Hello, I'm your host, Brian Calamea.
How is the city of Seattle responding to the recent Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision?
Will another attempt by the city to build a safe parking area for people living in RVs succeed?
Council President Debra Juarez and Council Member Dan Strauss answer these questions and the ones you're sending in, too, next on Council Edition.
Too many people are being hit and are dying, particularly in South Seattle along Rainier Avenue.
We are venturing into dangerous territory.
I'm glad to say that Washington is one of the 21 states that upholds a woman's right to choose all that and more coming up next on City Inside out Council edition.
And here they are.
I'm joined by Council President Deborah Juarez, who represents District 5 here in Seattle, and also Council Member Dan Strauss, who represents District 6. Thanks to both of you for being here.
Now, usually summer's a little bit of a slower time politically, but we are recording the show not long after the U.S.
Supreme Court's reversal of Roe versus Wade.
And Council President Juarez, I wanted to talk to you about this.
Your thoughts about the decision and what role Seattle is going to play in the aftermath of it.
I think what we found most disturbing, and we discussed it in our office, is that instead of talking about privacy and liberty and our rights under the 14th and 5th Amendment in the United States Constitution and the Roe v. Wade of 50 years of upholding that right, we really kind of slithered our way into these new terms of that a woman's right to obtain an abortion does not contain or is not an essential component of what they call ordered liberty.
And I was saying to my colleagues before we came here that that is some real handmaiden language about what is ordered liberty based on this country's history and culture.
And I would beg to differ with a lot of the comments and a lot of the statements that were made by the Justice Alito and those, and particularly a couple of the other opinions that were written by Thomas in Kavanaugh.
But I guess my point is this.
We are venturing into dangerous territory.
I'm glad to say that Washington is one of the 21 states that upholds a woman's right to choose.
As you know, 20, 30 years ago, we passed Initiative 120, I believe, which is a right for women and the right to an abortion.
And in March of 2022, we passed another law that protects people getting abortions and people aiding them.
What I'm concerned about are the trigger laws.
We still have 13 states that have trigger laws that will essentially come into effect right now or by the end of July, that Roe v. Wade will be gone and the Hobbs decision will be upheld.
And there are 16 states that still allow, do not allow abortion, even in the case of rape and incest.
We have a collision here of major proportions.
And I know that it isn't just women, but it's men and anyone who cares about civil liberties, privacy in our country and the constitution.
This is gonna be a major emotional, but it has to be a frank and honest discussion about abortion on both sides of the aisle.
Thank you for that.
Council members trust.
I just wanted to make sure I get your 2 cents on this because the council did pass a resolution opposing the draft decision from the Supreme Court back in May, and I know we heard from Mayor Harrell recently saying he wants more funding going towards abortion care in the city.
Could you talk about how you think the city of Seattle should be responding in this situation?
Yeah, it's clear to me that both the city, the county and the state are going to need to put more money into abortion access because we're going to be the safe haven for so many people from across our country.
This ruling creates a dangerous situation for many people in their ability to access basic health care.
I'm horrified.
frankly, about this decision.
And I'm worried about more decisions like this and worse coming down from the Supreme Court because this is going to just double down our need here in Seattle and King County and Washington State to continue doing all we can to support residents from across our country who do not have the ability to live in places that are safe for them when accessing basic health care such as abortions.
If I could just add one thing, Brian.
You know that Governor Inslee said Friday that he wants to add an amendment to our state constitution again to protect.
And that's pretty powerful.
That's very powerful coming from a sitting governor to amend the state constitution to not just have a law in the books, but actually have it in the constitution.
And hopefully that will spread like wildfire across this country.
Okay, thank you for that.
Council President Juarez, I'm going to stick with you and ask about something completely different here regarding a development up in District 5 in North Seattle, which you represent.
Your office recently put together the Hub of the North report encouraging development there.
You actually mentioned tribal sovereignty is an asset there as well.
What impact do you think your district is going to see out of this, this push for development?
Well, I'm glad that you made the intersectionality or the crosscut between the hub of the North, economic vitality.
And I was just thinking my colleagues and working with tribes and sovereignty and government to government, because from my former job, then coming here, one of the things that I've done and I think we should do is we should look at tribal governments on the government to government basis, but more importantly, use tribal sovereignty as a leverage for economic vitality.
And that isn't in just casinos and recreation.
it's business, it's construction.
My understanding is that the Muckleshoot tribe bought some property in District 4, I believe, to the tune of, I don't know, 17 million.
I can't remember now.
I can't see it on my sheet either.
So anywho, so we're trying to combine the development north of the Ship Canal and citywide, and also look at the aspects of more than a land acknowledgement that we actually implement land policies that go beyond an acknowledgement like co-management, like repatriation, like returning right at first, you know, for a tribe to have an opportunity to buy land in their ceded or unceded areas if we own it and if it's even outside of the city limits.
So there's a lot of land use policies that we can do and that we've started to do.
And that's what I'm hoping that we can do.
Okay, thank you for that.
And I wanted to talk to the land use chair about something here with Councilmember Strauss.
I'll draw you in.
I wanted to talk about something you've been working on with your committee over this past summer that could have a big impact on businesses all over the city.
And I'm looking up on the rooftops here.
So the mayor recently signed this legislation to allow for more things like greenhouses, penthouses, or even rooftop bars, while also encouraging some energy conservation too.
Can you talk about what's happening with this?
In Seattle, we now have the strongest energy code in the nation.
And to accomplish the strong energy code, we're requiring things like heat pumps and other types of HVAC equipment.
When we're doing this, it requires more space to be used on the roof.
So a lot of this, I know you talked about the attractive aspects that are very minor in the bill of talking about penthouses and rooftop bars and then the rest, but really the importance of this legislation is that we're allowing for more, capacity on the roof so that we can have high-speed elevators and spaces in areas that have been zoned to have taller buildings.
So just think of it this way.
If a building has the zoning or has the rooftop capacity for an elevator that serves five floors, that's going to be a very different type and speed of elevator that comes with a lot of different mechanical equipment than a building that has 15 floors.
And so that's a lot of, you know, this is bringing our code up to being compliant with what we're requiring of people to put out there.
What I can also say about rooftop bars in particular, it's much like bars and restaurants throughout our city because we have a strong maritime component to waterfront use.
We don't have a lot of good restaurants and places to look out at the view.
Similarly enough, our code has been restrictive about rooftop bars and so as we continue to grow up, the views get better and I'm excited to be able to let businesses use their entrepreneurial skill to show the great views of our city.
You spoke at a press conference in Woodland Park last month where at a large encampment, the city referred more than 80 people to shelter and housing.
The head of the County Regional Homelessness Authority, RHA, Mark Jones, said at the time, and I'll quote him here, quote them here, This can't be a victory lap because not everyone is housed.
However, I'm really, really happy to affirm that the number of shelter and housing exits from this work are the highest we have ever been able to achieve.
But this work takes time.
We also had a viewer write in about the situation at Ballard Commons, which was cleared in December of last year.
They wrote this, summer is here and Ballard Commons is still surrounded by fences.
Is there a plan?
The spray park used to be a neighborhood highlight in the summer.
I wanted to touch on both of those issues because Council Member Strauss, and you can talk about Woodland Park or Ballard Commons specifically if you'd like, but I'm really trying to help people understand the city's overall strategy here when it comes to connecting with people who are homeless, and then also how that is going to work in terms of getting them into shelter, and then finally, what the average person who does have a home can expect to see out of this process.
Yeah, and so the success here is months of planning.
And what I mean by that is in the last week before the Woodland Park encampment was closed, we moved 49 people inside.
And the only way we were able to do that was because we had taken the time for our professional outreach workers to build relationships, to understand who was there by name, who their name was, and what services and types of housing they needed.
Did they need to go with a partner?
Did they need to be separated from other people?
Did they have a lot of things or no things?
And so when we take this time to understand who a person is, what they need, and what resources they will accept, and what are right for them, we see a very high amount of uptake of people coming inside.
And this is a bit different than how the city's been doing it in the past.
When you come in and you have a very limited amount of time to build a relationship with someone and possibly that person has been offered shelter that doesn't meet their needs in the past and they're given take this or you have to scram, that doesn't work and it doesn't work to get people inside.
So we've been successful at Woodland Park with 89 people coming inside.
At Ballard Commons, 70% of people on the by name list came inside.
These are the highest numbers in city history.
So talking about the Ballard Commons Park right now, I've got a workgroup set up right now for 22nd Avenue and Ballard so that we can see not only at the park, but we've got a library, we've got a customer service center, we've got a Seattle Housing Authority building there, we've got two large apartment buildings, we've got St. Luke's Episcopal Church, Which, through my work we got $10 million from the housing office of housing to build family affordable units, three bedroom units for for families to be able to live have affordable housing in downtown Ballard.
There's a lot of work going on and what I can say is that we've worked with the parks department to make sure that the hardscape aspects of that park are ready.
We're now working on the activation plan as well as we're making sure that there's a couple things that weren't quite completed that I was hoping to see completed in the park and what I can tell you is that the adjacent neighbors when I met with them last week were very worried frankly, that the park would reopen immediately.
And so what I have to do as a council member for District 6 is I have to balance the needs of the residents on Finney Ridge and in Green Lake, Greenwood, and Crown Hill.
I have to balance their needs with the needs of the people who live directly adjacent to the park.
And that's my job.
And that's what I'm doing.
And so we have a regular operations meeting where we discuss the activation plan and how we're going to open this park with a grand reopening.
I think you may know that the park did not receive a lot of updates in the time that it's been open.
And so a lot of the work that's been completed has been deferred maintenance.
And when you look at the park as well, there's a there's a gap in accessibility for Children.
So you've got the spray park, which is great from zero to four.
And then you've got the big skate bowl, which is good for 15 and up.
But there's nowhere for anywhere from from five year olds to 15 year olds to really be able to enjoy that park.
Well,
Can I touch on that though?
Is there a set date for when it might open or where are we looking with that?
Yeah in December we said you know six months to a year and that's currently the time frame that we're working on.
What I want to make sure is that the community partners who are adjacent to the park are bought into the reopening of how and when it will happen and make sure that everyone participates in revitalizing the space because the park is a place for those who are down and out and up on their luck.
And so we're not going to be pushing people out or around.
It's just that we need to make sure we have a plan because this is an urban park, which is very different than Woodland Park, which is an urban forest.
And so we just want to make sure we have success there at Ballard Commons.
Great, thank you for touching on all those pieces there.
Council President Juarez, I want to talk to you about this, the outreach work you're doing when it comes to homelessness in District 5. There's a new dashboard from the Regional Homelessness Authority that shows where camps are, where some public safety issues might be cropping up.
Can you tell us what's happening in your district, what you've been doing to respond to it?
We've been dealing with this housing crisis since it was, you know, declared a crisis in 2015. So we're kind of over that language now.
And you and I were talking a little bit offline with the contract that the city has signed with Lehigh to create an RV safe lot.
Right.
I think what we've seen citywide and now I can just speak specifically to D5.
What we've seen in our district and we're working very closely with parks, S.SPU and SPD is I'm putting that 72 hour notice on the RVs because they're not safe in parks.
And so they've been very careful about working that.
And we no longer have a navigation team, but we've been working really closely with the third party providers to come in and provide services.
The last budget session, I cannot remember how much money was given to to us.
to hire a specific worker in D5 to go out and meet people where they're at and get them into services.
And so we've been counting the numbers, like if you went to an encampment and there were like 40 people, how many of the 40 actually take services?
I wish the numbers were higher.
I think Council Member Strauss touched on that with Woodland Park Zoo, that that was the first time we had such a high percentage of people taking services.
My experience in the last six years is, you know, you don't have that many people taking services.
And so then we get back to the question about, you know, for me anyway, as an elected, is I think it is inhumane to allow people and not to be able to live in parks or in, you know, golf courses or parking lots.
And we certainly don't want to see that, but I would be honest with you and other folks if I were to sit here and say that I think we've got a great handle on the homelessness issue.
I think all coastal cities are dealing with this issue, Portland, San Francisco, LA.
And so what we're really trying to do and what we probably didn't understand, even before we even got the Barb Poppe report five years ago or whatever, is we never understood how important it was to have that backup of housing stock.
And I think that's what we're catching up with now is like, okay, there's a bandwidth of people that are aren't quite poverty but aren't going to make it to that next level to pay, not even your market rate.
And now we're starting to see the density in cities where we as a city as a policy have to start providing that middle housing.
And that's where I think my focus has been with working with developers, low-income developers, affordable housing care developers, transitional housing, those type of things.
Tiny houses are great.
What you'd like to see with a tiny house village is that it transforms into brick and mortar to transitional housing.
And that's really, for me, kind of the arc of where I'd like to see.
You start from someone being, quote, unquote, experiencing homeless in a park.
to transitional, to meeting those needs, to someday being able to situate them either in a permanent supporting housing situation or an actual place to live and raise their family.
Okay, thank you for that.
And Council Member Strauss, I want to make sure that I get your thoughts on this, specifically with this RV park issue that Council President Juarez was talking about.
So I know the city has attempted this before.
Now there's a situation where the RHA has awarded $1.9 million to Lehigh, as Council President Juarez mentioned, to create this safe lot.
The city has tried this before, and I know a few people have brought this up.
Tried this before in 2016, didn't get great results then.
What do you expect to see this time around?
How could it be different?
Well, and I'll go back to answering your last question first.
And I'll come back to this, which is that last year, the city council funded affordable housing at $194 million.
And this was the first time since the McKinsey report came out in 2017. And that report stated we needed to be funding affordable housing at $200 million a year for five years, I believe.
And so we are finally in year one of us being able to meet these goals.
And it's really important that it will because it'll take a couple of years for those dollars to really be felt by the community.
So it's important that we stay on this track.
Regarding the RV safe lots, yeah, it was tried before.
It was even tried in my district before it was a District 6. I still lived in Ballard, and so I followed it closely.
And there were some basic, I mean, we're going back to Maslow's basic hierarchy of needs.
Is there water?
Is there food?
Is there, you know, is there a place to have a kitchen, to take a shower, to use the bathroom?
These are the basics of why a person would or would not come to it.
We also need to make sure that people are able to repair their vehicles because a lot of people would rather keep moving if not for their vehicle doesn't work.
And so in the time since that pilot was tried and just because you try something and it doesn't work doesn't mean you don't try it again.
It means that you look at what you did wrong figure out how you need to improve and do it again and do it better and so working with the vehicle residency outreach team Jen Adams in particular who.
That program was slated to be cut last year's budget.
I saved it and expanded that budget because I know how many RVs are in my district.
And I rely on Jen Adams and her team to be able to give me the information of who needs help, what type of help they need, and how can we address the RVs in the district.
So at the end of the day, we do need a place for RVs that people are living in that do not work for them to go, that are not our city streets.
And I'm hoping that this program will be successful and to fill that void.
Okay, thanks very much for that.
Council President Juarez, I'm going to go back to you for a question about light rail.
The council is working through a resolution with its preferred alternative for Sound Transit as it heads to Ballard and West Seattle through downtown.
Sound Transit also has a new CEO, Julie Tim.
A lot going on right now with this agency.
I know a lot of viewers are anxious about the vote for light rail alignment plan for Sound Transit.
at the end of July.
We got one tweet coming into us about this.
Sound Transit 3 serves many Seattle neighborhoods with light rail, but many other neighborhoods that Sound Transit 3 leaves out will need to be served in a future ST4 expansion.
How exactly should the City of Seattle work with Sound Transit to plan ahead and build new ST3 stations with future ST4 expansion in mind?
I just wanted to look at this broadly if we could.
You serve on the Sound Transit Board.
I want to talk about what you want to advocate for maybe concerns about the cost of the project, anything that comes to mind when we talk about Sound Transit as this big vote is on the horizon.
Well, that's a lot.
That's a big question.
You basically shoved about 12 questions in there.
So I'm going to start from the perspective as a board member for Sound Transit.
OK, Tri-County, as you know, Snohomish, King, Pierce, 19 board members.
We selected Julie Timm.
She's coming from Virginia.
She will not start.
I think not till September 26. And you can read about her on their other on their website.
So my understanding and what I've worked from, if you will, from the platform is that as a board member, I start, we start looking at different stations and plans and the preferred, you know, the preferred model is that we look at ridership.
We look at equity.
We look at the timeline or that is how we fold in, you know, what stations and when they're coming, you know, what's a tunnel, what's an infill.
But for me, those are the important things, but the real driving common denominator that pardon the pun is the engineering.
It's not a political question.
It's an engineering question.
What makes sense while at the same time looking at these variables of ridership and equity and tenure?
And so it would be premature for me now to say, you know, what the preferred alternative plan we're looking at, we're focusing for me, I have been mainly focusing on the international district and how, what disruptions would hurt them because they've already been hurt.
Like when the, when the, when the dome was built or not.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And so we don't, we don't want that again, because we know that historically transportation projects have been quite frankly, racist.
keeping them out of the nicer neighborhoods, putting them more in the dense neighborhoods, but not offering any benefits.
And that's where the whole thinking of transit-oriented development and housing, that's where this whole big push came in in the last decade.
That's the new fancy term we're using, that urbanists are using.
So what I want to see in the International District and what I would like to see, obviously, for Seattle Center, Soto, and Ballard, and certainly on council members Strauss's neighborhood is we are gonna have disruptions.
That just happens.
We had it with the waterfront.
We had it with climate pledge.
We had it with the cracking community iceplex.
You're gonna have that.
But what you say, it's the kind of common sense of you get a nickel to get a quarter and we hope better benefits come from that.
And so we have gotten over 5,000 comments from the community.
We're supposed to vote on July 28th.
I'm hoping that that's the date that we can stick with Julie, Tim coming in.
But I'm hearing for the first time real conversations about equity and neighborhoods and what can stay vibrant and how we can protect those neighborhoods.
But we're coming at it from a perspective that it's not just, you know, poor BIPOC neighborhoods.
These are vibrant neighborhoods that have been around forever that give the flavor of Seattle.
that there's something intuitively, I can't say that word, inherently, thank you, beautiful about making that our city.
So no, it's not the space needle, but yes, the idea is important.
Inner Bay is important.
How do we get out to Ballard or I'm sorry, how do we get out to West Seattle and across the water?
Because then those are more engineering issues.
I'm still leaning on looking at the Delridge and the junction place, but again, I really look to Sound Transit staff and their engineers to guide us.
Okay, thank you very much for that.
Councilmember Strass, there is plenty of talk in your district about light rail.
What's your take on what the council is recommending?
How do you want to approach this issue, please?
Well, as Councilman President Juarez stated, at the end of the day, it's going to be Sound Transit's decision.
We don't have a formal Seattle City Council has no formal role, and we're inserting our voice.
through a resolution, as you mentioned earlier about another resolution.
Resolutions are non-binding.
They don't actually do anything.
And so I think I have some concern with that.
But it's been clear the community members in my district don't want a station that is east of 15th.
In fact, they want it west of 15th.
But right now, we're looking at 15th and 14th.
And I can tell you that 15th Avenue Northwest is the third most used north-south corridor behind 99 and I-5.
And what that means is we've got a low level highway running through my neighborhood.
And I don't want to see Sound Transit requiring people who, because the housing and commercial core is in downtown Ballard.
And I think that I have a concern with requiring people to cross this heavy arterial to get to the station.
And furthermore, You know, I heard one person recently refer to it.
It's only one block between 14th and 15th.
Well, I'll have you know, and actually, let me pull it off my board here.
This is the old map of Ballard as it was when it was a city annexed May 29th, 1907. Before that, anything east of 15th was not part of Ballard.
And so the blocks out there, because they were farmland are, I'm gonna go walk it and get the exact measurements.
So I'm not out here pontificating, but I can tell you they're much longer blocks.
So it doesn't sound, when you and I are talking 14th, 15th, it all sounds pretty similar.
But when you take into account the amount of traffic that's on 15th, Yeah, distance from the commercial and housing core, and then the size of that block it.
It becomes a big deal.
OK, and I know there's a lot more conversation going on at the City Council level here.
I'm going to try to jam in two more questions if I can.
Council President Juarez, can you talk to me and maybe a 45 second answer if you can manage it?
Talking about the work you're doing with the Seattle Police Department when it comes to missing and murdered indigenous people.
This is a big issue for Seattle.
This city has the highest number of missing and murdered indigenous women of any urban area in the US.
What are some of the challenges involved here?
What are you working on with the SPD?
We passed the legislation and we hired Francesca.
She's over in Department of Neighborhoods has been working with Seattle Indian Health Board.
and the Seattle Police Department.
And we had our, we had a couple of briefings and we were in committee.
We're waiting for another, I think we're going to have another briefing on July 21st, I believe.
But basically, and I think I was sharing this with you before, our job as electeds and chairing the committees and Native communities is in my committee, is to listen to the stakeholders, draft the legislation, make sure it gets funded.
and then that it lands in the right city department.
So right now, the missing murdered issue and some other issues will land with the Indigenous Advisory Council, which is set to hopefully get online in the next, I don't know, two months or so.
And we're gonna wait to see what the recommendations are that come out of SPD and come out of Seattle Indian Health Board.
So that's kind of where we're at right now.
Okay, we'll keep updating people on that one.
Council Member Strauss, I wish we could spend more time on this one, but I did want to make sure we mentioned it.
Vision Zero, some concerns about this.
The city's plan to eliminate traffic deaths in the city by the year 2030. Those numbers are actually going up instead of down.
I know that's a concern for you as Vice Chair of the Transportation Committee.
Can you give me a 45 second answer about where we are and where that plan needs to go?
Yeah, I'd say too many people are being hit and are dying, particularly in South Seattle along Rainier Ave.
We have 8% of deaths occurring in District 6, while 44% are occurring in District 2. Just to remind the viewing public, 9 out of 10 people survive being hit at 20 miles an hour, 5 out of 10 people survive being hit at 30 miles an hour, and 1 out of 10 people survive at being hit at 40 miles an hour.
We can build our city in a way that reduces and eliminates collisions and death.
because 93% of fatalities are occurring on arterials and 80% of people being killed on streets.
And these are happening on streets where there's no bike lanes provided.
We can't rely on just enforcement because enforcement happens after the fact.
And I can tell you, I got hit by a driver while riding my bike.
I was hit at approximately 35 miles an hour.
I had to self inflate my lung so that I could survive until medic 18 got there.
Right.
And so these are real world things.
I wouldn't be with you.
There's a very high likelihood I wouldn't be with you today because this happened to me.
And reducing speeds and reducing opportunities for conflict and people inside and outside of vehicles enhances safety for everyone.
And so we need to be doing more.
And particularly, we need to be looking at where this is happening the most often.
If I could add to that, though, please briefly.
I mean, customer stress made a point, but I don't want to kind of make you sound like it's worse than D5, but District 5 has three state highways running through it, including I5.
So we have the highest level of fatalities of pedestrian car accidents in District 5 because we have Lake City Way, which is 522. We have 523. We have Aurora and we have I5 and we only have three bridges that go east and west.
So that is like a big issue for District 5 as well.
Got it.
I know everyone's got issues with that one, so we're going to keep following that issue.
I thank you both for joining me and we will see you next time on Council edition.