City Inside/Out: Council Edition - November 2018

I'm Brian Calinan.

Why is the city taking revenue from red light cameras and putting that in the general fund?

Where is the city council making changes with its approach to homelessness?

And does Seattle's new contract with its police officers take a strong enough step towards reform?

Council members Rob Johnson and Sally Bagshaw answer these questions and the ones you're sending in, too, next on Council Edition.

The delay of MHA is having a real impact on our ability to ask developers to pay their fair share.

We need to fund those because we don't want 217 people out on the street.

217 more people out on the street.

All that and more coming up next on City Inside Out, Council Edition.

And joining me for this discussion, we have Sally Bagshaw and Rob Johnson.

Thank you very much for joining me on what is a very, very busy time for council, talking about the budget.

And I will start with the budget chair right here.

And Sally, let's break this down.

We're taping this just before your final vote to approve the budget.

There's one piece of this, your proposal to take some excess red light camera funding Take that away from school safety projects, put it toward the general fund.

I know a lot of advocates say we need to put this toward school safety, etc.

Your response to that, please.

Well, we haven't changed the mayor's budget on school safety at all.

The red light camera and the school safety funds are frankly two separate things.

And with the red light camera coming from the schools, All of that is going to the projects that have already been identified, so nothing is being cut there.

But what we are able to do, because there was more fines generated, unfortunately, more people speeding or more people going through the red light cameras themselves, we actually have more money that we could put in the general fund.

So we've used that around human services.

We had to make some decisions, and that was the priority this year.

That phrase, more money, is not one that I've heard a lot during this budget season.

Tell me about that.

This is a different discussion you're having this year as opposed to last.

Right.

Well, we have actually about $1.3 billion in the general fund, but this year we didn't have a lot of excess.

We didn't have monies that we could point to and say, we're going to take it from one pot and put it in the other.

So much of what we've done has had to be reprioritized, which we have.

Last year, you remember that we were debating about the head tax.

This time, that's not on the table.

So we had to use the revenues that we have.

Our balanced budget is now something that will be voted on on Monday.

And I think we've done a respectable job of recognizing what our priorities are so people will be safe.

We have more investment in human services.

And I'm actually fairly pleased that we've identified areas, and we'll talk more about this as this goes, but human services and focusing on the kinds of things that we can actually take action on this year, that was my priority.

Great.

Rob, I want you to weigh in, if you could, please, on this red light camera situation.

I know you're a dad.

You've got some kids that are going to school.

Let me know about your thoughts on this.

Yeah, so we've got three in public schools, and they take the school bus to school, but they've got a lot of friends who walk and bike to their elementary school, and so school safety is important to me.

And we have two different funds that we raise money from and put towards Safe Routes to School programs.

One is funds that are generated from folks that are speeding in school zones, and another are folks who run those red light traffic camera sections.

The first pot of money, we spent 100% of those resources in school safety.

So if you're caught speeding in a school zone, we put those dollars right back into school safety projects.

But if you're running a red light camera, we put 20% of those dollars back into school safety projects.

Just so happens, as Council Member Backshaw put it, we've had about $2 million more than we expected in both of those pots of money.

So instead of spending the $2 million that we were going to get in red light camera funds on school safety projects, we're just spending all the school zone money on school zone projects.

And we were able to divert those $2 million up to other priorities.

I think for us as a city, it's a balancing act.

We are still making a lot of investments in, say, front school programs, which is necessary for a lot of folks, but we also have to balance that against other important priorities.

I just want to go back to this issue, though, of trying to penalize people for doing the wrong thing, going through red lights.

And if too many people are doing it, shouldn't we try to penalize them more or break down on that or invest more?

What do you think about that?

Yeah, you know, I think that there's an important nexus argument there that we've talked about in this context, but then also in the sugar, sweet and beverage tax.

Part of this is a function of us as government wanting to be conservative with the revenues that we think we want to come in.

And that's the case both for red light cameras and for sugar-sweetened beverages.

And then secondly, we're a growing city, so we've got more folks that are trying to get places, we've got more folks that are consuming things.

We need to take into account that as part of our assumptions too.

These behavioral changes also take time.

So just because we introduce something doesn't mean that everybody does it right away.

Yeah, so we expect those to Diminish over time as well.

They're not diminishing as quickly as we had expected It means that we've got a little more money to spend but we still expect those things to continue to go down

Thank you very much for that.

Sally, I want to shift to the city's homeless response.

You talked about this a little bit earlier.

So the council repealed that employee head tax earlier this year.

That new revenue is not there.

And I know the hope is for a regional response to this issue.

I'm wondering what are the steps that are being taken to make that happen?

Here's a question tweeted in from Matt.

And thanks a lot for sending this in, Matt.

the homelessness emergency has now lasted more than a thousand days.

When do you think the city can declare the emergency is over and do you think that will happen next year?

He's putting the time frame on it but I want to talk about this regional response and just the homeless emergency that we're still in.

So it's really sad that we, it just takes so much time, that we are in a growing community with a lot more people who are finding themselves out of homes and as we see all the time We need a whole lot more housing, not just for very low income, but for over 50% AMI and beyond.

And I would love to be able to say it's going to take time and things are going to get better.

I think unless we have a massive regional investment, and I mean massive like what San Francisco or what Los Angeles has done with their proposition Triple H, we're going to continue just to take little incremental steps.

Now, good news today that the mayor has announced that more housing is going to be built.

It's underway.

$100 million that will be leveraged, and we will see that.

But it's really expensive to build like permanent supportive housing.

Average numbers, we're talking about $30 million to build a facility with 100 family beds.

So we know that it has to be leveraged.

And I know that Council Member Johnson may want to talk about MHA here in the future.

But I think that we really need to be focusing on this regional approach where every city has to take a proportional share, and if you just want to do it, population or otherwise.

But you know, many other cities are not willing to raise taxes.

We seem to be willing to raise taxes to improve the quality of life here in the city.

But we can't do it alone.

And we know that the numbers are amazing about how many units we need.

One study, Eco Northwest, said we've underbuilt by 175,000 units across three counties.

One of the committees that Council Member Johnson is on is saying we need to, over a 20-year goal, put 244,000 new units in our region.

That's a stunning number.

We're talking about 8,000 units a year.

But frankly, that's the number we're going to have to attack.

That's what we've got to go for.

We need incentives from the state.

We need other cities to be working with us.

Thanks.

Rob, let's touch on that MHA issue quickly.

What did you want to bring up about that?

You know, Council Member Baxter is right.

The regional goal that we have is significant.

We think as a county, just in King County, we need to triple the production of affordable housing that we are constructing every year.

to get to that goal of 250,000 units by 2040. That means we need to build 9,000 units of housing every year in King County, and those units need to be affordable to those folks making 80% of median income or lower.

It means they need to be income-restricted affordable housing units, and that is expensive for us to do.

One of the best ways for us to be able to triple the number of units that are being built is to ask developers to pay a fair share.

So the city has implemented a mandatory housing affordability program in six neighborhoods throughout the city that has raised, just this year alone, a little more than $13 million that will be part of our city's notice of funding availability that we use to allow affordable housing developers to go out and build more housing.

We have also done an analysis of what the delay of MHA's implementation in the other 26 neighborhoods has meant.

One-year delay, which was funded by about $200,000 in resources from neighborhoods that are concerned about the construction of affordable housing, has resulted in a loss of almost $90 million of affordable housing for us.

That would be a doubling of of the amount of money that we could give to affordable housing providers this year to build affordable housing.

So for us, the delay of MHA is having a real impact on our ability to ask developers to pay their fair share to build more affordable housing, which we need to do right now.

Sally, I want to jump back to you.

Another part of the spectrum here when it comes to homeless is how the homeless are sheltered here.

And the city has really been wrestling with this concept of basic shelter providing the overnight space, but not any case management versus enhanced shelter, which has some services with it.

Basic shelter is certainly helpful, but the data shows it doesn't necessarily help people get into housing.

So Kevin sends in a challenging question here.

At what point will the city have enough enhanced shelter capacity that the council will stop funding basic shelters?

What do you think?

Well, that's an issue that comes up every single year.

And this year I decided to head it off at the pass and say the 217 mass on the floor.

We need to fund those because we don't want 217 people out on the street, 217 more people out on the street.

So the enhanced shelter is the 24-7.

something that I've been advocating for for years.

Finally, we have gotten, you know, two that the city is sponsoring their 24-7 plus our tiny home villages, which as people say, and I say in particular, this is not the end place.

We don't want people to come here and stay.

We want people to get stabilized and then be able to move, but they have, we have to have, and they have to have a place where they can move to.

So to our friend Kevin there, yes, we need both.

And it's a continuum.

I would much prefer to be investing our money in good, affordable housing.

That said, I'm not in a position, nor would I be in a position, to say, I'm going to put all of you who are in tents now, leave you out on tents.

So we've got to find people inside just to get people stabilized.

I'm going to wrap up on the homelessness response with one last piece.

And Rob, maybe I'll start you here.

The mayor had called for an expansion of the navigation team, the group that goes out and interacts with a lot of the homeless camps that are out on the streets.

Councilmember Mosqueda has proposed to reduce that expansion, put the money towards a pay increase for homeless service workers.

There's been some pushback on that.

Your position here?

We've got a deal on that where the council is going to vote on Monday and not put ourselves in that forced position where we're having to choose between expansion of the navigation team and or funding for human service providers increases.

So, I think that that's a good deal.

We've been able to have some negotiations over the last couple of days to get us to that point.

I'm a big believer in the work that the navigation team does.

I was out today, this morning, in Meridian Park in Wallingford talking to folks associated with an elementary school that's right there who are very concerned about the number of tents that they're seeing in the park.

The navigation team is our city's response to have folks who are living on shelter get access to services and provide a safe way for them to get into permanent supportive housing.

So we need more of those officers.

We need more of those caseworkers.

We need more of those data analysts.

And that expansion is going to go forward.

And I'm fortunate to have helped play a small role in those negotiations and believe that we need to both pay the workers who we're contracting with from human service agencies an appropriate wage so that they can do good work and also make sure that the navigation team can expand because it's being successful.

Your thoughts on that?

Absolutely, and Council Member Johnson is being modest.

He and Council Member Mosqueda helped scrub the budget and look for some additional money so that we can have both, that we can increase our navigation team.

I'm a huge fan of adding mental health workers to those teams, too.

So we are doing that.

Hopefully, maybe in the next quarter, we may be able to do more of that because we know that the people that are having contact with those that are living in tents, building that trust and being able to say, we have a place for you to go, whether it is a permanent shelter, if it's a tiny home.

We know that if it's 24-7, people are much more inclined to go.

And if they can bring their pets and their partners and their possessions, it makes a big difference for them.

Last budget piece, Rob, I want to make sure I touched on this.

The community health engagement areas there, the safe consumption sites, safe injection sites, some people have called them.

I know there was a little bit of money that you threw on a green sheet there.

Is that still happening?

What's going on there?

It is.

So we received $1.3 million in last year's budget for the capital facility necessary to stand up a safe consumption site.

We asked for another $400,000 to fully fund what the mayor says that she needs in order to stand up a site.

We were lucky to get another $100,000.

We're standing pat with $1.4 million.

That'll be part of the 2019 budget assumptions.

We think that that should be enough combined with the county's mid money to be able to cobble together what we think is about $3 million, which should give us enough capital on operating for 2019 and 2020. So now it's really about working with service providers and siting a location, which I think is going to be a controversial issue, but I think is a really critical, important first step.

Thanks for that.

And just one more thing on that.

Briefly, here we go.

So when the King County Seattle group came together two years ago, this was a recommendation.

It wasn't one of the central recommendations, but they said this will help.

This will get people off the street, keep them healthier, and also something I've been supporting is the buprenorphine clinic.

So it goes hand in glove if we can get people inside and giving them alternatives so that they can help beat their habits.

This is a way and a public health way that we can make the community safer and people healthier.

Thank you for that.

Sally, I'll stick with you.

I want to talk a little bit about the police contract that was just sealed with Seattle Police Officers Guild.

Been a long time coming.

You've been on the council for a decade nearly here and I know you've seen this issue unfold over the years.

There was some back and forth here with this.

I know a lot of the law enforcement community thought this was a great thing, but there was some pushback from the community police commission, other community groups that said this is not a good deal.

It was ratified by the council.

What's next year?

What's going on?

Well, it was ratified.

It's moving forward.

What I appreciate is the fact that it really balanced.

We were able to go back and it's been four years without a contract so that our police officers will get the pay and the increases that they deserve.

What do you say to those community groups, though?

I'd say that everything is a compromise.

We now have police that are being paid and the community is saying we need more police on the street.

So this is going to help us do that.

We're going from a position where we were like paying our police officers the least of any of the major West Coast cities to putting us in the middle of the pack.

It's got to go forward.

If Judge Robart says that it's not ready for prime time, it'll come back to us.

We're going to be at the table in two years anyway, starting to renegotiate this.

So I say, let's go forward.

Okay.

Rob, you serve on the Safe Communities Committee, and I wanted to talk about your input on this.

What did you see out of it?

I don't have much to add other than, you know, I think we both feel very fortunate to have Council Member Gonzalez chairing that committee because I would trust no one more to understand the reforms that we want to see in place while also recognizing the hard work that officers do on a day-to-day basis.

She has done a really great job of shepherding this through.

Of course, the mayor was the one who really started that negotiation.

So from my perspective, the next steps are really about the reaction from our federal monitor and the judge.

As Council Member Bagshaw said, you know, if the judge says we got more work to do, then it'll come back to us.

But if we don't, we get a two-year pause.

The officers get the pay increase that they need.

We get a lot of the major accountability reforms that we've been asking for, and we get to move on.

Okay, thank you for that.

Picking up the pace ever so slightly here, we just went through a midterm election.

In case you were hiding under a rock, that actually happened recently.

Rob, I want to get your impressions on what you saw.

A big win for the city's Families Education Preschool and Promise Levy, but a mixed bag on some of the state initiatives that I know the council weighed in on.

Your thoughts, Postal Action.

I'm thrilled about the victory for the Families Education Preschool and Promise Levy.

That's going to make a huge difference for the lives of thousands of preschoolers who now will get access to free preschool.

It's going to make a huge difference for all of my PTSA parents who rely on the Families in Education Levy to fund reading and math interventionists, summer learning programs, after-school programs, mental health counselors, and nurses within those elementary, middle, and high schools.

And then, of course, the mayor's big proposal around the Promise Program is going to give several hundred kids a year a chance to attend one of our Seattle community colleges.

So I think that this is a huge victory for us.

I will say the city and the school district historically have been, rightly or wrongly, maligned as not having a really good working relationship.

Over the last several years, we have really worked hard to make sure that we are coordinating well.

The district now has a set of capital investments that they're going to put in front of voters in February.

They've been working with us hard on those capital investments, just like we worked with them on our levy.

So this is a really great working partnership.

The new superintendent, Denise Juneau, has been working really closely with the mayor, with Councilmember Gonzalez, with myself, with Councilmember Bankshell.

So I think there's a really great relationship to support all of our kids in our public schools.

I was disappointed by the 1631 results.

I think when you look at the investments that were going to be made with those resources, whether that was public transit, whether it was affordable housing, whether it was about cleanup of Puget Sound or other water-based resources, lakes, rivers, and streams, those were critical investments.

You know, Big Oil was going to spend literally whatever it took in order to defeat that ballot measure.

They spent $30 million.

If we had spent $30 million in favor, they would have spent $60 million.

If we had spent $60 million, they would have spent $120 million.

It was their number one priority at a national level, and that's really, really hard to defeat.

I'm excited about some of the other initiatives that I've gone through, but those two were a mixed bag for us.

I will add, this is a gun responsibility statewide.

I was going to say, that's a big part of your background.

It has been, and I was thrilled.

Over 60% statewide, that is a big number, and I hope the legislature hears that loud and clear, that in this state, people want, obviously, to protect constitutional rights to make sure, however, that guns are being stored safely, that people know what they're doing when they're using the guns.

And I was a big fan, so I'm happy about that.

Interesting to see, too.

I know Seattle passed its gun storage measure.

Clinton County did.

Edmonds has one.

And now we have this statewide thing.

What do you think happens?

Clearly, a lot of people are talking about this right now.

Right.

Well, I think there's the appeals going on.

Stephen Gottlieb said that.

But they're going to appeal everything that we do.

And I think this is going to be up to the courts to be able to say, look, the people are speaking too, not just a small group.

Okay.

All right.

Thank you very much for that.

I'm going to move on to a key arena, if I may.

There's a big vote coming up, start of December from the National Hockey League Board of Governors.

I see smiles on faces here.

All signs are pointing to having an NHL team within a couple of years.

It's a tight schedule.

Will the arena be ready?

I know we've been asking this, but it feels like we're really close to crunch time here.

Sally, do you want to start?

What are your thoughts?

Well, I am thrilled, and I have to say that Oakview Group, OVG, has been so responsive to the city, and I'm just very, very pleased at the connections that they've made with us as a government, but also with the neighborhoods.

And they've done a really good job with labor, bringing them in.

Yes, I think that this hockey team's going forward, and they've actually hired Ken Johnson with SOJ.

to be one of the project building overseers.

And frankly, he's done many of the major projects that we've done around the city for the last decade and a half.

The fact that he's on board helps me have the confidence that we're going to make it.

Something specific you might be looking at as this project goes forward when it comes to the construction, transportation, different issues?

What are you looking at?

Well, the transportation and congestion is really the big thing.

I think about Department of Neighborhoods that you work with a lot.

Right.

Department of Neighborhoods has been super reaching out to Uptown, Belltown, and South Lake Union.

but we've got to get people there and back before the game and after the game.

So there's a lot of opportunity here.

I think, you know, we're talking about pedestrian connections, bike connections, working with Lyft and Uber for places and drop-offs.

But frankly, we're going to have to upgrade the monorail as well.

And I think there's plans afoot to do that and getting more buses there because light rail is coming, but not for about 15 years.

So by the time that it opens, we still need to deal with the next 15 years.

Rob, your thoughts about the KeyArena project going forward?

I think what they're trying to do is really ambitious.

I mean, I'm obviously a big supporter.

I think a major capital facility like this that's landmarked, where you're having to really work within the constraints of a physical environment, as opposed to where most of these arenas get built, which is an unconstrained parking lot, right?

It just creates a lot of interesting challenges, which, like Sally, I'm really glad to see them having hired Ken Johnson.

I think he does a really good job of managing those environments.

For me, I'm super excited about the chance to see the NHL come back to Seattle.

For us as a city, I think that the enthusiasm that this has generated is also second to none.

It is an amazing thing to watch the city kind of get unified around sports.

We just had a big victory Thursday night football last night.

Did Lockett really catch that?

Absolutely caught it.

All right.

You heard it from Rob Johnson.

Go ahead.

Yeah, no question.

And so my prayer, I thought so, too.

Yeah, that's right.

So generally, I think that sports can be a really wonderful, unifying place.

And to see that manifested through the 35,000 folks that put down deposits is another great example of those cultural touchstones that, whether it's arts or sports or the mountains, that really bring us all together, regardless of your political ideology or other issues.

The nitty-gritty of it, though, in terms of what you're looking at, the transportation, I know that's a big issue for you, too.

Yeah, so for me, I think the system works well when you can get the folks that are selling beer at the stadium to get to and from work.

If your Unite Here, it Local 8 workers, who are the ones pulling the tabs, have to be there 90 minutes before the game and have to close up for an hour after the game, if they can get to and from the stadium really well on public transit, on walking or biking, then your customers are going to be able to get there well too.

We've got a lot of parking lots in the neighborhood.

We can coordinate those well.

We've got a lot of folks that are interested in a lot of other upgrades.

But I think, generally, the transportation infrastructure, we could be spending billions of dollars to improve that.

We have a limited amount of resources.

We've got to be really strategic about investments that we know are going to work well, not just to get people to and from the game, but are going to work well to get people to and from uptown 24-7, 365. Got it.

Rob, I'm going to stick with you.

I wanted to ask a question back on MHA for a second because I believe the hearing examiner that's working on this case might have a decision pretty soon.

I want to talk about this and the Rainier Beach Coalition sent in a tweet my way to help guide the conversation.

Thanks for doing that.

They write this.

Is there any monitoring of the land speculation occurring due to MHA?

Is it in the millions of dollars?

What is the city doing to influence landowners to think about community benefits?

Thanks again for the question.

Help me out with this in the timeline we're looking at with MHA.

Sure.

So the MHA has been implemented in six neighborhoods.

We've got a plan to implement it in 27 more.

MHA, at its heart, is an allowance for a developer to build slightly taller than what they can build today.

And an exchange requires the developer to pay a fee to build affordable housing or to build affordable housing on site.

So in a neighborhood like Rainier Beach, where we don't have it today, there are a lot of folks who are interested in buying property.

Whether you have MHA implemented or no MHA implemented, you're by a light rail station.

So there's a lot of folks who would really love to be able to build taller buildings by light rail stations.

Implementation of MHA allows for us to make sure those developers pay a fee or build affordable housing where they don't have to pay that fee or build that affordable housing today.

For community benefits issues, I think that there's a lot of really good stories to tell, and the cities have approached this in a lot of different ways, mostly in proactive work with developers.

A project like the Africatown project in the Central District where we've got a private sector developer who's worked with a nonprofit in the neighborhood to build housing for the neighborhood is a great example.

There are a lot of different ways that the planning department has engaged with folks.

But to your final point, the hearings examiner is going to rule very shortly about whether or not we can move forward with implementation of MHA.

We're all on pins and needles and I'm very hopeful that we do have the chance to go out and implement it because we know that it is an important strategy to reduce displacement in neighborhoods like Rainier Beach when we can ask developers to build affordable housing on site.

Thank you very much for that.

Sally, can I make a brief point with you?

This is an interesting proposal you brought up with Councilmember Juarez, a recent meeting.

It's kind of back to the whole fabric of the community here, talking about public art installations, making sure they're culturally appropriate.

She was talking about totem poles and other things.

What do you hope to accomplish here?

What's going on?

There's a bigger discussion here.

Right.

Well, it's very interesting to me with Councilmember Juarez on the council.

she has raised issues that have really never been discussed before and she's focused on natives here in Seattle and there's different tribes and there's some things that we have that are pretty offensive and I'm trying to find out to whom are they offensive.

And can we agree on some things?

And can we make some changes?

And an example, over in City Hall Park, which is right behind the courthouse, I've been working on that all summer.

There is a stone, and it is just about the size of this table.

And on the stone is a plaque, and it was done by an organization 100 years ago that sort of glorifies the fact that there was a major fight between some white settlers and some of the natives, and the natives were destroyed.

And that's honoring the fact that that battle happened.

Well, I'm not so sure that that's appropriate then, but it certainly isn't now.

And so I have invited Councilmember Juarez to work with me.

She's parks chair.

I vice chair that.

Let's bring in the community and ask.

And then it's in some ways, it's a little bit like removing the Confederate statues.

It's like, let's get ourselves updated.

Okay.

Thanks, Rob.

We need to wrap up here.

You made an announcement recently about not running for re-election?

Why'd you make that announcement?

Why now, I guess?

And what's going on?

Great question.

Thanks for acknowledging that, Brian.

You know, as somebody who made strong commitments when I was running for office in 2015 to a lot of people, but most importantly to my wife and young kids, I had said, I want to do this for a one term.

And I think it's really important to keep your promises to folks, and particularly for my family.

This is a really good decision for us.

I wanted to do it now because I think for other folks that are contemplating running for office next year, it's a hard decision.

And for those of us with young families, that requires a lot of conversations and the holidays tend to be a good time where you can spend time and energy focusing on that.

So I wanted to make sure that I announced early so that other folks had a chance to step into that space and talk to their families about whether or not it's something that they want to do.

OK, Sally, so let's say next December, Rob calls you up and says, hey, are you free at Monday 2 p.m.

for a cup of coffee?

Would you be free?

Just just thought I'd ask.

Listen, I am working with Mr. Johnson from now until the end of 2019. Sounds like a plan.

With absolute knowledge that this man is going to be running through the tape.

So it's a delight to be able to work with him.

All right.

Thank you very much, both of you, for this.

We'll see you next time.