Category: City Council

City Council, Mayor Harrell, Police

Police Contract Gives Big Raises to Officers, Still Fails to Meet Baseline Set in 2017 Accountability Law

By Andrew Engelson

On Tuesday afternoon, a little more than two weeks after Mayor Bruce Harrell’s office publicly announced a new three-year retroactive contract with the Seattle Police Officers Guild, the Seattle City Council ratified the agreement 8 to 1, with councilmember Tammy Morales casting the lone dissenting vote. Almost immediately after the vote, Harrell signed the contract, calling it a needed step to advance “our vision for a city where everyone, in every neighborhood, is safe and feels secure.”

Morales, in an amendment that failed, moved to delay the Tuesday vote, noting that the contract was fast-tracked directly to the full council without any public hearings and after just twenty minutes of public comment—nearly all of it in opposition.

 “The community deserves a chance to make their voice heard before we vote on it. We shouldn’t be rushing this,” Morales said.

Before the vote, Morales noted that the new contract offers almost no changes to accountability measures for police officers. “I believe this contract as bargained does not protect the city and the lack of accountability measures puts us in continued violation of the federal consent decree,” she said, referring to the 2012 federal agreement between SPD and the US Department of Justice.

In 2023, US District Judge James Robart modified the consent decree to lift most restrictions on SPD, but on the condition that the department make additional reforms to its accountability and crowd control.

Speaking in defense of the new contract, Council President Sara Nelson said, “We have to attack our staffing crisis from both retention and recruitment and hiring angles, and this is an important piece of legislation to accomplish both of those goals – because it will also help attract new officers to the force and facilitate our recruitment efforts as well.”

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The contract, which PubliCola acquired and published in early April, retroactively gives police officers a 24 percent raise – broken down to 1.3 percent in 2021, 6.4 percent in 2022, and 15.3 percent in 2023. The raises will boost SPD’s starting pay, before overtime, to $103,000, making Seattle officers the highest-paid in the region.

According to an economic briefing before the vote by Ben Noble, director of the city’s Office of Economic and Revenue Forecasts, the contract adds $39 million annually to the existing annual SPD salary budget of $170 million. In sum, the retroactive cost over three years totals $57 million, and adds $9.2 million to the city’s existing budget deficit, because the city didn’t put enough in reserve to account for the total cost of the raises.

Councilmember Bob Kettle, chair of the Public Safety committee, said before the vote, “Yes, it is expensive. Yes, it is a challenge for our budget. But if we don’t compete in this labor market, we won’t accomplish our goal of achieving a safe base in our city.” T

After signing the bill, Harrell said the agreement “will make meaningful improvements to officer pay and staffing, to accountability so misconduct is investigated, and to new efficiencies through diversified response options.”

However, critics point out that the contract offers only minor changes to accountability for police officers. It allows a 60-day extension of Office of Police Accountability’s (OPA) 180-day deadline for completing investigations into the most serious misconduct; tells arbitrators tasked with reviewing officer firings to “give deference” to the police chief’s decisions; adds just two more civilian investigators at OPA, bringing the total to four; and increases the amount of time OPA has to inform an officer of an investigation from five days to 30. Continue reading “Police Contract Gives Big Raises to Officers, Still Fails to Meet Baseline Set in 2017 Accountability Law” →

City Council, Economy, labor

City Council Bill Cutting “Gig” Delivery Workers’ Pay Moves Forward
Micaela Romero from Washington Community Action Network, joined by her son, testifies against legislation that will reduce delivery driver wages.

By Erica C. Barnett

The Seattle City Council’s governance and economic development committee approved a bill sponsored by Council President Sara Nelson that will lower the minimum wage for so-called “gig” delivery workers on Thursday, with Joy Hollingsworth abstaining because, as she put it, “I still want this bill to be baked more.”

The 4-1 vote came after hours of testimony from delivery drivers who were overwhelmingly opposed to the legislation and have shown up at public comment periods for weeks on end to ask the council not to cut their wages. After last year’s city council, including Nelson, voted for the “PayUp” bill that required gig companies to cover more of workers’ costs, wages went up to an average of around $26 an hour. In response, the gig companies—Uber, Doordash, Instacart, and others— imposed a flat $5 fee on every order, causing demand for delivery service to plummet.

A handful of drivers, mostly representing the Uber-funded lobbying group Drive Forward, said the changes would enable the companies to drop the fees.

Several council members patted themselves on the back for listening to “all sides” of the issue before voting to approve a bill that satisfied almost all of the delivery companies’ demands.

Nelson, for example, spent several minutes reading the February testimony of bike delivery worker Heather Nielson, who said the fees had caused customers to “boycott the apps” and stop providing tips, into the record. Nielson, later featured on the conservative website The Center Square, said tips make up 90 percent or more of drivers’ wages—a claim that many other drivers contradicted in their testimony.

Nelson seemed eager to ignore those workers’ comments, referring to them dismissively as “all this noise we’ve been hearing.”

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Her legislation, she said, “is an effort to reverse the bad outcomes caused by a flawed law” that resulted in a “drastic reduction in worker wages and lost revenues for restaurants and other retail establishments. That’s what happened. That was the chain of events. And all of this was anticipated but the last council did it anyway. And now we’re faced with the fallout.”

Councilmember Maritza Rivera recalled a time when, “as a young woman, I worked as a server in a fast food restaurant where I made the legal minimum wage and relied on tips to pay rent, utilities and groceries.” In most states, restaurants can pay sub-minimum wages for tipped workers on the justification that workers make plenty of money from customers’ tips, and companies like Doordash and Instacart adopted the practice in states where it’s still legal until a series of lawsuits forced them to alter their policies. Washington state does not allow a “tip credit.”

The legislation notably,, does not require companies to stop paying the $5 fee; nor does it impose any new restrictions on the companies’ power over their workers, such as their ability to “deactivate” (fire) workers for any reason, including wanting to set their own work hours.

Instead, the bill reduces workers’ pay and takes away some of the rights they currently have. First, the bill lowers the amount companies must pay their drivers for expenses, such as self-employment (employer) taxes and workers’ compensation, that the drivers wouldn’t have to pay if they were classified as employees. Continue reading “City Council Bill Cutting “Gig” Delivery Workers’ Pay Moves Forward” →

City Council, Density, homelessness, labor, Mayor Harrell, Transportation

This Week on PubliCola: May 4, 2024

A roundup of this week’s news.

Monday, April 29

Planning Commission: Harrell’s Growth Plan Will Worsen Inequities and Keep Housing Unaffordable

The Seattle Planning commission weighed in on Mayor Bruce Harrell’s proposed comprehensive plan update, which proposes a continuation of thepr “urban village” strategy developed to preserve single-family enclaves in the 1990s, calling it unrealistic and inadequate. ““In order to ensure everyone has a home they can afford in the neighborhood of their choice, we need to plan to increase, not reduce, our current rate of housing production” to allow “five to eight story multifamily housing in many more areas of the city,” the commission wrote.

Burien Moves Forward on Tiny House Village as Mayor Vilifies Police Chief for Not Enforcing Camping Ban

The city of Burien tentatively approved a zoning change that could help advance a long-planned tiny house village on property owned by Seattle City Light (see below, though, for an update). Meanwhile, Burien Mayor Kevin Schilling claimed the city is selectively paying the King County Sheriff’s Office for police service except for what they would owe the county for enforcing the city’s homeless ban—a claim the sheriff’s office couldn’t verify, since the city doesn’t owe them a payment until next month.

Tuesday, April 30

“I’m Losing My Temper”: Moore Accuses Morales of Calling Her Council Colleagues “Evil… Corporate Shills”

In comments that rattled some of her colleagues, Cathy Moore accused her fellow council member Tammy Morales of “vilifying” Moore and other council members in the media, saying she had called them “evil… corporate shills” who “don’t care about our fellow human beings” because they voted against an affordable-housing pilot Morales had been working on for years. Morales did express disappointment in the vote, but there is no evidence for Moore’s specific accusations. Moore also threatened to use council rules to silence Morales if she failed to be “civil.”

Labor Fizz: City Reduces Delay for Workers’ Retro Pay; Harrell Praises SPOG Contract for “Enhancing Accountability”

City workers learned this week that they’ll get retroactive pay increases in July, rather than October. Last month, the city told employees working under a new contract that the city would have to delay paying back wages because they’re implementing a new payroll system later this year. Also, Mayor Bruce Harrell released a tentative police contract that would make Seattle police the highest-paid in the region, boosting their starting pay, before overtime and bonuses, into six figures.

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Wednesday, May 1

Council Kills Morales’ Affordable Housing Bill, Arguing for More Process and Delay

The Seattle City Council voted 7-2 to kill legislation aimed at helping community organizations with “limited development experience” build small-scale affordable housing developments. Morales had been working on the program, called the “Connected Communities Pilot,” since 2022. Council members called the legislation premature, saying such proposals should get in line behind the 2024 housing levy and what will likely be the 2025 comprehensive plan.

Thursday, May 2

Officer Who Joked About Pedestrian Death Will Speak on Traffic Safety at Conference; Moore Calls for “More Vice Squads”

Daniel Auderer, the Seattle Police Officers Guild vice president who laughed and joked about a fellow officer’s killing of pedestrian Jaahnavi Kandula, will speak at a prestigious conference on traffic safety later this year. The conference program says Auderer will be representing SPD, although SPD denies this and says they aren’t paying for him to attend. And: At a meeting on public safety, Councilmember Cathy Moore said that in addition to bringing back an old prostitution loitering law, she wants to see “more vice squads” on Aurora Ave. N.

Friday, May 3

Harrell’s Transportation Levy Proposal Boosts Tax Measure to $1.45 Million, Front-Loads Sidewalk Construction

After advocacy groups expressed disappointment that the proposed transportation levy renewal backed off on bike, pedestrian, and transit projects, the mayor proposed a revised version that adds $100 million to the ballot measure and pushes sidewalk construction to the first four years of the eight-year levy proposal, which now heads to the city council for amendments.

Harrell Discusses Gig Worker Minimum Wage Repeal, Burien Restrictions Could Prohibit Tiny House Village

Remember what we said about Burien’s tiny house village vote? Well, it turns out the zoning legislation they’re considering on Monday will prohibit a proposed tiny house village unless the council amends it, because it restricts transitional housing to parcels much smaller than the one where the village is supposed to go. And: Will Harrell come out against Sara Nelson’s proposal to repeal the current minimum wage and labor protections for delivery drivers? Organized labor seems to be banking on it.

City Council, homelessness, King County, labor, Mayor Harrell, Morning Fizz

Harrell Discusses Gig Worker Minimum Wage Repeal, Burien Restrictions Could Prohibit Tiny House Village

1. Organized labor groups like the MLK Labor Council and Working Washington have vociferously opposed a proposal from Council President Sara Nelson to slash delivery drivers’ wages and roll back their legal rights, showing in council chambers and writing letters urging the council to vote against Nelson’s bill (which, notably, does not eliminate the $5 fees the companies added to orders when higher wages went into effect last year.)

In recent weeks, those same groups have been throwing their weight behind Mayor Bruce Harrell, reminding him none too subtly of his past commitments to labor priorities. In the last two weeks alone, the Labor Council nominated Harrell for a “Best Elected Official” award, and Working Washington all but fêted him during a City Hall celebration for the 10-year anniversary of Seattle’s $15 minimum wage.

Nelson’s bill seems likely to pass, but it could be amended; or, if the vote is 5-4, the mayor could veto it. On Friday, Harrell told PubliCola it’s still “too early to say whether I would [veto] or not,” but he still has a lot of unanswered questions about the legislation, including “why people are not using the service, why small businesses have not been getting orders, [and] what is the cause” of the slowdown in deliveries since higher wages for workers went into effect and the delivery companies imposed a $5-per-order fee.

“Are they sharing and being transparent with the information for us, as policymakers, to make good decisions? We have to have that information. And if we’re not accomplishing that, we will never achieve the [other] goals, which are driver equity and pay and small business revenue growth.”

The debate over the legislation, Harrell continued, “seems to be really fraught with conflict, and it doesn’t seem to be coming together [to a point] where all of the stakeholders can agree on their goal.”

The council’s governance, accountability, and economic development committee, which Nelson chairs, has its next meeting on Thursday, May 9, where they’re expected to discuss the proposal.

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2. The Burien City Council will vote Monday on a proposed zoning change to allow transitional housing, including tiny house villages, on certatin residentially zoned property in the city. The legislation came out of a lengthy debate last year over whether the city should accept $1 million King County offered the city to build a tiny house village; and, if so, where the village should go. The city council eventually settled on a piece of property owned by Seattle City Light.

However, the proposal as written may not be viable. Because of an amendment inserted in the zoning proposal by Councilmember Stephanie Mora, a consistent opponent of the project, transitional housing can only be located on properties that are between 1 and 2 acres in size—and the City Light property is 4.6 acres, according to King County property records.

A spokesperson for the King County Regional Homelessness Authority said KCRHA staff have asked for clarification about Burien’s plans, including whether the city plans to subdivide the site so that the parcel where the village is located does not exceed two acres.

A spokesperson for the city of Burien said the proposal, which is currently on the council’s consent agenda, still isn’t final. “Until the City Council votes on Monday, there is still potential for the proposed ordinance to be amended.”

The legislation limits the total number of people—not buildings—at any transitional housing project to 30, which would result in a smaller tiny house village than most of those operating in Seattle.

The City Light property won’t be available forever. According to a City Light spokesperson, “The site is being held for a proposed future substation to meet projected demands through our comprehensive electrification planning efforts. Incidental use of the property is permitted on an interim basis only and in coordination with all partners involved.”

Also on Monday, King County Sheriff Patti Cole-Tindall and Burien Police Chief Ted Boe will be part of a “public safety roundtable” to discuss public safety and mental health and addiction responses in Burien. The sheriff’s office provides police services through an agreement with Burien, and is currently suing the city over a total ban on “camping” that the county’s lawyers have called unconstitutional.

Because Boe, as a representative of the sheriff’s office, has said he won’t enforce the ban, the city has countersued the sheriff’s office for breach of contract; directed city staffers to stop paying the police department’s invoices; and called for Boe’s ouster, prompting outrage from veteran police officers loyal to the popular chief.

According to the B-Town Blog, Bailon responded to the announcement of Monday’s forum by demanding the removal of all references to Burien and the Burien Police Department from the materials for the event, claiming that “Burien’s name and logo to add credibility to King County’s proposed roundtable”—arguably a dubious claim, given the ongoing chaos caused by the city’s actions.

City Council, Morning Fizz, Police

Officer Who Joked About Pedestrian Death Will Speak on Traffic Safety at Conference; Moore Calls for “More Vice Squads”

1. Daniel Auderer, the Seattle Police Officers Guild vice president who was caught on tape joking with SPOG president Mike Solan about the death of Jaahnavi Kandula, a 23-year-old student who was killed last year when SPD officer Kevin Dave struck her in a crosswalk while driving 74 miles an hour, was reassigned to low-profile office duties while the Office of Police Accountability investigates multiple complaints against him.

Despite Auderer’s notoriety, he will appear on a national stage in August, when he will be one of two speakers from the Seattle Police Department at national traffic safety conference put on by the International Association of Chiefs of Police in Washington, D.C.

UPDATE: After this post published, a spokesman for SPD contacted PubliCola to say that Auderer is not “representing” the department at the conference, but could not explain why Auderer and another officer, Tom Heller, are listed on the IACP’s program as Seattle Police Department representatives. The spokesman said SPD is not paying for Auderer to travel to or appear at the conference and did not receive a request for him to attend the conference and speak.

According to the program for the IACP’s Impaired Driving and Traffic Safety Conference, Auderer will lead a workshop called “Becoming a Pickup Artist: How to Get More Out of Interviews,” where he’ll teach other officers how to get accurate information out of crime victims, witnesses, and suspects “using only the power of human psychology.”

“From the roadside to the interrogation room, learn how to use human memory, perception, and motivation to improve investigations,” the panel description promises.

Asked about Auderer’s D.C. appearance and his current assignment within the department, a spokesperson said, “We don’t have any further updates or information concerning Auderer other than what has previously been provided.”

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2. Expanding on her proposal to restore a former law against “prostitution loitering,” City Councilmember Cathy Moore told a North Seattle public safety group yesterday that she would like to see “more vice squads” on Aurora Ave. North, a stretch of road where sex workers have congregated for decades.

“I know that SPD is doing their best, I think they have two vice officers. They need more vice squads,” Moore said. Mayor Bruce Harrell, Moore added, “is not coming to the table on this, and they’re not showing up in a way that they need to show up on Aurora. I have reached out to their office to talk about this. We as a council can’t do it all alone. They are in charge of everything [including] the resources.”

Councilmember Moore said she asked Police Chief Adrian Diaz for an update on SPD’s response to a damning report that revealed a widespread culture of misogyny in the department and “I did not receive a response.” She also called SPD’s PR response to four women’s lawsuit against the department “highly unacceptable.”

Moore, who represents North Seattle’s District 5, made her comments at a forum sponsored by the North Precinct Advisory Council Wednesday night. The forum also included District 4 Councilmember Maritza Rivera (Northeast Seattle) and District 6 Councilmember Dan Strauss (Northwest Seattle).

Rivera expressed her support for Moore’s proposal to bring back the prostitution loitering law, saying it was part of a “holistic” approach that should also include traffic calming measures to slow down cars on Aurora and give the area more of a “neighborhood feel.”

The city council repealed laws against prostitution and drug loitering on the recommendation of a work group convened in 2015 to support and reduce barriers for people with criminal history. According to the work group, the prostitution loitering targets people who are “already at high risk for trafficking, abuse, and other exploitation”—disproportionately women of color—and puts them at further risk. Prostitution itself is still illegal, but the city has only made 25 prostitution arrests since 2019.

3. Moore, along with her council colleagues Bob Kettle and Rob Saka, issued a statement Thursday morning expressing support for an independent investigation Mayor Bruce Harrell announced earlier this week, after four women announced their intent to sue over allegations of sexual harassment by Police Chief Adrian Diaz and communications office director John O’Neil. “We must address barriers to recruiting and retaining women sworn officers to make desperately needed progress on our public safety crisis,” she said.

Asked about the allegations at Wednesday’s meeting, Moore was more explicit, saying she asked Diaz for an update on SPD’s response to a damning report that revealed a widespread culture of misogyny in the department and “I did not receive a response.”

SPD’s “public relations response” to the charges was “highly unacceptable,” Moore added. The department issued a statement responding to the women’s claims that essentially called them all liars, saying their allegations were based on “individual perceptions of victimhood that are unsupported and – in some instances – belied by the comprehensive investigations that will no doubt ultimately be of record.”

 

 

City Council, Density, housing

Council Kills Morales’ Affordable Housing Bill, Arguing for More Process and Delay

By Erica C. Barnett

The Seattle City Council voted 7-2 to kill legislation sponsored by Councilmember Tammy Morales aimed at helping community organizations with “limited development experience” build small-scale affordable housing developments and “equitable development” projects, such as health clinics, day care, and retail space.

Morales had been working on the program, called the “Connected Communities Pilot,” since 2022. The five-year pilot would have helped as many as 35 community organizations build larger, taller buildings, as long as they preserved a third of their rental units for people making 60 percent or less of the Seattle’s area median income (AMI), or built homeownership units for people making 100 percent of Seattle AMI or less.

It would have also allowed community groups to build apartments in areas of the city that have historically been reserved for single-family houses, and exempted certain projects in historically redlined areas from design review and parking minimums, two requirements that can add significant time and cost to projects.

The council’s land use committee, which Morales chairs, voted against her bill last week, citing vague concerns that the bill had been rushed and that there were more appropriate avenues for building affordable housing.

At Tuesday’s meeting, Morales’ new colleagues repeated those claims, suggesting that the city should instead provide affordable housing through the comprehensive plan, the housing levy, or some unspecified future legislative route.

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“After the comp plan process is finalized, we can determine if additional legislation is needed to achieve our housing goals,” Councilmember Maritza Rivera said on Tuesday. “In addition, the city just passed a nearly $1 billion [housing levy] and we do not yet know how these funds will be implemented. … Finally, given our housing shortage and the slowing down of recent development, we need to consider how to incentivize all development, rather than singling out some investments over others.”

In fact, as Morales pointed out, the city does know how the Housing Levy funds will be spent. And the comprehensive plan update is a set of policy guidelines, not legislation—the city can still pass housing legislation and incentives before finalizing the update, which might not happen until next year. “This is just another tool to help us meet our housing shortage, which we all acknowledge we have,” she said. Continue reading “Council Kills Morales’ Affordable Housing Bill, Arguing for More Process and Delay” →