Good evening and thank you for joining us this evening in this historic venue in District 4 to show your support and witness the swearing in of Seattle's newest city council member, Alex Peterson.
My name is Monica Martinez-Simmons.
I'm the city clerk for the city of Seattle, and I have the distinct honor of administering the official oath of office to your newest council member.
I'm also pleased to report that at 3.38 p.m.
today, I received official notification of the certification of the election, and we can now proceed.
Alex and Lindsay, please join me.
Alex, please raise your right hand and repeat after me.
I, Alex Peterson, swear and affirm that I possess all the qualifications prescribed in the Seattle City Charter and the Seattle Municipal Code for the position of City Council Member.
for the City of Seattle, that I will support the Constitution of the United States, the Constitution of the State of Washington, and the Charter and Ordinances of the City of Seattle, and that I will faithfully conduct myself as Seattle City Councilmember.
Council Member Peterson's wife, Lindsay, will be pinning his city council member pin.
Thank you friends and neighbors.
I am honored and humbled to serve as your new City Council member of District 4 here in District 4. Now this week is Thanksgiving so I hope we can all pause for a moment to consider why we are thankful.
I'm thankful for my family and for my city.
I'm thankful for this place in the heart of Magnuson Park with its waterfront, its artists and athletes, its green open spaces, its majestic trees, and most importantly the nearly 1,000 low-income residents at Solid Ground and Mercy Housing who call it home.
I took the oath of office in this neighborhood because it represents the beauty, the challenges, and the hopes of our district and our city.
I'm thankful for the public officials who have served our city so well on whose shoulders I will strive to stand.
Thank you Councilmember Nicola Cotta, Senator David Frock for being here tonight.
I'm thankful for our Mayor Jenny Durkin.
and the brave men and women in uniform who protect our city, the police officers, the firefighters, the paramedics, they all serve our city doing jobs few of us would have the courage to do.
And I'm thankful for the many candidates in District 4 and across our city who competed for this important job for City Council.
I'm thankful to the thousands of voters for their confidence in me.
And for those who did not vote for me, be comforted.
I'm a public servant who will fairly and responsibly represent all the people of District 4. I'm thankful for the opportunity to fulfill the promise of our system of district representation, a promise enshrined in our city charter with these words, to ensure members of the city council are closer to the people they represent.
I'm thankful for connecting with thousands of voters.
I personally doorbelled every block of our district.
That's nearly 25,000 people in over 20 neighborhoods.
And I'd like to tell you about one of them.
She's a mom named Denise, and she lives in Wallingford.
And like thousands of others I met, she opened her door, looked me in the eye, and said, Mr. Peterson, we need a city council that listens, that cares about all our neighborhoods, that gets back to the basics of city government and spends the city's money as responsibly as if it were its own.
Less rhetoric and more results.
I'm thankful for the diverse and broad coalition of endorsements we received during the campaign, not only from community leaders, many of whom are here tonight, but also from labor unions, local business, and environmentalists.
I'm thankful for the city's Democracy Voucher program, which enabled me to refuse all direct donations from PACs, developers, and interest groups, to be accountable only to the people of District 4. I'm thankful for the thousands of people who used their vote to protest the millions of dollars dumped into these elections by interest groups and corporations.
Ironically, that big money hurt the candidates it was trying to help.
So no matter which side you were on with a candidate, we were all against the big money dump.
And we can all agree our democracy is not for sale.
And that put us on common ground to prevent it from happening in the future.
So I'm thankful for Councilmember Lorena Gonzalez's creative efforts to keep much of that big money out of future elections.
Let's work together to make that proposal as strong and as all-inclusive as possible.
At the same time, the people of our district, like Denise and thousands of others, will not let the dark cloud of dark money obscure the problems that continue in our neighborhoods.
Persistent homelessness, rising crime and prolific offenders, clogged and torn up streets, and a long-standing lack of accountability.
To solve problems, we must hold our city government accountable.
Our executive branch spends $6.5 billion every year across 40 departments.
Our legislative branch must make sure your tax dollars are getting results.
Strong oversight should be the job of every city council member, with every city council member chairing a committee accountable to the priorities of the people.
To tackle our biggest challenge, we should keep the city council committee on homelessness.
To protect our environment, we should create a new committee on climate change so we can expand mass transit with buses and connections to light rail, preserve and expand our tree canopy here in the Emerald City, and hold our city government accountable to reduce carbon emissions and increase our resiliency.
And to find financial savings, that we can redeploy to our priorities, we should create a committee on fiscal accountability.
Let's not tax first and ask questions later.
If we decide we need additional sources of revenue, we should always craft detailed action plans before seeking that revenue.
So for the people of District 4, I pledge to keep alive the flame of common sense, to be a voice of reason, to insist on using facts and data.
Again, less rhetoric, more results.
The city charter requires that we take care of the basics of local government.
Allow me to read from the city charter's preamble.
The people of Seattle enact this charter as the law of the city to enable municipal government to provide services and meet the needs of the people efficiently, to provide for transparency, accountability.
and ethics in government and civil service, to foster fiscal accountability, to promote prosperity, and to meet the broad needs for a healthy and growing city.
That's our charter.
And when making decisions, I will not only honor our charter, but also Denise of Wallingford and the thousands of constituents I serve.
I was forged by the experience of listening to you on your doorsteps.
No shouting at City Hall can drown out those one-on-one heartfelt conversations when you shared your concerns and hopes with me.
An election campaign is a time for highlighting differences, but governing and leading is a time to find common ground and move ahead in a way that brings everyone together for a brighter community and a stronger city.
Let's get to work.
Thank you.