the preventative pieces amongst the youth.
-Council Member Hollingsworth--
-And transportation.
-Alright, I'm going to get this question out,
I swear, some day.
But Council Member Hollingsworth,
the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals recently ruled that
Seattle can enforce its anti-graffiti law.
You're chair of the Parks Committee,
what are your thoughts about removing graffiti
from parks and other places?
-Yeah, I'm for it,
I think a lot of the tagging that's going on in our city,
especially in public places, is not wanted.
And a lot of it, I talked to business owners
all across our district
and they have, they spend thousands of dollars,
Seattle Central College spends hundreds of thousands of dollars
for graffiti removal,
the BIA on Broadway spends hundreds of thousands of dollars
for removal of graffiti on private businesses
and private homes.
You could talk to a ton of people
that are spending a ton of money
where it can be invested into other things.
But I do believe that there should be spaces
that are designated in our city for that type of creative,
that creativity, right?
There's some, there is some artwork
that's done around out city where I'm like,
if that was done at a different place,
that'd be amazing, right?
But it's on the side of a private business
that probably does not want it there.
And so, if we can be able to have like right down the middle,
if it's like hey, we cannot have graffiti
and a certain type of tagging done on certain public spaces.
I see it on crosswalks, I see it on signage,
I see it on different things
where people are not able to utilize public assets
and we can kind of focus on are there designated spaces
to be able to steer a lot of the young people
that are doing the tagging to be able to have spaces for that,
and then for us to enforce those laws
that you cannot just go and tag on anywhere that you see fit.
-Council Member Rivera, the state legislature is moving
to allow even numbered,
even numbered years for local elections,
what do you think of that idea?
Do you think Seattle would want to go along with that?
And do you worry,
and you have to pack this all into one answer,
and do you worry that local issues
might get lost in the loud noise of a presidential
or congressional campaign?
-That's a great question, Joni.
I don't have a strong feeling
about the elections on even numbered--
I mean, I will say that on presidential years,
we see an increased number of people voting,
and one thing that I think is really important in general,
regardless of whether we go to even number years or not,
is the, we need to get folks to come out and vote.
Your vote is your voice.
And we're here in the university,
so for young people especially, your vote is your voice,
and I think anything that will help us
get to a higher percentage of people voting,
I mean most of our elections,
the highest I think was like a 43 percent of people
to come out and vote.
Which is not even half of the population
in each of these districts.
And so anything that will help that,
I think we need to look at.
-I have strong feelings actually on that,
so again, I think we should look at the specific goal
and objective of whatever, insert your challenge,
we're trying to address,
and I think with this, it's a valid one,
is to increase and drive voter engagement and participation.
I am not particularly convinced
that giving this specifically proposed bill will do that,
I think there might be less intrusive and yeah,
less intrusive ways to help do that,
for example, in '23 when, the year we all got elected,
there was four elections, four elections.
In an odd year.
And so, like maybe one thing worth exploring
would be to all those levies and all those proposals
and all those special, like that every--
it's exhausting for voters. It's exhausting.
So maybe we say like you must shoehorn your thing
into like the August primary or the November general,
and have two election cap, the odd year elections at two.
but yeah, it's a valid goal,
I just think there's potentially better ways
that haven't been fully explored to do that.
-I do want to say, we have the highest,
one of the highest voter engagement
because we do absentee ballots
and I think we are very fortunate in the state
to be able to do that, you look at other states,
they do not offer that, people stand in line
for hours to just cast their vote.
So I think we're very fortunate in the state
to have absentee ballots.
-Council Member Rivera,
the mayor's downtown activation plan
is still a work in progress.
How will the mayor's plan in your view,
significantly increase foot traffic
and revive the central business district?
-That's a great question and one
that I've been talking a lot about this week.
I really thinking that the mayor's done a great job
with addressing the challenges of downtown
and I know that the city has worked together,
he's brought together a lot of the city departments
under the leadership of the Office of Economic Development
to try to address the issues downtown.
And I know that there's been a lot of investments
and a lot of great organizations to do activations downtown.
At the end of the day,
if we don't have the foot traffic downtown,
I think it will be really challenging
to get downtown back on track.
So I would love to see city workers
come back full-time in-person, downtown, and also the county.
The city right now has two days a week in person,
I believe the county has not required
any days in-person of county employees,
and so we need to partner with the county on that,
if that is still accurate,
and then we need to lead by example.
And by the way, there's an equity issue here
because our blue collar workers
who are usually our low income earners,
they're the ones that have been working in-person
through the pandemic. And so when you think of equity,
all the folks that are white collar workers,
are the ones that have the privilege
of being able to work from home.
And I don't think that's equitable
and I also don't think it's helping our downtown,
and so I think this is something that I will keep talking about
and that I feel really passionate about.
-Thank you. -Council Member Saka,
let's dig a little deeper into the downtown activation plan.
One of the great ideas for improving downtown
is changing zoning along 3rd Avenue
to increase residential development on that street.
To do that, the plan would adjust building heights
by more than 100 percent.
Does this, do you think this has a prayer
of achieving its desired goals?
-Yeah, so I am less familiar with that specific aspect,
the downtown activation plan,
I would personally would need to learn more
about what the impact that would have on the neighborhoods,
the surrounding buildings,
and which community and specific communities,
but we need to bring downtown back
and I think everything is on the table,
we just need to carefully understand the impact,
be able to look around the corners and understand
what are the likely consequences.
Not to say we won't make decisions
being fully informed of any reasonable like,
reasonably anticipated consequences
but let us fully understand that first.
-Could I say one thing,
downtown's the front porch of Seattle,
it's the economic engine to our city,
an economic engine to our state,
we have the seventh largest port in the entire country,
we have to start looking at having residential downtown,
look at our friends at Vancouver,
right now we used to laugh at them
because they built residential with commercial space downtown,
people were reverse commuting.
But now their downtown is active and live more than anything.
And so that's what we need to have in our Seattle,
is activity downtown.
And we also have to make it safe.
-In 30 seconds, can any one of you tell us
what's missing from the mayor's downtown activation plan?
Just one thing that pops to mind.
-I'll start, I really want arts and culture,
it's not going to be JCPenney or Macy's
that's going to bring downtown back,
people want to go to entertainment,
think of young folks, think of Millennials
that want to go and experience things,
and our older population,
they want to be able to go experience things downtown.
-We are out of time for this part of our show.
But were coming right back with three other new
Seattle City Council Members, thank you all so much.
-Potholes. -Thank you.
-And we are back with Seattle University's Conversations,
now joined by three other new members
of the Seattle City Council;
Cathy Moore in District 5, Robert Kettle in District 7,
and at large member, Tanya Woo. Thank you all for being here.
-Council Member Moore,
Seattle is not San Francisco or Portland,
we're doing better post-pandemic,
but Seattle is still not at its best.
What is the most important thing we can do
to get closer to pre-pandemic times?
-Well, first, excuse me,
thank you everyone for having me here tonight,
and to Seattle University for hosting
this very important conversation.
I think that the most important thing that we can do is address
and hopefully make tremendous progress
on our homelessness issue...
in any neighborhood that you go
to and particularly in downtown
and you were just talking about the downtown activation,
critical fundamental piece
to that is dealing with people who are on the street,
dealing with the public disorder,
and just the sense of discomfort
both at sort of seeing the human suffering that's going on,
and so as chair of the Seattle Human,
excuse me, as chair of the Housing
and Human Services Committee,
I also serve on the King County Regional Homeless Authority,
and one of the things that is going to be
very important for us this year as you know,
there's been a fair amount of dissatisfaction with the way
the Regional Homelessness Authority is operated
and it's going to be incumbent upon us,
the new leadership, to really take a hard look
at how well that authority is working.
Does it need to reallocate money
to have a greater emphasis perhaps on tiny house villages,
looking at making sure we have greater funding
and rapid rehousing
and keeping people housed to begin with.
So I think there are many challenges ahead of us
but the first one is to really address homelessness
in a very thoughtful and proactive manner.
-Thank you.
Council Member Kettle, you are the public safety chair,
you've said many times that you want to dismantle
the culture of permissiveness in Seattle.
If you had your way, what will actually change?
-Well first, I just want to, as others have,
than Seattle University for having us,
and it's interesting, first time meeting you,
but often I've met Joni,
and basically I just close my eyes
and think mid-day show, Bill Radke and so
it's good to be here and to have this engagement
and it harkens back to those conversations
that we hear with those shows. To your question, yes,
I am the chair of the Public Safety Committee,
in fact, we just had our first public safety committee
meeting this morning.
And we laid out what we're going to do with the committee;
first, the primary mission areas,
which is crime and security first and foremost,
but then also fire rescue and alternative response,
and third, being emergency preparedness,
and there are some secondary mission areas
and then foundationally we also have our accountability
and oversight roles as well. Key to crime and security
is addressing the permissive environment,
so today we talked about a strategic framework
to address the permissive environment.
And there's six pillars to it,
number one is we have to fix SPD staffing,
two is the legal tools, the ordinances and the like,
looking at those, three is the vacant building lots
and I'll add on that point;
I've had some great conversation with Chief Scoggins
in terms of what fire's dealing with
with these vacant buildings, but like what I saw in Belltown
and other places, on walkabouts, we see those challenges
and how it contributes to the permissive environment.
Pillar four, as mentioned earlier in your earlier set,
that graffiti. We have to address the graffiti piece.
Five is public health,
and like I said many times in the campaign trail,
you can't succeed in public safety
if you don't also succeed in public health.
We have to build the capacity on this piece, on that pillar.
And that ties into the last pillar,
which is we as a committee need to work together,
and we will the collaboration piece,
but also the council and with the mayor in a One Seattle way,
so then we can engage the county and the state,
because the county is responsible for public safety,
issues like King County Metro or King County Jail,
on the public health side, where's the five care centers,
and the like, and they have that responsibility
from a public health piece,
and I've noted on the state, engaging with the state.
They're responsible for mental health.
Imagine out of 50 states,
if we were number two on mental health
spending over the past decade,
instead of five years ago we were like 46 or so,
now we're in the 30s, imagine if we were number two,
sorry, I meant Seattle University,
but the way our dogs are in college football,
and what that would translate in terms of capacity
like hospital beds, but what kind of capacity
would that generate on the public health side,
and how that would impact our public safety piece.
So those are the six pillars to hit
and address the permissive environment
that's been built up in our city over the last number of years.
-Thank you. Council Member Woo,
downtown has lost 2,200 businesses
since the beginning of 2020.
Given that a lot of the workforce still works from home,
will downtown ever recover to levels experienced
prior to the pandemic?
-I believe it involves reimagining
what downtown looks like,
building more housing, letting downtown become and arts
and cultural center for the city,
and as well as looking at making sure
that public safety is enforced,
that people feel safe coming to downtown.
We have a lot of amazing events coming forth,
FIFA Soccer in about two years,
and I think we just have to really focus on downtown,
the activation plan is amazing,
how do we focus on getting people to come down to downtown,
stay for dinner, go to the theatre,
and shop, basically.
And so I believe that it's an ambitious goal to go back
to pre-pandemic standards but I think we can do it.
-So, going back to the King County Regional
Homelessness Authority, Council Member Kettle,
we have spent millions of dollars
and a lot of time trying to create this entity.
Is it time to call an audible and move beyond this model?
And I imagine Cathy Moore might want to jump in here.
But to move beyond this particular
construct for solving our very serious homelessness problem.
-It's frustrating because we basically have had
a two-year false start with the KCRHA
and it reminds me when I was on the Queen Anne's
Community Council, hearing Mayor Murray's
team come to the council and briefing,
hey, we have this emergency,
here's our plan for Seattle and homelessness,
and in that briefing I was listening,
I'm saying, this plan's not going to work.
The span of control is wrong,
and it was frustrating to hear and here we are eight years on.
And then we have the KCRHA, similar problems,
in terms of like its business operations,
in terms of doing the nuts and bolts,
it's kind of like what Council Member Saka was saying earlier,
it's about getting to the basics
and the nuts and bolts of local government,
and doing those things right. And we have a big problem there.
In addition, the governance structure is terrible,
who has three boards?
In this school you would never teach to have three boards,
it's one board. Maybe an advisory council.
So those are two main areas to get fixed
and if we don't fix them,
it will never be a regional approach.
Because we won't be able to get north and south King County--
-You think we should abandon that particular idea?
-I believe in a regional approach,
so the window is there, and it's getting shorter,
but it has to address those two points.
Otherwise it's in trouble.
-Council Member Woo, as the appointed member
on the council you have limited time
until your next campaign.
You have said many times during the campaign
that you want to improve the lives of everybody
but particularly citizens
in the China Town International District.
What are a couple of things you feel
you can accomplish on the council
before your time runs out?
-Yes, I do have a short time,
I'm trying to get as much done as I can during that time.
And I've been told, treat this time
as if this is the only time you'll have on council.
So I approach it with that mindset.
And I think representation
and making sure that diverse voices are heard,
especially with my background in trying to reach people
who are the furthest from government.
And try to get them involved with city
and being heard especially.
And so I think trying to get diverse voices together,
collaborate, and bring them onto city council,
get people involved in government,
and let people know that there are resources available
and making sure that connection collaboration is there.
-Council Member Moore, the 1st Avenue streetcar
has an ever increasing price tag,
should a city facing a deficit cut the cord on this project?
Let's be honest, nobody knows the real price of this,
there's not exactly screaming ridership
on the other two lines,
isn't this an obvious budget cut?
And yes, I know that it's a capital expense to start with,
but once it needs extra money shall we say,
from the city, it could become an operating expense.
-So I think this might be one place
where there's some daylight between myself
and Mayor Harrell,
I am not a supporter of the 1st Avenue Streetcar.
When I was initially running,
I thought this is a wonderful idea,
we can connect all of the different streetcars
and have the connector, but each of those,
the 1st Avenue Connector, the South Lake Union,
they too have struggled, they have not been perfect
and then when we learn
what sort of the technical difficulties and challenges
would be with the 1st Avenue Streetcar
and then just an enormous amount of money
that would be spent on this,
I do not think that in this time of budget difficulties
and deficits that this is really an area
where we should be putting so much public funding.
-Council Member Kettle, several Seattle neighborhoods
have been struggling with parked vehicles
that remain in place for some time.
What will you do differently to enforce the parking rules?
-Well there's two things here;
one, there's the general piece where you enforce the,
you create those standards and you enforce it.
Probably to your question,
this is where we need to think about what are we doing
and learn the lessons of the last eight years,
and one example that I keep coming back to that I like
is the, there's some challenges with this location
but the Salmon Bay Village Project on Interbay,
near the Ballard Bridge,
and the reason why I bring that up
is because they've created a perimeter fencing
and there's a gate guard, there's a counselor on site,
there is a-- public facilities
like the dining facility and laundry and the like,
and there's rules that relate to that.
And then they bring the RVs off the street,
which is the big issue in terms of your question is those RVs
because bottom line is, and I know this
from my experience, any time you get five
RVs, like in Nickerson on North Queen Anne,
soon you get a drug market, once you have a drug market,
then you have a stolen goods market going on.
So we need to work these issues and this is one way to do it,
where they bring the RVs off the street,
those that are long-term parking,
and they bring them in and those individuals
are working with the counselors.
And then there's this transition to the tiny homes
that are a part of the project,
and then they move on from there.
And that's the kind of project
that we should be looking at that incorporates
those lessons learned and it brings those
RVs off the street that have been parked, as you're noting,
and then work with those individuals
to help them be more successful
as they move into some type of supportive housing.
-Specifically moving to tiny homes.
Council Member Moore,
going back to the regional homelessness authority,
there is some sense of the agency's resistance
to tiny home villages was shortsighted.
How do you feel about that?
-I would have to agree with that assessment.
I think that there were personality conflicts that got
in the way of being able to really thoughtfully
and critically think about what are the best methods
of moving people into a form of shelter,
I also think that the cumbersome governance structure
has also contributed to the dysfunction around those issues.
So, the one thing that we hear regularly
when we talk to Unified Care Team,
we talk to Reach and Just Care,
is that people really want to be in a tiny house village.
They will agree to move and we need to have more of those,
and we often hear we have to meet people
where they're at, well, we are meeting people
where they're at when they tell us
they want to be in a tiny house village.
So I think it's important that in this context
that we put aside sort of ideological positions,
we put aside our personal grievances
that have arisen over the years,
and look at what works, what will people do,
where will they go, and really, direct our resources to that.
And additionally, there's a group out there called
Solid Foundation Northwest,
they have been building many of the tiny house villages,
they have a fantastic plan to really upscale,
so we need to put our money
and our resources in things that work.
And so far, tiny houses villages,
they're not perfect by any means,
but they are working in getting people off the,
out of tents and off the street, and that is our first priority.
-Council Members Woo and Kettle,
I want to ask you both about Seattle's Care Team.
It's been, it's been up and operating since October,
there's a new report that shows some success,
Care Team, for everybody in the audience,
these are social workers and mental health officers
who go out with police on certain calls,
and I guess 40 percent of the time officers
can leave within a few minutes
and go on to other more serious calls.
Starting with you Council Member Woo,
what do you think about this team?
And you have some very direct experience
about going out into the neighborhood
and talking to people who are suffering.
-Yes, these past three years
I've been working with the Community Watch,
we go out on the streets level, we go into encampments,
we talked to our unhoused neighbors,
and we also patrol a couple of blocks
and have learned that most of the time,
we can deescalate a situation
without ever having to call police.
I think that's what's so important about this team,
sometimes when people are having an episode
where they need someone to talk to,
or they just need the escalation,
or they need services, or resources,
this is where this team
is really important building up that trust,
building up those relationships on the ground level,
working with people and getting them inside
and getting connected to resources.
-So I wanted to get your take on the report
and how well it's going, Council Member Kettle,
and can we overdo it?
Can we get too dependent on this and make a bad mistake?
-I don't think we can overdo it
because if you look at the numbers,
those kind of calls that require that kind of support
are a huge percentage of the calls that are coming in,
and those are the kind of calls
that we don't want to have our police on.
There will be times though when they may be needed in terms of
if it's a high acuity kind of situation,
but oftentimes we have the opportunity to deal
with things as Council Member Woo was saying,
at a lower level and do it in such a way that it stresses,
which essentially is a public health challenge,
it's not really a criminal set issue,
it's more of a, it's more of a public health challenge,
and the care kind of fills that gap,
instead of having SPD come and respond,
where things could escalate for various reasons,
instead have the care team who are trained
for these kinds of situations to come in
and take care of the lowest level
which usually will mean less chance of going into that,
the criminal side, and avoiding those kinds of situations
which then cascades to other issues.
-Council Member Woo,
you already made a reference to the World Cup,
so let me follow-up with a question related to that.
We learned that Seattle will host six matches
in the 2026 World Cup, and our question for you is,
will the cost associated with putting on this event,
be outweighed by the financial benefits in your estimation?
-Oh, I think that will depend on the execution.
As we saw during MLB week,
there was a large number of people
who came to the downtown area yet many of our businesses,
especially in the CID Central District, Pioneer Square,
did not reap the benefits and so how do we work together
with all of our small businesses,
all of our communities in this region,
and draw people into our communities,
into our small businesses,
and I think that will involve the coordinated effort
with the Seattle Sports Commission,
with the small businesses, and other organizations
that will help be able to bring light
to diverse businesses right across from the bridge
and so I think it will really depend and we'll have to see.
-I have to jump in, as a first generation American,
my parents are from England,
I'm super excited that they're coming,
and it will be a benefit,
although we have to be mindful of the point
that Council Member Woo's bringing up,
that we have to make sure that all parts of the city benefit,
and that just goes to smart planning.
But the benefits are going to be there.
I've been to World Cup matches here in America like in '94,
I traveled via England to Germany in 2006,
I saw how the Germans did it,
I saw matches in Stuttgart, Berlin,
it will be a success because they know what they're doing
and the benefits are going to ripple,
not just for the immediate time of the matches
but following on as well.
So I just wanted to put that plug in.
-Thank you.
Okay, this is what we call a jump ball question,
so any of you can choose to answer it
or all three of you if you want.
Looking back to some of the mistakes
of the earlier city council, what do any of you think
was the long-term impact of the defund movement?
-I'll jump in first because public safety,
I chair the committee, the defund piece
in a lot of ways is what really kicked off
and really energized the permissive environment problem.
And so we had to acknowledge, like I did today,
we have to acknowledge that all communities
don't experience public safety the same way,
either by race or by socioeconomic class,
but that's not the reason why you throw the baby out
with the bath water if you will.
We have to ensure that we have a safe base in the city,
and the defund movement was a mistake
because they were never going to accomplish that
and it's unfortunate that we did it
and that led to this permissive environment
that we're not trying to deal with,
I'm talking about six pillars.
By the way, there's a seventh pillar
that's kind of too far outside of our committee,
and since I have Council Member Chair Moore
of the Housing and Human Services Committee,
is the youth and young adult violence.
This is something where our community is going to
have to work with her community, committee,
to really address this. And these are the ripple effects
of those decisions made at that point
and it's unfortunate but we're going to press ahead.
We're going to make a big press this year,
and we're going to really turn the tide.
-I guess I would add that I think
one of the long-term effects was a re-depression
of the morale of the police department
and we saw a lot of police officers decide to retire,
basically they were ready to retire
and so they decided to go ahead and do it.
So it has really led to an attrition
in the number of officers,
and it's been, it's part of the reason
that we are struggling to recruit
both on a national level, we have a pipeline issue,
but also I think people are feeling like
they don't necessarily want to come to Seattle
because of the tense and sort of fraught relationship that,
the dialog around defund produced.
I do also though want to say
that I think that there was a positive in the defund,
and I think it's unfortunate that it was termed defund,
because there has definitely been a need
for I think a community interest in looking at other ways
to create public safety, other ways to police--
-I mean, look at the Care Team,
isn't that answering that?
-Right, exactly.
And I think that we can look at the Care Team
as a direct result of those conversations.
So, it's important not to view it all as a bad thing,
in think it has generated some good discussions, the Care Team,
and I think we're finding that officers are finding
that they are appreciative of having
that additional assistance
and having some of that scope of work
not having to be responsible for that
when they were not initially meant to be responsible.
So, it's been kind of a two-edged,
it's had a multitude of affects,
mostly negative but a few positive.
-I agree, like it's great that that dialog was had,
we're still having it,
and we should really look at community based solutions,
but at the same time, we do need police.
And so how do you look at this holistically,
learning from the mistakes of our past,
looking ahead we moralize communities
and come together going forward to create
what public safety looks like whether it's Care Team,
Lead, Reach, all these organizations
who are doing amazing work in the community
and going forward, what do communities want to see?
And really listening to people and doing,
and enacting plans that neighbors have.
-The Seattle Times FYI guy, Gene Balks,
says we have the fifth highest property taxes
in the nation among major cities and still our voters
are very, very generous in approving levies
for all kinds of things.
When is it up to you guys, the council,
to protect property owners and renters
from so much taxation? Anybody.
-Ditto, to the earlier group.
I mean Maritza, Council Member Rivera,
is tough, and so is Council Member Saka,
and Hollingsworth, and I think we as a cohort
and we as the new council, as Council Member Saka said,
it's about okay, what is the goals,
what is the objectives,
and then let's work towards those
and then let's do that right
and then we can figure out the pieces that come to that
and ensure that we're not doing situation
where we're putting this burden on the property owners that--
here in our city.
-We all doorbelled this past year,
and talking to a lot of homeowners
who are fixed income seniors or elders,
people who are struggling to pay property taxes,
how do we connect people to resources
and we think about the people we talked to at the doors
and it's always in the back of our minds going forward.
-Would you like to jump in here?
-Well I mean, the problem with property taxes is that we don't,
we have a regressive state system
and so we're having to rely on property taxes
to fund things that really
we should be funding at a state level,
a county, state, and federal level.
So, I think where our responsibility
in the council lies is in looking at the budget
that we have and being very thoughtful
about we have a deficit to fill, how are we going to do that?
Being mindful in terms of discussions
about whether we want a new revenue source
that people are already overly taxed
in terms of their property taxes, being mindful of that.
-So, going back to some of the budget discussion
for a moment, the city council has become
or is becoming a little bit reliant on the Jump Start Tax,
but philosophically, and we're sort of doing that more
with this group for some reason. At some point in the future,
when the budget deficit is resolved,
do you think the Jump Start Tax should be eliminated
because of its long-term impact
on business development and retention?
We're all talking about how much we want folks
to come back downtown,
we want companies to want to build here
and have employees here. Just philosophically. Tanya.
-We have to invest in what works
and so I think we're doing that exercise right now,
we were looking at how we got here to this moment,
and what do we need to do going forward,
and that's looking at what earlier council members
have said regarding taking a hard look,
making tough choices,
and using additional Jump Start Tax as a last resort.
And it would be amazing if we could find a way
to make the budget work for us
where we won't have to rely on Jump Start,
but I think that's-- we're just starting
and we are hoping to learn more.
-Go ahead.
-I'm going to go out on a limb here and say,
I guess I'm taken aback by the thought
of removing a tax revenue source.
-That's the funny thing about taxes, once they're there--
-Exactly, and so no, I don't actually think so.
I support Jump Start, because of the fact
that it has been specifically set aside
for affordable housing, for equitable development,
and for bringing new deal initiatives.
I guess I would like to see the evidence
that it has truly affected our ability to be competitive,
you look at Amazon,
I think just reported the largest profit its ever had,
so I don't think that we want to extend
Jump Start to a lower range,
because then you are truly affecting businesses
that people don't think of as being small,
but are actually small.
So, for me, the issue is whether Jump Start should be used
to solve our general fund deficit and at this point,
I am not convinced that it is appropriate.
It was passed with very specifically designation,
we represented to the voters that that money was going to be
spent on those particular subject matter areas,
and now we're basically shifting the narrative,
which I think is a disservice to the public.
-Did you want to say something?
-I was just going to add that first, obviously
and to echo Council Member Rivera,
we have to do our due diligence on the spending side,
figure out what's working,
and then as you asked the question,
I remembered constantly being asked this during the campaign.
The key thing is that we need to be consistent and fair
and just be, it's kind of like being the Federal Reserve,
we have to telegraph, okay, we're going to need more
revenue, okay, and we have to be--
because that's what businesses need, they need that stability
and so we should be doing that in addition
to creating a safe base by the way,
and one thing about the Jump Start check
that I'm a little bit,
it's like sometimes this like targeted,
we're just going to target this piece right here.
If it's a good idea, then it should be
a more broad base approach
and that's one thing that I would say.
And lastly, we're in a change condition,
the previous council didn't have a big housing levy,
which infuses so much more money,
so the conditions have changed.
So I don't see our council being as tied
to the decisions of the previous council as some may.
-The only thing I would add to that though is that
while we have the housing levy
that's been passed on as a tax levy,
there is also a significant portion of it
that is going to have to come from Jump Start
and that was not made clear when the levy was passed.
So, it's a little bit more,
the Jump Start money is going to be an important piece
to making the housing levy effective.
-We are out of time,
big thanks to our council members
for spending their evening with us.
Big thanks to all of you for joining us.
Goodnight.
[ Applause ]
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