Hello, I'm your host, Brian Kalanian.
What's the latest on a plan to recruit and retain more police officers in Seattle?
What do you need to know about a spike in monkeypox cases in our area?
And who's behind the new proposal for a Seattle Film Commission?
Citywide Councilmember Sarah Nelson joins me to answer these questions and the ones you're sending in, too, next on Council Edition.
We're operating quarter to quarter with a net loss of officers and we've got to do something and this is precisely the first step we need to take all that and more coming up next on city inside out council edition
And here she is joining us, your Citywide Position 9 Councilmember, Sarah Nelson.
Councilmember Nelson, thank you very much for joining us.
I wanted to jump right into police recruitment with you, police recruitment and retention.
Talk about this.
You recently heard a report about this in the Public Safety Committee.
So the SPD has had 109 separations, as they're called, officers leaving the department in the first six months of this year, about double what they expected.
They've hired 30 officers, also much lower than what they were projecting.
What do those numbers say to you?
What are you doing to respond to that?
Well, it says we've got a public safety crisis on our hands.
And this is exactly the outcome that was intended by my resolution for a staffing incentive program in SPD, which passed council in May of this year.
And that resolution called for the development of a staffing incentive program to accelerate the hiring of new officers.
And it stated council's intent to lift the restriction that council imposed last year on the use of unspent salary funds.
And this is precisely the outcome that we were looking for.
So I have to say that, yes, it's extremely worrisome that we're operating quarter to quarter with a net loss of officers, and we've got to do something, and this is precisely the first step we need to take.
Got it.
Thank you for breaking that down.
I wanted to bring up some other points of view on this because Councilmember Mosqueda in that meeting abstained on voting on the police hiring incentive plan because of a few concerns.
During the meeting, she mentioned that she has talked with human services providers who hear from police often about this issue.
Here's a clip of what she said in the meeting.
From the officers' own mouths, what they said is that what they need is not additional money, but a place to bring people.
A PR firm for SPD won't help that.
A hiring incentive approach won't help that.
We also got an email in from Jimmy on this topic who wrote this.
Can you be better at listening to marginalized groups who are disproportionately negatively impacted by police who then see police getting bonuses?
And I should point out here, the majority of council members supported this legislation in committee, but there are still some concerns.
That's why I wanted to bring this up.
I just wanted to ask Council Member Nelson, how do you respond to these issues, the need for more human services, not hiring bonuses perhaps, and this basic overall message this might send to people who do feel marginalized by police?
Well, I agree with that writer.
And because I am listening to people in communities most impacted by crime.
And in one of the first committee meetings of the Public Safety Committee, I read a letter that we had recently received from Mothers for Police Accountability.
And they've been long active in this issue.
And they called for uh, city council to hire more police officers quickly, um, and stated our charter responsibility for doing so.
So while council member Muscata might be talking to, um, to people in, uh, the social services and in some officers, I'm talking to people who live day to day with an unsafe city.
And so I think that's where my responsibility lies.
Got it.
And in terms of what happens next with police alternatives, I know there's a lot of talk about that in the Public Safety Committee, too, trying to ramp some of those up, as well as trying to help get the police numbers up.
Some thoughts about that, where that issue needs to go.
Justice Patricia Guerrero, I recognize that officers are responding to calls they're not equipped to deal with, and I think I don't think there's any disagreement with that and prior to come on Council, I know that there was there was a request to develop alternative responses and I i'm fine with that.
However, I don't think that we should rush into anything.
We need to make sure that that response will work.
And meanwhile, make sure that we've got an adequately staffed police department to respond to real crime.
I'm not talking about people in crisis.
I'm talking about people that are committing crimes that are hurting our residents and businesses.
And just briefly on the hiring bonuses, I know that's been a concern.
Sometimes they work.
Sometimes they haven't worked as well.
What makes you think this time around this type of hiring bonus program is going to work for the SPD?
Well, I think that we can put that one and a half page memo to rest because this is after all the executive that is proposing this.
And there isn't any proof that incentives don't work.
In fact, every other city in our region has some form of staffing incentive program.
And so we have to compete with those jurisdictions for a limited pool of officers.
I'm going to switch gears and touch on a vote the council had recently to end the $4 per hour hazard pay boost for grocery workers.
This was a measure put in place during the pandemic to help those workers.
They're very much on the front line, but the council has now decided to end it a year and a half later.
I'm trying to figure out what message Seattleites should draw from that.
We are still in a state of emergency when it comes to COVID.
Workers are potentially still at risk.
Why did you vote to support this?
Well, I think council did the right thing, obviously.
And you asked what voters should, what message should they take away?
And that is that we have got to adapt to evolving conditions with this pandemic.
And so I voted in January to repeal hazard pay because that was imposed at a time when we did not have a vaccine and when the Delta variant with much higher mortality rates associated with it was circulating.
We now have a vaccine and we have frontline workers who are as vulnerable as grocery workers to to catching COVID.
And I believe that council needs to make sure that the laws that it passes are as universally applicable as possible.
And that only affected grocery workers.
Times have changed and we have to balance the benefits to workers against the needs of our constituents who could be paying higher food prices.
who could be looking at perhaps the independent grocery store in their neighborhood going into business because that was a steep increase in their costs that they had to pay.
So on balance, that is what I felt in January.
It's what I feel now.
And I do believe that we are going to be living with this pandemic, with COVID for a long time.
Thank you for breaking that down.
I do think there's a larger issue, though, about the measures that have been passed during the height of the COVID pandemic and the ones that might not stay in place.
Recently, the council voted to keep this 15% cap on driver delivery fees that businesses pay and affect DoorDash, things of this nature.
This measure was passed out of your city-like committee, and I'm just trying to ask, what impact do you think it's going to have keeping this cap in place?
Is this a sign that the COVID state of emergency is going to end sometime soon?
Some thoughts about this.
Well, Council Member Peterson and Strauss, the co-sponsors of the bill, were afraid that the civil emergency would end, the 15% cap would end, and small businesses, my constituents and the customers, would then be facing a sharp increase in the costs that they pay to be on these delivery apps.
And so I think that the immediate benefits are going to be to these businesses that have been hardest hit of all sectors, I would say, with the pandemic.
And we want to make sure that they stay open and they're still dealing with lost revenue from COVID.
And so this is designed to help them.
I wanted to stick with the pandemic topic if we could here.
And we're dealing with an epidemic, if you will, with monkeypox.
It's been declared a national emergency.
You got cases doubling in our state every week with most of those cases happening in Seattle and King County.
Health officials briefed the council about this very recently.
What do you want people in Seattle to know about monkeypox?
I want them to know I'm listening to them.
In fact, I would.
I received several emails from constituents very convincing that Seattle and King County needed to do more and more aggressively, which is why I brought it up at briefings first time anybody had publicly spoken about it.
So what I want them to know is that I am paying attention and I will be pushing for the the members that are on on that board, the Public Health Board, to be fighting for proactive steps to educate the public and make vaccines available.
I applaud the pop-up clinic that occurred last weekend.
That's exactly what we need to be doing.
Other cities are doing more.
And so I want to make sure that we're doing absolutely as much as we possibly can and that Seattle is advocating for its constituents.
Absolutely.
Thank you for breaking down that piece.
I wanted your thoughts about some proposals coming down for Mayor Harrell.
One, to make $2 million available to businesses via grants so they can make improvements to existing or new commercial spaces here.
Then you've got another issue here, Seattle Restored, aiming to activate vacant commercial storefronts in downtown and across the city.
I'm trying to figure out what impact you think these programs might have.
I'm thinking about your Economic Development Committee here.
And will they be enough to revitalize businesses downtown, for example?
A lot of people simply aren't coming back to work downtown, in person, that is.
Well, there's a lot to unpack there.
But what I have to say is that I am thrilled with these proposals.
And you said, what impact will they have?
I'll tell you what impact they won't have.
A small business who is forced to leave a location because their lease is up or that needs to expand or just fix things in their existing business, place of business, would ordinarily not have the access to these funds.
It's extremely difficult to finance tenant improvement because Banks don't like making loans for things that they can't seize back, frankly.
So that program fills a gap in resources that small businesses can use, and it's an anti-displacement tool.
It'll help businesses stay in neighborhood and keep that wealth and those jobs in community.
Same with Seattle Restored.
This is basically we're taking a resource that well, it can be seen as a negative, an empty storefront and turning it into a resource for artists or small businesses to move into.
And it adds life to the street and You know, that's exactly the kind of creativity that we need to be doing over and over again.
So I am all in for those.
And you're right.
As chair of economic development, these are the kinds of programs that I am seeking, supporting and helping to develop.
Okay.
Thank you for breaking those pieces down.
And I wanted to make sure I pointed out, you met with business leaders all around the city, business leaders from all around the city a couple months ago to talk about a victim's compensation fund, basically broken windows dollars, if you want to call it that, for businesses impacted during the pandemic.
I know this was approved in last year's budget, and I'm sure some businesses are telling you, we've been needing this help for a long while.
Where's the money here?
I'm trying to figure out when this victim's compensation fund might be in place.
What needs to be taken care of here?
Let me be clear.
We're talking about two different things.
I convened a roundtable discussion with small business owners and representatives from neighborhood business districts to talk about the impacts of crime.
And several recommendations were put forward, one of which was help repairing damaged storefronts.
And so that is a high priority for them.
And that is in progress.
Stay tuned.
And so we have to do something to directly help small businesses that have been the victims of crime.
Now, when it comes to the victim compensation fund, I believe that's what it's called.
That was an initiative last year.
It's a very small amount of money.
It's about $100,000.
Any money helps, but there are a lot of businesses that have incurred thousands of dollars.
And so I agree with the spirit and whatever we can do to help businesses who've been victims of theft, damage, et cetera, that's great.
I just want to be clear that there are two different things.
Thank you.
Thank you for breaking those pieces down.
I know there's a lot of businesses that have that question.
I clearly have that question too, so I appreciate that.
We've had a couple of emails come in, Councilmember Nelson, for you for the show, including a land use question from Eric.
I wanted to throw this one at you.
He writes this, I am well off.
My child is attending college in Seattle, which I am paying for.
Landlords are pressuring me to apply for MFTE housing, multifamily tax exemption housing, because my daughter has no income and would qualify.
Isn't that an MFTE loophole you should close?
Eric, as always, thank you for the emails.
Interesting question.
Councilmember Nelson, you serve on the Land Use Committee.
Any thoughts on this one?
Well, I have been I've been talking about improving the MFTE program so that more so that more developers participate because we're not going to be able to subsidize our way out of our housing affordability crisis.
We need to we need to have private developers make units afford available that are affordable within within buildings.
I did not know that there was a gaming of the system that that email indicates.
I would suggest, I don't know what advice I would give that person, but in general, MFT is one of our tools to to build affordable housing and make it available at at no cost to city, we are not building these units, it is a tax, you know it's a tax break for the developer and the benefits are that we have more affordable housing got it.
Thank you for breaking that down and engaging the question.
I always get a lot of interesting ones on the show here.
We also got in one from Ethan about a streetlight issue in his neighborhood in West Seattle.
It's apparently been going on for a few years.
I'm going to forge that message to you, Councilmember Nelson, and hopefully you can help out one of our viewers there.
Ethan, thank you very much for writing But I did want to talk about a broader City Light issue with you, if I could.
Again, a part of the committee you oversee here, there's a rate increase on the way for next year, which happens yearly with City Light.
It's pretty normal here.
But the numbers I'm seeing, an average increase of 4.5% for all City Light customers.
It will be a little bit higher for residential customers.
It's a jump of about $5 per month, maybe a little bit less than that.
But this is a bigger percentage increase than in terms of what we saw in 2022. I just want to try to get the background here.
What's going on with this and what's pushing those rates up?
Well, what's pushing those rates up first and foremost is that we did not raise rates in 2021 because of the pandemic.
And so city council approves new rates every two years.
And so we were overdue for a reconsideration of our rates.
And in the meantime, what has happened is that it's become more expensive to generate and deliver electricity to our customers because of high inflation, which is I think it's about two thirds higher than what was projected earlier when when the last rates were in place and keeps changing, keeps going up.
And so that impacts copper wiring and all these other kind of costs.
Is that kind of part of it?
Yeah, it impacts all of our costs.
Materials, metals have increased in cost by 70 to 80%.
So we've got all of these external pressures, plus the fact that we've got a lag in raising rates.
Look, nobody likes a rate hike, a rate raise.
But every two years, this is what happens.
And City Light does a good job of trying to absorb these costs and not pass them on to the rate payers.
City Light is a public utility, has lower rates the vast majority of other utilities, and they do a good job of trying to deliver the same level of service and protect our rate payers against increases that are just really difficult to bear.
Thanks, Councilmember Nelson.
I wanted to switch gears a bit and bring in a special guest at this point to join Councilmember Nelson to talk about a plan for a Seattle Film Commission, and that would be Kate Becker from the King County Executive's Office.
Kate, thank you very much for joining us here.
But Councilmember Nelson, I wanted to talk about this because you've been discussing this idea of a film commission for quite some time.
I want to start with you and ask what this film commission is all about.
Why are you pushing legislation for this?
Well, the short answer is I'm pushing legislation for this because this is what our film stakeholders want and have been calling for for years.
So just to back up, Seattle has been a vibrant, creative city.
We've lost our edge when it comes to filmmaking in specific and the A film commission is a way to bring industry professionals to the table to help the city design policies, programs, initiatives that will not just support the film industry, but also attract film production from across the country and hit our goals, which are workforce development, economic development, equity, and a whole host of other things.
So the bottom line, some people say, well, why a film commission?
And I have to say that we talk about growing our creative economy.
Well, the best way to do that is to focus on film, because film is the most commercially viable art form, employing artists from the greatest number of creative disciplines.
And it'll help us target our policies that end up helping people who work in a number of different creative industries.
But the bottom line is a film commission will help us be smart about how we grow the film industry here in Seattle.
And it's about time.
And I am simply putting forward what the community has wanted for a long time.
And I'm sure that Kate can speak to that.
Oh, yeah.
No.
And you got to stop the Seattle scenes being shot in Vancouver.
That's that's a big part of the issue here.
But I wanted to make sure I asked you this question, Kate.
The county has been doing a lot of work with this.
It started up its creative economy initiative a couple of years ago as a made a major investment to build a film production studio in Harbor Island.
And also, very importantly, the state's kicking in some extra money into this effort.
Can you help us out with a larger picture of the county and state, how they're going to work together with the city on this?
Absolutely.
So Executive Constantine has long known the needs of the film industry and been a champion for the film industry and has known that we needed a production facility.
Simultaneously, when the pandemic hit, we had a whole lot of film industry professionals out of work.
And so the opportunity came together to really put to better and higher use a 117,000 square foot warehouse on Harbor Island and converted into two sound stages and a production facility.
The region has needed this for a long time.
In order to compete in the film industry, you must have a place to make film, and we haven't had that.
The last soundstage of any scale that we have had in this region was the Northern Exposure Stage, which broke down when they left town in 1996. And we have not had a big soundstage here since that time.
Wow.
And just in touching on what the state's doing here, this increasing of the business and occupation tax credit limit, as I understand it, for the motion picture competitiveness program, moving that from $3.5 million to $15 million, I think that state piece is going to be big here, too.
It's going to be huge.
It's a perfect time for the city to be moving forward on a new initiative with a film commission and really centering film in the city.
And then the county having our work well underway and the state having this new incentive.
The opportunity is grand for our state right now.
Got it.
Councilmember Nelson, back to you on this.
And I wanted to center in on a point you were making earlier about the number of workers who might be getting involved with this.
I thought it was very interesting in the presentation to see an estimated 250,000 workers in creative industries in our region.
It's a very important part of the economy and a big one, too.
But this question around growing this industry sounds great, but how do you do it in an equitable way and make sure people who might have been excluded from these kinds of opportunities in the past get in on the game?
Well, thank you very much for bringing this up because this is a fundamental rationale for this commission and there is a position on the commission for someone who represents underrepresented communities.
Look, film is a sector that has living wage jobs, many of them union jobs, that don't require a college degree to get into.
And so if we grow the film industry, more people can take advantage of opportunities.
to develop their careers in the industry or into other sectors.
So we need to make sure that, as I said in the beginning, this is about workforce development and creating opportunities to build wealth and livelihoods.
And so I believe that, and in fact, many of the people that were on the film task force that preceded this effort did represent people from a diversity of communities.
And this is precisely why they said that a film commission was important, so that their needs and the needs of low-income people could be advanced and that we strengthen the community enough so that there are opportunities for everyone.
Got it.
Thank you for that.
Kate, I wanted to get your sense of the urgency behind this because I was reading a piece in Crosscut a couple days ago that talked about the recent arts and culture report from the Puget Sound Regional Council.
And that report had a survey that showed a third of the people, I should say, working in the creative economy, especially younger ones, are considering leaving that sector of the economy.
And I'm not trying to throw cold water on your efforts at all here, but I'm trying to figure out, do you think the work you're doing can help turn that tide?
We need to keep our talent here in this region.
They are the folks who not only tell our stories, the film industry also works with all our corporations, our businesses, creates the advertising content, the commercial content.
We need to keep these folks here.
So yes, that report, which I was interviewed for, is indeed a troubling report.
We can't have our creatives and our talent leaving this region.
We've already lost a lot of the film industry.
We're hoping we can woo them back now, because who doesn't want to live here, right?
So we're hoping we can bring them back here, but we can't afford to lose anymore.
And we all need to work together collectively to make sure that we are keeping the talent in this region.
Got it.
Thank you very much for that.
To wrap up here, Council Member Nelson, just a quick look at the timeline ahead.
What sort of costs and logistics are involved with setting the Film Commission up?
When do you think the council might be able to take a vote on this?
Cost and logistics.
The person staffing the Film Commission will be the person who knows film in Seattle.
And so we do have the staffing that will be working on the commission.
So that is not an added cost.
And we've got to act fast because everything is aligning right now with the state's incentives with this studio that will provide a space for film production.
And so the next steps for committee on film commission are that at our next meeting on September 14th, we will have a discussion of the formally introduced legislation, hopefully voted out of committee that day, and it'll go to full council on September 20th.
And then early next year we go fir into budget, right?
So th the rest of the year.
But we're going to impanel th quickly.
I am hoping for months so that we can hav experts giving us advice programs as soon as poss forward to hear more abo Nelson.
Also Kate Becker f executives office.
Thank y on this.
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