Hello, I'm your host, Brian Calamand.
How much is the Seattle City Council willing to pay for a streetcar project that's already well over budget?
After the Seattle squeeze, what changes are coming to the Seattle waterfront?
And how much impact will a $500 million pledge from Microsoft really have on our affordable housing prices?
Council members Rob Johnson and Lorena Gonzalez join me to answer these questions and yours too, next on Council Edition.
This is about whether or not we have the political will and the tools out of Olympia to make sure that those streetcar lines have exclusive right-of-way.
It has the real risk of damaging the public trust that we've been working so hard to build.
All that and more coming up next on City Inside Out, Council Edition.
And here they are, councilmembers Lorena Gonzalez and Rob Johnson.
Thank you very much for joining me here.
I'm going to leap right into it.
And Rob, I'll start with you regarding the Seattle streetcar project.
Mayor Durkin's talking about bringing this back to life.
The new cost estimates are double what they were four years ago.
Ridership hasn't been meeting the mark.
The project would open five years later than anticipated.
Help me get excited about this.
What's going on?
Right now we've got two disparate streetcars that carry people, you know, about a mile and a half, two miles, depending on which line you're on.
And they work pretty well.
What the Center City Streetcar would do is really knit those two together and really create a seamless network for you to be able to get all the way from the light rail station in Capitol Hill to Mohi in South Lake Union.
So, for us, yes, it's great that the mayor has hit the green light for us to move forward on this project.
It's been a disappointment that it's taken us this long to get here, because it means that costs are going to continue to go up, because construction costs are going up, and everything gets more expensive the longer that you wait.
But we've got some, I think, really good opportunities to continue to work with the federal government, state government, and other folks.
And, you know, we got 75 different organizations that have signed on to letters and communications downtown saying they're really interested.
Diverse communities, including Pioneer Square and the CID, to traditional downtown stakeholders like SAM and the market.
So a lot of folks that really want to see this thing happen.
Okay.
Lorraine, I'll send it to you.
I'm just trying to figure out how much this project makes sense because getting around our city, you can go a lot of different ways.
You can go by bus.
You can go by streetcar.
But when you look at the streetcar, sometimes it's faster to go by foot.
I know some journalists have actually tested that.
And I'm just trying to figure out that you serve in a co-chair role on the finance committee.
Is this extra $65 million that it's looking like it might be for the city council, is it a worthwhile investment?
What are your thoughts?
I do think it's a worthwhile investment.
And I think that when we talk about sort of these other light rail lines that aren't connecting to anything, we have to think about in this evaluation of the cost and the investment of whether we're willing to just sort of leave those other pieces of the system on an island by themselves.
And I don't think that that is a wise policy choice for us to make.
It's important for us to make these connections work and to imagine how people will begin to be much more encouraged and likely to use the full network once it's connected.
I mean, the same can be said about our bicycle networks and about our
They need some work, yeah.
Safe walking routes, right?
Once we connect them and give people a reason to use them, they will see, I believe, an increased ridership.
And so I think we have to stay committed to the promise to connect the network in order to really see success here.
Rob, I'll bring you in here.
I just see some possible redundancies in the future, especially along South Lake Union when it comes to light rail is going to be in there in a matter of years and we'd have the streetcar too.
Do both of those things play well together?
How do you look at that?
You know, a transportation system that is redundant is one that works well.
You want to have lots of different ways for people to be able to get around a city because if you have one, then that one gets really clogged up when any incident happens.
So for us, redundancy is a good thing.
The bigger issue, I think, for us is about the exclusivity of the streetcar.
I think the frustration that your mythical journalist had walking from one place to another.
Seattle Weekly, yeah.
Did some running.
Had to do some running.
But also, you know, this is about whether or not we have the political will and the tools out of Olympia to make sure that those streetcar lines have exclusive right-of-way.
Just like we battle with downtown.
When you're on a bus on 4th Avenue, and it's in a bus-only lane, and that bus-only lane is blocked up by a bunch of folks who are driving their cars.
It's hard for you to get where you want to go.
I'm one of those folks.
So we need to be working hard in Olympia to get that red light camera authorization so that we can then give more exclusive rights away to folks all throughout the system who are transit riders.
Don't forget, two-thirds of folks that are coming downtown every day are doing it other than driving alone.
And the majority of those folks are taking buses, walking, or biking.
So we need to really make sure that our infrastructure gets trued up with those numbers.
And let's stick with the commute idea.
We are in the middle of the Seattle squeeze as we are taping this show here.
Lorena, I believe you're swimming across Elliott Bay from West Seattle.
Tell us about how you're changing what you're doing.
You know, I think it's, as somebody who lives in West Seattle and has to, you know, do a difficult commute over a bridge and the viaduct.
Right with you.
It's difficult sometimes, yeah.
But, you know, I think I'm very dedicated to continue to take, taking public transit.
I, you know, gave up my own car, you know, driving my car into work about three years ago.
And it really does allow me to see the city in a different way and to experience our transportation system is a really, I think that's an important part of my public service.
For me, I've been trying to really push myself to get more creative, right?
Taking the water taxi is something I've always loved to do.
Exploring different bus routes is something that I've been doing during this period of time.
That sounds like a bike on the day that we're taping this show.
And on the day that we taped this show, I had an opportunity to connect with the folks over at Cascade Bicycle Club and ride my bike into downtown.
So these are things that we have to, as residents in the city of Seattle, I think we have the opportunity and a shot at trying different ways to get around the city.
And Rob, I know you're a bus transit rider.
You also use light rail.
I'm going to put a finer point on this one if I can.
We got a couple of e-mails in on this with regard to the viaduct coming down and what's coming next with the tunnel, et cetera.
Will writes this one in.
Why are bicycle dollars for my taxes, is how he looks at it, being used for climate change increasing roads for cars?
Isn't the best way to fight climate change to spend more on basic bike lanes and transit instead of increased emissions?
Again, putting a fine point on it.
But let me know about this.
There's a lot going on when it comes to transit and where the city of Seattle, too, makes investments.
Yeah, and I think that those decisions around state infrastructure are rightfully made at the state level.
That tunnel project was a state-funded project, a state-led project, and a state-built project.
And I agree with Will.
I would love for the state to be making a stronger investment in the kinds of biking, walking, and climate infrastructure, like transit, that we in Seattle really need more of.
I know the last couple of legislative sessions, there's been talk about new revenue for transportation.
There's talk again this session, Senator Hobbs just released a draft proposal.
It's better than previous proposals would have been, but nowhere near what we're seeing in other places around the country.
You look at a place like, you know, Connecticut, Massachusetts, California, Oregon.
These places have made state capital investments in the construction of light rail, in the construction of bike lanes, in the construction of sidewalks.
The amount of money that we have gotten from Olympia to build out our light rail system is next to nothing.
So we really need more advocacy down in Olympia to get us more state resources to really help build out our transportation and transit infrastructure.
Thank you very much for that.
I'm going to start looking even further ahead if I can.
Past the time the squeeze is done, the Seattle waterfront's revitalized here.
The council's in the middle of finalizing this local improvement district to help pay for this, some back and forth certainly with property owners regarding this LID.
I want to move past that if I can for a minute.
The deal brokered to pass the LID has a provision that the park that would be created, the waterfront park, would be properly maintained.
I want to know what that looks like, what you think that means, especially from talking about the homeless issues that we have in our city here.
Rob, can I start with you, please?
Sure.
You know, for me, this is a wonderful opportunity for us to finally reknit the waterfront with the rest of the city, which, frankly, we've been cut off from since the 1930s when the viaduct was first built.
If you've been down there in the last week since the traffic has come off the viaduct, you can actually have a conversation with somebody in Pioneer Square.
You can hear the ferry boats honking, coming in and out in the foggy mornings.
It's amazing and beautiful.
So we're going to spend the next four or five years really building out that infrastructure to allow for the waterfront to be the vibrant, 100-year vision that we've always hoped it would be from an economic development perspective, from a tourist perspective, and from a wonderful place for Seattle residents to be.
The real question I think you're asking though is like, what does it really mean for us to maintain that well?
And I think the opportunity here is a little bit different than it is from the rest of our parks because we've got a private sector partner that we're working with that's gonna be doing the operations and maintenance and is also raising some private sector dollars in order to help pay for the construction of this project.
I think that there's an appropriate conversation between the city and that private nonprofit in order to better understand levels of service and maintenance agreements.
But Council Member Gonzales serves on that committee, so I'm sure she's got a lot more detail.
Ooh, nice puns.
Let's see it.
Well, your thoughts about this.
I mean, we are talking about a private entity with the Friends of the Waterfront there really helping out.
Are we talking about private security guards or what does this look like?
How do you want it to look at the waterfront?
Well, I mean, I think if I'm thinking about, you know, the waterfront park opening and the viaduct coming down and us continuing to make significant investments in the waterfront and what it looks like and how it feels, My hope is that by then we will have actually made, at the same time, some measurable progress on continuing to address the issues of housing affordability and in making sure that our emergency response system through investments in mental and behavioral health, through addressing the opioid epidemic, through really addressing the root causes of why people are experiencing homelessness in the first place, My hope is that by then we will have seen measurable income in these areas and I think we're taking significant steps and we continue to take significant steps to be able to have those measurable improvements be felt in the community.
Now I think that this public-private partnership presents a really good opportunity for us to make sure that both in the short term and the long term that the open space is one that is positively programmed so that there is positive behavior happening in our open spaces.
That's not unique to the waterfront.
That's unique to all open spaces throughout our city.
And we've seen really good progress in this space.
You can think about the Occidental Park.
In Pioneer Square, you can think about Westlake.
Those are examples of where it's still publicly owned property, but we have programmed it in partnership with private entities to really create a different feeling of both safety, security, and also just enjoyment for everyone, regardless of what your housing status is.
Can I put one more fine point on it?
I know a lot of people are very bullish on this project.
I think it's going to look great when it's done.
But there is this extra piece added, an extra burden on the philanthropy piece.
They're looking for $110 million to try to help out with this.
If that doesn't come through, does the city have to make up that amount or from a finance perspective?
I just wanted to look at this.
What do you know?
That's a great question.
So we have put in a safeguard in the operations and maintenance agreement and in the overall ordinance that addresses that particular issue.
And what the legislation package as a whole says is that we will closely monitor for purposes of accountability and transparency to taxpayers.
the progress of philanthropy in terms of meeting, hitting the mark throughout the next couple of years.
And so they will be reporting to the city and it will be done in a public way for us to evaluate that.
There's also a provision in the agreements that does not require the city to make up the deficit.
So we have some financial safeguards and some backstops to prevent the city's coffers from being put at risk as a result of any shortfall in the fundraising.
Now that being said, we don't anticipate that occurring.
Philanthropy has been doing an incredible job in fundraising in this space.
And, in fact, at committee, I think last week, a couple weeks ago, the Friends of the Waterfront articulated how passionate people across the city feel about this project and how, in a lot of ways, easy it has been for the Friends of the Waterfront to raise those dollars.
And we're incredibly appreciative.
Yeah, I know Mayor Durkin was saying it was like we're at the groundbreaking of the Space Needle.
This is a transformative project.
Transformative project.
A lot of people believe in it.
Yeah, yeah.
Rob, I'll go back to you, back to the homelessness housing affordability issue here.
Big headline recently about Microsoft pledging $500 million to go towards those issues.
Now, most of that money is coming in the form of low interest rate loans for developers who, of course, face high land costs, as you mentioned earlier.
$25 million would go towards services for low-income homeless people in our region.
Your thoughts on this impact it could make on Seattle?
I mean I think they're being very intentional about focusing on the east side and I've taken phone calls from mayors just in the last couple weeks asking me to help introduce them to affordable housing developers who might be willing to jump across the lake and do more work over there.
than they have been doing in the past.
So I think that there's a real vested interest by Mayor Marcioni and other folks in East King County and really partnering with Microsoft on this.
I think that there's still a lot of questions for all of us.
It was a great announcement.
I'd love to see other organizations step into that space.
And there's a nice model for this with Puget Sound Regional Council.
We have something called our TOD Revolving Door Fund.
What it is is it's a pot of money and affordable housing developers can come to that pot of money as a last dollar and say, we are very nearly close to our full financing.
We want to borrow $2 million from that pot and over the next five years pay that $2 million back.
So it's a revolving door.
door insofar as it's a loan from your project to future projects that you pay back and it pays itself forward.
So I think that kind of innovation would be really wonderful to see these dollars invested in and allow for us to really continue to get more bang for our buck.
We know that there's a giant housing crisis throughout King County.
I was on a task force that we identified we need to triple our housing production every year over the next 20 years to meet our goal of 244,000 new units of housing by 2040. That's a really hard thing to do, but these kinds of private philanthropic statements alongside important city and local government investments are gonna be critical.
Yeah, and Lorena, I know the council worked on a very challenging discussion with local businesses about a head tax last year.
That's behind us, but I'm looking at this move by Microsoft.
Does that give you an indication that businesses maybe learned something from that discussion?
How do you look at this?
I mean, I think it's important for us to remember that the sort of private sector and philanthropy alone is not going to fix the issues related to housing affordability and the realities of people who are suffering outside.
But that being said, I want to recognize and give sort of credit where credit is due.
And I do appreciate the fact that Microsoft is now engaging in this conversation and that they are willing to dedicate this amount of money to what is a really critical issue.
I think what the most important part for me was about the announcement from Microsoft Setting the dollars and cents aside is a clear acknowledgment for the first time by one of these major profitable tech companies that they see a cause and effect between what they do in our communities in terms of job growth, and how that impacts housing affordability and displacement of our communities.
It's an important thing for them to acknowledge.
And we have not had that level of acknowledgement from companies who do business here in the city of Seattle.
And so I think that my hope is that other tech companies and other major corporations who are contributing to housing affordability issues will also see an opportunity to engage in that conversation.
Okay, and Lauren, I want to stick with you regarding a situation, if I can, about the Seattle Police Department.
You've been asking why city lawyers and the officers union delayed the release of a ruling to reinstate an officer who had been fired for punching a handcuffed woman.
This information came out after the council voted on a new labor contract for the SPD.
What's next on this?
What are you trying to find out?
What have you found out?
So I think that it's an unfortunate situation where I feel that there might have been a politically motivated reason to delay the publication of the arbitration decision in the Adlai Shepard case.
You know, we'll never know if it would have made a material difference in the consideration, in the council's consideration of the contract.
But I can say that I think what is more important than figuring out who did what is What can this city council do in terms of understanding why it happened and how it happened and whether or not that indicates some sort of failure in the system in terms of making sure that we are being truly transparent and accountable to ourselves as city partners and inside city stakeholders, but more importantly to the community.
And, you know, when things like this happen, it has the real risk of damaging the public trust that we've been working so hard to build in this space.
And so I'll be looking at Again, sort of how did this happen?
Why did it happen?
And is there an opportunity to, for example, have our new Office of Inspector General of Public Safety take a systemic look at prior arbitration decisions under the old Disciplinary Review Board system?
as a baseline to be able to evaluate and compare the modifications that were made in the new SPOG contract that put to rest DRB and just stay committed to a single arbitrator model.
So I'll be exploring those opportunities and perhaps also exploring the opportunities of some legislation that could, for example, require disclosure of specific types of information to either the labor relations policy committee or to the full council that are or may be relevant to our consideration of approval or non-approval.
And I know it's too early to tell just yet, but does this, could this have an impact on the federal consent decree process that the city of Seattle and the police department are still working through?
I mean, I think that it is a test of the health of our current accountability system.
And I think the judge obviously pays very close attention to these issues, as he should, and as we all should.
And it will be interesting to see whether he believes that our response to this news is part and parcel of a healthy accountability system.
And my hope is that Judge Robar hears from this city council and this mayor that we do take these things seriously, we're not taking them lying down, and when we notice that there might be a systemic issue, we have a route in front of us that is reasonable and judicious for us to evaluate whether or not there is a flaw in the system and that we stand at the ready to fix it.
Thank you for breaking that down for me.
Rob, I'm going to shift gears one more time for an issue that I believe you're going to be working on here.
The council looking at this possible moratorium on changing mobile home parks to another land use.
Kevin asked the question on Twitter here.
Are mobile home parks viable long-term sources of affordable housing?
What kinds of protections do they deserve?
Your thoughts about this.
You know, I think that one of the important things about this is that mobile home parks and manufactured home parks offer people an opportunity to build equity that they may not be able to get in a lot of other places.
So if you're a low-income individual and you're trying to raise yourself out of poverty, property ownership is one of the best ways for you to create intergenerational wealth.
And we, because of some condo liability laws and reform that needs to come out of Olympia, aren't seeing very much of that product being built.
Townhouses are oftentimes very expensive.
And so this kind of opportunity, manufactured home parks, can allow for you to build equity in a way that other housing opportunities aren't providing right now.
We don't have very many left in the city.
And there's a lot of interest and energy around the preservation of the two that we have right now.
There's also, I think, a lot of different models that exist out there about what we can really do to preserve them.
And my hope would be to be considering expansion and what can we really do to allow for the creation of more in the city because You know, when you drive throughout the city or you take the bus or you walk throughout the city, you'll see wide, wide open swaths of parking lots and lots and lots of places that are underdeveloped that could be the kinds of places where people are getting access to low homeownership opportunities.
You know, I think we're going to come up with some creative solutions.
We're going to spend most of the rest of this year working on this problem.
We'll start with a moratorium at our next council meeting on Monday, which I hope will get adopted by my colleagues, and then we'll spend some time figuring out what a long-term solution looks like.
Thank you for that.
I'm going to move ahead to another land use issue with you, if I could, Rob.
Updating people on the mandatory housing affordability legislation.
Hearing Examiner basically giving this a green light for the most part.
Council's working on some amendments over the next couple weeks.
Here's a few notes to start the discussion with you.
One says MHA isn't going to work.
Already people are avoiding MHA.
Instead of looking for projects that will not have to pay the fee, you're going to see the market lock up and production stall.
Here's another one.
Watering down MHA only perpetuates the high cost of housing that's hurting working-class residents.
I know this has been a contentious discussion.
When you hear neighborhoods say things like MHA, up zones, they don't work at all here, like they're saying in Beacon Hill, how do you respond to that?
Yeah, it's really hard.
I mean, land use is a hard issue and we're hearing it from folks on all sides, right?
We've got folks who are complaining that we haven't implemented it fast enough and we've missed the development cycle.
We've got other folks who are asking us to slow down and take more time to figure it out.
And, you know, we've been at this now for almost four years.
Four years feels like it's enough time for us to make a decision.
We've had almost 200 meetings.
We've had 40 meetings led by the council alone on this topic.
It feels like it's enough time for us to implement a program and see how it's going to go.
The six neighborhoods where we've implemented MHA so far, all implemented in 2017, raised about $13 million last year for our Office of Housing's Notice of Fund Availability, which they used to give to affordable housing developers to build more affordable housing.
When we implement MHN, the other 26 neighborhoods, which we're hoping to do by the end of March this year, it allows us to really ask developers to start paying their fair share to build affordable housing.
And in an environment where we are scratching every rock we can to find money for affordable housing, When you start talking to people about asking developers to pay their fair share, the conversation changes really quickly.
It's hard, I believe you, when you say you're hearing from people that they are going to move to other parts of the city or other parts of the county to build those houses.
But fundamentally, we're a city that's still growing.
We still have the highest number of cranes in the United States.
And let's allow this program to be in place for a couple years and evaluate how it's working.
And I believe it's going to be one of those important tools to build more affordable housing.
Okay.
And Lorena, looking to you on this one, I know this is broken down in some cases to an issue where different city council members that represent different districts, you're hearing a lot from different neighborhoods.
I know that's happening for you, Rob, but in your at-large role, help me out with this.
What amendments would you like to see to MHA?
Just looking at that overall picture here.
I mean, I think, setting amendments aside, I think that the...
You won't be able to do that for long.
I mean, I think really the goal here is to create more space in neighborhoods that are not accessible and have not historically been accessible to low-income, working-class, middle-class families, a majority of whom are households of single moms, for example, of people of color, of immigrants and refugees, and they have, you know, I feel like we have a duty to allow space for those types of populations to be a part of a neighborhood that they have not historically been a part of.
And I see MHA as an opportunity for us to allow the density that is required that both helps economic development, that helps, you know, diversify neighborhoods, both in terms of socioeconomic status, but also in terms of race and ethnicity.
And those are important things for us to keep centered at the work of all of the amendments that we're going to see here that are working their way through the select committee on MHA.
Right.
I want to try to wrap up with one quick piece, a 15-second version if you can.
Families, education, preschool and Promise Levy.
A lot of voters supported this last year.
I believe it was a 68% approval rate.
Now it's on your plate to try to do something with it this year.
Help me out with this.
I'll have you both weigh in.
Lorena, you first.
Yeah, so we're gonna work on the implementation and evaluation plan in my committee for the first quarter and the second quarter of this year.
Really excited about being able to present a plan to the voters who thankfully approved the FEPP levy that will really fulfill the promise that we've made to invest across the education spectrum from pre-K all the way through the first two years of community college.
So we have a lot of work to do.
We're a deal.
Our Department of Education and Early Learning is engaging in community conversations to make sure we get the implementation plan correctly.
And I remain committed to working with the mayor, with my colleagues, and with Seattle Public Schools around making sure that we get particularly those K through 12 investments just right.
School dad, real quick on this one.
What are your thoughts, Rob?
Super excited to see what we can do to encourage more providers to step into the preschool space.
We've had some challenges, administrative challenges, from some of our providers who are high-quality providers but aren't in the program right now.
How do we remove some of those barriers, administrative barriers, to get them to participate in the program?
And I look at somebody like El Centro de la Raza or Denise Louis, who are really high-quality providers but aren't participating in our program right now.
And then for the public school dad, I think this is a lot about how do we continue to work with the district to make sure that our investments are supporting kids in schools, and how can we work with the district to make some small-scale capital changes to some of their schools to let more of our preschoolers be in the schools where they'll be going to elementary school.
That's a big deal.
Thank you both for this, and we will see you next time on Council Edition.