Tag: Teresa Mosqueda

City Council, Elections

Morales Surges While Other Progressives Flail in Latest Election Results; Mosqueda Explains Why She’ll Stay Through the End of This Year

1. UPDATE: On Friday afternoon, District 2 incumbent Tammy Morales pulled ahead of challenger Tanya Woo and now has 50.15 percent of the vote, a gap of 317 points. Alex Hudson conceded to Joy Hollingsworth in District 3, and District 7 incumbent Andrew Lewis conceded to Bob Kettle.

Dan Strauss (District 6, Northwest Seattle) officially pulled ahead of challenger Pete Hanning after King County Elections posted its latest set of results on Thursday, while the other two incumbents seeking reelection—Tammy Morales (District 2, Southeast Seattle) and Andrew Lewis (District 7, downtown and Queen Anne) began closing the gap on their opponents, Tanya Woo and Bob Kettle.

As is typical in local elections, progressive voters who were losing (or barely winning) on election night pulled ahead significantly in this first large batch of later results, though generally not enough to come back from election-night trouncings.

With another 47,000 votes counted, Strauss now leads Hanning 50-49, while Woo is a little more than three points ahead of Morales, at 51.5-48.2. That’s a big gain for Morales since election night, when Woo was leading by almost nine points, making this a competitive race.

Lewis, meanwhile, is now 7 points behind conservative challenger Kettle, at 46.2 to his opponent’s 53.4—a seven-point gap that’s unlikely to close unless the remaining ballots are wildly lopsided compared to those counted so far.

In the open seat for District 4 (Northeast Seattle), Ron Davis is now 6 points behind Maritza Rivera, with 46.7 percent of the vote to Rivera’s 52.9. In the other races in which no candidate has conceded (Districts 1 and 3—Rob Saka v. Maren Costa and Joy Hollingsworth v. Alex Hudson), the more progressive candidates remain double digits behind their centrist opponents.

In short, the new council will most likely consist of seven moderates (Sara Nelson plus six new members, one appointed by the council when Teresa Mosqueda leaves to join the County Council), plus Strauss and, potentially, Morales—a major shift from its current, more progressive makeup, and a sign that voters were in the market for candidates who promised harsher policies toward drug users, unsheltered people, and people committing low-level crimes.

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2. Council budget committee chair Teresa Mosqueda, the presumptive winner of the King County Council seat being vacated by Joe McDermott, has come under pressure from left-leaning activists to resign now, before the council loses as many as seven progressive members, so that the council can appoint a progressive to serve until the next election. Under the city charter, the council has 20 days to replace a council member who resigns after their final day in office.

It’s an absurd argument, for a number of reasons, not least among them that most of the current council already votes in lockstep with Mayor Bruce Harrell, who openly backed many of the moderates who are currently leading in the races for open seats. A scenario in which Mosqueda “pushes through” a left-leaning candidate like former Lorena González aide Brianna Thomas would require support from both Andrew Lewis and Dan Strauss, against a council president (Debora Juarez) who would almost certainly oppose the idea, assuming that all the other progressives on the council got on board.

More important than that hypothetical, however, is the fact that Mosqueda’s budget committee will still be meeting to hammer out revenue options for future budget years until December, when the council is scheduled to vote on new taxes that could include expansion of the JumpStart payroll tax, which is earmarked primarily for affordable housing, and a local capital gains tax. “We have unfinished business in the Budget Committee that we won’t even get the chance to start voting on” until December, Mosqueda noted.

Neither Mosqueda nor her staff are independently wealthy, and living without a paycheck for six to eight weeks could represent a significant hardship, as it would for most people.

Whoever the council appoints next year will serve until the end of next year; if they run for the seat in 2024 and win, they will serve until Mosqueda’s original term ends in 2025, and will have to run again then.

 

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City Council, human services, labor, Mayor Harrell, Police, Taxes, Transportation

Council’s Budget Would Preserve JumpStart Spending Plan, Restrict Shotspotter, and Restore Safe Streets Spending

 

By Erica C. Barnett

Last week, Seattle City Council budget committee chair Teresa Mosqueda released a first-draft 2024 budget “balancing package” that includes dozens of amendments to Mayor Bruce Harrell’s 2024 budget proposal—reversing a plan to fund child care and human service worker wages with the JumpStart affordable-housing payroll tax; adding or restoring funding for transportation, eviction prevention, free help with tax pand other services; and placing restrictions on the Seattle Police Department’s future spending on an acoustic gunshot detection system and salary savings from unfilled positions, among many other relatively small tweaks to a budget that Harrell’s office has changed significantly since the council and mayor passed an “endorsed” 2024 budget last year.

As in previous years, the mayor’s office proposed using about $9 million in JumpStart funds—which are earmarked for affordable housing, small businesses, equitable development, and Green New Deal projects—on items that aren’t authorized uses of the tax, including pay increases for human service workers and child care providers, the relocation of a tiny house village in the University District, and startup costs for the new social housing public development authority.

Mosqueda’s budget proposal would change the way those items are funded so that they come out of the city’s general fund, which is authorized to receive up to $84 million in JumpStart revenues in a lump sum this year; by shifting these expenditures to the city’s mainline operating budget, the proposal avoids the need to change the legally binding JumpStart spending plan and avoids making these items dependent on JumpStart funding in the future. Additionally, in response to new projections showing almost $10 million more coming in from JumpStart than expected, Mosqueda’s budget increases spending on a number of JumpStart priorities—including $4.6 million for multifamily housing that the mayor’s budget cut—and contributes $2 million to the fund’s reserve.

Responding to Councilmember Sara Nelson’s comment that the appropriate use of JumpStart funds “seems to be a matter of interpretation,” Mosqueda said that there’s actually “not a lot of disagreement about what the current statute says,” and that if the council wanted to fund items that aren’t allowed under the current spending plan, “we would have had to statutorily amend JumpStart, which the [mayor’s office] also understood and realized in the transmission of their budget proposals.”

Councilmember Lisa Herbold noted that although Burgess told the council there are studies showing that acoustic gunshot locater systems better in concert with camera surveillance, the mayor’s office has not provided any evidence for this; meanwhile, she noted, a study in Philadelphia found that adding cameras to Shotspotter increased police workload without improving outcomes or even confirming more shootings.

The budget still includes funding for Shotspotter—an audio surveillance system that deputy mayor Tim Burgess told the council will be more effective when “married” to CCTV cameras in the same locations—but would now include a budget proviso barring the police department from putting it to use until the city conducts a racial equity toolkit and a Surveillance Impact Report. Ulike the mayor’s proposal, which would do one racial equity analysis and impact report up front and apply it to all future uses anywhere in the city, Mosqueda’s proviso would require SPD to look at each neighborhood individually.

Councilmember Lisa Herbold noted that although Burgess told the council there are studies showing that acoustic gunshot locater systems better in concert with camera surveillance, the mayor’s office has not provided any evidence for this; meanwhile, she noted, a study in Philadelphia found that adding cameras to Shotspotter increased police workload without improving outcomes or even confirming more shootings.

Referring to the same study as well as a review of Shotspotter in Chicago, Mosqueda said the systems have led to “more officers going to neighborhoods on high alert, potentially with guns drawn … expecting to potentially confront a dangerous situation. Given the already tragic number of shootings for our BIPOC community, especially our Black community, by police, this is a recipe for trouble.”

Other potential changes in the council’s budget proposal include:

• A proposal to retain the title “director” for the head of the Community Assisted Response and Engagement department (formerly the Community Safety and Communications Center). Harrell’s budget would change CARE department director Amy Smith’s title to “Chief” to make it equivalent to the police and fire chiefs, but opponents of this change argue that the title change is out of step with efforts to distinguish the CARE department as a civilian response team, not another arm of the police.

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Discussion about this change got surprisingly heated during a budget meeting earlier this month, when Smith insisted Harrell’s title change was “brilliant” because it provides “a level-setting, across public safety to say these are of equal importance and significance” to first responders from police and fire departments. Mosqueda said she had heard “directly from first responders” that their jobs are different because they take an oath to show up in emergencies, which is distinct from the role of the civilian team that will soon begin responding, accompanied by police, to some low-priority, non-emergency calls.

• Funding ($200,000) to expand pretrial diversion programs, which allow people accused of some misdemeanors to avoid charges by attending classes or other programs on a short-term basis. Sponsor Andrew Lewis said enhancing these programs would help the city “continue to have a more just and equitable system of justice”; these light-touch programs not generally appropriate for people with serious addiction or mental health issues, so the money won’t address the influx of new potential clients pouring into  programs like LEAD because of the city’s new drug criminalization law.

• Funding to raise wages for human services workers at agencies whose contracts with the King County Regional Homelessness Authority are funded through the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), not the city. The council passed a Mosqueda-sponsored law in 2019 that requires annual inflationary adjustments to most human services contracts to boost workers’ pay and improve employee retention, but that mandate only applies to city-funded contracts. Increasing other homeless service contracts would bring workers at those agencies to parity, but would create an ongoing annual budget issue.

The proposed amendments include one from Council President Debora Juarez stipulating that of $2.4 million reserved in 2024 for paving non-arterial streets, $600,000 can only be spent paving the streets around the Seattle Storm’s planned practice center in Interbay, which former mayor Jenny Durkan pushed through on her way out the door. Under the agreement, the developers is only “responsible for repaving half the streets”—from the property line to the center of the road—leaving the city on the hook for the rest.

• A one-time, $300,000 transfer to King County’s Department of Community and Human Services to pay for what sponsor Sara Nelson described as “intensive outpatient or inpatient treatment,” including detox, for low-income people who can’t access private treatment through Medicaid. The intent, Nelson said, is to fund treatment at facilit[ies] where they are taken out of their daily lives and detoxed and given some counseling and behavioral therapy nutrition, etc.” Nelson has advocated for the city to fund traditional abstinence-based treatment in addition to opioid use disorder medications and harm reduction, and the council may be more open to the idea if the money flows through the county’s human services department—which will have discretion over how to spend the money—than the city’s.

• A proviso stipulating that of $2.4 million reserved in 2024 for paving non-arterial streets, $600,000 can only be spent paving the streets around the Seattle Storm’s planned practice center in Interbay. Former mayor Jenny Durkan pushed through a special zoning exemption to allow the 50,000-square-foot facility, which is under construction, in an industrial area; under a subsequent agreement, the developers is only “responsible for repaving half the streets”—from the property line to the center of the road—leaving the city on the hook for the rest. The proviso, sponsored by retiring Council President Debora Juarez, would lock up a quarter of next year’s non-arterial street paving fund to pay for the other half.

• About $10 million in restored funding for transportation that Harrell’s budget proposed cutting to account for shortfalls in revenue from traffic cameras, parking taxes, real estate transactions, and vehicle license fees. The balancing package would use the balances sitting in several transportation funds to restore funding for ADA curb ramps, bridge maintenance, greenways for bicyclists, and school safety projects. “We wanted to make sure to fully preserved the investments in transportation in 2024 to avoid broad cuts to Safe Streets infrastructure projects, and prevent pitting communities against each other.

The initial balancing package would also convert $300,000 of a $1 million loan city made to Community Roots Housing, the affordable housing nonprofit, into a grant. Community Roots, formerly Capitol Hill Housing, is supposed to pay back the full interest-free loan by 2025. Earlier this week, Capitol Hill Seattle reported that Community Roots is selling off a 30-unit apartment building that the nonprofit said cost too much to maintain; it’s the second time the organization has put one of its buildings on the market this year.

City Council, Environment, Police

Midyear Budget Proposal Adds Funding for Streetcar Study, Police Overtime—and $19 Million for Unanticipated Lawsuit Payouts

By Erica C. Barnett

The city council got a first look at a proposed mid-year budget package that would fund a graffiti cleanup team that Harrell recently rolled out as part of his Downtown Activation Plan; add funding to revive the delayed downtown streetcar connector; increase SPD overtime spending to pay for downtown emphasis patrols, expanded online crime reports, and public disclosure officers; and put an additional $19 million into a fund that pays out for lawsuits and claims against the city, many of them the result of alleged police misconduct.

Every year, the city council has to adjust the budget to reflect new priorities, as well as what the city has actually spent so far that year, in a midyear supplemental budget that’s often hundreds of pages long.

The council denied Harrell’s request to nearly double what the city spends on graffiti removal last year, increasing annual graffiti cleanup spending to almost $4 million. According to council staff, Harrell’s office reversed their decision by using unspent funds from Seattle Public Utilities public hygiene budget, including pump-outs for trailers that provide showers for unsheltered people, to fully the graffiti cleanup crews. Harrell announced the new spending earlier this month as part of his Downtown Activation Plan. Because the city has already executed the contracts, a council staffer explained Wednesday, the council now has little choice but to fund the expanded graffiti program.

To fund other Downtown Activation Plan programs, a central staff memo notes, Harrell has proposed using the JumpStart fund, which includes funding earmarked for small businesses. Ironically, it was the Downtown Seattle Association, along with the Seattle Metro Chamber and other business groups, that proposed temporarily suspending the JumpStart tax—which only applies to the city’s largest businesses—earlier this year.

The memo outlines all the other proposed midyear budget adjustments, which also include $1 million “a delivery assessment of the Center City Cultural Connector”—as the proposed downtown streetcar was recently rebranded—”to determine if the design needs to be updated to reflect the intent of the project.”

“My original idea was, just lift the proviso and let them spend the salary savings on emergent needs,” Councilmember Sara Nelson said Wednesday, adding that the funding limitation “prohibit[s] the uses of salary savings on on expenses that are really important right now for the for Seattle Police Department.”

The council will also have to approve a $19 million increase to the city’s judgment and claims fund—including $14 million from the city’s planning reserves fund and $5 million from insurance—to pay for “higher than anticipated expenses” from lawsuits against the city. A spokesperson for the city’s budget office told PubliCola the city “cannot accurately predict how much money will be spent if the request is approved,” and said the city may not end up using all the money.

Still, the allocation represents a significant increase to the fund, which the city already expanded by $11 million in the 2023 budget last year, when it increased the fund from $30 million to $41 million “to pay for extraordinary settlements against the City.” Last year, lawsuits against the police department accounted for almost half of the $36 million the city spent on settlements, defense attorneys, and other litigation-related expenses, according to a report released in April.

The midyear budget also releases some funding to SPD to pay for improvements to the department’s online reporting system and unbudgeted overtime expenses the department has already made, along with position authority for four new public disclosure officers. Currently, SPD has to get council approval to spend funding allocated to vacant positions, including sworn officer positions the department is unable to fill, on unrelated purposes.

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Although the spending SPD is requesting is fairly limited—about $815,000—budget chair Teresa Mosqueda noted that whenever the city creates new SPD positions—on top of the hundreds of vacant positions that are included in the budget every year—”it compounds our increased costs year over year,” because the new positions become an additional SPD expense in future budget years.

“If there [are] positions that are vacant, that the department intends to hold vacant, that are no longer needed or are not part of the near term planning, it is okay to abrogate positions in order to put funding into other priorities,” Mosqueda said.

Councilmember Sara Nelson, who argued vehemently against restrictions on SPD’s spending authority last year, said another way to solve the annual funding problem would be to just allow SPD to spend salary savings on whatever they want. “My original idea was, just lift the proviso and let them spend the salary savings on emergent needs,” Nelson said Wednesday, adding that the funding limitation “prohibit[s] the uses of salary savings on on expenses that are really important right now for the for Seattle Police Department.” (In fact, it just requires the council to approve those expenses.)

Immediately after suggesting the council has made it too hard for the department to spend salary savings however it wants, Nelson spent 15 minutes questioning a $50,000 expenditure on a “living hotel” pilot that would create sustainable development standards for new hotels. Currently, the city has no way of endorsing or verifying that a hotel that calls itself “green” is actually adhering to green standards such as limiting water usage.

Suggesting that Mosqueda, who proposed the expenditure, was dropping the idea on the council out of the blue, Nelson said, “You make it sound like there’s a lot of talk going on between departments, but I’m the vice chair of the sustainability and renters rights committee, I’m on land use, I’m the chair of City Light, and  the first time I’ve heard about this policy is through some of those form emails coming in.”

“I appreciate that you might know a lot about it,” Nelson continued. “Again, talking about money, that transparency in budgeting ,and making sure that when we allocate money, it’s actually getting spent. So is it premature to be funding this work, given those factors?”

No one took the bait on the glaring contradiction between supporting a blank check for police and scrutinizing a tiny expense for the environment, but Councilmember Lisa Herbold did chime in on behalf of Mosqueda’s add, noting that “it’s really important to guard against greenwashing” by companies operating in the city.

As the central staff memo notes, Harrell’s Downtown Activation Plan includes a special land use change for a proposed hotel in Belltown that will not have to adhere to any green standards, and would extend master use permits for existing downtown hotels, prolonging their exemptions from current environmental rules.

City Council, Elections, King County

City Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda Will Run for King County Council

By Erica C. Barnett

Seattle City Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda, who’s in the middle of her second four-year term, will run for the King County Council seat longtime County Councilmember Joe McDermott is leaving at the end of the year. (PubliCola first reported that Mosqueda might run for this position on Monday). In an interview, Mosqueda said she was “pulled” by the appeal of serving on the county council rather than “pushed” out of her current job by the factors—public hostility, divisiveness, and personal attacks—that have contributed to several colleagues’ decisions not to run for reelection.

“Throughout my career, but especially on council, it is evident that I can rise above the fray, that I can pull people together who have diverse perspectives, and we can pull solutions together and pass them with near unanimous or near-unanimous support,” Mosqueda, a former labor lobbyist in Olympia, said.

As an example, she pointed to the JumpStart payroll tax, which succeeded where previous “Tax Amazon” efforts by her council colleague Kshama Sawant had failed, thanks in large part to Mosqueda’s efforts to win at least tacit consensus from groups that opposed previous efforts to raise taxes on large businesses.

“I think there really needs be a shift from thinking about ‘peak hours” to thinking about what workers need and what accessibility truly means to families,” Mosqueda said. “Also, making sure that our light rail is going to communities and not through communities.”

Similarly, Mosqueda said, she would have handled the siting of a controversial homeless shelter expansion in SoDo—which King County abandoned under pressure from advocates in the Chinatown-International District who said the county never consulted them—differently.

“Folks who were concerned about the siting [of the shelter] there are also interested in solutions— they’re concerned about people not having a place to use the bathroom or sleeping outside business establishments,” Mosqueda said. “We have shared interests… but we have to start with talking to the community first—especially in the CID and the [Asian and Pacific Islander] population who have also been on the receiving end of other services over the years.”

If voters pass a ballot measure to build six behavioral health crisis centers around the county in April, the council will play a role in deciding where those are located, a decision Mosqueda said “has to start with community conversations” about “where those six sites are going to be.”

In addition, Mosqueda said, she wants to support efforts to build “workforce housing” in places like Vashon Island (one of several parts of the district outside Seattle), improving participation in apprenticeship programs and broadening their scope, and bolstering the infrastructure that supports high-paying jobs—everything from funding to “create a career pathway for child care workers” to restructuring King County Metro’s bus system to better serve people who work outside standard office hours.

“I think there really needs be a shift from thinking about ‘peak hours” to thinking about what workers need and what accessibility truly means to families,” Mosqueda said. “Also, making sure that our light rail is going to communities and not through communities.”

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If Mosqueda wins, she will be the first Latinx person to ever serve on the King County Council, and one of only four council members of color in county history—one of whom, Girmay Zahilay, represents what has historically been the council’s only majority-minority district.

Mosqueda wouldn’t take the bait on a question about whether she, like the four council members who have announced they’re leaving this year, is actually fleeing the council, rather than being “pulled” toward the county. After all, I noted, if the county council was more compelling than the city council, she could have run for that position in the first place.

Instead, she chalked up the city council exodus to the fact that seven of the nine council seats are all on the ballot at once—a recipe, she said, for instability. If elections were split more evenly—with half the district seats and one citywide seat on the ballot every two years—”then you wouldn’t see that kind of instability,” Mosqueda said. That’s something she said she plans to work on this year, whether she wins or not.

Since the Durkan administration, Mosqueda has over multiple city budget cycles to prevent the mayor from raiding proceeds from the JumpStart tax to fill a general budget hole. Without her vigilance, will JumpStart—which is supposed to fund housing, small businesses, and equitable development—become a slush fund for other priorities or a permanent emergency reserve to fill funding gaps?

Mosqueda said she was confident that it wouldn’t, citing “structural requirements” the council has codified as well as future revenues, to be identified by a new progressive revenue tax force, that will address long-term budget gaps. Even so, Mosqueda had to negotiate a deal this year that allowed some JumpStart revenues to help backfill a massive general-fund shortfall—and even with new progressive revenue on the table, there’s no guarantee that the mayor, or a future mayor, won’t try to use JumpStart taxes for purposes outside the scope of its adopted spending plan.

Mosqueda has already rounded up more than c80 endorsements, including that of current Mayor Bruce Harrell, and her decision to run seems to have neutralized some potential opponents, including West Seattle attorney Rob Saka, who was reportedly considering a run for the county council seat but now appears likely to run for the West Seattle seat being vacated by Lisa Herbold.

Uncategorized

SPD Confirms Name of Officer Who Killed Student in Crosswalk; Seattle Councilmember Mosqueda May Run for County Council

1. SPD has confirmed that the name of the officer who killed a 23-year-old student in a crosswalk earlier this month is Kevin Austin Dave, who joined the department in 2019. Divest SPD, the police watchdog group, first reported Dave’s name on Twitter Monday morning; they described the process they used to figure out his identity on Twitter and in a Substack post.

Dave, who is in his mid-30s, was driving to provide backup to Seattle Fire Department first responders at the scene of a suspected overdose in South Lake Union when he hit Jaahnavi Kundala, who was crossing Dexter Ave. in a marked crosswalk at Thomas Street. As PubliCola reported, the city had planned to install Seattle’s first protected crosswalk at the intersection, but Mayor Bruce Harrell canceled this safety project in his 2023 budget, citing financial constraints.

Court records, obtained through a records request, confirm another detail Divest SPD posted on Twitter:  Dave received a ticket for running a red light in Puyallup in late December 2017. Documents show that he didn’t pay his $124 fine, and the ticket went into collections last year.

Initially, in response to a request to confirm Dave’s identity, an SPD spokesperson sent PubliCola to a statement published on the department’s blog on January 26, which reads in part: “for purposes of both preserving the integrity of the investigation and respecting the family’s right to privacy, [SPD] will not be putting out information over and beyond what has already been provided.” In an email confirming Dave’s identity, the spokesperson said, “We are still exploring what—if any—additional details we can release and may be able to provide more information soon.”

PubliCola has requested information about how fast Dave was driving, whether he stopped after hitting Kandula or went on to his destination a few blocks away, and whether SPD is pursuing a criminal investigation.

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2. City council member Teresa Mosqueda is seriously considering a run for the King County Council District 8 seat being vacated next year by longtime County Councilmember Joe McDermott, according to numerous sources—in fact, the will she/won’t she chatter about Mosqueda’s electoral plans make this the worst-kept secret in Seattle politics right now.

Mosqueda, who lives in West Seattle, wouldn’t confirm or deny the rumors. But a run for county council would make sense on a number of levels. First, the county council is simultaneously lower-profile than the city council and has a broader scope—encompassing issues that the city doesn’t deal with directly, such as health policy and transit service. Second: It’s no secret that the Seattle City Council has become a toxic place to work; becoming a council member means accepting an endless barrage of verbal abuse, along with occasional protesters at your home. Four council members have already said they won’t seek reelection this year.

Mosqueda, like her colleagues, has to be acutely aware that the job is both riskier and less rewarding than it used to be. (One of her colleagues who is stepping down, District 1 Councilmember Lisa Herbold, for example, had a brick thrown through her window while she was home and was later among the targets of a violent “protest” encouraged by the late right-wing radio provocateur Dori Monson.)

It also makes sense that, if Mosqueda plans to eventually run for higher office, such as Congress, she might want to put some distance between herself and the eternally unpopular city council.

Two others who we heard were considering a bid for the seat Jeanne Kohl-Welles is leaving, Seattle City Councilmembers Andrew Lewis and Dan Strauss, said they aren’t running; Lewis has announced he’s seeking reelection to the city council, and Strauss told PubliCola by text, “Love my job representing D6!”

If Mosqueda was elected to county council this year, the council would have to appoint her replacement, since her citywide council seat won’t be on the ballot until 2025.

Other rumored) candidates for McDermott’s current seat include West Seattle attorney Rob Saka, who has also considered a run for the District 1 city council seat Lisa Herbold is leaving; Burien Deputy Mayor Kevin Schilling; and Burien City Councilmember Jimmy Matta. The district includes much of downtown Seattle, West Seattle, Burien, part of Tukwila, and Vashon Island.

Jeanne Kohl-Welles, who represents Ballard, Queen Anne, and Magnolia also announced that she plans to leave her seat after her term ends this year. So far, only one candidate—managing assistant state attorney general Sarah Reyneveld, who ran for the 36th District state House seat in 2020, losing to Liz Barry—has announced in that race. Two others who we heard were considering a bid for the seat Jeanne Kohl-Welles is leaving, Seattle City Councilmembers Andrew Lewis and Dan Strauss, said they aren’t running; Lewis has announced he’s seeking reelection to the city council, and Strauss told PubliCola by text, “Love my job representing D6!”

Uncategorized

Council Budget Chair Decries Colleagues’ “Misinformation”; Co-LEAD Program May Shift to State Highway Encampments

1. After voting against the 2023-2024 city budget yesterday, City Councilmembers Sara Nelson and Alex Pedersen issued lengthy statements explaining their rationale. In general, both argued that the council should have approved Mayor Bruce Harrell’s budget without significant changes, and should not have eliminated 80 of the 240 vacant police positions for which SPD would otherwise receive funding year after year.

The council funded Harrell’s entire police hiring plan, including large financial incentives for new and transferring officers, and moved parking enforcement officers back to SPD, another top priority for Harrell and the police department.

Still, Nelson and Pedersen described the budget (which Harrell praised) as an affront that will endanger resident and drive qualified police applicants away “With SPD down about 30% of its deployable force and fatal shootings up 35% since 2020, these are far from normal times, and we need to change the narrative that contributed to their staffing shortage,” Nelson said.

Those numbers require some context: There were 36 fatal shootings in Seattle in the first ten months of 2022, compared to 24 for the same period in 2020—at 33 percent increase. But those disturbing numbers of part of a national trend that is actually worse in rural (and Republican) areas, making it a stretch to suggest that shootings are up because of police staffing problems. Similarly, it’s far-fetched to suggest that a largely symbolic (and fairly obscure) council vote to stop funding some long-vacant positions is driving potential job applicants away.

“At best, Nelson and Pedersen are exhibiting sheer incompetence, but unfortunately it appears it’s a wilfull attempt to spread misinformation to prop up their individual political goals. They are being dishonest and actively harmful.”—Council budget chair Teresa Mosqueda

On Wednesday, council budget committee chair Teresa Mosqueda responded to the overheated rhetoric from Nelson and Pedersen, telling PubliCola: “At best, Nelson and Pedersen are exhibiting sheer incompetence, but unfortunately it appears it’s a wilfull attempt to spread misinformation to prop up their individual political goals. They are being dishonest and actively harmful.”

Although Nelson was just elected to her citywide position last year, Pedersen (who represents Northeast Seattle’s District 4) is up for reelection in 2023. One candidate has already announced, and PubliCola has heard about at least one more potential opponent—an urbanist who will challenge Pedersen from the pro-housing left.

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2. One program that did not receive full funding from the council this year—the Public Defender Association’s Co-LEAD program, which provides case management and hotel-based shelter to people experiencing homelessness—may end up having to shift their focus away from Seattle neighborhoods to encampments near state highways, PDA co-director Lisa Daugaard said.

That’s because without $5.3 million in annual city funding to keep the program going, the PDA may end up moving Co-LEAD to the King County Regional Homelessness Authority, which has access to state funds to address encampments in state-owned rights-of-way, such as embankments and overpasses.

“[Focusing on state highways] will take us further away from the focus on public safety in Seattle neighborhoods and the public safety concepts that both the Harrell Administration and the City Council have strongly espoused.—Public Defender Association co-director Lisa Daugaard

The PDA made a similar change to its JustCARE program, which previously focused on large encampments inside the city of Seattle, earlier this year. The program moves encampment residents to hotels and enrolls them in intensive case management, enabling the Washington State Department of Transportation to remove encampments in state rights-of-way—a top goal of Gov. Jay Inslee during the last legislative session—without simply displacing them.

“I think the most likely solution is that more of Co-LEAD may shift over to RHA, if indeed RHA is successful in advocating for the state to double down on the approach that we and other partners have brought to the state transportation right-of-way work,” Daugaard said. “But that will take us further away from the focus on public safety in Seattle neighborhoods… [and] the public safety concepts that both the Harrell Administration and the City Council have strongly espoused.”

JustCARE and Co-LEAD both emerged during the pandemic, with support from emergency federal funding, to address the proliferation of large, sometimes dangerous encampments in places like City Hall Park in Pioneer Square. The council’s budget does provide funding for LEAD, the PDA’s original diversion program, which provides case management to people involved in the criminal legal system, such as homeless people facing charges for misdemeanor crimes.