Katie Wilson: Good afternoon.
Thank you all for joining us.
I want to start out by thanking
our partners at the Seattle Department of Transportation,
Seattle Fire Department, Seattle Police Department,
my colleagues, Council member Wink,
and Council member Lynn.
Our transportation safety advocates,
thank you all for coming out today.
Coach Erin Roche, for being here today.
As mayor, and as the mom of a young child,
making Seattle a safe and welcoming place for
families and for every resident
is deeply important to me.
Families should feel comfortable
walking their kids to school,
biking to the park, taking transit,
or simply crossing the street in their neighborhood.
Traffic safety is part of public safety.
Everyone should be able to get
where they need to go safely,
no matter how they travel.
We have made important progress,
but people are still being killed
and seriously injured on Seattle's streets.
The simple truth is that despite having
a Vision Zero commitment on the books for over a decade,
Seattle has not met our goals on transportation safety.
We are not on track to eliminate
serious injuries and fatalities by 2030.
We still see too many headlines,
too many ghost bikes,
too many families in mourning.
We know the tools that can make a difference.
Safer street designs, safer speeds,
better crossings, and better visibility.
SDOT's team has done outstanding work,
and we have the data showing its impact
on particular routes or intersections.
But we have not achieved our goals yet because
one department can't keep
up with the scale of this challenge,
and we have lacked the political will to do what works.
This is what this executive order does.
It directs the city to take
this issue seriously from how we design
our roads to how we manage
our fleet of vehicles to how we do enforcement.
A key part of this order is
accelerating existing safety projects,
taking work already underway,
and helping it move forward faster.
That includes Southwest Wildwood
Place Protected bike lane
and the 12th Avenue South safety project, Phase 2.
The order also advances safety improvements along some of
Seattle's highest crash streets and expands the tools
we have to address dangerous speeds
and make crossing safer.
Director Brady will talk
more about what these actions mean on
the ground and the specific improvements
that ESdat will be advancing.
Safer streets aren't something
that any one department can deliver alone.
This executive order also strengthens coordination across
our city government and brings together the people
responsible for different parts
of keeping our community safe.
ESdat designs, builds, and operates our streets.
Seattle Fire and Seattle Police see
firsthand the consequences when serious crashes happen.
Our council members, our schools, community advocates,
and residents also bring
essential perspectives about where
improvements are needed and
how people experience our streets.
Keeping people safe requires all of us working together.
It is especially meaningful
to be here near Cleveland High School,
where the safety of young people
traveling to and from school is top of mind.
We've heard from people in this community about
the importance of making these streets safer,
and I'm grateful to coach Aaron Roche for
his advocacy and for joining us today.
[APPLAUSE] Our young people
should be able to get to school safely,
and parents should feel confident as their children
become more independent and navigate their neighborhoods.
When we make our streets
safer for young people and families,
we make them safer for everyone.
As a parent, I want my child and every child growing up
here in Seattle to be able to
experience their neighborhood and their city safely.
We have important work underway.
This executive order is about building on that work,
strengthening our collaboration, and
helping to move key improvements forward.
That is part of making Seattle a
safer city and a great place to raise a family.
With that, it's my honor to introduce Coach Aaron Roche.
Aaron Roche: Good afternoon, everyone. Happy Friday.
The sun's coming out.
Before I get into my two-minute speech,
let me start watch there.
I want to thank
you and send some thanks to some folks who have been
really strong advocates for the work we
started down the 13th
Avenue South and South Louis Hill Street,
just around the corner and at the Cleveland playfield.
First and foremost, the ESdat construction crews who
started about three weeks ago and
have already made some amazing progress down there.
I talk to my athletes all the time about records and
how you set your personal
best and set your personal records.
You keep doing that. Eventually you get a world record.
ESdat, if you keep doing
the work you're doing, eventually,
you have the world record and fastest safety projects
in the world. Thank you for them.
You can hold the applause
for the end of the thank yous, please.
Next is Sarah,
calling the programs manager for
ESdats Safe Routes to School program.
She's been awesome in communicating with our group.
We started a group called the Cleveland
Playfield Traffic Safety Improvement Project.
It's a mouthful.
But it's our steering committee,
and she's been a strong advocate for our work there.
Again, with that group, we also have
members from the Beacon Hill Safe Streets,
the Inner Valley Greenways,
and the Seattle Street Alliance,
who have been part of that.
I thank you to those groups,
Georgetown Business Association,
and our rock star CPT Sit
volunteers from the Cleveland High School community,
which includes staff members,
coaches who I see out here in the audience,
students, athletes, and their families, of course.
SBU's Adopt a Street Program, and this program manager,
Jenny Frankel, has been really helpful
in providing us supplies for our cleanups down.
Thank you to her and her team.
Of course, Mayor Wilson and
your staff in your office have been
really supportive throughout your administration so far,
especially with this Vision Zero signing.
This is amazing. Of course,
to my lovely partner, Anna Smoo,
who she's an Eastside, grew up in Bellevue.
She's a Wolverine, but we claim her as our own,
hair as an eagle at Cleveland High.
We are here at this spot,
specifically because of the work that's
going on at South Lucille Street.
Back in 2022, when I started coaching at Cleveland,
we would do our training runs
right across South Lucille Street.
It was crazy busy, and we had a team.
Our first week of Practice,
was about 50 athletes running across that intersection.
Right away, I started, I'm
going to be the de facto crossing guard here.
We just posted up and
waited for the long line of kids to cross the street.
But I thought, you know,
there's got to be a better way here.
We've got to make some improvements here.
I don't know, it took me about two years
to figure out how to do that.
I took the Sale Parks Foundation Gala,
and listening to what was going on at
Koa Elementary and Queen Anne,
and the work over near
Magnusson Park for another community group
who was doing a park for traffic safety.
Just plugging away,
connecting with the organizations in
Seattle who could help calm traffic.
Fast forward to 2024,
finally submitted a FixIt request for
that neighborhood and got
connected with ESdat's Brian Daugherty.
We talked about some low-hanging
fruit that we could address,
maybe just installing some crossing flags,
putting up some yard signs. We've done that.
The yard signs have survived a whole year and a half,
which is incredible. Just things like that.
This group has been advocating
for traffic calming for over a year and a half now.
Some people are saying, Oh,
they're finally installing something, and I'm thinking,
Well, two years.
That sounds like rapid speed to me.
Civic projects that I've worked on.
I can't imagine something
getting implemented within a year,
and then the promise that it's going to be happening.
Now the work's going to be done,
hopefully by the start,
right after the start of the school year.
Long story short. We're here 2026, work starting.
It's taken many emails,
a letter-writing campaign actually,
to a lot of civil-minded folks
who were advocating for us and with us.
But the number one message here is patience.
As a running coach, as
a runner myself, patience is the key.
Nothing happens overnight.
You just have to plug away,
grind away sometimes,
and make sure you're being patient,
make sure you're connecting with
the folks that can help you along the way.
Takes a village. Thankfully, this village,
this community here in
Cleveland has been very supportive,
and I think that's pretty much all I need to say today.
I appreciate everyone's help.
Everyone's support,
the focus on the Vision Zero program.
Let's keep up the good work. There's more to be done.
Cleveland Playfields got a lot of English IV that
are wrapping around some trees.
I know my partner's really interested
in taking on leading some of that work.
If something looks like trash,
we're going to treat it like trash.
We want to make sure we beautify
these areas and make sure it's safe,
and the streets can
be navigated pretty well for all ages.
Thanks, everyone. 5 minutes.
3 minutes. This is Angie Bryant.
Angela Brady: Hi, everybody. I'm ESdat director.
Angela Brady. Good to see everybody.
Thanks, Coach. Thanks, Mayor.
At ESdat, our goal is straightforward.
Everyone should be able to get where they
need to go safely.
We know street design can make
a real difference in preventing
crashes and reducing their severity when they do happen.
That's why our teams are working every day across
Seattle to redesign streets, improve crossings,
reduce dangerous speeds, and build
safer connections for people walking,
biking, rolling, taking transit, and driving.
The mayor's executive order builds on that work,
and it helps us move priority projects
forward and expand
proven safety improvements across the city.
That includes advancing near-term improvements
on our high injury network,
the streets where we see a disproportionate share
of serious and fatal crashes.
We'll be making safety upgrades at
19 identified high collision locations,
including locations along Rainier Avenue South,
Aurora Avenue North, and Fifth Avenue.
We'll also be adding pedestrian Head Start
signals at 40 intersections,
giving people walking a few extra seconds
to enter the crosswalk before vehicles get a green light.
I want to note here, we've already
added pedestrian Head Start
signals to nearly 90% of walk signals citywide,
where the improvement can be easily implemented,
and we've seen a nearly 50% drop in the number of
people hit by turning cars
at crosswalks with this improvement in place.
Thank you. [APPLAUSE] Additionally,
we'll continue using tools such as traffic calming,
improved visibility, automated traffic safety cameras,
and signal operations to
address dangerous speeds and making crossings safer.
Vision Zero isn't one project.
It's not one type of improvement.
It's an ongoing commitment to learn to respond,
and to use tools available
to make our transportation system safer.
In May of this year, my team at ESdat adopted
a new fatal crash response policy
so that when a fatal crash occurs,
we have a consistent process for reviewing what happened,
identifying immediate needs, and
considering additional safety
improvements at those locations.
It's one example of how we continue to learn,
respond, and strengthen our approach to Vision Zero.
You can see our work right
here near Cleveland High School,
as Coach just covered with you.
Our SDOH team is working together
to deliver safety improvements in this area,
including new marked crosswalks,
ADA curb ramps, and flashing beacons.
This work also reflects
our broader safe routes to
school efforts and our partnership with
Seattle Public Schools to make it safer and
easier for students and
families to get to and from school.
With the school year approaching,
this is tangible this is
a tangible example of what our work is ultimately about.
Making everyday trips safer for students,
families, and everyone who uses our streets.
I want to thank Coach Aaron Roche and
the Cleveland High School community for
advocating for safety in this area.
Their voices help us understand where
improvements are needed most and why this work matters.
We cannot do this work alone.
It takes partnerships across
city departments with elected leaders,
advocates, schools, and communities.
The mayor's executive order strengthens
that collaboration while building
on the work our teams already are delivering.
We're committed to continuing that work and to delivering
safety improvements where they can make
the greatest difference. Thank you so much. [APPLAUSE]
Alexis Mercedes Rinck: Oh, in I'm short. Thank you.
I appreciate that. Hello, everyone.
I am Alexis Mercedes Rinck.
You're Seattle City Council member
representing the Office of position eight,
one of the at-large citywide Council offices,
and I am your vice chair over the Transportation,
Waterfront, and Seattle Center Committee.
Every morning in this city,
thousands of us make a choice
of a bet we shouldn't have to make.
We bet that the crosswalk will be enough.
We bet that the driver will see us.
We bet that our children will make it six
blocks to school and back without incident.
Most days we win that bet,
and then we stop thinking about it,
because that's what you do when
systems are supposed to protect you.
You stop noticing it's there.
But too many of our neighbors have lost that bet and,
in turn, lost their lives.
They didn't lose it because they were careless.
They lost it because cities built streets that
were faster for cars than they were safe for people,
then asked all of us to
be careful enough to make up the difference.
What we're doing here today with
this executive order will save lives,
and it starts the long,
difficult process to recovery.
We're here today because we all believe
that everybody should get home at the end of the day.
Ten years ago, Seattle set a goal of
zero traffic deaths and serious injuries by 2030.
The goal was right, but a goal is not a plan,
and zero wasn't really the point.
The point is the people behind that number.
The point is your neighbor,
your co-worker, your kids' school teacher.
Right now, too many of them don't make it home.
want to note that that danger isn't random.
It isn't shared equally.
Deaths in our community
concentrate on a handful of arterials.
Aurora Ave, MLK,
Rainier Ave, and many more.
You could draw the map of who dies in
this city onto a map of
where we historically underinvested in,
and those lines more than often overlap.
Do not. The burden falls hardest on our elders,
on people living with disabilities,
on black, Indigenous,
and communities of color, our unhoused neighbors,
and people who don't drive cars.
Where you live and how you commute
can be a factor in whether you get home alive.
That is not a traffic problem.
That is an equity problem.
In Seattle in 2026,
we are done pretending otherwise.
That's why I'm proud that we're moving with urgency.
Not with another study,
not with another decade-long planning process,
but with action now for people who cannot afford to
wait another ten years for the next arbitrary deadline.
Thank you. [APPLAUSE] This
isn't about paint on pavement for its own sake.
It's about a mother living off of Aurora Avenue,
not squeezing her child's hand a little
tighter every time they cross the street.
It's about an elder in the
Rainier Valley being able to get to
the bus stop without playing
chicken with many lanes of traffic,
and it's about saying,
finally out loud, with
the force of city government behind it,
your life is worth more than someone else's convenience.
[APPLAUSE] I want to thank
our transportation safety advocates who have
been here alongside my office every step of the way,
pushing for years for
these much-needed safety improvements.
I want to thank Mayor Wilson and her team for working
with my office over the past couple of months
to craft this executive order.
Thank you for showing real leadership on traffic safety.
Now, this executive order
initiates tangible actions that
will make real impact for communities across the city,
actions like intersection daylighting
to improve visibility for our pedestrians,
side guards to protect pedestrians,
bikers from large trucks and other state of
the art safety retrofits
for our city contracted vehicles,
and a process to speed up
projects and deliver on safety investments
now on Rainier Aurora Avenue and MK Way.
Now, here's what I know.
No city has ever regulated
its way to safety with a press release.
This only works if we keep showing
up after the media cameras leave.
When it's just budget line items
and construction schedules,
and somebody has to keep
asking why a project is behind schedule.
Now, that somebody is going to be me,
and I'm asking for it to be you too,
because, again, zero in
Vision Zero was never really the point.
The point is the lives we've
saved along the way to keep that number zero,
all of them making it
back through their front door tonight.
Everybody gets home.
Let's now make sure that's true.
Thank you. [APPLAUSE]
Eddie Lin: Good afternoon, everyone.
My name's Eddie Lin,
Seattle City Council member for District 2,
which includes wonderful Cleveland High School,
includes Beacon Hill, goes from
CID down to Rainier Beach.
I appreciate the mayor talking about
public safety includes transportation safety.
Recent surveys have showed that transportation safety
is either Number 1 or Number 2
in terms of concerns for our community.
We know that South Seattle, again,
is Number 1 or Number 2 in terms of
serious injuries or deaths.
This is folks of all walks of life.
This is our youth. This is our seniors.
This is families.
This includes drivers, and if you're a driver,
you're not a driver 100% of the time.
You are also sometimes out in the neighborhood,
walking, biking, taking transit.
Safety transit,
transportation safety is good for all of us.
I think too often,
we think about transit safety in
a different way than we think about
other types of public safety.
Certainly, it is important for us to
focus on all types of public safety.
Youth gun violence has been devastating,
again, for South Seattle in particular.
But for some reason, we talk about
transit traffic safety differently.
We too often see it as just part of everyday life as
if it's not something that we
have the ability to change or control.
I think that's why for too long it has been normalized.
It has allowed us to
not take the urgent action we need to take.
Change is hard when
your streets and sidewalks
and other ways of getting around are changing.
People will get used to what they know,
but change is necessary.
I appreciate the mayor and the SDOT and
all the city departments that will be critical
to making this a priority for our community.
I think, especially here
in front of Cleveland High School,
as I think about our families,
it's not just about making
sure everyone gets to where they need to go safely.
I think about all the trips
that people are choosing not to take,
the trips to the grocery store,
the trips to the library that people
just are choosing not to take
because they don't feel safe to do so.
I think about how much more freedom and
mobility and accessibility we can
make for our neighbors and
community if we truly prioritize safety for all.
Again, thank you to the mayor,
to everyone, to all the community advocates.
This is your win.
This is going to take all of us.
It's going to take all of us to talk about
transportation traffic safety in
a different way, to prioritize it.
To remember to slow down as we talk about somebody's life
should not be based on my convenience, your convenience.
We all need to remember that this has to be a priority.
This is our neighbors, and their lives are at stake.
Thank you. [APPLAUSE]
Tim Taylor: Hi, I'm Captain Tim Taylor.
I'm the captain of
Fire Station 21 in the Greenwood neighborhood.
I'm also one of the liaisons from
the fire department to SDOT.
The fire chief asked me to come out here today to speak
on what we've been doing to this point already,
working with Vision Zero and our SDOT partners and
our police partners on projects throughout the city.
But he wanted me to emphasize that we
unfortunately have a first hand seat
to these tragedies unfold.
We respond to everything with
our police department, brothers and sisters.
It takes a toll. We see
that toll first hand that it takes
emotionally on the people that are involved,
the people that are there, their families.
The mission of the fire department,
first and foremost, is to save lives.
We've been invested in working with SDOT with police,
with our neighborhood community groups.
We have been working already with
the Vision Zero team to have
a holistic and collaborative approach
to building these projects
that keeps in mind
the response needs for the fire and the fire police,
but at the same time,
keeping in mind the heart of what
this initiative is designed to do.
We're still working on that collaboratively,
and we're still very engaged on
that level projects that
have already happened and projects that are undergoing.
Brandon James: Good afternoon. I am Brandon James,
lieutenant with Seattle PD,
and I'm one of the commanders in the traffic section.
The Seattle Police Department is aligned with
safe system approach for Vision Zero.
Death and serious injuries from traffic crashes
are unacceptable, tragic, and preventable.
SPD is dedicated to proactively making the streets of
Seattle safer by dedicated emphasis patrols.
Just some examples here.
Since January of this year,
a small group of dedicated officers working on
a state funded grant
have contacted more than 260 drivers,
issued nearly 300 citations,
and arrested three dozen DUI drivers.
Another emphasis patrol through
the drunk net program launched in
December of 2025 consisted of six officers and
two supervisors who are
alone to the traffic section for one month.
During that one month period,
nearly 725 drivers were contacted.
Nearly 500 citations were issued,
and 107 DUI drivers were arrested.
Additionally, more than two dozen other arrests
were made for other traffic crimes.
During the FIFA operational period,
the Seattle Police Department dedicated officers to
proactive traffic enforcement to ensure
the safety of citizens and visiting attendees.
A dedicated DUI traffic squad was
launched during and after each FIFA match.
During that time, 350 citations were issued,
30 DUI drivers were arrested with
an additional eight arrests made for
other proactive traffic enforcement.
Now, notably, during the FIFA operational period,
there were zero Seattle traffic fatalities.
Seattle PD currently has
10 drug recognition experts with
more on the way through
collaborative training efforts throughout the state.
We recognize that doing
traffic enforcement reduces the number
of people who are killed or
seriously injured in traffic collisions.
However, a key part of
the safe system approach is knowing that
humans do make mistakes.
When appropriate, officers will educate drivers,
cyclists and pedestrians about how to keep themselves and
others safe on the road
so that everyone can enjoy Seattle.
Thank you. [APPLAUSE]
Gordon Padelford: Good afternoon.
My name is Gordon Padelford.
I'm the executive director of
the Seattle Streets Alliance,
and I want to put the mayor's bold action
today in some historic context.
I was there at the press conference in 2015 in
Lake City when Vision Zero was
announced as a bold new direction for the city.
Since then, across the United States,
speeding has been rampant,
distracted driving is increasing,
intoxicated driving remains stubbornly high,
and the proliferation of
SUVs and passenger trucks that are too
large for our streets is having
deadly consequences, especially for pedestrians.
But in the face of these headwinds,
Seattle is safer than many of our peer cities,
San Francisco, Minneapolis, Washington DC,
Philadelphia, Portland, and Denver.
That's a laudable achievement
we should take a moment to recognize.
It's thanks to the Vision Zero program's effort
to set safer speed limits,
implement traffic calming, and build safer crosswalks.
But we must do more.
In 2025, more than 200 Seattleites
suffered life altering injuries and 27 lost their lives.
Something we've come to know while we're working
on this issue is that these are not statistics.
These are not numbers. These are families.
These are individuals with
communities and friends and colleagues,
and the ripples of devastation that happen from each of
those incidents affects people for a long time.
There are stories behind each of those.
I would implore the media today to
humanize the people behind the statistics,
to think about why they're not
able to get home to their loved ones,
and what we can do to make sure
everyone gets home safely because in the end,
this is a choice that we're making as
a society for how our grand transportation system works.
In Seattle, 80% of
pedestrian fatalities occur on multiple lane arterials.
We've been talking about the same streets since 2015.
Council member Rink mentioned some of them.
The Top 5 most dangerous streets are Aurora, Rainier,
Fourth Avenue South, Lake City Way,
and MLK Jr. Way South.
Now, the good news is that we
have the solutions to keep people safe on our streets.
The Seattle Department of Transportation has
the expertise to fix our dangerous streets,
but the political will,
up until this point, has been lacking.
Without the political will,
too often safety improvements have been watered down,
delayed or canceled altogether.
Now, with Mayor Wilson's executive order,
they have the clear backing of
the mayor to strengthen and speed up
these improvements that will make sure
everyone gets home safely to their loved ones.
[APPLAUSE] Some of those improvements
can look like major street redesigns,
like redesigning Aurora Avenue or Rainier Avenue South.
Other times those projects may be
small but meaningful improvements,
like improving intersection visibility
through hardened daylighting,
or they can be at the policy level,
like installing side guards on our trucks,
as we know that half of
all people biking and a quarter of all people
walking who are hit by large trucks
are actually hit by the side of a truck first,
which would be preventable if
side guards were ubiquitous.
But in the end, there's no single solution
to keep people safe on our streets.
We need a comprehensive approach
like the one Mayor Wilson outlined today.
But there is one key ingredient,
and that is political will.
Finally, today, in Seattle,
we have it thanks to Mayor Wilson's action today and
her determination and strong leadership
to see it through through implementation. Thank you.
Speaker 1: With that, we're going to move over here,
and we're going to sign an executive order.
Then we'll take a couple of questions
related to Vision Zero.
Afterwards, we're going to have
some pullovers pits going to be
super quick 'cause we have a lot of talkers.
Thanks. Poll over. Poll asides.
Katie Wilson: Really? There you go.
Speaker 1: They're both the same. We got two of them.
Katie Wilson: [inaudible]. [APPLAUSE]
Speaker 1: If you have a question about Vision Zero, let me know.
Chris. You might [inaudible] come over here.
Or whoever needs to answer should come over to this mic.
Speaker 2: Council member Rob Saka who leads
the transportation proposed something
called the Safer Streets Act.
He's not here today. How is what
you're doing different than what he's proposed?
What do you think about this legislation?
Katie Wilson: I know. I'm excited to have
the partnership of our council
and of the transportation chair.
I think anyone who wants to work together to make
our streets safer for all users,
we're going to work together, and I'm
excited about his leadership, too.
Speaker 2: Council may have [inaudible] have
a public safety plan.
[inaudible] Do you have a plan?
Katie Wilson: Public safety is an extremely
high priority for my office,
and I think the executive order
that we're laying out today
is definitely part of a comprehensive public safety plan.
We also are working very hard on updating and improving,
better coordinating our city's approach to gun violence.
I know we'll have more to share about
that in the coming weeks.
Speaker 1: Just making sure that we're
talking about Vision Zero.
Speaker 2: [inaudible] about that.
Speaker 3: The South Seattle Emerald
had an op ed that talked about
how recent traffic calming projects
in South Seattle lack features that are in projects,
other places had trees
and whatnot, shrubbery, and whatnot.
South Seattle has high traffic fatalities and
also losing [inaudible] faster than any other places.
These executive boards you have,
make sure that planning for
South Seattle traffic calming projects
have beautification,
planning associated like in other places.
Katie Wilson: I think that will be a great thing
for interdepartmental team working on
this to discuss because
I think that tree canopy is very important,
and definitely South Seattle
and some other neighborhoods of
our city are behind when it comes to having tree canopy.
Speaker 1: You're a go guy in
the mobile right over there.
Speaker 4: Related question [inaudible] one,
do you know why Councilmember Saka isn't here with us?
Is it an OPMA thing or is it something else?
Number 2 there's been
a lot of discussion about public safety,
and council member accused
you of not having a plan for public safety.
Would you like to respond to that and talk more about
the holistic view of public safety then?
Katie Wilson: Sure. I think I respond to that a little
bit with the earlier gentleman's question.
But absolutely, public safety in
all of its forms is extremely important.
Traffic safety is one piece of that.
Gun violence is a piece of that.
Just the experience of walking
outside in your neighborhood and what that feels like,
or getting on the bus and
riding transit, whether that feels safe.
All of this is part of public safety.
To make improvements is
a multi-dimensional effort that
involves lots of different partners,
and we are working on that very hard every day,
and welcome the collaboration of everyone here.
Speaker 1: Right there.
Katie Wilson: [inaudible]
Again, I don't want to
speak for Councilmember Saka,
but again, I appreciate his leadership,
and I know that he's also been talking about how we can
move forward on Vision Zero and looking
forward to working with him to make that happen.
Speaker 5: I had a question about engagement,
which obviously,
we love that type of stuff,
but it has been used as
a bludgeon for projects in the past.
I'm thinking even at
Beacon Hill project part on the road that
had three parking [inaudible]
before we could move board with it.
Does your executive orders or
the associated effort have anything to say about that?
How can we make that process not so slow.
Katie Wilson: Angie can come up, I know.
Yes, it does address this.
I think this is always a tension in Seattle.
We talk about the Seattle process and how things
take a very long time sometimes.
Also, we really do want
everyone's input and participation.
We want to make sure that everyone's
heard and that we're considering
impacts as we're designing our projects.
Part of this order is to look at the way that we do
community engagement when we do
safety projects and to really figure out,
are there areas where we need to make sure that
we're doing things fast
because of the safety considerations?
That is definitely part of this.
I don't know if you want to stand it. You can
read the text in the order.
Speaker 1: There, one more over here. Erica, please.
Erica: Sorry to keep going back to Rob Saka.
But you support his legislation which you pulled
out pretty fast this week
without really announcing details?
Katie Wilson: I think I need to see the details.
This is part of why I think
it's going to be a conversation with
his office as we learn more
about in detail what he has in mind there.
Erica: Do you consider this more substantive
than what you're proposing?
Katie Wilson: I think people can judge for themselves.
Also, as the executive,
there are a lot of things that we have the ability to do
working in our departments in terms of execution.
It's just a different role. Our council
is the legislative body,
and so looking forward to
working with Councilmember Saka.
Speaker 1: Thank you, everyone. We can do
1 or 2 poll sides over here.
I think we talked to Chris and Dan,
and then we got to let the mayor go.
Madeleine. [APPLAUSE]