What's Kraken with Councilmembers Juarez & Pedersen? The duo talks pandemic, public safety & hockey!

I'm Brian Calamea.

How is Seattle working to get back to normal with an alarming rise in Delta variant COVID cases?

How is the City Council responding to what our police chief calls a public safety crisis?

And what's the latest on a major revitalization project in North Seattle?

Council members Deborah Juarez and Alex Peterson answer these questions and the ones you're sending in, too, next on Council Edition.

We have agencies arguing about minutia.

This is a homelessness crisis.

Let's get beyond that.

Let's get that tiny home village in place.

What I don't want to see is neighborhood residential housing versus single family zoning.

That is the narrative I do not want to see because that's a zero-sum game.

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

And here they are, councilmember Debra Juarez, councilmember Alex Peterson.

Thank you both for joining me here, and I'll jump right into it.

It's great to be back in the studio with you both, by the way, and I hope a sign of returning to normal in some way.

We've seen some signs of life around Seattle, downtown, some businesses reopening on the waterfront, tourism, cruise ships getting started again.

But we also have new concerns about the Delta variant with COVID, et cetera.

Councilmember Juarez, I'll start with you.

This thought about getting back to normal, getting out of pandemic mode somehow.

What's the status of that recovery right now from your perspective?

I know there's a lot of hope out there, but a lot of concern too Well, let's start with downtown Mainly, it's addressing homelessness and public safety It's reimagining the empty spaces that we have the office space getting people back downtown Because we know and not until we get this pandemic under control.

Are we going to get the recession under control?

So now we have this new variant.

So again, we're going to have to like, you know re-examine how we do this, but I think the tools are still the same.

Continue to wear masks, continue to focus on safety, continue to get people downtown, how do we use the spaces, and learn how to live in this pandemic-infused environment.

And I think we've done a pretty good job, quite frankly, in the year and a half that we've been under this.

Councilmember Peterson, I'll bring you in here.

You wrote an op-ed in the Seattle Times a couple months ago about this path to recovery from COVID here.

You had some ideas about having the council work more closely with businesses, especially in the downtown core there.

I know the council's been talking a lot about this, not only helping downtown, helping other neighborhoods, too.

How do you balance that?

Let me know about your thoughts about recovering from COVID.

Sure.

Well, first, I think we need to thank our mayor and her team and the firefighters for vaccinating so many Seattleites.

You know, we led the nation in the percentage of vaccinations, and that enables us to have an economic recovery, even as we're trying to keep the variants at bay.

And even though we're both district council members and focused on 100,000 plus residents in our districts, You know, we recognize downtown is such an important part of our economy.

It's a job center.

It helps to create that economic activity and the revenues that we use to help more vulnerable populations in our city.

So we want to keep the focus on downtown so that we can get those revenues we need.

And as Councilmember Juarez said, addressing homelessness, it's addressing public safety, so that our employers and their employees and the customers feel safe to be downtown.

It's difficult to know where we are in the pandemic now with the new variant coming out or whatever else.

I guess, what do you tell businesses that come to you and say, we're worried, we don't know what happens next?

Any thoughts about that, Councilmember Peterson?

Well, we're going to continue to follow the advice of our public health professionals.

And again, with those high vaccination rates, we can bring people back downtown as long as they're following the proper protocols.

Yeah.

Any thoughts about that?

I do.

And I'm really glad you came back to me on that one, because there are two big things happening for us, for the city of Seattle.

And one is the convention center.

And we're so excited about that.

It's going to open in 2022, and we're looking at about $260 million in spending, which is amazing.

And then, of course, we've done the Seattle waterfront, which we just finished up.

$800 million project, 20 more acres of park, boulevards, bike lanes.

That whole jewel, that spine in there, is just going to be amazing with the 12 major projects we have going, the connecting of the aquarium and the zoo and Pike Place Market.

And I know people use the word reimagining a lot, but this really was a reimagined project that's been going on since 2011. So take the convention center, the waterfront, that kind of vitality, and the cruise ships are coming back.

Let's see where we're at this time next year.

I wanted to touch on another piece, a definite bright spot here, how the Northgate neighborhood is growing and changing, et cetera.

I want to talk about the new iceplex coming online as we speak, I believe, the Seattle Krakens practice facility opening up a rink here in late July.

I want to talk about a lot of what's going on here.

There's the rink, there's new housing coming online, too, in D5.

I want to talk about the impact overall of the Krakens new facility.

And maybe you could let Councilmember Peterson know if you're working on an ice dancing routine with them in the near future.

Yes, we are actually.

Well, first of all, it's called the Kraken Community Iceplex.

And our new tagline is D5 is Kraken.

So we're expecting about 800,000 visitors within the iceplex in that whole area.

We're looking at two hotels, 1,400 units of housing, we've got market rate, low income, we've got affordable.

We have our pedestrian bike bridge that connects us to North Seattle College.

We have our light rail that's coming in.

We're fighting right now really hard.

I sit on the sound transit board for our stop at 130th.

And we're also, the city bought the eight acres across the street from Northgate Mall, Northgate Commons.

So we're looking at housing there.

We're tripling the housing there with a third of it being affordable low income.

So, I think people kind of get a little, they kind of forget that, you know, we have this going on and that's why the NHL picked D5.

It wasn't that they came first and everything came after.

We created this Petri dish, if you will, of transit-oriented housing, transit-oriented economic development, transit-oriented, you know, develop, all those things that we've been talking about since 2014, 2013. We all brought that together for the density, and what came is exactly what we had anticipated.

If you put housing in transit, and you have a rich transit spine, and you start rezoning for more density and housing, you are going to bring and attract business, commercial, and those kind of players in a neighborhood that really, actually, quite frankly, needs it.

And can I ask quickly, just on that Northgate Pedestrian Bridge, we got an email in about this one.

Joe sent this in.

What's the timeline on getting the Northgate Pedestrian Bridge named the John Lewis Bridge?

White male here, 100% support, let's go.

Some thoughts about this.

I know this is in discussion right now.

I'm really glad you brought that up because this is so important.

But can I put something in context just a little bit?

We did an inventory, our office, of the whole city of Seattle, looking at structures and what they're named.

And then we focused on the north end.

And then we realized there was such an absence of structures in the north end of naming African American, BIPOC community leaders, activists, regionally and nationally.

But then we focused on D5.

Turns out in D5, there is not one structure, bridge, community center, anything named after anyone of a BIPOC status, okay?

So, except for Seattle Public Schools has the Bob Eagle Staff School, and James Baldwin School will come online when they rename Northgate Elementary.

So, we thought, and I worked with community members, John Lewis Bridge, how fitting is that?

Conscious of the Congress, a bridge builder, a man that is good friends with Larry Gossett, has a history, but I think more importantly, and this is where I really want to put something in context, Places, structures, names are sacred.

And in our culture, we believe if you stop saying someone's name, then they're really gone.

And I want a big bronze plaque to say John Lewis, activist, civil rights.

And how timely is it that now we're dealing with the John Lewis Voting Rights Act and what has happened in these last couple of years?

I want people to come over that bridge and the young kids people anyone say oh, I know who John Lewis is Yeah, this is a man who fought for civil rights voting rights and did the right thing for our country.

Yeah.

Yeah Councilmember Peterson.

I want to bring in here a big part of this revitalization We're talking about is the impending arrival of light rail in these multiple stations you district Roosevelt North 130th You're head of the council's transportation committee.

I wanted your take on this What kind of revitalization are we looking at there?

What does this look like from your perspective?

Sure.

Well, we have two stations that are going to be opening on October 2nd.

They're game changers for encouraging people to ride transit, to get out of their cars, get back to their jobs downtown.

It's that transportation spine that goes all the way to Northgate and will go beyond that.

It goes all the way to SeaTac Airport.

So that's going to revitalize the U District and Roosevelt neighborhoods.

Also, I look forward to hearing the legislation on the John Lewis Bridge.

It's coming to our committee August 4th.

And so, you know, he's just, I'm reading his book now, Across the Bridge, about his experience there.

That's a historic civil rights moment where they crossed the the bridge in 1965 and we can, you know, following up on Council Member Juarez's leadership, look at other places to name.

I know the name, former Council Member Richard McIver has come up for his being a champion in South Seattle, why not name the South Graham Street Station after him for example.

And we are going to do a statute and recognize my Uncle Billy Frank in Olympia as well.

But look what Uncle Billy had to go through to be recognized, to be beaten by fish and wildlife, to be enslaved, to be in jail, to fight for their treaty rights.

I want people to understand that our history goes beyond the depths of being enslaved, beyond the depths of colonization, beyond the depths of genocide, all those things.

I want people to look at something positive and say, these are people that changed our minds and our hearts.

This is what America should represent.

And I think that should be memorialized.

Thank you for that.

I wanted to follow up on a quick light rail question if I could, Councilmember Peterson.

We got a question that came in from a viewer that said this.

North Seattle residents are feeling a lot of displacement pressure due to the overall housing crunch, but also accelerated by Shoreline's light rail station opening up.

Is anyone going door to door to hear from these residents?

If I can extract from it, I think talking about these light rail stations in the present and future, a lot of upside to it, but there is some concern about displacement.

Can you talk about that piece, please?

Yes, so it's very important that when we're upzoning an area and allowing for increased density where real estate developers can come in and build new things that we make sure that there are anti-displacement strategies in place first so that we're not losing a bunch of existing affordable housing.

Naturally occurring affordable housing is often demolished to replace it with more density, but not necessarily more affordability.

So I think when we talk more about land use changes in the future, making sure we put those strategies in place first, and that way we can build more, but also have more low-income housing.

Thank you for that.

And we're going to come back to land use in just a little bit here.

But I wanted to talk about, while we're definitely discussing a lot of progress in the city when it comes to light rail, there are some concerns, too, specifically around public safety.

I wanted to approach this with both of you.

Shortly before we recorded the show, four fatal shootings, unrelated, but they happened all over the city of Seattle, seven people injured as well.

Interim police chief Adrian Diaz who's had a number of officers leave his department over the past year and a half said this This isn't just a staffing crisis.

We have a public safety crisis council member Juarez one of those fatal shootings You know, I know was in your district in Lake City your response to this violence and what the chief is saying well I have two things to say, um, you know, we have to go with facts not feelings and we've had seven shootings and five deaths in the last five days and I think the mayor said this, I think we've been saying this, and I know Alex and I have been saying this, is that it is a false choice between public safety and community redirecting police funds.

You can actually do both, okay?

And it's another show, probably, maybe not at the same time.

But I want to say, I want to like put in context how I look at public safety.

And it isn't anything different than I've been saying for 30 or 40 years.

The first defense against violence is community.

If people have jobs, then we already know from statistics studies, and I can go on and on about all that, is that if the FICO scores in a neighborhood is around 50, you have more crime.

If your FICO score is around 700, that's actually been documented.

You have no crime.

You have neighborhoods that have jobs.

an opportunity for people to have access into the marketplace, to buy homes, to build wealth.

You don't have this kind of crime.

So when people are saying we need to invest upstream, that's what they're talking about.

Now, I'm not saying that every community group is going to go out there and stop people shooting, but it's going to take time to see the effects of taking some of that money and reinvest it in these upstream community groups, right?

But in the real world, We still need police officers there.

We need public safety.

Our charter requires public safety.

You need it.

Our 911 calls, they're down.

They should be like a seven minute time and they're down.

And in our community and citywide, even though Alex and I represent districts, we represent all of the city.

Our vote weighs just as much as everybody else's.

So, I'm a big proponent of supporting our officers, but supporting the community organizations, but more importantly, getting away from this crazy narrative that you either have to say, defund the police, abolish the police and everything's going to be great, or hire 700 officers and, you know, we live in this crazy military town where, and that's not what you want either.

You could actually weave together both to have that happen.

Alex, let me bring you in here.

The city is in the middle of this process, as Councilmember Juarez was talking about, to reimagine public safety.

When 911 calls don't need an armed officer, the city is looking for other solutions, other responses.

I want to talk about this whole reimagining process here.

I know there's a police union contract to consider here.

There are community groups involved.

A lot of moving pieces here.

Your thoughts on public safety.

Thank you.

So first, you know, I want to acknowledge the surge in gun violence and the tragedy for the families and the victims that have suffered through this.

And as my My colleague has astutely pointed out we need a plan, not a percentage, and part of that plan is to revamp the police union contract.

That contract governs the policies and pay for over a thousand police officers, and that's an expired contract.

That's a real opportunity to revamp that, which will increase accountability for disciplinary issues.

It'll also help us to reduce costs so we can use that savings for other programs, social service programs, or hiring more officers.

Since we're losing about 300 officers over a two-year period, which is astronomical, it's alarming.

And so we need to revamp that contract so that we have more flexibility, more accountability, and cost savings.

Let me know about that, though, because I know the council a few years ago passed some accountability legislation.

They worked with the police union about this.

It ended up, the city gave away, I think, a few different pieces there to the union when it came to that contract there.

I just worry about that negotiation and what does happen next.

When you have all these officers leaving, where does that negotiation go?

Is there room for the city to get these type of assurances that you're looking for?

Absolutely.

Please, yes, please.

Let me just say, because I was on council and I also sat on the labor relations when we did that first contract and the legislation, the accountability legislation.

So Alex, or Councilman Peterson, brought up a really good point, which I wish the public would try to understand in what we're working with the contract.

It's a collected bargaining agreement.

So officers, firemen, all those workers, they come in there with their unions and representatives and lawyers.

We have ours.

We hammer it out.

And we were really going through the guidelines of what Judge Robart did in the consent decree, right?

So there were some bumpers there where we couldn't go beyond.

So when people were critical, and I tried to explain, Listen, we're in a collective bargaining agreement, so it isn't like city council can just say, hey, we're just going to negotiate this.

The world doesn't work like that.

So we have this contract.

Councilman Peterson is absolutely correct.

It has to reflect 21st century sensibilities and what our charter requires.

And now I think that's the lens in which we're looking at it at.

Yeah.

Councilman Peterson, any final thoughts on this?

I know this is a big issue for the council this year.

Again, we need to revamp the contract to save the money.

What was the existing contract that was approved?

It made sense at that time years ago.

Now there's been a lot of learning that's occurred and new things that have happened.

So looking at that lens, we need to make the contract more accountable.

and to save money.

For example, right now we pay premium pay to officers just to wear body cameras.

You shouldn't be paid extra to do basic accountability.

Let's use that cost savings to hire more officers and do more alternative strategies.

Thank you for bringing that up.

I want to switch gears, if I could, briefly here, Councilmember Juarez.

You served on the Mayor's Equitable Communities Initiative, working to distribute this $30 million to BIPOC communities, and they're working to respond to things like public safety.

You mentioned some of these upstream investments, etc.

Talk about the ECI's plans, how this initiative could impact the city, especially communities of color.

I'm so glad you asked that because the task force was put together in the fall.

They got to work immediately all the way up to like three weeks ago, over 30 meetings, 26 community members.

They had four phenomenal pillars that I actually wrote down are dedicated to business, education, housing, and health.

And these are investment strategies of where they want to go.

And I was so proud of this group because the people that are on the group, My big shout out to my district director, Dean Alsup, who attended every meeting.

I was an ex-officio, but I did not want to have a council presence there because I didn't want a chilling effect.

I don't need to tell black leaders what to do.

They know what to do.

I don't have to get into their business.

They know what's up.

I kind of took a page out of Indian Country and when I met with some of the groups and talked about it, you know, they took that inventory of what does our community look like, what is the human capital there, what is the physical infrastructure there, and how can they leverage it.

And that's what they've done.

So I'm really, really, really excited.

Yeah, we'll see what happens in the next couple weeks.

I want to pick up the pace ever so slightly here.

And Councilmember Peterson, I want to talk about a few stories we've seen over the summer about new sources of federal funding coming in for the West Seattle Bridge, the repair project there.

I want to talk about the impact this money is going to have on this.

I think the big question from the West Seattle Peninsula is does it get built faster or what's going on?

Well, the good news is that we're on time to restore access to the West Seattle High Bridge by mid next year.

And it's a $175 million project.

Our Seattle Department of Transportation has done an amazing job pulling together various resources so it's not just the city government doing everything.

And so we've got federal dollars, we've got regional dollars, the port of Seattle's helping.

You know, there are 100,000 Seattleites stranded there.

It negatively impacts the port, which is an engine of economic activity.

So, you know, I'm glad the mayor made the decision to restore that bridge as quickly as possible.

And the federal funds help a lot so that we don't have to do it all ourselves.

Could you touch briefly on one issue that I know you've been carrying a torch for for a while, which is bridge maintenance on a larger scale here?

He's Mr. Bridge.

This is the guy.

He's bringing sexy back on bridge maintenance.

All right, what do you got there?

Yeah, the West Seattle Bridge was a wake-up call, so we audited all of the bridges in the city, and it showed that we're way behind on maintaining our bridges.

You know, bridges connect everybody, whether you're on a bus or bike, there are pedestrian bridges we're talking about.

So, right.

And so, I'm really looking forward to Mayor Durkin delivering her budget proposal to us in a few weeks and seeing an increase for bridge maintenance because we can't afford to have another bridge cracked and 16 closed.

We need to, it keeps our economy moving, keeps everybody moving during this economic recovery.

So let's invest more in our bridges.

A lot of them are over 100 years old, including the University Bridge in my district.

Yeah, a lot to do there.

Council Member Juarez, I wanted to touch briefly on another light rail issue.

serve on the Sound Transit Board of Directors.

That group's talking about some realignment right now, which I know is a bit of a dirty word.

So we're in this situation.

Well, you've got the revenue from sales taxes taking a hit over the past year plus, but we still have this really hot market for property construction, so lower revenue, higher costs, seeing that there.

Talk to us about the path forward.

What's going on on the board right now?

Things are going good.

Okay, so we went from a 12 billion dollar affordability gap to a 6.5 affordability gap all within less than six months.

Still more than I make in a week, but keep going.

Okay, so the next piece is Board Chairman Kiel, phenomenal.

Council Member Balducci, phenomenal.

The mayor, phenomenal.

All of us work together behind the scenes and with our colleagues and on our committees and put together a hybrid resolution, which will incorporate this target date, what we promised the voters under SD3, right?

So we're gonna go there and say, okay, here are the dates, here are the projects, this is what we promised, and we're gonna be right on top of them with accountability, looking at what the forecasts are and how we can do that.

But more importantly, we still are looking at it through a lens that we're supposed to look at it as a tri-county board on ridership, equity, completing the spine, and tenure, which is phasing.

So when you have that acronym of R.E.S.T., but that's what it means.

And we are all committed to that as tri-county board members.

So we are, pardon the pun, going down the track.

We'll all vote, I think, August 5th.

And I'm actually very supportive.

We have a couple amendments coming in.

I want to move 130th up, which I'm fighting for, which is right now in what they're calling Tier 2. But I want to move it up to Tier 1 so it gets done when it's supposed to get done, which is 2025. And you know, can I say one other thing?

Please, yeah.

Okay, there's a lot of reasons I'm pushing this, but one of the main reasons, and we talked about it earlier in your show, is the density and the explosion in the North End.

We already know that the Northgate light rail is going to have about 50,000 riders.

15,000 of them will be boarding at Northgate.

Can you imagine when we bring on that other state, as we should with the explosion of growth at Bitter Lake, Holler Lake, Northgate?

That was the whole point when we start looking at and started getting money for this back in like 2013, 14.

Right, right.

And I will be paying close attention to that vote.

Thank you for bringing that up.

Absolutely.

I wanted to move on to another issue.

Maybe both of you can weigh in briefly.

Councilmember Peterson, you first here.

You just had a public hearing on the idea of changing the name of single family zoning to neighborhood residential.

What does that mean?

What impact does this have on our neighborhood short term, long term?

There's a lot to unpack here.

Yeah, I support having more low-income housing throughout Seattle, and this name change is fine.

What I really care about is the details that happen after that, and we want to make sure that we have zoning and housing policies help low income families and not for profit developers.

And so I want to make sure we avoid some of the results we're seeing from the mandatory housing affordability program, which are mixed, and that we're seeing a lot of density occurring, which is what we want, but we also want that affordability and we want it built in those neighborhoods.

So unfortunately a lot of real estate developers are choosing the option to write a check instead of build that housing right away.

on-site, and the check only covers about 25 percent of the cost of housing, so as we look at ways to increase building capacity, I think we need to have a finer point on making sure it's for low-income housing families and encouraging more home ownership as well.

Incentivizing maybe these developers to be incentivizing more for them to build on site.

Would that be a piece of this?

Yes Yeah, so so rather than you know, just the name change Why not increase the fees that they have to pay then they'll they might choose to balance it more to build it more quickly on site Integrated in the neighborhoods.

Okay.

Thank you for that councilmember Juarez you and councilmember Peterson both serve on the land use committee and What was your take away from this public hearing on this neighborhood residential name change and what effect do you think this is going to have?

I don't think it's anything new but let me just put it in context.

Whether you call it neighborhood residential housing, what I don't want to see is neighborhood residential housing versus single family zoning.

That is the narrative I do not want to see because that's a zero sum game.

And I think when we are moving towards calling it what it is, is we are capturing in 2021 that we already have neighborhoods that have adus, as you know, and dadus.

We're already saying this is already there.

We already have that there.

And also, I really loved what Ron Sims said.

I don't know if you read, and he's been talking about it, is when we did the urban village and that whole structure and what it was going to look like, that was from the 90s.

And that was, OK, that was fine.

I remember working for Governor Lowry then and saying, we're going to grow with grace.

OK, everyone understood that.

So now it's the 21st century.

It's 2021. We have density.

We have light rail.

Our city has changed dramatically.

We're getting up to 800,000 people in neighborhoods, and we want to have welcoming neighborhoods.

But on a more just kind of a personal note, a philosophical note of what I've watched my whole life being a lawyer, a politician, a judge, is that I truly, honest to God, believe in my DNA that every child should have a good neighborhood.

They should have a community center, a bus stop.

They should have a library.

They should have all the good stuff.

And if we keep doing this density thing, where we're just focusing on transportation and not saying that all these other good things that you see out in the suburbs, and also getting away from this notion that somehow we have to protect the suburbs from urban growth.

Because those are really loaded terms from the 60s and 70s.

And I have a problem with that.

OK.

I want to see if we can sneak it in with about a minute apiece here.

about some tiny home villages opening in both your districts here.

Councilmember Peterson, Rosie's Village, Northeast 45th, I know there might be a couple delays going on with this.

I'd like to try to update people.

And also, you just got an update on the council in a committee meeting about kind of the overall approach for the council and how we're doing with sheltering, etc.

If you can take a minute, I know it's a lot of not a lot of time, but let's talk about this.

Yeah, so clearly we need to ramp up our response to homelessness.

The council has funded a lot of things.

We're waiting for those interventions to be stood up.

So the tiny home villages is one strategy.

to bring people out of parks, off the sidewalks, sleeping in front of stores.

Let's get them into places where they want to go, like tiny home villages.

I identified a site in my district and we're finding there are bureaucratic Issues that pop up where you have agencies arguing about minutiae.

This is a homelessness crisis.

Let's get beyond that Let's let's get that tiny home village in place.

I was in a meeting yesterday I think we had a breakthrough on that with that with that village and then the the council meeting we attended also I think we're seeing council members United and wanting to Stand these up faster.

Okay.

We'll see what happens there next Councilmember Juarez just to wrap up.

I know a new village set up for friendship Heights in your district Yes, talk about that in the overall approach.

I can give you a minute.

We are working with Chief sale club.

Yes, but I want to go back to something customer Peterson said that tiny home villages are just one tool Yes, and one thing I'm proud of in our district.

We had one tiny home village that now has transferred into brick-and-mortar We have another one coming online and King County is buying two hotels and on North Aurora So we're using all these different if you will tools to not just House people in the emergent situation, but transition them into real housing because we don't want people living in parks we don't want them on the street and we've been seeing that and Like I said, I think we had a breakthrough yesterday in our committee about what that means and getting away from you know Going to a church basement and just having a call those days are over and I think when councilmember Bagshaw chaired that committee we moved away from the we'd had the Barb Poppy report and that told us what we needed to do and what our input should be, how we should be getting people out the door.

And I think the most important thing that came out of that also is meeting people where they're at.

Letting people come in with their partners and their pets and their children, being close to their jobs.

If you live up in Lake City Way, but your job is down south in Soto, you know, you want to live in Soto, that's where you should be.

Okay, thank you both for your time.

We'll see you next time on Council Edition.