okay good morning everyone thank you all for being here today i am here with representatives from puget sound sage from mlk labor from disability rights washington and from seattle neighborhood greenways to announce that my office will be proposing a transportation levy package of 1.7 billion dollars to fully fund every safety measure that was proposed by every single city council member First, I do want to thank the Chair of Transportation, Rob Sacca, for leading on the effort to increase the levy so that we can prioritize more and better sidewalks and increase support for Vision Zero across the city.
However, over the past several months, we've engaged with transportation levy communities We've engaged in the committee itself, and I've heard loud and clear from constituents across the city, from people in every council district during our public hearing and during our public comment periods and committee that voters want a bolder transportation levy.
They want a package that prioritizes safety investments for everyone, especially for those who are walking or rolling or biking to navigate the city.
Seattle has had a goal to eliminate traffic fatalities and serious injuries since 2015. And yet just last year, there were 167 fatalities in King County.
And while other parts of the country are seeing traffic fatalities decrease, Washington State saw an 11% increase last year.
Since January, we've had 14 fatalities.
Seven of these were pedestrians on Seattle city streets.
Seven were in vehicles.
These are people who were simply going about their day, trying to get to work, to groceries, to visit with a friend.
And these are deaths that could have been prevented if we were bold enough to make sure that we prioritize redesigning our streets.
When we design our streets to center universal accessibility, everyone wins.
My team and I added up each of the proposed amendments from city council members.
And increasing the chairs package will cost the average homeowner about $48 a year or about $4 a month.
That means for an additional $4 a month, we can implement a levy package that prioritizes safety, that incorporates all council members' transportation priorities without pitting modes of transit against one another, without pitting different city council districts against one another, and without pitting other priorities for our city's transportation system.
There is a safety crisis playing out on our streets, and it's claimed far too many lives in Seattle.
This council has the power to do something about it.
Relatively modest investments in our community's health and safety today will improve our city for decades to come.
On the other hand, inaction and underinvestment puts people at risk, and you can't put a price on people's lives.
So as it stands, the current levy proposal would force Seattleites to make false choices.
Do we have bike lanes or do we have safe bridges?
Do we have road maintenance or improve transit?
Do we build new sidewalks or do we repair existing sidewalks?
We can and should do all of these things.
This council has a once in a decade opportunity to shape our city's transportation infrastructure, to center mobility and safety for everyone.
We're in the middle of a local and national road safety crisis.
We can't afford to wait to be bold in the vision of what we want our Seattle streets to look like.
Lives are quite literally depending on it.
So I want to introduce our next speaker.
As I mentioned, we have folks from several different organizations.
Next, we will hear from Christy Shimizu from Puget Sound Sage.
Good morning, everyone.
My name is Christina Shimizu, and I'm the executive director of Puget Sound Sage.
The transportation levy presents council with an opportunity to be bold and not just do the same old thing.
Bold for BIPOC communities that have been dispossessed, disinvested in and neglected for centuries and bold for all people of Seattle who deserve a robust transit system that meets the needs of all people and is accessible and doesn't result in further harm to BIPOC communities.
It is indisputable that Seattle voters want a large and transformative levy.
The polling others will discuss in greater detail today showed that over 75% of Seattle voters would vote for a $1.7 billion package.
Seattle voters also want increased transit without displacement.
Over 55% of voters would be more likely to vote yes if the transportation levy included funding to mitigate displacement caused by transit expansion such as light rail.
Council Member Morales has introduced amendment doing just that asking for just five million dollars a tiny amount in the scheme of the levy package for community-led planning in the Graham Street South End neighborhood and the Chinatown International District Graham Street and the Chinatown International District are both neighborhoods at some of the highest risk of displacement across the city And both will be seeing new light rail stations within the next decade.
And we know from experience in the Rainier Valley that without large scale investment in anti-displacement strategies by and for our BIPOC communities, light rail expansion equals gentrification.
With higher income people initially attracted by light rail moving into our neighborhoods and ultimately using their cars, not even light rail to get around.
Meanwhile, our people, low income and working class BIPOC communities, most likely to use public transit, are pushed out further and further south, out of our city altogether.
Low income BIPOC communities deserve access to robust transit systems, and they deserve to remain in place to take advantage of it.
Council Member Morales' amendment to allocate $5 million to community-led planning in these neighborhoods will make a future without displacement more possible in two communities that deserve it.
We call on the City Council to support this amendment as well as to increase the overall size of the levy to $1.7 billion.
Thank you.
Next up is Karina Ibala from MLK Labor.
Thank you and good morning.
My name is Karina Ibalia and I'm with MLK Labor, King County and Seattle's largest labor organization representing thousands of workers across the city of Seattle and their unions.
I'm here today because we stand at a pivotal moment in our city's transportation future.
Every day we navigate our streets, commute to work, and build our lives around the infrastructure that supports us.
But years of underinvestment have left us with crumbling roads and bridges that hinder not just our mobility, but our economic vitality.
And no one feels more profoundly the inadequacies of our growing city's transportation infrastructure than the people who show up every day at work to drive trucks and buses on our roads, unload freight at our port, pave sidewalks and streets, engineer solutions for the future, and so much more.
Back in March, our members passed a resolution calling for a $1.7 billion levy that builds more sidewalks, makes freight easier to move, and repairs our bridges and roads.
This transportation levy is not only essential for the repair and maintenance of what we already have, but also gives us the opportunity to properly resource good union jobs and transportation improvements that all of us stand to benefit from.
Through this investment, we can help meet our climate goals by building electric vehicle charging infrastructure, invest in equity through neighborhood greenways and safety initiatives, and further connect our transit lines and bike paths.
We'd like to thank the many people who've worked tirelessly to create the transportation package that meets the need and are especially grateful to Council Member Morales for her leadership and forward thinking.
We'd also like to take this opportunity to thank Mayor Harrell for inviting labor to help craft the initial proposal as part of his kitchen cabinet and Transportation Levy Select Committee Chair Saka for his amendments that propose improved access to EV charging stations for Seattleites.
Together, we can ensure that Seattle remains a city that works for everyone with roads that connect us and transportation that moves us forward.
Next, I'd like to welcome up Cecilia Black from Disability Rights Washington.
Hi, my name is Cecilia Black, and I'm a community organizer at Disability Rights Washington.
When I was 16, my family was in a massive car accident.
The driver in the other car, a 16-year-old, died.
Every person in my family sustained significant injuries.
I became a quadriplegic, and my brother with internal injuries was put into a medically induced coma.
When they take you out of a coma, you can experience psychosis.
And for my brother, it was a family friend who sat by his side and calmly talked him through it.
And I don't think it's an easy thing to do.
Last week, that friend's son was biking in Seattle when he was hit by a car.
Now he and his wife are collecting recordings from friends and family to play to their son, who is now in a medically induced coma.
No one should ever have to watch a loved one go through that.
but also no one should ever have the experience of being remotely prepared to do that twice.
We cannot keep normalizing car violence.
Between 2016 and 2020, people with disabilities were involved in 4% of total traffic accidents, yet accounted for 53% of people killed in Seattle.
When 60% of our streets are inaccessible due to broken or missing sidewalks, we have to put our bodies in the line of traffic to leave our houses.
We need a transportation system that supports life.
Last week, all six council members who submitted levy amendments, Councilmember Saka, Nelson, Hollingsworth, Moore, Strauss, and Councilmember Morales, proposed additional funding for projects that will make our transportation safer and more accessible.
But many of these amendments were funded through cuts to equally vital programs.
We shouldn't have to choose between keeping pedestrians, cyclists, or neighborhoods safe.
Whether we repair broken sidewalks or build missing ones, I, as a wheelchair user, will still have to navigate a broken, inaccessible sidewalk network at the end of the day.
The bottom line is we cannot adequately address the issues the council has highlighted as priorities without increasing the size of the levy.
And the good news is this is what voters want.
Seattleites know what is at stake.
And even in our expensive city, a majority of voters want to be taxed more for a better transportation system.
A poll conducted by Change Research found that twice as many respondents preferred a larger $1.9 billion levy that invested in more sidewalk safety and transit projects than a smaller $1.7 billion option.
In April, the city's own polling by EMC Research showed that the only effective argument against renewing the levy was that it did not go far enough, dropping support for the levy by 23%.
Rarely does the city's funding needs align so closely with public opinion.
Council can't walk away from this moment.
Council Member Morales is an opportunity to seize this moment and pass a transportation levy that can adequately meet our city's vast transportation needs.
I want to introduce Clara Kanter, an organizer from Seattle Neighborhood Greenways.
Thanks, Cecilia.
Can you hear me?
Is that picking up?
Okay.
My name is Clara Cantor.
I'm a community organizer with Seattle Neighborhood Greenways.
And our next transportation levy must meaningfully tackle the safety and equity and mobility and climate challenges that our city is facing.
Like Mathers have mentioned before, polling shows that Seattle voters recognize those great needs and are willing to pay to fix and address the system that we're moving in every single day of our lives.
A poll conducted by Change Research found that 79% of Seattle voters would approve a $1.7 billion levy like is proposed here, and that two-thirds of those would go even higher, preferring a larger $1.9 billion levy, when told that it would build more sidewalks and more safety projects across Seattle.
According to the city's own polling done by EMC Research, the only argument against renewing the levy that caused a significant dip in support was that it didn't go far enough and invest enough in walking, biking, transit, and the climate.
Voters understand what's at stake here, and the council needs to capitalize on this unique moment.
But so far, what we've seen, the council amendments have been proposed to pit vital programs against each other.
And we shouldn't have to choose between safe routes for kids walking and biking to school and equity-focused safety programs.
We shouldn't have to choose between building and repairing our sidewalks.
We shouldn't have to choose between public open space and protected bike lanes.
We need all of those things, and polling shows that voters will pass a levy that funds them.
I also want to speak specifically to two of the items in this package that Councilman Morales has proposed that are really close to my heart personally.
One is the $15 million for the equity-focused neighborhood safety program, which reverses a proposed 38% cut to a vital program that was crafted and pushed by SDOT's own transportation equity workgroup.
This program is small, but it highlights and prioritizes community ideas and increases the equitable distribution of safety-focused spending in Seattle.
It would have an outsized impact on starting to write some of the historic and ongoing disinvestment that BIPOC and low-income communities in Seattle have had for decades.
I'm really grateful to see the funding here for those communities and for our communities, especially in the South End.
The other one I want to mention specifically is $20 million for protected bike lanes with an emphasis on South Seattle projects.
I live in the South End and I mostly get around on my bike or sometimes riding the bus.
And currently there's no connected, protected way for me to get around the South End.
There's no connected bike network for the majority of South Seattle.
There's no way to get between our cultural centers, our business districts, our schools, and even areas that are expected to see significant growth in the coming years.
I'm also a parent of two very young kids.
And trying to get anywhere with my kids on the back of my bike has put in really stark reality just how unsafe I feel most of the time I'm on my bike, how very few places in my neighborhood I can get to in a way that feels safe enough to have my kids with me and like I'm not endangering their lives and mine.
I'm left taking these roundabout 45-minute routes that hop up on the sidewalks and going up and down steep slopes.
just to avoid the direct routes that would probably take me half the time if they felt safe to bike on.
The primary reason for that is the lack of investment in South Seattle, particularly in safe streets.
It started decades ago when we chose to build our highways and our high speed freight routes on top of and through BIPOC communities and low income communities.
And it continues today every time our city makes decision after decision after decision that prioritizes high speed traffic over community lives.
30 people have been killed in car crashes in my neighborhood in the last five years.
30 people, each one of those people, each one of those numbers is a person with a family and friends and neighbors and a community and families in the South End deserve better.
This amendment is a very small step in prioritizing communities in South Seattle so that our streets are safer for everyone.
We're tremendously excited that Council Member Morales has proposed this amendment to increase the size of the levy and build more sidewalks and safety projects across the city, and that other council members have expressed their support.
Ultimately, whether this levy passes or not is not up to council.
It's up to Seattle voters.
And voters have shown that we support investing in a transportation system that gives people choices for how to get where we need to go safely, conveniently, and affordably, and most importantly, without dying.
I'm going to pass it back to Council Member Morales for questions.
All right, we're going to take a few questions.
Does anybody have one?
Hi, Council Member Voss.
I know when Council Member Sacco went to make amendments, they came out to, I think, $1.55 billion, so this will increase that.
Can you go through again the bullet points of what changes you wanted to add to this that makes that different and what the status is now?
Sure.
So what we saw at committee last week is that there's a lot of energy around Vision Zero, around increased sidewalks.
There's energy around freight, bridges.
But at the 1.5 level that's being considered by the chair, in order to do one of those things, we have to take money from the other.
So the difference is that we've added all of those things together to see how much it would cost, how much it would increase the levy.
And it does come out to about 1.7.
So there's no difference between what I'm proposing and what amendments were submitted last week.
The difference is that We're putting them all together to say we can do all of it.
And voters have demonstrated that they're interested in doing all of it.
What happens from here before it goes to the voters?
Yes.
So procedurally, what happens is that we vote on the amendments next week at the committee meeting on Tuesday.
Then it goes to full council once it passes full council, which I believe the intent is to vote on July 9th.
Then it goes to the November ballot and voters will have a chance to weigh in.
What do you say to property owners who have to pay this tax?
Seattle is already one of the most expensive places to live in the country and we started at 1.4 something billion, 1.55, now 1.7.
Some people are saying now you should have gone to 1.9.
What do you say to the property owners who have to pay this?
Well, I'll start by saying you can't put a price on safety.
What we're talking about, as many people have referred to, is the fact that people are dying on our streets literally every day.
And so what we're trying to do is demonstrate that we can actually make our streets safer.
It's going to cost money to invest in better sidewalks, better infrastructure.
And really, this is basic infrastructure that we're talking about.
So going up to the 1.7 comes to about $48 a year.
about $4 a month, and I think people are willing to pay $4 a month.
We've had thousands of emails from constituents from across the city saying that they want to see us increase the levy.
We had dozens of people come and testify at our committee meeting last week saying the same thing.
And we had a lot of people who lost loved ones come to committee and say, my husband would be here if we had protected bike lanes in the south end.
My child would be here if we had safer crosswalks for them.
Again, this is about basic safety infrastructure, and everybody deserves that in this city.
Whether you're driving a car or you're commuting by bike or you're a person in a wheelchair trying to get to a bus stop, you deserve to know that you can navigate the city safely, and that's what we're trying to do here.
And voters have demonstrated that they're willing to pay.
dispute the arguments over safety but there's some trust problems here with the city council because the moved seattle levy didn't deliver what was promised voters were upset about that now you're asking for the biggest tax increase in the city's history what do you say to the voters who say you failed last time why should we give you a second chance
Sure.
I guess I'd say two things.
One is that I think the previous levy probably over-promised.
It was very specific about very particular projects that would be delivered.
And sometimes things happen that that particular project can't be delivered so that's one thing the other thing i'll say is that since that levy was passed inflation has gone up 67 and so a lot of it is related to the cost of building these projects um this levy uh while that inflation accounts for a lot of the reason why we're asking for more funding um but it also gives will give sdot greater flexibility so that we have list of proposed projects but if it turns out that one project is stuck and we can't deliver on something we will still be able to meet the goal of achieving you know a certain number of sidewalks or a certain number of bike lanes or increasing freight mobility to a certain extent so part of the goal here is to give a little more flexibility so that we can deliver what we need for a community.
Have you heard any support from your colleagues on the council yet with your amendments?
Yeah, so I am speaking with everybody one on one.
We do have interest.
You know, there's still some interest in tweaking a little bit, but I will say that what everybody heard in committee last week from every part of the city is that our constituents, regardless of where you live, our constituents are interested in having a levy that meets the safety goals that we have as a city.
And again, we had people coming from every part of the every neighborhood in the city to demonstrate an interest in increasing safety.
Great.
Thanks for being here, everybody.
Appreciate it.