City Council, Transportation

Councilmember-Elect Saka Compared 8-Inch Road Divider to Trump’s Border Wall
Partial map of the RapidRide road safety improvement project on Delridge; the arrow points to the daycare Saka says the city is discriminating against.

By Erica C. Barnett

City Councilmember-elect Rob Saka, a former Meta attorney who will represent West Seattle’s District 1 starting next year, sent a series of increasingly heated emails to Seattle Department of Transportation employees during 2021 and 2022 seeking the removal of a road divider that SDOT installed in front of his kids’ preschool. The divider was part of the RapidRide H project connecting Burien, White Center, and West Seattle to downtown.

The curb-like divider is a variation on a common traffic calming device known as a hardened centerline. The curb, which replaced a double yellow line, physically prevents northbound drivers from making an illegal left turn to access homes and businesses on the west side of the street, including a bilingual preschool called the Refugee and Immigrant Family Center. According to an April 2022 South Seattle Emerald story about the dispute, Saka’s two children attended the preschool as of last year.

In the email thread (reproduced in part here), which PubliCola obtained through a records request, Saka compared the mid-block traffic barrier to Trump’s border wall and said it was “triggering” and “severely traumatizing” to immigrants who “have faced significant trauma during their perilous journeys, including by navigating divisive structures and barriers designed to exclude lives in the US.”

“First, it might be helpful to reset on physical barriers as a social construct and how SDOT’s dangerous barrier here has severely traumatized and upset our community at the Refugee & Immigrant Family Center (RIFC),” Saka wrote. “Historically, barriers have been used to exclude, isolate, divide, discriminate against, project power over, subjugate, render less than status to, punish, segregate, humiliate/embarrass, harass, degrade, and so much more.”

“Historically, barriers have been used to exclude, isolate, divide, discriminate against, project power over, subjugate, render less than status to, punish, segregate, humiliate/embarrass, harass, degrade, and so much more,” Saka told project staff last March. “More recently, the Trump administration sought to build an enormous wall on the southern border with Mexico – presumably, to exclude certain individuals deemed ‘undesirable’ in the name of national security.”

The border wall is a 30-foot-high barrier, spanning hundreds of miles, that has contributed to the deaths of countless migrants, including a growing number of deaths and injuries due to falls. The Delridge barrier is an 8-inch-high road divider that runs for about 100 feet. Although Saka described the divider as “highly unique and bizarre,” SDOT has installed similar road treatments across the city, including along 15th Ave. NW in Ballard and Rainier Ave. South between I-90 and the Rainier Valley.

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Even before SDOT installed the divider, left turns were illegal along the length of the RapidRide project, which also includes new bike lanes on both sides of the street. The divider is one of many new road treatments designed to keep people from attempting to pass stopped buses and prevent collisions with pedestrians and cyclists.

Many of the new safety measures along Delridge are much larger and more permanent than the raised centerline outside the RIFC. Just to the north of the preschool, for example, a new RapidRide bus stop in front of Louisa Boren K-8 school features a raised concrete island in the middle of Delridge, along with wide markings between the lanes to indicate that drivers should not turn left or pass buses at the RapidRide stop. Immediately to the north, a broad, landscaped median protects patrons at the Delridge library from cars turning illegally into the bike lanes and parking lot.

Nationwide, about a quarter of all car crashes involving pedestrians are caused by a driver turning left and hitting someone in their path.

The South Seattle Emerald’s story about the preschool’s concerns also notes that the new bike lane took out several parking spaces parents had used to drop off and pick up their kids.

POV: Driving north on Delridge Way SW, the new barrier blocks drivers from turning into a new bike lane and the sidewalk used by transit riders. It also prevents illegal left turns into a preschool parking lot.

In his emails, Saka suggested that community members, not roadway designers at SDOT, were in the best position to know what keeps their roadways safe.

“For clarity, we don’t need a secretive ‘design team’ to impose their errant decisions on us in the name of ‘public safety’. Nor do we need a benevolent king to do the same,” Saka wrote. (Emphasis in original.) “SDOT must immediately remove the most egregious feature – a concrete barrier that directly targets our RIFC community and was erected without our prior consultation, input, or knowledge.”

In April 2022, an SDOT public engagement manager offered to set up a meeting with Saka to discuss the project. Saka responded that he would only meet the SDOT team if the agency guaranteed in advance that they would remove the barrier. “Like I mentioned earlier, we need this pretty simple confirmation from SDOT in order to ensure any meeting would be an effective and efficient use of time,” Saka wrote. “I strongly urge you to NOT overthink your response.”

SDOT has not yet responded to PubliCola’s inquiries about the project, and Saka did not respond to detailed questions sent on Tuesday. The operator of the RIFC also did not immediately respond to questions sent Thursday. A search of court records did not show any legal action by Saka, either on his own or on behalf of the preschool, and the road divider remains in place.

City Council, homelessness, human services, Mayor Harrell, Mental Health, Police

City Budget Will Fund Shotspotter—But Also Significant Progressive Priorities, Including $20 Million for Student Mental Health
Image credit: Chicago Office of Inspector General

By Erica C. Barnett

The outgoing city council is making its final amendments to Mayor Bruce Harrell’s proposed 2024 budget—the final city budget for six of the council’s nine members, and the final year of budgeting before the city enters a period of ongoing $200 million-plus “structural” deficits resulting from a combination of increased costs (construction prices, for instance) and lower revenues from volatile sources, such as taxes on real estate transactions.

Members of the council’s progressive bloc flexed their muscles on some issues, such as funding pay increases for human-service workers, while capitulating on others, like Councilmember Sara Nelson’s proposal to direct $300,000 in city funds to private addiction treatment companies.

Here are some of this week’s budget highlights:

• Although the council plans to wait until after they pass next year’s budget before taking up new tax proposals to address the structural deficit, the biggest progressive win this year is a small tax increase that will fund something entirely new. Councilmember Kshama Sawant, who is leaving at the end of the year, proposed and pyearassed a 0.1 percent (0.001) increase to the JumpStart payroll tax to fund mental health counseling and community-based programs for kids in Seattle Public Schools. The tax increase will increase annual revenues from the tax by $20 million, making this new program by far the biggest new investment in this year’s budget.

Sawant’s mental-health proposal had a compelling constituency. On Monday, dozens of current and former public school students testified at a budget hearing about the high rates of mental illness, depression, and suicide among their peers, making a convincing for a large new investment at a time when other needs—such as wage increases for thousands of city workers—remain unmet. Sawant did propose two amendments that would establish a fund to sustain worker pay increases in the future, but neither passed.

• Two proposals to address wage inequity between human services workers that were initially part of the council’s “consent package“—amendments the council has already hashed out and agreed collectively to support—got pulled out for further discussion by Councilmember Sara Nelson. Both amendments, which ultimately passed, addressed a problem that emerged when the city handed its homelessness contracts to the King County Regional Homelessness Authority: Although a 2019 law requires the city to fund annual inflationary adjustments for all the human services contracts it funds, a small number of contracts are funded directly by the federal government and aren’t subject to the annual pay increase requirement. The amendments will bring worker pay under those contracts in line with other human service workers.

Citing a column by Seattle Times columnist Danny Westneat, Councilmember Nelson noted that recent polls showed the council has a low approval rating and that voters don’t trust the city to spend their money well—a comment that prompted Mosqueda to retort that if the city fails to pay social service workers enough to live here, “more of the very people that continue to serve our most vulnerable will themselves be unhoused

Nelson argued that the changes, which will cost the city about $2 million next year, create an ongoing obligation without identifying a specific funding source to pay for it, and said the contracts were now the KCRHA’s responsibility, not the city’s. “We no longer have a statutory obligation to pay an inflationary adjustment,” Nelson said. “I understand that that is a desire, but again, we’re talking about another agency, and we’re not really responsible for how they run their books.” In response, council budget chair Teresa Mosqueda noted that the city is the KCRHA’s primary funder, and that the agency has no ability to raise money on its own “When we transferred these contracts, the intent was to ensure that there was inflationary adjustment and wage stability … no matter who held that contract,” Mosqueda said. 

Later in the afternoon, Nelson raised objections to a proposal by Herbold that would require agencies to demonstrate that they’re using city funds dedicated to annual wage increases for that purpose. Nelson argued that the city shouldn’t be assuming annual wage increases in the first place, but should base cost-of-living adjustments on performance standards.

Citing a column by Seattle Times columnist Danny Westneat, Nelson noted that recent polls showed the council has a low approval rating and that voters don’t trust the city to spend their money well—a comment that prompted Mosqueda to retort that if the city fails to pay social service workers enough to live here, “more of the very people that continue to serve our most vulnerable will themselves be unhoused, living in cars, living paycheck to paycheck, and that’s not how we create sustainability.”

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• A 10-cent fee on app-based “network” companies like Doordash passed after a lengthy debate over which companies should be subject to the fee, whether the fee was too large, and who should have the authority to increase the fee in the future. Councilmember Lisa Herbold sponsored the underlying legislation, which applies to all app-based workers except Uber and Lyft drivers (who are now subject to a preemptive state law), along with an amendment that would reduce the fee for so-called “marketplace” network companies like Rover and TaskRabbit. These companies aren’t subject to minimum-pay requirements that apply to other gig-work companies because they allow workers to set their own rates and give workers more autonomy over which jobs they accept.

Nelson and Councilmember Alex Pedersen, who is leaving at the end of the year, both unsuccessfully attempted to water down the legislation. Pedersen’s failed amendments would have exempted marketplace companies from the fee and required council approval for any fee increase— a departure from the current system, in which the Department of Finance and Administrative Services (FAS) can increase or decrease many city fees on their own.

Nelson, meanwhile, proposed amendments that would prohibit the Office of Labor Standards to use fee revenue to implement the city’s minimum pay ordinance and cut the 10-cent fee in half. Both councilmembers’ proposals failed by narrow margins.’

According to a recent report by the Chicago inspector general, more than 90 percent of Shotspotter calls that resulted in a police response turned out to be false alarms; that city is joining several others, including New Orleans and Portland, in ending or canceling Shotspotter contracts.

• After the council rejected Harrell’s proposal to fund a gunshot detection system last year, the council appears ready to invest $1.5 million in a “pilot” that will include CCTV cameras in addition to audio surveillance devices. The system is generally referred to as Shotspotter after the company that provides the only widely used gunshot detection system.

As we’ve reported, Shotspotter is not a new or innovative technology, nor does it “detect” gunfire on its own. Instead, sensors installed on utility poles detect and determine the approximate location of outdoor sounds that resemble gunfire and alert human “acoustic experts” who listen to the audio and determine which ones sound like gunshots. These experts then alert police, who can be dispatched to the scene.

On Wednesday, the council voted to reject a proposal by Sawant to remove funding for Shotspotter from the budget and use the $1.5 million to fund behavioral health care at non-congregate shelters, foreshadowing next week’s overall budget vote. (Since Harrell’s budget includes Shotspotter by default, the council does not have to take a separate vote to fund the program.) Mosqueda did manage to add an amendment requiring a separate racial equity analysis for each new location where the city deploys the system; one frequent criticism of Shotspotter is that it leads to overpolicing in communities of color while doing nothing to reduce gun violence in those communities.

Shotspotter has been around for decades, so there’s a large body of evidence suggesting it doesn’t work to address gun violence and consumes scarce police resources by repeatedly sending police out on false alarms. According to a recent report by the Chicago inspector general, more than 90 percent of Shotspotter calls that resulted in a police response turned out to be false alarms; that city is joining several others, including New Orleans and Portland, in ending or canceling Shotspotter contracts.

• As we noted above, the council plans to put off a formal tax discussion until after the budget passes in late November, but we’ll have a separate update on the revenue discussion well before then, so stay tuned. Today, the council discussed Pedersen’s proposal to eliminate the utility tax and fill the $38 million gap by passing a 2 percent local tax on capital gains; skeptics of Pedersen’s proposal argued that the city needs more funding to fill the looming budget deficit, not a revenue-neutral tax swap. And council staff revealed that one of the potential taxes identified by the city’s progressive revenue task force—a “surtax” on JumpStart for very large companies whose CEOs make hundreds of times more than their median employee—would only net a relatively paltry sum of $2 million to $4 million a year.

City Council, labor, Mayor Harrell

City Employees Seeking Wage Increase Advised to “Avoid Impulse Buys”
Financial tips for city workers included putting money into savings before paying bills and stopping “money leaks” like unnecessary subscriptions.

By Erica C. Barnett

Mayor Bruce Harrell’s human resources department sent out an email sent out an email to city workers this week containing tips and tricks for spending less money. Harrell has proposed giving thousands of city employees a “cost of living adjustment” significantly below the rate of inflation.

The email, titled “Financial Self-Care,” informs employees that “Making small changes to your money mindset and habits can have an immediate impact on your financial picture.” For example, it says, city workers could get rid of subscriptions that can add $12 to $30 to their monthly costs; consolidate their debts; and “pay yourself first – set aside money for emergency funds or long-term savings every paycheck before paying bills and spending.

The council did approve a $20 million increase in the tax to pay for mental health care services at public schools, with Council President Debora Juarez joining Tammy Morales, Teresa Mosqueda, Lisa Herbold, and amendment sponsor Kshama Sawant to vote for the increase

“Pay yourself first” is a concept popularized by the “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” series of self-help books, which argues that people should put money toward investments before paying for rent, food, electric bills, and other immediate needs.

The email also advise workers—who are seeking an annual wage increase that at least keeps up with inflation, instead of a sub-inflationary increase that will amount to a significant annual pay cut—to start thinking about whether they really need the things they’re buying. “Start defining wants and needs – Ask yourself: ‘Is this a need or want?’ with each purchase, to avoid impulse buys,” the email says.

Harrell, who initially proposed a 1 percent wage increase at a time when inflation had recently topped 8 percent, has reportedly more than doubled that offer, but even a 2.5 percent increase represents a significant pay cut in a city where the cost of living is rising much faster than that.

“When we stop seeing financial self-care as a chore and start incorporating it as part of a routine, we become empowered to build a stronger future,” the email concludes. “What steps can you take next?”

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For many city workers, the answer is: Continue working for a wage increase that won’t put them even further behind. Earlier this month, city employees held a series of “practice pickets” across the city.

On Tuesday morning, the city council voted 5-4 against two proposals that would increase the JumpStart payroll tax, paid by the city’s largest companies, by a fraction of a percentage point to fund $40 million for future pay increases for city employees.

The council did approve a $20 million increase in the tax to pay for mental health care services at public schools, with Council President Debora Juarez joining Tammy Morales, Teresa Mosqueda, Lisa Herbold, and amendment sponsor Kshama Sawant to vote for the increase.

Dozens of students and former students showed up at a public hearing Monday night to testify in favor of the modest tax hike, noting the recent increase in diagnosed and undiagnosed mental illness and suicide attempts among public school students in Seattle. Before voting against the proposal, Councilmember Sara Nelson said it was important to sit down with “both sides” before passing any tax increase.

Elections, King County

County Website Failed on Election Night Due to “Traffic Issue”

By Erica C. Barnett

County Executive Dow Constantine’s office chalked Tuesday night’s very late-to-go-live election results up to a “traffic issue” related to a new  web platform and design that has more than its share of very visible bugs. Essentially, according to the county, the new system was not set up to handle the large amount of traffic caused by thousands of people trying to load the website at 8:15 —when the first batch of results are posted every year—and, as a result, the link that would ordinarily go to a results page simply didn’t function.

King County Elections, which has been busy counting ballots after a brief delay when someone mailed white powder to election offices across the state, has not yet responded to our request for comment on the glitch, which forced people at election night parties, and elsewhere across the county, to turn to KING 5’s website, which had the results before they were generally available on the county site.

The county’s actual, “improved” elections website.

Earlier this year, King County IT staff and a group of outside consultants transformed the county’s website into a bare-bones, temporary-looking shell of its former self, with few images to break up the white space of what is now a mostly text-based site. The “upgraded” site—now includes many broken links (like the ones on this page to programs funded by the county’s Mental Illness and Drug Dependency levy) and gives prominent placement to a random assortment of county services: Metro, live traffic cameras in unincorporated King County, animal services, and job listings.

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The county’s 2019-2020 budget included $1.3 million for upgrading the site. According to that budget, the changes were necessary to ” facilitate increased engagement with the public and improve their experience… [by] reduc[ing] web content, so people spend less time searching for information they want and more time engaging with the information. …To ensure engagement, KCIT will invest in modernizing the KingCounty.gov platform and the County’s web presence.”

Post-“modernization,” it can be maddeningly difficult to navigate the site—which, even if technically outdated, used to be fairly intuitive. If you’re interested in looking up a specific department’s website, your best bet is to go to the throwback A-Z site index, but you better know exactly what you’re looking for: “Garbage and recycling facilities,” for example, goes to a different page than “Garbage, recycling, and compost services,” and the Maleng Regional Justice Center—the downtown Seattle jail’s South King County counterpart—can now be found at a link labeled “Kent Jail.”

The county does plan to conduct an after-action report on what went wrong on election night. Fingers crossed that it will prompt to re-evaluate the entire “upgrade”—and perhaps downgrade it to a version that people can actually use.

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, Density, Development, housing

Council Holds Lone Public Hearing on Legislation to Allow “Impact Fees” on New Housing

By Erica C. Barnett

A public hearing to consider an amendment to the city’s comprehensive plan that would allow transportation impact fees on new development was bumped by more than two hours to make room for public comment on a resolution from outgoing councilmember Kshama Sawant demanding “an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, an end to U.S. funding for the Israeli military, the safe release of all hostages, the restoration of humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza, and an end to the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands.”

After hours of public comment from Sawant’s supporters that included chants of “from the river to the sea,” the resolution failed for lack of a second, prompting a chorus of denunciations from the crowd and a brief recess to clear council chambers.

By the time the council returned about 10 minutes later, it was past 4 pm and tensions were high. Lisa Herbold, who sponsored the comprehensive plan proposal along with Alex Pedersen, teed up a presentation on the amendment by accusing her council colleagues of misrepresenting her legislation and confusing the public by raising questions about the fees themselves.

“I’m really frustrated that … when I ask questions, I’m being treated as if it is unreasonable. These questions are coming from community.”—Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda

Transportation impact fees are based on the number of units in a building, based on the premise the denser the development, the more of a negative “impact” it has on the city’s infrastructure, like roads and bridges—a assumption that conflicts the urbanist view that density is greener and more efficient than sprawl. The legislation Herbold and Pedersen are sponsoring would allow the council to adopt impact fees in the future, “identify deficiencies in the transportation system associated with new development,” and adopt a list of projects that could be funded through such fees.

“I can’t tell you how many emails we’ve received commenting on whether or not people want a transportation impact fee or oppose a transportation impact fee,” Herbold said. “There is no transportation impact the proposal before the council today. People have pointed to the questions about the potential transportation impact fee program as a reason to not support this amendment. … These are not questions for today.”

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Councilmembers Dan Strauss and Teresa Mosqueda disputed this characterization, noting that while amending the comprehensive plan to allow impact fees might technically be “procedural,” the only reason to pass such an amendment is to move impact fees forward—a longtime goal for both Herbold and Pedersen, who are leaving at the end of the year and won’t get another chance.

Ordinarily, amendments to the comprehensive plan—the document that guides all planning and land-use decisions in the city—go through the land use committee, which Strauss chairs, but the council voted last month to bypass the normal committee process and push the amendment through before the end of the year—all very much over Strauss’ objections. “This is a big piece of legislation,” he said last month, on par with the tree protection ordinance and changes to the city’s maritime industrial zoning. “I believe it is important that we have the time to understand the policy.

“It really upsets me to hear people say that this impacts the cost of affordable housing. We have not set a fee. … And I just really think that we’re doing a big disservice to the public by continuing to suggest that we’re making those decisions today.”—Councilmember Lisa Herbold

“I’m really frustrated that … when I ask questions, I’m being treated as if it is unreasonable,” said Mosqueda, who submitted 20 questions about the proposal back in September and said she is still waiting on responses to most of them. “These questions are coming from community. These questions are coming from people who are very interested in [ensuring] that there’s no impediment to building housing. These questions and concerns are essential for us to address and should have been addressed in a committee setting, not in the middle of budget” season, a time when the council ordinarily does not consider major legislation.

“It really upsets me to hear people say that this impacts the cost of affordable housing,” Herbold retorted. “We have not set a fee. … And I just really think that we’re doing a big disservice to the public by continuing to suggest that we’re making those decisions today.”

According to a presentation by council staff in September, the fees could add millions of dollars to the cost to build new housing and “generate between $200 million – $760 million over 10 years.” The housing developers and attorneys who stuck around to testify against the legislation (their comments limited to one minute each because it was so late in the day) said impact fees could make some of their recent projects prohibitively expensive.

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“I feel like I’m in an alternate reality when I hear a council member saying that this is not a policy change, when the comprehensive plan is actually the city’s main policy-setting document,” said McCullough Hill attorney Jessica Clawson.  “Make no mistake—you’re setting policy, and again, I have never seen the council rush to make such an important policy decision—ever.”

The council will take up the proposal again next week, and is expected to vote on the amendment on November 21. It will then be up to the next city council—including a group of newcomers that does not include a single outspoken proponent for density or renters—to take action on impact fees, and to decide how much to penalize developers for building new apartments in a city with an acute housing shortage.

labor, Mayor Harrell

Firefighters’ Tentative Contract Could be Bad News for Other City Workers Seeking Pay Increases

By Erica C. Barnett

A tentative 2022-2026 contract between the Seattle firefighters’ union, Local 27, and the city—still subject to approval or rejection by fire department rank and file—includes minimum annual wage increases of 2 to 4 percent, plus a “COLA [cost of living adjustment] bank” that would serve as a repository for “excess” cost of living increases during years when inflation is higher than 4 percent, which could be tapped to keep pay increases at a steady 4 percent through the life of the contract, even if inflation dips below that level.

The goal of the COLA bank is to keep annual wage increases stable even if inflation drops. For example, in 2024, when the rate of inflation is expected to be 4.5 percent, the firefighters would get a 4 percent COLA boost and bank the remaining 0.5 percent for use in future years. In real terms, a wage increase that’s less than the rate of inflation represents a pay cut, because wages aren’t keeping up with the cost of living.

The tentative agreement, which would replace the contract that expired at the end of 2021, includes retroactive wage increases of 4.5 percent in 2022 (with another 2.3 percent going into the COLA bank) and 5.5 percent in 2023 (with 7 percent going into the bank), plus 4 percent going forward. After that, the annual increases are 100 percent of inflation, with a minimum base increase of 2 percent (if inflation goes that low) and a maximum base increase of 4 percent.

An FAQ included in the contract raises the question of why the city is not providing a true cost of living increase—that is, a wage increase equal to the increase in annual inflation. The answer: “The City was not willing  to agree to a pay increase that included 100% of CPI. … Your Negotiations Team and Executive Board feel that we deserve 100% of CPI and we did our best to get it. However, we believe that this offer is a fair and reasonable deal that is better than our alternatives, in part because to capture 100% of the CPI we have also negotiated COLA banking.”

Additionally, according to the tentative contract, the city “intend[s] to provide all City employees with the same [annual wage increase] each year.”

As we’ve reported, the Coalition of City Unions, an umbrella group for unions that represent more than 6,000 city workers, has been seeking a wage increase closer to the actual rate of inflation. Initially, Mayor Bruce Harrell proposed what union leaders called an “insulting” 1 percent increase. Harrell has reportedly increased that offer to 2.5 percent. Stagnant wages have forced many city employees to move out of Seattle, and are making it difficult to hire qualified people for positions that pay far less than similar private-sector jobs.

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In contrast, Seattle police officers received a 17 percent pay increase after their last contract negotiation, with retroactive pay increases between 3 and 4 percent a year for the years they worked without a contract. The city council approved hiring bonuses of up to $30,000 for police last year.

The proposed wage increases in this contract proposal are roughly similar to those in the firefighters’ last contract, adopted in 2019; however, the rate of inflation has increased dramatically over the past few years and the attrition and the vacancy rate for firefighters, like many other government jobs, has increased dramatically since 2020.

Voting on the contract began on Monday and will continue through next Tuesday morning. If the firefighters reject the contract, it could go into arbitration—a process in which a neutral outside party makes a binding decision about the terms of a contract.

City Council, Elections

Election Night Results Represent a Turn to the Center for Seattle
City Councilmember Andrew Lewis at his sparsely attended Election Night party in Belltown

By Erica C. Barnett

In early results that signaled a hard turn to the center for the Seattle City Council, three progressive city council incumbents were trailing their more conservative opponents Tuesday night, while moderates had strong leads over progressives in all four open seats.

The number-one issue this cycle was public safety—exemplified, a bit absurdly, by a vote to empower City Attorney Ann Davison to prosecute drug users—and voters were apparently convinced that a slate of more moderate newcomers will be better equipped than the current council to address the city’s problems.

Collectively, the candidates who were prevailing on election night support aggressive efforts to hire more police, aggressive crackdowns on people using drugs in public, and a harsher attitude toward unsheltered people, particularly those who are visible downtown and in the city’s business districts.

Although land use took a backseat to issues that lend themselves better to soundbites, it’s likely that the new council will be disinclined to adopt policies that would allow more apartments in Seattle’s historically single-family neighborhoods; Joy Hollingsworth, leading urbanist Alex Hudson by almost 17 points in District 3, talked fondly of “middle housing,” citing her family’s experience converting their large house into a triplex, but spoke warily about other forms of density, telling PubliCola she considered the level of density in District 3 “very extreme.”

It’s almost unprecedented for a city council candidate to come back from a double-digit deficit. In fact, the only person to do it in recent memory was Kshama Sawant, who gained 12 points on challenger Egan Orion in late returns in 2019, ultimately defeating him by more than 4 points.

The one council incumbent who’s almost certain to prevail, District 6 (Northwest Seattle) incumbent Dan Strauss, still ended the night two points behind Fremont business leader Pete Hanning, despite the fact that Hanning raised relatively little money and did not benefit from the kind of massive business-backed independent expenditure campaigns that fueled other candidates.

In other races, progressive candidates trailed their centrist opponents by double-digit margins, each representing thousands of votes. Later votes in Seattle usually skew heavily toward progressives, but the gaps many lefty candidates who were generally viewed as competitive are facing—Rob Saka’s 18-point lead over Maren Costa in West Seattle’s District 1,  for instance—seem fairly insurmountable. (Up in North Seattle’s District 5, former judge Cathy Moore’s 41-point lead over social equity consultant ChrisTiana ObeySumner feels like a foregone conclusion, given ObeySumner’s 24-point second-place primary finish, but the lopsidedness of Moore’s lead is representative of Tuesday’s dramatic results.)

Some progressive candidates, such as Strauss and Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda—narrowly leading Burien Mayor Sofia Aragon in her race for King County Council—will surge ahead to comfortable leads in late results. Others, like Lewis and District 2 incumbent Tammy Morales, who ended Election Night almost 9 points behind neighborhood advocate Tanya Woo, could still pull off a win as later, leftier votes come in.

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That said, it’s almost unprecedented for a city council candidate to come back from a double-digit deficit—bad news not just for Lewis but for District 4 progressive Ron Davis, trailing centrist Maritza Rivera by 11 points. In fact, the only person to do it in recent memory was Kshama Sawant, who gained 12 points on challenger Egan Orion in late returns in 2019, ultimately defeating him by more than 4 points.

Next year’s council will have as many as seven new members, including one the council itself will appoint to replace Mosqueda when she leaves next year. Sara Nelson, the Position 8 incumbent who campaigned for Saka, Woo, Rivera, and Kettle, wants to be council president, and will likely have the votes. But if the current trend holds and most of the centrist slate prevails, the new majority will have no one to blame if they fail. These candidates promised they had solutions to crime, homelessness, and addiction, and now their supporters will expect them to deliver.

The election could also leave Mayor Bruce Harrell in the unfamiliar position of being in the absolute majority, with a council that fully supports his agenda. If the mayor and his supporters can no longer blame the city council for thwarting his plans for the city, who can they blame other than the mayor himself? This isn’t to say that Harrell himself is vulnerable (as my podcast cohost often tells me, the man is popular), but it’s always easier to point the finger at political opponents than admit that some problems are systemic, complex, and unsuited to quick political fixes.

The county will post outstanding election results every afternoon aroudn 4 for the next three weeks, and I’ll be posting regular updates on all the races in which no candidate has conceded.

homelessness, King County

As Deadline to Use or Lose $1 Million in Shelter Funding Looms, Top Burien Official Offers New Explanation for Failing to Inform Some on Council

By Erica C. Barnett

Burien city manager Adolfo Bailon offered a novel explanation last night for why he failed to inform the full city council about a November 27 deadline for using $1 million in shelter funding from the county: He had, contrary to his previous claim, opened and responded to the email from Deputy County Executive Shannon Braddock, but he had “left it [marked] unopened to deal with the following week.”

The email then got buried, Bailon said, underneath a pile of messages about a sanctioned encampment at a church proposed by a nonprofit headed by Councilmember Cydney Moore, and he was unable to get back around to it until the next Friday, November 3, when he finally told the rest of the council. The encampment proposal “monopolized our time and led to a number of different things occurring” last week, Bailon said.

Aragon confirmed during the meeting that she was also aware of the deadline last week and had discussed it with Bailon during their agenda-setting meeting on Wednesday. It’s unclear which other council members besides Aragon, if any, also knew about the deadline before Bailon informed the full council in an email on November 3.

As we reported on Monday, Bailon initially said that he had not seen or responded to the time-sensitive email until a full week after it landed in his inbox, a claim PubliCola revealed as false after obtaining Bailon’s response to Braddock from King County, sent shortly after he received the letter informing him of the new deadline.

Since March, the Burien council has been debating how to respond to a group of several dozen unsheltered people who the city initially swept from a site next to City Hall and the downtown Burien library and who have since been swept from place to place. King County offered the city $1 million and 35 Pallet shelters, which can each hold two people, back in June, suggesting that the shelters go on a piece of city-owned land that currently serves as excess inventory storage for a local Toyota dealer; under the deal, the county would provide space in its own garage for the cars. In July, the council’s four-member majority voted to reject that offer, and in September, the council enacted a nighttime “camping” ban.

As we reported on Monday, Bailon initially said that he had not seen or responded to the time-sensitive email until a full week after it landed in his inbox, a claim PubliCola revealed as false after obtaining Bailon’s response to Braddock from King County, sent shortly after he received the letter informing him of the new deadline.

“I am sorry to share with you that the email from Shannon Braddock went unopened and became lost until today due to the more than 150 email messages that I have received since Sunday regarding the proposed encampment at Oasis Church,” Bailon wrote in an email to the full council and the city attorney. “I have since reviewed all unopened email messages.”

Moore challenged Bailon on his changing story, noting that by withholding the information from certain council members, Bailon deprived the council of a full week—out of four until the deadline—to secure a location for the shelter King County has been offering to fund since June. “I would like to know why the misinformation was given to council that the letter wasn’t read or open until Friday,” Moore said. However, she was interrupted repeatedly by Bailon and Aragon, who said Moore was stirring up irrelevant “drama” and creating a “distraction” from important issues.

Bailon said Moore’s claim that he had withheld information from certain councilmembers was “tantamount to slander,” and the council almost went into a closed executive session on the grounds that Moore was threatening legal action against the city.

Instead, the council meeting continued until a public commenter who opposes the encampment ban, Jennifer Fichamba, suggested Bailon should resign and return to California, where he lived before taking the job in Burien, because he lacked “compassion” for homeless residents and had “not done due diligence to understand what our community is about.”

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This led Councilmember Kevin Schilling to suggest Fichamba, an outspoken advocate for immigrant rights, was racist for saying “our Hispanic city manager [should] go back to California” and demanding that she apologize. “I am ashamed at what I just heard!” Schilling yelled. As the room erupted, Aragon shut down the meeting, clearing the chambers for 10 minutes before returning with a warning that the council could end the meeting and reconvene in private if people didn’t behave.

This wasn’t the first time in recent weeks that members of the pro-sweeps council majority had accused someone on the other side of the issue of being racist. Earlier this year, Councilmember Hugo Garcia, one of three council members who have voted against efforts to crack down on Burien’s unsheltered residents, expressed his opposition to a potential new encampment site in Boulevard Park. The fact that the council majority wanted to move people from a wealthy, white neighborhood into a poor, Black and brown one “reeks of white supremacy,” Garcia said. Both Schilling and Councilmember Stephanie Mora expressed shock at Garcia’s comment, and Mora called for Garcia to be censured for his “very racist remark.”

The city council has two more council meetings scheduled before the county’s deadline, including one on November 27. The $1 million is time-limited federal money; if Burien doesn’t come up with a plan by the deadline, the county will make it available to other jurisdictions through a standard bidding process.

Density, Development

City Delays Release of Draft Comprehensive Plan Update Until “Likely” Next Year

By Erica C. Barnett

Editor’s note: This post was originally an item in Afternoon Fizz published on November 3.

The city of Seattle’s draft of the 10-year Comprehensive Plan update—a major revision to the plan that determines how much, and in what ways, the city will grow—has been delayed again. According to a spokesperson for the city’s Office of Planning and Community Development, the draft comp plan update, and the Draft Environmental Impact statement that lays out the impacts each option will have on the city over the coming decade, will come out sometime “in late 2023 or, more likely, early 2024.”

The delay means that the public will have less time to review, absorb, and weigh in on the five options outlined in the plan before the end of next year—the state deadline for every jurisdiction in King, Snohomish, Kitsap, and Pierce Counties to adopt an updated ten-year plan.

Originally, the city said it would release the drafts in April, but pushed that back to September over the summer.

The delay means that the public will have less time to review, absorb, and weigh in on the five options outlined in the plan before the end of next year—the state deadline for every jurisdiction in King, Snohomish, Kitsap, and Pierce Counties to adopt an updated ten-year plan.

Each option represents a different vision for the future of Seattle—from the suburban-style status quo (Alternative 2) to a city where as many as four housing units per lot are allowed everywhere (Alternative 5). “Alternative 6,” an option proposed by housing advocates that would allow more apartments all over the city, could influence the final document despite being off-the-books.

Pushing the release of draft documents into 2024 means that the new city council, which will have four, and likely five, new members, could find itself deliberating over complex planning documents while also figuring out how to close a budget shortfall of more than $200 million during the annual late-fall budget season.