• Katie Wilson’s State of the City speech. (Read our story)
• An update on which bills are moving and which are dying at the Washington State Legislation.
• The Seattle Social Housing Developer’s big moves, including huge proceeds in its first year with a dedicated revenue source. (Read our story)

A recap of the Olympia coverage we referenced:

• Age verification for Big Tech.
• Washington’s Elevator Reform Bill Rises Again
• Curbing Mandates for Ground-Floor Retail Spaces Advances at Legislature
• Washington Legislature Grapples with Slew of Bills Regulating AI
• Washington State Reacts to Feared ICE Invasion, Constitutional Crisis
• State Lawmakers Move to Regulate License Plate Readers, Fearing ICE Misuse
• ICE’s Tacoma Detention Center Targeted in New Lawsuit Alleging Abuses
• 2026: The Year the Washington Legislature Catches Its Breath on Housing

And in a bonus closing segment, the three of us offer our Pike Place Market food recommendations.

This episode of The Urbanist Podcast was edited by yours truly. Episodes also air on KVRU 105.7 FM radio Thursdays at 4pm, on a once every two weeks cadence, give or take. Thank you to Crystal Fincher and Shannon Cheng of KVRU for their assistance getting our podcast off the ground. Please follow and rate us on your preferred podcast app to help us spread the word!

Transcript

[00:00:05] Ryan: Welcome to the Urbanist Podcast, a show touching on the biggest headlines at The Urbanist, and also offering a deeper look from the reporters breaking the stories as an independent reader supported publication. The Urbanist has been covering the Seattle metropolitan region since 2014. We do advocacy journalism for better cities.

You can find us at theurbanist.org. I am Ryan Packer, contributing editor here at The Urbanist, and we’ve got the rest of our newsroom here on deck. Publisher Doug Trumm.

[00:00:35] Doug: Hey Ryan. Thanks for having me.

[00:00:36] Ryan: Thanks for being here, Doug. And we’ve got our esteemed reporter, Amy Sundburg.

[00:00:41] Amy: Hi Ryan. Good to be here.

[00:00:43] Ryan: Great to have you. Well, there’s a lot happening this week. So, we’re gonna go ahead and dive right into it. Top story. Katie Wilson, Seattle Mayor gave her first State of the City address. Doug, you were there in the room at the beautiful Langston Hughes Performing Arts Center. Amy and I were both watching from our laptops, but we all watched the speech, and so we’re gonna give you our recaps and takeaways. But we’ll start with you, Doug. What was your takeaway from this speech, which Katie noted was the longest she’s ever given in her entire life.

[00:01:16] Doug: Yeah, I think if there was any doubt that she was just not gonna be able to handle the speech making side of this, I thought the speech did a good job of dispelling that. She is a good speechmaker when pressed into it, and she definitely joked that it wasn’t her main skill.

But, yeah, rolling out her affordability agenda, in a more descriptive way than in the past. She talked about the four pillars of it and hinted at programs for each, which we’ll get into a bit. But, there wasn’t like a big ‘here’s this program we’re launching now,’ but there was a lot of mention of ‘here’s these efforts that will bear fruit later in the year or next year.’

And some of these programs are just large, so you can’t just snap your fingers in seven weeks. But some folks might have wished for some big marquee thing that is immediately happening, but it’s a lot of things that are in progress.

[00:02:06] Ryan: Amy, what was your takeaway?

[00:02:08] Amy: At the time that I was listening to the speech, I thought that it wasn’t so very different than the speech I would’ve been listening to from Bruce Harrell, should he have won. And I will say upon further reflection, because now it’s been about 24 hours, I think that’s not entirely fair.

But it might also speak to the nature of these speeches because they’re so high level that they don’t really get a lot into the details of things, which tends to be what I’m interested in. And so it can be hard to distinguish one politician from another politician all, all top level stuff.

[00:02:45] Ryan: Yeah, I agree with that. And I think Mayor Wilson’s been taking some criticism for this speech in terms of Erica Barnett, at PubliCola, said she was whiffing on surveillance cameras in particular, as well as encampment sweeps. And so, I think my takeaway was kind of, I don’t understand quite why she chose to give this speech, since her inauguration was so soon ago.

I think the fact that it’s been such a short period is why there’s not a whole lot of things to announce. And so I don’t really quite get the reason, you know, I understand that everyone does a state of the city address every year, but like usually you can kind of take your first year off, you give a big inauguration speech or maybe give a big speech in the middle of the year when you have more things to announce.

There were some marquee Wilson agenda things that Denny Way bustling is a prime example of that; although, there’s not much to announce yet. SDOT’s still scoping that out. And then she kinda lumped improvements to the Route 60 that Metro was leading on in there. And I noticed that it was just something that was already in the works. And so, that’s not a criticism of her administration because as we said, it’s been seven weeks. But I think that speaks to where things are at.

[00:04:00] Doug: I’m very hesitant to criticize a progressive mayor for being too out front in the media. Yeah. It’s a little bit like double dipping from the inaugural speech. Sure. But I definitely think it is a necessary thing to get some momentum, to get a narrative building when you’re dealing with so much conservative counter efforts that started immediately, even really before she took office, you know, trying to make it seem like she, the crime was already getting worse on the data’s pointing the other direction. So, it was worth trying to build her narrative and we’re policy nerds. So, it’s sort of like, we’re hammers and we’re looking for a nail.

And this speech wasn’t about those nails. It was more about the vibes thing that Harrell was so good at. And that’s not the most important part about being mayor. The most important part is actually delivering results. But I think it’s sort of a necessary step to start building that groundswell behind those ideas.

And I do think that countering Trump, strengthening the community to face that threat that cities like Minneapolis have faced, and that the president seems likely to turn his eye of Sauron towards Seattle at some point. So I think some of those steps were important to lay, even if, as far as like, well, what tangibly are we doing tomorrow is still kind of a question mark.

[00:05:16] Ryan: Yeah, I think that’s a good point, Doug. There were some great moments in the speech. I loved hope as a discipline. I think that would’ve gotten a lot of attention if it had been in a Zohran Mamdani speech or a  Zohran Mamdani video, a two minute video. I guess I do kind of think that the 30 to 40 minute State of the City address might not quite be the thing that meets the media environment that we’re in right now. Since you’re gonna end up with people kind of pulling out the parts that they don’t like or kind of were the most controversial.

[00:05:51] Amy: To be honest, I didn’t love the “hope as a discipline” part. I love that quote. It’s by famous prison abolitionist, Mariame Kaba. And it’s certainly a quote that I have referenced myself, and I think that many, many people reference. ’cause you know, it’s, it’s a very powerful quote, but to me it hit a bit of a jarring note to hear this really famous quote from a prison abolitionist who is, you know, still actively working, at the same time that Mayor Wilson was really hedging a lot on surveillance issues, for example, which I’m pretty confident no prison abolitionist is gonna be happy about.

So for me, it felt a little bit weird because I was hearing these quotes that are very leftist coded quotes, but some of what was said in the speech was not very leftist coded at all. And some of it was very directed towards the Seattle’s business community, which is fair enough. But, it just struck me as a little bit strange as a combination.

[00:06:52] Doug: Yeah. And the other thing It’s so hard for a mayor to walk that line between being thorough and considering all sides versus just letting it slide into procrastination and fear of making decisions or taking a bold step quickly. And that surveillance issue could be one of those things where she is just dragging her feet to the point of not really coming to a policy resolution or, or a shift in direction and letting the inertia carry her. And I don’t think that’s what she ran on, so hopefully that’s not the case.

[00:07:28] Amy: I think the surveillance issue is really interesting and maybe a little bit more complex than is sometimes being discussed. But I mean, it’s definitely true that that was a memorable part of her platform. I am hearing from folks who are feeling like by not acting on that now she’s breaking her promise from her campaign., There are complexities, as I mentioned, I think chief among them, we’re seeing an argument that we’ve seen many times before being brought out that the surveillance is needed for public safety and specifically due to the really tragic gun violence that happened in Rainier Beach and the CID recently.

It really reminds me of similar arguments that were made back when then Mayor Bruce Harrell was trying to adopt ShotSpotter, which is acoustic gunshot detection technology, which went through a few rounds of him trying to adopt it. And, the argument for that technology, which a lot of research shows has a a myriad of problems, right, was in fact to protect from gun violence. But what ends up happening is you have people pitted against each other from the same community. So, you know, throwing immigrants under the bus to try to help with gun violence. And I feel like it’s also a false dichotomy.

There’s plenty of things that Seattle could be doing to prevent gun violence or to reduce gun violence that we haven’t been doing a good job with. In general, I would say our gun violence prevention has been all over the map. It hasn’t been well coordinated. It’s a particular pain point for me in terms of watching what Seattle has been doing. I think we can do a lot more that has nothing to do with cameras.

[00:09:20] Ryan: Yeah. Doug, you mentioned that this was the rollout of the Wilson affordability agenda, a multi plank, multifaceted proposal, but it was a little, little bit more of a, I think, a sketch than a fully fleshed out outline. But can you talk a little bit about some of the elements that she mentioned?

[00:09:37] Doug: Definitely, yeah. It was centered around four pillars, which I think were pretty similar to what she was saying on the campaign, but, it was very clear that she had separated that into housing, which that’s pretty obvious. Childcare, food, which was a huge issue as far as where people were feeling the pinch in their pocketbook during the high inflation years of the pandemic. And then, business growth and small business support. It’s very expensive city to launch a business. That’s a number of factors. She had made those price of pizza videos during her campaign that got a lot of attention, sort of her first viral moment and those were just quick hit videos, but she’s, she’s obviously well steeped in all the complicated factors that drive up the cost of goods. That’s like the labor cost in our region, which that’s a good way to spend any money in one hand. But then there’s also just very high rents and all this regulatory burden too that sometimes Seattle heaps on businesses.

So those are things that policymakers can do something about, particularly on the regulatory burden side and to some extent on the rent side. So she’s definitely hoping to make it an easier place to grow a business. And, spoke very glowingly about how Seattle is a city of builders and innovators, and that sounded a little bit like Harrell too, but I think she struck a tone where it’s like, this is a community, and we’re not saying we’re not gonna tax you, but we’re gonna support you in your growth and then expect you to chip in as well, as you do find success.

[00:11:08] Ryan: Yeah, I was interested to hear that she didn’t add affordable transportation as a fifth plank there, which is such a realm that the city has such a direct impact on. So, that struck me as interesting, especially given the mayor’s background. I think behind housing, transportation is the single biggest cost driver for most households in Seattle. And so, that was a notable absence. Obviously she is doing work on that, so I can’t be too harsh considering that people are working on it, but yeah, just I noticed that. 

[00:11:41] Doug: It’s somewhat a matter of how quickly the goalposts move. Not to say that we shouldn’t expect big things from our politicians, but we have a mayor who is an urbanist now and a longtime transportation advocate. So, the fact that she was even willing to bring up bus lanes being a major priority she was working on, which was reiterating something she already rolled out, but, you know, got a moment in this speech, and Vision Zero being off course, got a moment in his speech. That seemed authentic and was, you know, well, there was a tragedy that happened just, the day before in Capitol Hill where someone was struck. And, something she reacted to immediately and it seemed like it hit her pretty hard.

And, there were moments over Harrell’s tenure where he did speak to those issues, but it never felt quite like it hit him the same way as Wilson, and he was never really willing to go as far. And often would play both sides on issues like Lake Washington Boulevard and others where it’s very risky environments for people walking, rolling, and biking.

So, I think it’s a subtle thing, but definitely something that this mayor is gonna work on a lot more than predecessors. And we’re just taking it for granted, which is good, but also I guess we have to give credit where credit is due. That those things have more hope than before.

[00:12:50] Amy: I think that that wasn’t in her original speech, that the part about Vision Zero and the fatalities that had happened the night before. I think that she added that in because she personally thinks that’s important and I do think that’s an important point.

[00:13:05] Ryan: Yeah. That was an incident on Monday night at Bellevue and Pine Street. 27-year-old woman was hit and killed by a driver. Ended up being pinned under the Prius and had to be extricated. Obviously hit the mayor as well as a lot of people who live in Capitol Hill, like myself, pretty hard. So, she directly addressed that. I think I saw some reaction on social media that they would like to see more than just a speech drop in and actually take steps to quickly change the orientation of our streets following incidents like this.

There’s lots of low-hanging fruit, but we yet haven’t yet seen what Katie Wilson’s SDOT really looks like. So, I once again would be kinda curious to see what actually happens when we are able to fully see what this mayor’s vision looks like and how it can be implemented.

[00:13:57] Doug: And she’s definitely invited advocates to, you know, twist her arm. Like that’s something she said from the get go. But obviously I don’t think anyone can realistically expect someone the day after a tragedy to be like, well, here’s my plan to get pouring the concrete and putting up the bollards, or whatever the case may be. I mean, that would be nice if we get to a point where SDOT can move that quickly, and the political leaders can quickly build consensus or at least the will to do that. But, we’re not quite there yet. But I think that’s something in previous administrations you would appoint a task force and you might hear from them a year later. And I don’t think it’s gonna be that long, for when things like this are happening in the Wilson administration. Hopefully.

[00:14:38] Ryan: Well, I would just point out that we can stand up a Super Bowl parade that can accommodate a million people from Sunday to Wednesday. So I think we can do it.

[00:14:50] Amy: I think we can do it too. And I would say from a public safety perspective, people are really concerned about traffic safety. It’s actually something that people really want things to be done about. It’s one of the top concerns in the city. I saw a poll. So, listening to the people, it should be a priority, not just because we made this promise in the past, but because people now really care about it.

[00:15:11] Ryan: Yeah, well, we’re probably, I think, being a little tough on the mayor. But, she’s putting herself out there with this speech. I think there was a lot to digest. Doug, you’ll have a story on this speech by the time this podcast is out, so you can read Doug’s full breakdown. But I think we’ll be watching all these topics in the months ahead.

[00:15:32] Amy: I do wanna talk a little bit about her promise on homelessness, because that is very concrete. You know, when she ran, she said that she would stand up 4,000 new emergency shelter spots. And now she said that she’s gonna do a thousand of those in her first year, that things are on track to do that. And I think it’s an interesting dichotomy to look at, because she’s still sweeping, right? And that’s something that a lot of her base I think is not thrilled. But kind of the gambit is, well, if we can stand up enough of this emergency housing fast enough, we’re gonna get all these people into housing and we won’t have to sweep anymore, so that she can kind of make both sides of that argument happy.

So I’m really interested to see what happens with that.

[00:16:23] Ryan: Yeah, and so she’s pointing to her work at the Ballard encampment on Leary, which she gave a reprieve. They were able to get five additional people into a more stable shelter. Obviously, that’s not everyone in the encampment, and so it’s a tough sell in terms of not really pleasing too much of anybody.

But it is a little bit more of an intentional approach than we’ve seen in this area. When it comes to these emergency shelters, we’ve been seeing very quick movement. Very quick movement in large part because one of these sites is in West Seattle. So the West Seattle Blog has been all over the permits for this tiny house village slash RV encampment that’s gonna be on Marginal Way.

And so, it’s February 18th and we’re already talking about what this looks like, what its name is, who’s gonna operate it. That’s lightning fast. That is lightning fast. And so if we’re talking about things like that all over the city, I don’t even, we don’t have the reporters in other neighborhoods, like I said, to be able to look at these permit records for elsewhere.

But I assume that they’re moving as fast as they can on these public sites that they have pretty direct control over. This is a state lot, but it’s actually pretty quick work.

[00:17:36] Amy: And it’s a longer term fix, right? It actually goes more to the root of the problem. So if she’s able to stand up 4,000 new shelter spaces in her term, that that is a significant step forward. Obviously I’m always wait and see what happens. But it’s promising in that way. As well, the city will have to potentially consider investing more in keeping people from falling into homelessness in the first place, especially with various federal cuts that might make that more likely. 

[00:18:08] Ryan: Yeah. I think she alluded to the fact that the budget is gonna be her biggest hurdle. She’s gonna have to find funding sources, you know, she has the proviso that’s keeping a straight jacket on the funding for the Unified Care Team, and she has the housing levy with its restrictions. But, she had a long hinted during the campaign that she would look at the housing levee as a source for some of emergency dollars. Got kind of lambasted for that from the affordable housing nonprofit world. But she’s gonna have to get creative.

[00:18:40] Doug: Yeah, and I wanted to return a little bit, to a point Amy made that the Stop The Sweeps camp being her base. And I think that’s somewhat true as far as like the grassroots mobilizing the people who were volunteers at farmer’s markets and things like that, that might be true of that subset, but as far as, the last two elections or three elections, however you wanna look at it, shows that the most of the electorate, and granted, those are odd-year people, if we had even years elections, maybe it would be more representative, but, I think most of the people are not at the place where it’s either extreme of like, ‘sweep every homeless person. We don’t care if they have reliable shelter or get services.’ Or ‘no sweeps whatsoever.’

It seems like people are bristling at either approach, at least the swing voters that decide every election, which is a tough reality when you want her to pick a camp and stay in it. This subtle thing she’s doing of, ‘well, I’m not Bruce Harrell on sweeps. I’m not gonna do it as often as him, but it’s still in my tool belt.’ It’s probably the right thing politically, at least, if those election results from 2023 still have some sort of bearing.

Obviously she showed that you can talk about doing less sweeps and still get elected. So, I’m really interested to see how that plays out. But it’s tough to say that doing no sweeps is viable in the immediate term, just on both the logistical side, and the damage it could do to her. But you know, maybe I’m wrong on that. Who knows? Punditry is hard.

[00:20:10] Ryan: While zooming out from the city level to the state, Amy, you and I have both been frantically covering the legislative session, which came to a midpoint this week with the biggest deadline to date, the House of Origin cutoff. The date that every bill that’s introduced, apart from the budget that needs to get a vote in its original chamber, or is dead for the rest of the year. So, it’s been dramatic. It’s been tiring. It’s been a lot of different things, but, things are moving. So what, what have you been tracking, Amy?

[00:20:46] Amy: I’ve been trying to track as much as I can. I will say that after my experience this year, I wonder even more about the idea of having a part-time state legislature. But be that as it may, a lot of bills died this week or, or last week. A lot of bills have been dying. And, a couple of bills that died that I was particularly sad to see, the AI bill that would have stopped surveillance pricing for consumer goods. So that’s especially for grocery stores, right, which it is a basic need. The people need to eat, they need to go to grocery stores and get their food. That bill died. And I feel like it’s a very needed bill. And so I was really sad to see that. And then the other bill that died that I was sad to see was one of the bills related to immigration and specifically private detention facilities, creating a fine if the private detention facility… and to be clear, we’re talking about the Northwest ICE Processing Center, the Tacoma Immigration site– they would be fined if they didn’t allow the Department of Health to come in unannounced for inspections. Which would’ve been a huge step forward in terms of potential accountability and transparency of what’s going on in that site. And that bill also unfortunately died. I think there was some question about jurisdiction that I’m not quite clear about. So, hopefully they can figure out a way forward that will work in future years.

But, it’s not gonna happen this year. It seems very urgent for it to happen this year, so that’s unfortunate. That being said, there still is one bill that is still alive about private detention facilities. And this bill requires them to report allegations of abuse, death, and suicide.

Law enforcement agencies in the jurisdiction would also have to report as to what kind of calls they’re getting from that detention center. And it also has a whole section on improving food quality and access. So, that bill is still moving forward, which is great. I will say that while I think sentiment of the bill is wonderful, like it’s hard to know how much the Tacoma Detention Center will follow it in practice. Right. It’s one thing to pass these bills, it’s another one to enforce them. So that’s an open question.

[00:23:03] Doug: Yeah, and you pointed out how much GEO, as the company that runs these detention centers across the country, how much their profits has spiked in the Big Beautiful Bill era. Yeah, I don’t know how beautiful that is. But, it went from, I forget, it was like somewhere 50 million-ish profit in 2024 I think it was. And then suddenly it spikes to like 10 times as much in the following year. And that’s, that’s all these contracts for ICE that’s lining their pockets. It’s a big business. It’s people profiteering off this. It’s kind of disgusting.

[00:23:37] Amy: They’re making a ton of money, and I’ll say there was another bill that also died that would require Washington State to not invest in those companies that are making money on, on private detention and the torture of immigrants. And like I said, it’s dead, so Washington State can still make money that way. But, again, hopefully that’s something that can be revisited.

[00:23:59] Ryan: Yeah. It’s also been hard to cover the legislature this year without talking about the millionaires tax, which is the signature tax reform proposal from the Democrats that the governor has a lot of thoughts about. We did see a vote this week in the Senate: 22 votes against 27 in favor of a I think it’s 9.9% tax on income over a million.

This is, you know, a big step for tax reform in Washington, finally, getting our tax code a little bit more progressive in terms of its impact on upper earners in the state. But it’s not clear that the governor is gonna get a proposal that he actually likes and will sign.

[00:24:44] Amy: Indeed.

[00:24:44] Ryan: What do you think about this, Amy?

[00:24:47] Amy: It was really funny to watch Governor Ferguson in the press conference because he was kind of weaving around that question. He wouldn’t directly answer the question as to whether he would veto this tax if it wasn’t sufficiently changed. But he somehow still made it pretty clear that that’s really on the table. So, he’s, he’s being tough on this one. And he laid out a laundry list of changes that he wants to see in the bill. Even though he didn’t say it directly, it felt to me watching the press conference that it was kind of like, you better include most of these things, or, we’ll see.

His point is that he’s very concerned about the affordability crisis for Washingtonians and he wants to see the bill spend a lot more of the proceeds from this millionaires tax to provide tax relief as opposed to now where most of the money would go straight into the general fund, so it could fund any expenses the state might have.

[00:25:53] Ryan: Yeah, it’s a little bit of a philosophical disagreement, I would say between Ferguson and, and the leaders in the House and Senate, which is that Ferguson thinks that this new tax really should just go right back into Washingtonian’s pockets and doesn’t seem very concerned about a lack of structural reform to allow the state to have a pathway to providing services over the long term. ‘Cause, our tax system is incredibly dependent on a very small number of funding sources that are pretty volatile. And so that’s why we end up in these situations where we have these huge budget deficits. And the governor doesn’t seem too concerned about having a strong state government, I would say. He’s more concerned about having a state sales tax holiday, which I think is very flashy, but not super high impact.

[00:26:50] Doug: Yeah, it’s kind of a pathetic debate, when he’s saying, ‘well, no one’s going to feel this little discount you’re giving them on like toothpaste and things like that,’ which is probably true. But then he is saying they will feel a slightly larger subset of sales tax relief. And I just don’t see there’s a big of distinction there that people are gonna go, ‘oh, I didn’t feel that quarter off my toothpaste tube, but I am gonna feel some slightly larger amount over a broader set. Like, I mean, I guess there is a breaking point, but it, it goes to speak that he doesn’t really have a more of a long term or deeper ideological bend about, okay, like we can actually believe in the government to spend this money well and do more for the good of the working people of the state than just simply a little bit of sales tax money back in their pocket.

And you know, that’s not inspiring. I’m much more inspired by the politicians who do believe we can do big things and implement programs and shift the trajectory of people’s lives. Investing in education is gonna help a lot more as far as down the road than some small sales tax gift.

[00:27:55] Amy: He really wants to expand the working family’s tax credit, like a significant amount, which I thought was interesting. And so I looked into it a little bit more, because I feel like in general people are pretty positive about that program. What I realized though, looking into it, I was like, well, you know, what would be better would be some kind of guaranteed basic income program. Which would do similar things but would do them better, which you could fund from the general fund if you wanted to. I feel like it’s defining affordability as only being about less sales tax. Sales tax is very regressive. But I do think it’s more complicated than that.

[00:28:36] Ryan: Yeah, once again, I just go back to the fact that the cuts that have to get made to our state government that go mostly unreported on a lot of the time are also heavily regressive. And so we just don’t talk about that. And, you know, cutting education. So directly after the Senate passed the millionaires tax, they turned to a different bill, which is the estate tax cut, which a lot of people were kind of blindsided by. There actually had been a hearing in Senate Ways and Means a couple weeks ago that no one testified at, on this bill that would, uh, essentially lower the top tier estate tax rates in Washington, reversing a increase that the legislature passed last year, I believe.

Were you surprised to see this moving forward? Amy?

[00:29:23] Amy: It wasn’t on my radar. So in that way I was surprised. I do think the state legislature has something of a history of, of rolling back things pretty quickly after they passed them. You know, I think the argument was that the highest tax rate on estate tax in Washington State is now much higher than other states. So, it might actually have bearing on how people do their estate planning or where they live out their retirement years. And I think Democrats got spooked and, and that’s what we’re seeing play out. I feel like what’s interesting to me about all this tax talk, right, like, the millionaire’s tax won’t even go into effect until 2029 if it survives all the legal challenges and everything.

And now if we’re cutting this other money from this estate tax, as you reference, what about the long-term health of the budget, but particularly in light of the federal cuts that we know are coming down the pike, right? Like at this point, I don’t think that’s a big question mark. Maybe the amount could change, but it’s going to be significant.

[00:30:28] Doug: That’s the thing that was so jarring is that the official excuses that are out there for why they have to do that are not very well laid out. It seems like everyone’s dancing around the real thing is that they made some sort of deal. It seems to be an implication that, in order to get the millionaires tax, they wanted to get this largest estate tax in the country rolled back.

And if you were guaranteed to pass the millionaires tax, which it’s this huge hurdle to finally tax the highest incomes in our state when we have zero income tax. I mean, I think maybe some people would make that trade, but no one’s actually saying, well, that’s why we’re doing that.

Why are all these progressive people trying to, you know, hand a paycheck to some of the wealthiest families in the state? So, I think on as far as messaging to your base and even the swing voters who, who’ve generally supported an estate tax, like it’s almost political malpractice. But I, I know it’s hard to just be like, ‘well, we made a backroom deal.’

That’s a hard foot to put forward. And, to be clear, I don’t know that that in fact is going on, or if they really just legitimately were lobbied by a bunch of people who offer services or rely on business from folks who were threatening to leave the state, that that scared them enough.

I could live with it, but no one’s actually laid out that we’re doing this ’cause we, that’s how we get the millionaires tax passed. It could blow up in their face both from a, this trade if they back out the millionaires tax with governor vetoes it or something. They’ll look pretty foolish. And also blow up just from the, ‘okay, well we thought you were about redistributing wealth, not letting this extreme accumulation of wealth’ that is just absolutely taking off with the 1%, having so much of the wealth. Well, it’s not very consistent to take from one hand and give back with the other.

[00:32:04] Amy: It does have the appearance of some type of compromise. I mean, in another part of that compromise appears to be that the payroll expense tax statewide, that was proposed by Representative Shaun Scott seems not to be moving. Again, would tax large corporations. And what’s interesting about that tax is that it could potentially be implemented sooner and there was literally a in public spat between Representative Shaun Scott and Senator Jamie Peterson, who, who represent the same district, funnily enough, in a Stranger article in which Shaun Scott was like, ‘look, we can implement this tax faster than the millionaires tax, and it’s really important because we have all these federal cuts coming up.’

And then The Stranger checked in with Senator Peterson who was like, ‘that’s just not true. It can’t be implemented faster.’ So they went to the office that actually would implement these taxes and has the actual knowledge about it, and they said, ‘no, we can implement this faster. So, that was a little bit of a public brouhaha that I thought was interesting to watch.

[00:33:11] Doug: I’m curious, Amy, did they say if the governor was right about how long it would take to set up the Millionaire Tax? Because he was saying it was basically be a second term thing for him.

[00:33:21] Amy: I don’t think the article fact checked that in particular, although I think the governor has laid out a certain path for this tax and the path that he has laid out will take the time that it takes. I’m not certain if another path would’ve been possible if we had a different governor.

[00:33:36] Ryan: Yeah, I think this is definitely exposing some divides among the Democrats this session. It’s kind of been unavoidable to talk about the millionaires tax and all of its related issues so far. There’s another number of bills that I think a lot of urbanists would be interested in that we’ve been covering. On Monday, the house passed the Mosquito Fleet Act, which would empower local governments up and down Puget Sound, to create their own passenger ferry districts. Some of the new routes that could potentially get expanded under this authority could be Everett to Whidbey Island, Friday Harbor to Bellingham, and Olympia to Tacoma, maybe some other places from Olympia as well.

Port of Olympia is very interested in looking at this, and so that one’s getting a lot of excitement. Our reporting from over the weekend noted that the prime sponsor, Greg Nance from Bainbridge Island, was coming out hard against Senate Transportation Committee Chair Marko Liias for quietly killing the bill last year, and he’s coming out guns blazing this year, wants a big turnout in the Senate Transportation Committee, but it’s also rare to see a representative go so hard at one individual senator. So that was interesting.

We’ll see if we have a repeat performance of that bill in 2026. There was a pretty overwhelming vote on the house floor. Any other bills that you’re watching for Doug right now? Any bills you’ve been finding particularly uplifting.

[00:35:09] Doug: It feels like it’s a little bit of a session of cleaning up, and not doing anything as big as previous sessions. If they do pass a millionaires tax, I think that would be the thing the session is remembered for. But, you know, we’ve talked about some of the housing bills and some of those could have a marginal effect and some it could be significant. Some more minor impacts that could, could build up over time. I do wanna see the reform of vertical circulation, both in the single stair and elevator reform front. So I’m hopeful for those.

[00:35:41] Ryan: Well, that’s what I was putting down, the uplifting bills. Yeah, so the elevator bill’s very exciting. A lot of national attention for this one. I don’t think any other state has introduced such a bill. Got a little bit watered down between this year and last year, but I think it’s still pretty much intact allowing smaller elevators in buildings, up to six stories or 24 units, which is kind of that sweet spot for middle housing to be able to make single stair buildings have a smaller elevator, maybe even two for redundancy. And so, there’s a hearing this week. I think the only person to be commenting opposed is from the national elevator lobbying group. We’ll see how that one goes. Yeah, there were some housing bills that didn’t make it past cutoff.

I think mobile dwelling units was one that people were watching to see if they would move on. But there’s been a lot of local government opposition to that one. Like we mentioned. The governor’s big housing bill we’ve talked about on this podcast that would require cities to legalize housing in commercial zones, including getting rid of some of their ground floor commercial requirements. There’s been some opposition to that, particularly on Eastside where retail spaces in these quickly redeveloping cities are getting scarce. I think it’s an interesting bill that kind of puts urbanism against housing a little bit in terms of creating these vibrant mixed use districts.

Obviously we know we have empty retail space in some of our cities, but I think it’s a product of the churn and, and not necessarily a static state. And so, yeah, I think it’s gonna be interesting to see how that one balances out.

Overall, a session very focused on tax reform, not a lot on big policies.

[00:37:23] Amy: There is the big ALPR bill or automatic license plate reader bill, which is still moving along. It passed out of the Senate a few weeks ago, actually, and just had its first hearing. I think it was his first hearing in the House today, this morning. We’ll see what happens with that, because I feel like there’s a lot of debate as to how long the data retention time should be, and, and that doesn’t seem to be anywhere close to being settled.

Right now it’s 21 days. Originally the bill was 72 hours. New Hampshire has a three minute retention rate, but obviously law enforcement wants much longer. It’s really interesting to see how this technology has evolved over time because it used to be that it was just about looking up a hot list of license plates, right, stolen cars and stuff like that.

But now law enforcement wants the opportunity to retain this data so it can go back through it when it wants, if there’s anything relevant, which is definitely more of a surveillance state type of vibe to it. There’s questions about access that the vendor, not, not the agency, but the vendor would have with the data, which could be a data privacy issue, especially related to immigration right now, of course.

And then we have a, a little Seattle wrinkle in that council member Bob Kettle is very concerned about there being an exemption for these license plate reader systems that aren’t fixed. Some of them are like fixed to polls and stuff like that, and they always look at the same place all the time. And others of them are installed into cars.

In Seattle, they’re all installed in cars. So, there are elements of this bill that would make that really hard to implement technologically, because they’re not supposed to be recording, according to the bill. They wouldn’t be supposed to be recording certain sensitive locations like places of worship, for example. And it’s really hard to do that if you’re just, you know, driving around in your police cruiser, how are you gonna know when to stop recording whenever you’re passing a church or a mosque or whenever you’re passing a Planned Parenthood, that kind of thing. So, Councilmember Kettle is very concerned about this.

Obviously to make that large an exemption would really weaken the bill. So, it’s gonna be really interesting to watch the next couple weeks, where they land, if they’re able to land. And, I’ll be keeping an eye on it.

[00:39:47] Doug: Yeah, another set of legislation that I am interested in — we haven’t written about it much on our site, but I’ve heard some coverage from others — is election security bills because that to me feels like it’s gonna be the issue this November. And the primaries too. We have consistent polling showing the Trump party is very, uh, unpopular.

So the only recourse they have to retain control of the House and various state legislatures around the country, where they’re on the line, close enough to have to defend it is to, you know, monkey with the elections. And we’ve already seen that’s in the playbook. But, one bill that seeks to tackle that in our state is making it a lot harder to challenge ballots. And I think that’s a good idea. Like it would require an affidavit, a signed affidavit to challenge a ballot. So if you’re just doing that spuriously and lying, there could be recourse for you ’cause you’d be perjuring yourself. And you’d actually have to physically go sign rather than electronically sign.

Like do challenge ballots from a different state or something like that, or challenge a whole bunch of ballots in the city of Seattle, even if you lived, you know, three, four hours away. So I think that’s a nice security to put in place, especially considering the way we vote in our state. So, that people don’t abuse that system and try to swing close elections that way.

[00:41:04] Ryan: Yeah. We are less than a month away from the end of session. Pretty soon it’s gonna be budget, budget, budget. And that will be interesting to watch. And some big issues are gonna come back up, including how to use a bunch of Climate Commitment Act dollars that the governor wants to divert over to the working families tax credit that we talked about earlier. It’s a contentious proposal among environmentalists and people who wanna see climate action, so that’s gonna be interesting.

[00:41:41] Ryan: So let’s go ahead and wrap up, returning to the City of Seattle, talking about a big issue that a lot of people are tracking, which is social housing. So, this week we got some references to social housing in the Mayor’s speech, largely building on some announcements from last week. Doug, you’ve been tracking what’s happening in social housing at the city level. So what’s going on?

[00:42:05] Doug: A lot is happening. So many things. I think the biggest news recently is that they just pulled in way more money than they thought they would. And that’s really exciting news for everyone who fought for social housing. They went with the projections that the city budget office gave them, and they were conservative, I guess, because instead of pulling in somewhere in around $50 million like they predicted, they ended up getting $115 million in the first year, which goes to show how good of a year it was for folks with high incomes in Seattle, despite the spate of layoffs…

[00:42:37] Ryan: Doug, where does that money come from again?

[00:42:40] Doug: So, yeah, we should go back to the beginning for folks who haven’t followed along. But, the Seattle Social Housing Developer that was authorized in 2023 didn’t have a funding source initially. So they came back last year and passed one in February of 2025, and that tax was called an excess compensation tax. And, it’s similar to the state millionaires tax in one sense, but it’s not actually an income tax. But, it’s levied on the companies, for compensation that is above $1 million. That includes like benefits, stocks, and other retirement plan perks, stuff like that.

Once you hit that million mark, it’s I believe, 5% after that point. So, it’s only hitting people who are doing really well and maybe a stock windfall impacts that. I mean, it would’ve to be income, so it’d only be the stock you were provided that year.

But anyways, that they thought would be about 50 million, that’s how much they expected people to make over that million mark in Seattle that year. But it turned out it was over twice that. So, yeah, they have a lot more money to work with than they anticipated.

So that’s one thing that’s going on. And that led to them going to update the city council early February. They laid out their plans, and they intend to actually start buying property soon by the end of the year.

The other big news is there’s a big leadership transition. They removed their CEO kind of dramatically at the beginning of the year. His name was Roberto Jimenez and he had a lot of experience in the Sacramento Bay area. But, the various entities, including the board that runs the social housing developer, grew dissatisfied enough to remove him. That was a little bit of a shock. They did kind of hint in December that they were frustrated. One of the things they brought up was that allegedly, he doesn’t actually live in Seattle yet.

He’s still maintaining his primary residence back in the Sacramento area. So there was frustration with that. And then it could also go to some philosophical differences. There was allegations that he didn’t actually want to do the social housing model per se, but wanted to do more of the traditional, all affordable model, which is more tried and true.

And what the advocates behind the social housing measure wanted to do was actually prove out this new model. That’s the whole point. So that’s a pretty deep philosophical divide insofar that that was actually a line in the sand. And Jimenez has defended himself. He didn’t want to be removed, thought it was incorrect.

But obviously that’s been done. And they have an interim director now who is Tiffany McCoy, who you may recall was the person spearheading this measure from House Our Neighbors, the advocacy group that cooked up this idea and then ran the funding measure two years later. She’s taking over in an interim capacity. She says she doesn’t wanna become like the permanent head of this organization. For one, she doesn’t have development experience directly, but she says they’re gonna start a national search in six months. So it’s gonna be a temporary thing until they find a new director for this agency.

But in the meantime, they’re also gonna staff up. They’ve hired a development officer to be the point person on all the details with the property agreements and all of that. They hired someone from the Seattle Housing Authority to do that, with a lot of experience, and they also hired a comms person for the first time. So that definitely goes to show that they’re trying to ramp up.

[00:46:05] Amy: I have a question. It sounded like from what you were saying that the old CEO that was ousted didn’t believe in social housing as a model. He wanted to do more traditional, affordable housing. As you said, the whole point of this was to build social housing. So how does that happen that the social housing developer hires a CEO who doesn’t believe in social housing? Like that doesn’t make sense to me.

[00:46:33] Doug: I mean, we’re getting one side of the story. Jimenez did defend himself and, and I don’t know if he brought up that specific point, but I think maybe his intent, if we’re reading it more charitably, was you do something more conservative for the first few steps, in order to just get the ball rolling. So, I don’t know if that was what was behind it.

I think he didn’t want any weak spots in the armor to attack was they’re still getting outta the gates because that’s the danger that if they make some false moves that public opinion would turn against them. And, they might get their funding taken away from them somehow. It’s fairly protected because it’s passed by measure. But there’s probably vehicles, they could try to take it away. Maybe it was also just, we don’t have social housing very much in our country, so the pool of people who are well versed and demonstrated commitment to it, there’s not that many. So, maybe it was just a factor of they’re not getting the died-in-the-wool type that they expected. 

[00:47:37] Amy: It’s innovative in this country. So I guess that will bring its own problems.

[00:47:42] Ryan: I mean, it ultimately illustrates the tension between the very established affordable housing world and social housing, which is a different model. We saw this during the two campaigns for these initiatives. And I think it’s clear that there’s just a lot of entrenched thinking around how you do quote unquote affordable housing.

And so even if you get somebody who’s super experienced in affordable housing and says they’re on affordable social housing, in practice, it might be a little bit harder than they even think. And like I was just kind of tweaking the model a little bit when it’s really fundamentally different.

[00:48:19] Amy: So they’re getting a lot more money to spend than we thought. Ryan, do you have thoughts about that?

[00:48:25] Ryan: I mean, everyone’s watching for their first big moves, which is likely gonna be building acquisition. So they’re probably gonna purchase an existing building or two. I’m very interested to see how that works. What happens to the existing tenants in those buildings, how they are able to stand up the social housing model in a building that might not be in great condition.

I’m very curious. And so in some ways I do wonder whether the over a hundred percent increase in expected revenue for the agency is gonna be a little bit too fast for them to have to grow. And so I I wonder if that’s gonna end up being a little bit of a mixed blessing in terms of having to really make use of all these dollars when a more limited ramp up could have been effective for them. Obviously, we know we want to have people housed. We know we want to have people be able to utilize these units, but especially if you’re gonna be buying existing buildings, it’s gonna be very interesting to see.

Obviously, we would also love to see them start building, so there’s a, related to this is another bill in the legislature actually that would allow local governments to get more directly involved in social housing PDAs, which is what this developer is technically a public development authority. That’s House Bill 1687, sponsored by Rep Reed over in Queen Anne, our urbanist champion. So I’m gonna be interested to see how that dovetails with the idea of getting the city more involved, and able to actually start building units, creating new units.

[00:49:59] Amy: One thing that’s always surprised me, it still kind of surprises me, even though I’m now very aware of it, is how difficult it can be to spend money. I always thought that, you know, the hard part is getting the money. Right. And then once you have the money, problem solved. But what I’ve seen in practice over and over again for, you know, very different programs is just because you have the money, getting that money out the door is another whole huge project of its own.

[00:50:26] Doug: Yeah. And part of the slow rolling of this… well. It’s not really still rolling, but they need to get the money in the door. And the Harrell administration was kind of jerking them around as far as fronting them the money based on the proceeds. And they eventually did do that, but not as fast as the board would’ve wanted of the social housing developer.

But now they made these hires and it was Ginger Segel was the person they brought over to be their chief real estate officer. And they have someone named Cole Husman, who’s their chief financial officer, and then they hired Lily Fowler to be their comms person.

So, you know, now they have a team that can actually hopefully handle these transactions and then communicate them to the public. And yeah, it’s not gonna be easy. Certainly now they can ramp up faster than they thought. So it’s more of a matter of their plans weren’t laid out for the money coming this fast.

But I don’t think you’ll hear many nonprofits, or public housing authorities complain about having too much money, but it is helpful to have reliable projecting for that money.

[00:51:33] Ryan: Well, we’re almost outta time, but I do want to end on a nice palate cleanser here. The days are getting lighter and sunnier. This past weekend was amazing. I was out at Pike Place Market. The market was jam packed with people during the pedestrian pilot, which is still going on hopefully for several more months or years, hopefully. We just did a story on potential barriers at Pike Place Market. You can read on the site last year that are helping to harden the market during the World Cup. But I have a question for our panelists here.

What is your favorite place to grab a bite to eat at Pike Place Market? Amy, what do you think?

[00:52:10] Amy: So first of all, I have to confess that I don’t actually go to Pike Place Market that often. And that’s actually something I wanna change because I can take the water taxi over from West Seattle and it’s lovely. I love the water taxi, and then you just walk up, and it’s a really nice outing.

So hopefully this will be the year that I start doing that more often. But I will say that one of the places I’ve really enjoyed eating is Crepe de France. They serve crepes and I love crepes so much. So I’m always happy to be able to eat a crepe. So, that is where I tend to gravitate.

[00:52:44] Ryan: That’s a great option. El Borracho is a go-to for me with their vegan burritos and tacos. I do love Lands of Origin for a quick bite right on Pike Place. They’ve got some really good vegan and non-vegan options. Always tasty. Pike Place Chowder is always a go-to. I will say that I’m at the Market at least three or four times a week, so I’m always grabbing something to eat down there. Cinnamon Works huge ass cookies, always amazing. What about you, Doug?

[00:53:16] Doug: Yeah, of course you would have like five answers, Ryan. I like to grab it back to eat there too. I will put in a good word for the Patatas Bravas at the Lonely Siren. I love Mediterranean food, Portuguese food and the brava sauce is something that I would put on, I don’t know, everything. It’s so good. And they also do a good sandwich there, like a bifana sandwich is really good. And the other thing I would say is if you want to see them toss salmon, you should buy something from the people tossing the salmon. And my, my go-to there since I don’t always want to cook a whole salmon filet is the salmon candy. It’s really delicious. So that’s a great thing if you’re showing people around. Yeah, it turns out salmon makes great candy. What, what can’t it do?

[00:54:00] Amy: I had no idea. This is news to me. I’m gonna have to try it.

[00:54:04] Doug: I think they preserve it in sugar. So it kind of has that delectable, savory, sweet thing going on. So those are two that come to mind pretty quickly. Oh, and the other one: the French Onion soup at Maximilian is really good.

[00:54:17] Ryan: Okay, but is it better than the French onion soup at Le Pichet? That’s the question.

[00:54:23] Doug: Oh, that’s close. I wasn’t sure if I could say Le Pichet because it’s on the other side of the market, but I guess it is…

[00:54:28] Ryan: It’s inside the district. As a former Pike Place Market tour guide, I can attest that it is inside you. Technically inside Pike Place Market District, if you walk into the middle of First Avenue, but once you cross the middle of the street, you’re not in the district anymore.

I just wanted to lament the fact that we officially, officially lost Jar Bar. They had been closed for almost a year, but had been hoping to reopen and I walked by and saw the sign finally noting that they wished everybody the best, but were throwing in the towel, which is a sad loss for Pike Place.

[00:55:04] Doug: Yeah. And that’s the beauty of the market having choice too. ’cause we were talking about the multiple French restaurants, but there being multiple Portuguese restaurants in the market shows just the wealth of options you have, and I’m never gonna complain about more places with good apps and tin fish and things like that. So hopefully someone can bring that back in.

[00:55:23] Ryan: Or just really small bars. We need more tiny, tiny little bars. Well that’s all the time we have this week on the Urbanist Podcast. If you like our episodes, don’t forget to rate us on your favorite podcast app. But this newsroom has to get back to reporting on the stories all around the region. And so we’ll let you go, and be back with you in two weeks. Thanks for listening. Thanks for joining us. 

The post Urbanist Podcast: Social Housing and Wilson’s Four Pillars of Affordability first appeared on The Urbanist.

Hosts Ryan Packer, Amy Sundberg, and Doug Trumm also discuss the constitutional crisis created by a Department of Homeland Security that is ignoring due process rights in its haste to execute a campaign of mass deportation. They overview what state and local officials are doing to counter illegal actions by immigration agents, and prepare for the type of invasion that Minneapolis has seen.

Fresh off interviews with the two leading Seattle City Council candidates in District 5, Amy also breaks down the race that could swing control of the legislative body. As immigrants, Nilu Jenks and Julie Kang have stressed the need to defend to protect at-risk communities in the face of ICE overreach.

Finally, the crew each provides their top 3 destinations for visitors to the Seattle region.

Editor’s note: This audio was updated on February 17 to correct an audio leveling issue at the 25-minute mark. This section should be much more audible now.

Transcript

[00:00:02] Ryan: Welcome to the Urbanist Podcast, a show touching on the biggest headlines at The Urbanist, and also offering a deeper look from the reporters who are breaking the stories. We’re an independent reader supported publication based in the Puget Sound region. The Urbanist has been working to cover the big stories since 2014.

We do advocacy journalism for better cities. You can find us at TheUrbanist.org. My name is Ryan Packer. I’m a contributing editor here at The Urbanist. With me as the rest of our newsroom. We’ve got reporter, Amy Sundburg. 

[00:00:34] Amy: Hi, Ryan. Good to be here. 

[00:00:35] Ryan: Great to have you. And we’ve got publisher Doug Trumm. 

[00:00:39] Doug: Hey, let’s get into it. 

[00:00:41] Ryan: Let’s get into it. First thing we’re gonna be talking about is the biggest news, when it comes to transit in the region in a very long time, which is the news we’re finally getting a date for the light rail connection across Lake Washington, between Seattle and the Eastside. 

[00:00:58] Amy: Woo-hoo. 

[00:01:00] Ryan: After years and years of waiting, we know that riders will finally be able to ride the first light rail line on a floating bridge in the entire world on March 28th. So, mark your calendars. Doug, you and I were both there for the beautiful day when they unveiled the countdown clock on the top of I 90 in Seattle. What was it like to be there for this big announcement? 

[00:01:26] Doug: Yeah, it was one of those days we’ve been having. I biked over there, through a frosty arboretum meadow on the way there, trying not to wipe out on my bike. But, we get there and by the time they actually pull the veil back, the sun was shining pretty hard and it, and everyone was really excited and suddenly it felt like the middle of spring and jubilant. So there was a ton of energy there. A lot of people turned out to the little park that. We were spilling out into the road. We could see the Bellevue skyline in the distance and the bridge that’s gonna carry people there. 

It was a really great backdrop for the announcement. A lot of excitement, good speeches. Sound Transit chair Dave Somers was probably right that people aren’t gonna remember the speeches very well. But they will remember that they have this great new way to get to Bellevue and beyond. 

[00:02:13] Ryan: Yeah, I was struck by how many of the speakers tried to really ground in the history of what led to this moment. Dow Constantine really has a chip on his shoulder about Forward Thrust, the transit measure that failed in the seventies, and the fact that has taken us so long to, to finally build out our network. 

So he was really trying to paint all of the steps leading up to this, including Jim Ellis, who helped lead the Forward Thrust plan that ultimately didn’t work. But also, the people who built the I-90 Bridge with the idea of light rail potentially being able to go on it, which a lot of people thought was gonna be completely impossible. 

And then Claudia Balducci, who’s been on the Sound Transit Board almost longer than everybody had to also ground people on the fact that the Eastside fought against light rail, tooth and nail, and Kemper Freeman tried to stop it, and Mercer Island was not a big fan of having a station on their island. And all these headwinds. 

And it’s gonna be a big moment when this finally is able to open. Obviously the fact that, we already have the stations open on the Eastside it’s both a huge win for the region, but it also dampens the excitement a little bit, I think. It’s easy to imagine what this would be like if we were opening the entire thing at the same time. It’d be a huge, huge moment. But also those stations are getting a lot of use and so it’s really good that we were able to do that. 

It’s a different kind of thing, but I think people are still gonna be incredibly excited to get out there on day one. It is definitely the biggest transit opening, since maybe the first segment of the 1 Line open in 2008. 

[00:03:58] Doug: Yeah, a lot of people were saying that. I guess farther back I might not have immediately thought that, just ’cause they all seem like a big deal. But, I do think this one’s monumental, since the idea of crossing the lake is a barrier in itself. There’s only those few, few passageways through and the fact that Bellevue and Redmond are huge job centers too. I think at least to some of the regional boosters, that’s like a huge difference. And a great connection for people to have options in where they live and still get to work. So that came up a lot. 

[00:04:29] Amy: I mean the people I’ve been talking to are really excited. I think for people who haven’t been following as closely, the opening of the bridge so that there’s the cross ability is a really big deal and people are really into it. And I know people have already been asking me, where is the celebration gonna be? We know when we know the opening day, but where is it gonna be because maybe I wanna go right? That kind of thing. 

[00:04:52] Ryan: Yeah, it’s a big question I had. Where’s the ribbon cutting gonna be? Is it gonna be on the bridge? Is it gonna be in Mercer Island? Which is kind of right between, but it’s not a really, a super fitting, uh, um, place given how much they fought against having their station. I think Judkins Park makes a lot of sense, but also I want Bellevue to be a part of that moment too, even though they don’t have any new stations opening. And so it’d be nice, I mean, I think we’re gonna spread the party around a little bit, but we’ll see. 

[00:05:22] Doug: Yeah. And no official announcements at that event. They’re still getting their ducks in a row. And we joked about this in a previous episode that what if we put in Judkins Park? And we kind of laughed it off, but I talked to some people who thought it might actually be possible. I guess the one benefit it’s closer to some of the offices and news stations. The Bellevue station’s already opened, which would be the other kind of obvious option. 

[00:05:44] Ryan: Yeah, I think that makes the most sense. But there was a little bit of a sour note for the unveiling of the clock. Can you talk a little bit about why that was, Doug? 

[00:05:56] Doug: Yeah, I did an article on this, a week or two after the event, just ’cause it was still kind of sticking with me watching that surreal moment where they did give Claudia Balducci, who used to be mayor of Bellevue and Bellevue City Councilmember since 2004. So she noted she was one of the few people who saw this project through from its inception. 

Because the funding for this project came from the 2008 Sound Transit 2, or ST2, what we say for short ballot measure. And, they had a failed measure before that she noted. And all that time it was in negotiation with the local governments in the area, including the Bellevue City Council, which she was on. 

Then she eventually runs for the Bellevue district for the King County Council. And that’s where she got this appointment to the Sound Transit Board and served on the System Expansion Committee from 2018 as chair. So, that’s a long way of intro to say she’s not on that committee anymore because they voted to change the committee assignments that same week that they announced this opening. 

And we had caught wind of that, as well. So, she is making this big unveiling, which they’re giving their honor, but they’re giving with one hand and taking from the other in kicking her off this important System Expansion Committee where a lot of the work to balance the budget, which is there’s a $35 billion long-term gap, with their ambitious expansion plans, which are gonna nearly double the light rail that they built out with ST2, to 116 miles. It’s gonna be a very extensive network. Maybe not as dense in Seattle as some would like, but it’s gonna stretch from Tacoma to Everett and get out to Issaquah. 

But, she’s navigated the challenges with the 2 Line and they got there and people are excited about that, but they’re not gonna go take that experience and have her continue to, if not lead System Expansion Committee, at least be on the committee. ’cause they removed her from that and from executive committee and put her on Rider Experience where I’m sure she’ll do good work. But, I think it’s hard not to see that as a slight. 

[00:07:53] Ryan: Yeah, and it’s important to note that these committee assignments were not really up for renewal. There have been some new members joining, but usually you don’t completely reconfigure your committee assignments. This was supposed to go through the end of this year, which is a very critical year for all these decisions. Claudia Balducci has literally been chairing System Expansion Committee since there was a System Expansion Committee before it was called something else in 2018. It’s just, yeah, it’s a big shift. So a lot of people are kind of anxious about this. 

[00:08:29] Amy: It also looked like the new chair of the System Expansion Committee hasn’t been there for that long. Am I correct in that? 

[00:08:35] Ryan: That’s true. Yeah. Angela Birney, Mayor of Redmond, she’s only been on the board for a couple years and so, it was an interesting choice, especially given this sort of rationale that Claudia’s district is transitioning into the phase of their system being open. So focusing on rider experience makes sense, because that’s also true for Redmond. 

[00:08:56] Doug: Even more so. 

[00:08:57] Ryan: Even more so. Yeah. ’cause ultimately there will be another line in Claudia’s district, but not in Redmond. So that is a little head scratching. But it’s more to the fact that she’s not sitting on the committee at all. Nor executive committee. Executive committee deals with high level policy. She’s being replaced by the person that she lost to for the executive race last year. So it’s hard not to see that as a factor here as well. 

I watched her first Rider Experience Committee meeting yesterday after the first executive committee that she wasn’t on in the morning. And it’s undeniable the level of discussion that Claudia makes happen when she’s on a committee, cutting through to find the elephant in the room and actually put it on the table. And I just felt like it was pretty clear that was missing. Obviously, Katie Wilson, who’s now on executive committee is going to be a valuable voice, but she’s still getting her legs under her, in terms of what it means to be on that committee, as opposed to someone who’s been on the board, you know, for 10 years. 

[00:09:58] Doug: Yeah. And she’s also just trying to get the ball rolling and get momentum as mayor. So I think she can walk and chew gum, but it’s a tall ask to try to be Claudia Balducci two weeks into your Sound Transit term. 

[00:10:09] Amy: Is it safe to say that? This was a fairly surprising move. 

[00:10:15] Ryan: It was surprising. Yeah, it was surprising both to Balducci, quoted her saying that she was surprised by this, as well as transit advocates who really weren’t expecting. And this was really only announced 24 hours before the full board where the decision was made. And, there were some people who called in, thanks to our reporting, noting that the agenda materials had been posted, expressing shock. 

And, Dave Somers, the chair of the board responded to this saying, ‘ Claudia’s great by the way you can show up to any committee that you want to and still participate even though if you can’t vote.’ Even though that’s pretty unusual. Oftentimes the committees have trouble getting quorum some months, and so it’s a little unrealistic. 

But yeah, it was a big surprise. 

[00:10:59] Doug: Yeah, and I think a lot of people saw political retribution, you know, for her running for executive and losing. I will say that Angela Birney did endorse Claudia Balducci because Claudia had her base of support in the Eastside more so than, than the rest of the county, which ended up being more numerous as far as the votes go. 

So I guess it’s not like pure political retribution, but I think it played a factor. That that was why her time was up. And I don’t know, she can still go to the meetings, but without that voting power, I don’t think she’ll have as much leverage. 

So, it’s definitely gonna be an interesting time, and they’re tackling the Enterprise Initiative this year, which is what their term is for, ‘how the heck do we close this $30 billion plus hole in her long-term financial plan.’ I’m sure she’ll still be negotiating behind the scenes, but, I guess the big question is just do they have a plan, a viable plan to do that? 

Because they said, ‘we don’t want to just do what we’ve always done,’ which is delay projects and cut projects and water down scope and all of that. ‘We wanna try to figure out some new creative ways to solve that gap.’ But so far I haven’t heard anything that really gets them all the way there. 

[00:12:04] Ryan: Correct. And, to put my pundit hat on for a minute, I look less at the political retribution angle and more the fact that, Claudia Balducci is someone who is thinking out of the box when it comes to this. And that’s not always actually a popular thing for people who are more comfortable with the status quo to be forced to think out of the box. And so you go back to December when Dave Somers tried to force the conversation around Balducci’s idea to look at a building the second downtown tunnel. We talked about that on the podcast. 

And, that was kind of killed in the crib in terms of an intentional choice to get that out of the way before the discussion is happening this year. Even though, I think if I come down on one side, it’s in favor of keeping the tunnel, but I also come down in favor of keeping it on the table because the other option is maybe canceling West Seattle. 

And so should be a part of the discussion. So what I see is sidelining Balducci is really a move to really keep those discussions to a minimum. And, I saw this yesterday: she was pushing to really make sure that the board was actually getting involved in these discussions and not letting staff lead the way. 

And that’s the biggest concern that I have, is not engaging fully with all the options on the table and just letting the easiest thing take over. 

[00:13:25] Doug: Yeah, absolutely. You made a great point. The first meeting you watched without her, there was a lot quieter as far as actually pressing staff to explain themselves or consider other options because really that’s all it comes down to. Like, maybe her asking questions hasn’t always changed their course, but at least it forced agency staff to put their reasoning on the table. And that’s honestly been the biggest complaint from transit advocates from a process standpoint anyways, that Sound Transit won’t really show their work. They won’t explain their assumptions that led them to make an alignment choice or policy choice around service. 

So, the board is supposed to be there checking under the hood, so to speak. And if there’s not someone putting questions out there, even if they’re not immediately all the answers, you know, like the tunnel questioning being one where maybe she’s wrong, but at least she’s forcing a discussion about it. 

And she was asking those questions early in the process before there was a huge financial problem, because of all the trouble about getting a station in either Chinatown or Pioneer Square and then figuring how to do the transfers from the Eastside. That whole Chinatown Station debate was also about the whole system having good transfers. 

And she was saying back then like, well, let’s look at other options like connecting West Seattle and Ballard and then doing that as a driverless metro would save money on operations, ’cause you could run trains more frequently because there be drivers and you wouldn’t have to worry about scheduling. And it was then board chair Dow Constantine who was like, eh, we don’t, we don’t want to get into that. So it seems to be a pattern between Constantine, Somers, other folks who are like, let’s just stick to the plan. 

And that’s fine if the plan is working out great, but we’re seeing it starting to not work out so good. 

[00:15:08] Amy: I will say as a person who lives in West Seattle and therefore has a personal stake in some of the decisions coming up this year, personally I would like to know that Sound Transit is exploring all the options and really asking the tough questions. If they are gonna cancel the line to West Seattle, I wanna know that there really was nothing else they could do. 

Right? Also, I just hope they don’t cancel it. But beyond that personally, I want someone there asking questions. 

[00:15:40] Ryan: Well, we’re gonna continue to track what’s happening at the Sound Transit Board. There’s a big board retreat coming up on March 18th when a lot of these decisions are gonna really come to a head. And so we’ll be as usual, one of the only few news outlets that are actually in the room during those retreats. I’ve been to the past three ones and they have been fairly interesting, but also always important. We’ll be tracking that. 

We’re gonna switch gears and talk about another huge topic around the region right now, which is the response of all levels of government to the actions of the federal government and particularly the department within Homeland Security. Amy, you have been all over the story, providing incredible coverage for all these policies and potential moves that could be made in response. What are you tracking right now? 

[00:16:29] Amy: I think when we, when we speak about this topic, it’s important. A lot of the focus is on what’s happening right now in Minneapolis and what’s been happening before that in Los Angeles and Chicago and other cities around the country where ICE deploys an intense amount of force, right? 

So I don’t know if you wanna call it an invasion of the city. Certainly some people are. It seems like that’s what it feels like on the ground. And so there’s a lot of concern about that sort of deployment happening here in Seattle or in Washington state. But I do wanna say upfront that even though that deployment has not yet happened and we’re trying to prepare for it on many levels of government, that does not mean that ICE isn’t already active in our communities. 

They are here, they’re taking people and detaining them every day. They are here in Seattle, they’re in South King County, they’re on the Eastside and beyond, right? Obviously I am more in touch with what’s happening closer to where I’m covering, but that doesn’t mean that it isn’t happening elsewhere in the state as well. 

I think a lot of people are not aware of how much this is already impacting at risk communities and in particular immigrant and refugee communities. What I’m hearing is just a lot of fear. The stories that you’re hearing from elsewhere of people being afraid to leave their houses because they’re afraid that they will be detained or killed if they do so that is, that is already happening here as well. People are very afraid. 

I went to a Seattle town hall a couple weeks ago, that was Katie Wilson’s transition committee for federal response, and the focus of that was really on, on ICE and ICE’s activities. And, a few community members came to speak at that town hall and they said, ‘I was so afraid to even come to this town hall. Like, I thought that I might be endangering myself by coming here, but I wanted to be heard. I wanted to let my community members know like how bad it really is.’ 

And I will be honest, I was there. At the beginning of the meeting, they talked about spaces that people could go to if ICE came to the meeting, where ICE wouldn’t be allowed to go in to those spaces, right, because of the jurisdictional way that works. And I was sitting in this packed room. I’m bad at estimating, but it was definitely over a hundred people. And I was like, thank goodness so many community members showed up who aren’t as in, in much danger because with this many other people here, we will have a much better chance of protecting the people who need to be protected, if something were to happen like that. 

Clearly nothing did happen or I would’ve reported on it, but, that is the type of thing that’s already going through my mind. And I just think it’s so important to realize that even though we’re not having the degree of suffering and fear that’s happening in say, Minneapolis right now, that doesn’t mean it’s not happening here. It, it definitely is. And what we’re preparing for is for it to get even worse. 

[00:19:44] Doug: Right now, ICE agents outnumber police officers in the Twin Cities, and that’s, that’s pretty shocking. Definitely, I can see why they feel like it’s an invasion. I’m originally from Minnesota, have a lot of family members in Minneapolis and St. Paul, and yeah, I mean, it’s changed their daily lives, to have to avoid areas or, carve time outta your day if you’re gonna help to try to keep your neighbors from getting snatched. And I think people, even if you’re not that worried that you are gonna end up in a immigration detention center, like the feeling that you that’s happening in your neighborhood does not contribute to a sense of safety or wellbeing. 

And now that they’ve pivoted to targeting allies and people who are trying to disrupt the illegal detentions of random people off the street, you could get arrested even if you’re more, more so just being punished for helping rather than intended to be deported. 

So yeah, it creates a sense of chaos and danger. I think it’s good that people are trying to learn the lessons from Minneapolis, get those neighborhood groups together, get the signal lists and the whistles and everything else they’ll need. Mutual aid groups and all that. 

Because it seems like they’re gonna ramp up activity. And we already have a nearly 1600 bed facility in Tacoma, the Northwest Detention Center, that seems like it’s pretty much full to the gills. ICE is operating at a level where they can do that here in our state. And they’ve already applied to expand that facility. So they’re definitely intending to do more. 

[00:21:16] Ryan: Amy, I know a lot of people were waiting for Katie Wilson to take some type of action to protect the city. Ultimately she did make an announcement that got some pushback from the right wing because it’s a day that ends in “Y”. But what was this announcement and what would it actually do? 

[00:21:35] Amy: Right? Yes. Katie Wilson did make an announcement. She listed several steps that the mayor’s office intends to take in response to ICE’s behavior in Minneapolis and elsewhere, and to prepare should they descend upon us in a similar way. A lot of them were kind of common sense sort of things, like making sure city employees have updated training on how to respond to ICE in various circumstances. Making sure that all the city departments conduct a privacy review to find out, how is their data protected? Is their data sufficiently protected? Are there any holes where data could possibly get out? Like that kind of thing. Signage in private places where ICE is not allowed to go. 

So I think those are things that, that perhaps there have already been some movement on, but there they’re important to, to recommit to doing those things. But as well, she issued an executive order, to prohibit civil federal immigration authorities, which is mostly ICE from using property that is city owned and city controlled for civil immigration enforcement activities. 

So that includes parks, parking lots, like garages, the Seattle Center. It doesn’t cover things like schools because the Seattle School District would have to do their own policy, in order to have it cover schools. That I think is a meaningful thing to do. They still haven’t invested the $4 million that was allocated in the budget cycle in November for immigrant legal defense, et cetera. So they’re saying they’re gonna step up the urgency of actually allocating those dollars. And it’s February, I know it’s hard to move quickly, but I do think that getting those funds out the door should be a top priority and it sounds like it will be a top priority. 

And for me, what I thought was very interesting was they said they would require the Seattle Police Department to investigate any reports of immigration enforcement activity. So that would include documenting the activity with their body-worn cameras or the cameras in their vehicles. It would include seeing if the ICE officers making sure they are actually ICE right and not random private individuals. 

And I think this is trying to take lessons from Minneapolis, securing the scenes of when, when something goes down that might be illegal, right? Like if somebody is shot, to make a relevant example, making sure that evidence can be collected from that scene. That’s not the feds. 

[00:24:14] Doug: I think you’ve done a good job in your various reporting though, of putting out how these well-intentioned high level policy bills, if it’s counting on cooperation from the police, sometimes that doesn’t always work out too well in practice. And I know the flip side of all the body-worn cameras is that ICE can just subpoena the footage, if they’re trying to either defend themselves or, intimidate people, trying to protect folks who could be at risk of deportation. 

[00:24:41] Amy: Yeah, I’d much rather see legal observers, independent individual and concerned neighbors there with their phones, frankly, recording it, and get video that way. Also, there’s already been pushback from the Seattle Police Officers Guild. Mike Solan is the president, and he’s gonna step down sometime this month, I believe, but in the meantime, he’s still there and he’s already said, ‘we’re not gonna do this.’ And to be fair to the police, it is rather a sticky situation because you have the federal law enforcement and then you have the local law enforcement and like how those two bodies interact, right? That does put SPD in a bit of a hard place. 

However, I mean, at the end of the day, you have to make the call, right, as to who, who are you serving and protecting, and what are you willing to do about that? We had Chief Shon Barnes say almost a year ago now, they, he fully expected to be arrested at some point because he was gonna stand up to the federal government. 

And now that, it’s coming closer to maybe that point, that’s not so much what we’re hearing anymore and certainly not from SPOG. So I completely understand the people who are like, I want SPD protect us. I want them to be involved. But I am afraid that those people are going to be disappointed in practice. 

[00:26:02] Doug: He’s already done a couple things to undermine the mayors so far. So, it’s hard to count on Chief Barnes to just be a good soldier and carry out every Katie Wilson dictate. 

[00:26:12] Amy: Right. And I mean, I asked them, how is this gonna be enacted? This requirement and it’s not going to be part of SPD policy, which I think is a really important point. It really, in my opinion, should be made actual official policy because they think that will help to hold police officers accountable for actually if they do it or not. 

And if they don’t do it well, it was a part of policy, and that will make a difference in the accountability process. So, obviously it could be made into policy later, and I hope to see that, because right now I think it’s just a directive. 

[00:26:49] Ryan: Amy, one thing that I think a lot of people are watching for is to see what katie Wilson’s gonna do about the surveillance cameras that were approved under the previous city council and mayor. Have you heard about any potential movement on that front? 

[00:27:05] Amy: Yes. I heard a lot of people express disappointment that, that in this press release when Mayor Wilson put out the list of things that she’s gonna do in response, that surveillance was not mentioned. It was not on that list at all. It wasn’t even really obliquely referenced. It wasn’t there. And I think people were surprised and people were disappointed, because of her platform when she ran, she was pretty clear that she thought surveillance, especially at this time, was not the best idea, and could endanger vulnerable people who live in Seattle. So there has been no movement on that. 

I think it’s tricky. To be clear, I think this is a urgent time, and that the urgency of the moment probably needs to be at the forefront of decision making. But that, of course, that’s my personal opinion. I will say that there would be potential political fallout from curtailing the surveillance or turning off the cameras, which is I think, the main demand that people are making. You know, city council is divided on this issue. SPD loves their surveillance. And, there’s a lot of messaging around how surveillance could keep Seattleites safe. 

People who follow the issue, privacy advocates, et cetera, would push back on that. But, but that doesn’t mean, you know, a lot of people don’t know much about it, and so it can be a convincing argument. Making SPD angry in month two is tough, right? Like, if I were the new mayor, I might hesitate a little too. 

But like I said, I think it’s an urgent moment. Right now some of this surveillance has lower retention times, but some of it has longer retention times. So, if you don’t shut off the cameras until more ICE agents come, there’s the potential that there’s some data that will have been recorded before they came and that they could still get ahold of. 

So there, there are a lot of considerations there. And I hope that we do hear more since this was, I feel like one of her promises on the campaign trail was to really take a closer look at this, and act. 

[00:29:14] Ryan: If it stays in place the way it is right now, you’ve covered some potential changes that could be forced via bills and Olympia. Could you talk a little bit about what, what that might look like? 

[00:29:26] Amy: The main bill in Olympia that’s still moving right now, that impacts surveillance is the ALPR bill that Senator Trudeau has sponsored. 

[00:29:35] Ryan: And what’s ALPR?  

[00:29:36] Amy: Automatic license plate readers, this is license plate cameras. So that could be, for example, in the news, the most right now is the Flock cameras. But it’s not just Flock and I think there’s a lot of confusion about that right now. It is not just flock. There are several companies that do these sorts of cameras. And the ones that do Seattle’s camera, it’s Axon who does Seattle’s cameras, their ALPR. And it’s not just flock who has the problems, it’s more just that Flock is a very big network and has been under a lot of scrutiny right now from the press. So that’s what people have heard about. 

But, you know, all of these systems have similar vulnerabilities, so I wouldn’t… I am hearing that across the country, some cities are switching now from Flock to Axon because of this, and I don’t think that that’s a super helpful move, frankly. So this bill and Olympia, it actually did pass the Senate. So, I’ll be moving along to the house now. It would put limitations on what would be allowed with these ALPR cameras. However, it was weakened. It was already weakened. It was supposed to have a data retention time of 72 hours for any of the data that’s collected by the cameras. 

There are a lot of reasons why you could keep data for longer than that. So that would just be the data that mostly doesn’t matter. There’s nothing on a hot list that says this license plate is important in any way. That kind of thing. Just basically normal people going about their day’s data, 72 hours, which privacy advocates were already saying: ‘That’s too long. They don’t really need that data period, because this is just ordinary folks.’ 

And they’ve increased that time significantly, and the reason that is concerning, aside from the fact that advocates are already trying to get it lower, is that if the time goes beyond a certain length, it becomes much more dangerous for reproductive rights as well, because often what they find is law enforcement doesn’t necessarily go searching for someone who had an abortion like immediately. But if you retain the data for more than, I don’t remember what the amount is, five days a week, something like that, then those people seeking reproductive care become in a lot more danger as well. 

So it was disappointing to see the retention rates go up. 

[00:31:55] Doug: And I know we had a number of other bills that kind of impact ICE and the mass deportation campaign that the president is carrying out. But, I also wanted to talk about the response at the statewide executive level, because in late january, we also had a press conference from Governor Bob Ferguson and Attorney General Nick Brown that you covered, Amy. 

And they kind of said, we have a plan, but we can’t tell you the plan, I guess is the short version. So talk more about that because I, I do think they have some stuff up their sleeve, but obviously they’re playing hard to the ‘we don’t want to give the enemy our playbook.’  

[00:32:28] Amy: Yes, they said more than once during that press conference that they don’t wanna give up their playbook, and that now Seattle has taken up that message as well, which, which is interesting. I will say one of the most notable things that, for me that came out of that press conference was when Attorney General Nick Brown said, this is a constitutional crisis that we’re in. And, you know, it certainly seemed like that, but when you have the foremost legal authority in the state coming out and saying that unequivocally, I think that’s a big deal. It certainly means that I’m just calling it a constitutional crisis all the time with no worries about whether I’m being accurate. 

So it’s a big deal. I think that a lot of the strategy will be legal, and it’ll be sorts of legal things that as non-lawyers, some of the nuances might escape us even if they were to explain it. So, there’s that. A lot of it honestly that they were willing to share, seemed pretty: we’re like, oh, we’re coordinating, we’re talking about it. And I’m like, well, that’s great. I mean, we should be talking about it. 

There was the hope that the legislature would do something, and there are some bills in the legislature right now, that are pertaining to this. I would say most of them are gonna have minimal impact. So I wouldn’t put all my hope in the legislature. It’s a tough spot for everyone because both the Governor and the Attorney General said, you know, we can’t prevent ICE from coming here. They could potentially deploy the National Guard, but that’s a big move. 

And again, similar to the police problem, then you have the National Guard versus federal forces. What, what does that look like? How is that gonna work? Like, what are people going to be willing to do in that situation? There are a lot of there.  

[00:34:16] Doug: And that’s what Minnesota Governor Tim Walz did shortly after the shootings, the killings of people trying to interrupt ICE, the legal observers. And, it hasn’t been a game changer. Well, I guess no one’s been killed since then that we know of. But, it doesn’t mean that the deportations have stopped or that people have suddenly felt secure with all these ICE agents running around in the streets of the Twin Cities. So, the governor didn’t say he would do that. He kind of just put it on the table as a potential. 

[00:34:44] Amy: Right. It’s a thing he could do. But will he do it? And he, I think said pretty upfront he doesn’t know in what circumstances he would do that, right? Like everyone’s kind of playing it by ear to a certain degree, which is part of the chaos that is being encouraged right now by the federal government. It’s the same with the funding, right? 

Are we gonna get the funding? Do we need to change things around? And then maybe we’ll get the funding. We’ll, we’ll do a legal case and then it will pause something and then we’ll get the funding after all. But, you know, with all this chaos, it’s very, very hard to plan. It’s especially hard to plan out like more than a few months, right? ‘Cause you just don’t know what’s gonna happen. How many ICE agents are gonna be here, how much money you’re gonna have for this project or that project. It’s all kind of up in the air.  

[00:35:35] Doug: Ferguson’s over a year into being governor. But I think it seemed pretty clear he is still thinking like a state attorney general. He seemed very proud he said we’d done the most, we sued Trump more than any other state. And that’s what he did when he was attorney General. But he doesn’t really have his calling card yet as governor as far as how he stopped Trump. And maybe that’s just because it’s a harder thing to do than just count the number of lawsuits and we did do a lot of lawsuits and I’m not saying they didn’t help, but, fundamentally Trump was still able to do what he was able to do and get reelected. So it’s a complicated thing. There’s no easy answer. 

[00:36:10] Amy: And the other problem with lawsuits, I mean, the lawsuits are a good idea. I support us doing as many as we can, frankly, but they do take time. So it’s not necessarily the immediate response that you will need for certain situations. 

There are some bills that are still moving in the legislature. The bill about face coverings for law enforcement passed the Senate, you know, we’ve talked about that before. I’m a little skeptical about how useful that will be in practice or how enforceable that will be. I guess we’ll probably have a chance to see, to see how, how it goes. 

There’s some bills that will protect agricultural workers, and potentially give them more collective bargaining rights, which I think seems insufficient to the times, but is very important. I mean, clearly agricultural workers deserve protections and the ability to do more effective collective bargaining. So that’s a positive, if that makes it through. 

And then there’s also a bill that I’m following with great interest that says that the state can fine private detention facilities that won’t allow health department inspections. And the fine it grows over time, right? The longer they deny these inspections, the more money they will owe. And this bill will primarily hit the ICE detention facility in Tacoma, where we know that the conditions are, while not perhaps quite as horribly dire as some other detention facilities in the country. I mean, the bar is on the floor, right? Like the conditions there are still quite bad, and we have documentation of that going back a long time. 

And there was just a lawsuit brought this week about the guard’s behavior at that detention center and a lot of brutality and potential I think that sexual misconduct perhaps as well. I haven’t, I haven’t read the law lawsuit yet, but, that was for actions that, that happened during Biden’s administration. So clearly this is a facility that has not been treating its inmates very humanely for quite some time. 

[00:38:14] Doug: Yeah, and we can see with just ICE’s planned expansion. They’re just buying up warehouses, not places that have been built to house people that actually house goods. And that’s gonna be their next phase of new concentration camps basically. So if that’s what they consider suitable habitation and holding facilities, then you can only imagine what the existing facilities are like.  

[00:38:38] Amy: Yeah. And I mean, we have some reports. We have a few people who have since left the detention center who have spoken about the conditions there, so, I would say this is not in question that the conditions there are quite bad. Some of the details might still be kind of murky. And that’s something that hopefully we can continue to get more clarity on. But at the end of the day, it is not suitable conditions for human beings. 

[00:39:04] Doug: And that’s, that’s likely by design because part of the goal is to encourage people to self deport by making it such a miserable experience. 

[00:39:11] Amy: Right. Well, and that’s also the, the whole atmosphere of fear. It has that same effect, right? If you’re so afraid you don’t wanna leave your house, you’re afraid for your family, whatever, then you’ll start considering your options. I mean, the problem is not everybody has any other option. So yes, maybe some people will self deport if they feel that they do have another option that would be a little bit safer. But some people, they came here because where they were before was not safe. And as unsafe as it might be here, it might still be safer than where they came from, which is just a huge tragedy. 

[00:39:46] Doug: And I think that’s the only way that Trump can make his campaign promise math work. Because what was it he said a million people per year he wanted to deport. They don’t have the capacity to do that with flights, and ICE doing its thing. So they, they need people to self deport to make that work. 

[00:40:03] Amy: Right? And they don’t have the capacity to do these big incursions like you’re seeing in Minneapolis and every city in the country, right? They have to do like one or two at a time. And that’s why we’re seeing what we’re seeing. I think that’s part of why it’s really important to emphasize that these sorts of actions are happening in other places. Because I feel like a lot of the media coverage goes to wherever the incursion is happening and understandably so. But that doesn’t mean, for example, there still isn’t a lot of really harmful and disturbing things happening in Los Angeles, right. It’s still happening there. It’s just that the news is now covering Minneapolis. 

[00:40:42] Ryan: Yeah. I’m sure that these issues are gonna be front and center in this year’s elections. The Urbanist team has been very busy covering candidates who are announcing their campaigns, including in District 5 in Seattle and King County District 2. 

Amy, you just talked to a new candidate, in Seattle’s District 5, which has a special election this year because Cathy Moore, who was elected in 2023, decided to resign in the middle of her term. Who did you talk to and what was your impression of this candidate? 

[00:41:13] Amy: Yeah, so I talked to Julie Kang, who is one of the candidates. I’ve also talked to Nilu Jenks. And I’ll say both of them brought up without me even having to ask the issue of immigrant and refugee safety in Seattle. So it definitely is top of mind. Both of them are also immigrants themselves. 

I do think that these are issues that touch home for them personally from the conversations that we were having. I mean, it’s gonna be an interesting race. Obviously, District 5 has not had an elected representative because Cathy Moore resigned. Whoever wins this race will only serve a year and then potentially have to run again for the next full term. So that’s an interesting facet. District 5 is a very large district and it has its own challenges as every district does. We talked about many of those including accessibility, transit access, the food desert problem, food access, gun violence. So there’s a lot of problems that need addressing in District 5. 

[00:42:22] Doug: Yes, Lake City lost its QFC, which is why that’s been so top of mind there. I think it’s a fascinating district and really with control of city council up for grabs it’s going to be an interesting bellwether because normally North Seattle’s wealthy and largely White compared to the rest of the city. 

D5 is sort of the exception. It’s more diverse than the rest of North Seattle. And, there’s a sizable Latino and Asian population that that could be folks that feel like ICE is coming for them. So, that’s why this issue is coming up. And, while it went towards centrists in the last election with Cathy Moore absolutely cleaning up, part of that was having a candidate who wasn’t very well funded and seen as sort of a novice, I guess, or, or just a little too raw in Christiana ObeySumner, who we did endorse in the general election at the Urbanist. 

But in the Primary we endorsed Nilu Jenks, and she finished third, and not to play what if, but there are some people have theorized that she would’ve put up a little closer race, but, considering the margin that Moore won by, she was probably destined for victory. And she didn’t really get forced to define herself on some issues maybe, but that was a different wave of a year back in 2023. 

So, it could be a much different year this time. It definitely seems like it with the momentum that progressives had in the 2025 election. 

[00:43:43] Ryan: Amy, since you talked to both Nilu and Julie, what would you say the biggest distinction that you drew between the two candidates was. 

[00:43:52] Amy: That’s a good question. I think Nilu seemed to be a bit more solution oriented. So that was a big difference I noticed. And I mean, one of the reasons I noticed is because I tend to care a lot about solutions. So I’m always asking about that and pushing to see what are candidates ideas or what do they think about this policy that passed or that kind of thing. 

Part of it is that Nilu Jenks has experience in the gun violence prevention space. She did some work in that space, when she lived in California. Talking with her, I could tell that she had done work in that space, right. She, I think, had more ideas of what to do about the food desert situation, which maybe isn’t surprising because she actually lives in Lake City. 

Whereas Julie Kang, lives more in the off of Aurora area. About the food desert situation. Julie Kang was more like, ‘oh, I’ll support state legislators who are maybe working on bills and I don’t necessarily have any new ideas about this, but we just need to work together,’ which is fine. 

I mean, it’s always hard with candidates because especially early on in the race, they don’t necessarily know everything. They don’t have all the answers. And I think both candidates were very frank with me in saying that. And I think that is honest and a real thing. So one of the things to look for is, how did they respond as they learn more? 

‘Cause I think some people are more open-minded and like the example I’ll give for this is a Councilmember Eddie Lin. We saw it last year with social housing and he voted against social housing and later on he was like, you know what? I’ve learned about it and I made a mistake and he was very upfront about that. I do think that he learned about social housing and now supports it more. And it was the same with surveillance. If you look at some of his early questions, he was like, ‘facial recognition is fine.’ And later, clearly he is one of the voices on council that is very concerned about surveillance. He’s learned a lot more about what the implications of it are. 

[00:46:01] Ryan: Yeah. I think even Eddie’s campaign manager said in a podcast that he had encouraged Eddie to just lie to The Urbanist, when we asked about the social housing vote, and he decided that that was not a good thing to do and ultimately went with his gut. 

[00:46:17] Amy: But, I actually feel like that’s something to think about is that a lot of these candidates, they don’t have all the answers. There’s certain topics they’re gonna know a lot about. And there’s other topics that they’re just not. Especially, I mean, it’s February, right? But how did they evolve over the course of the campaign, I think is really interesting. We’ll, we’ll have to wait and see on that. 

[00:46:38] Doug: They will have a head start though, because they both well, Nilu also ran in 2023, but even Julie Kang applied for the position in 2025 when they ultimately went Debora Juarez for the appointment. So they both were kind of running before they were running, and had this D5 seat in mind for a while. To me what’s interesting is the similarities, because you would kind of want to pigeon hole Kang as the centrist and Nilu as the progressive, but things are always a little bit more interesting, complicated than that. 

[00:47:04] Amy: Yeah, murky.  

[00:47:05] Doug: But maybe this goes to speak to centrist candidates are shifting in how they talk about housing and growth. But, one thing that Kang said in your interview, which I’m really glad you brought this up, was that she supports Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck, her proposal to add eight neighborhood growth centers across the city, which ultimately they had to table it and they’re planning to bring it back late this year. 

So, it could be something very much would be on the docket for that group of council members to finally approve the zoning for, either at the end of this year or next year or whatever. But one of those would be in D5 and she was willing to say, okay, let’s add another neighborhood growth center in D5. I’m sure there will be some people who don’t like that. But, she wanted to be on that side of that vote, and that’s very much where, where Nilu is at as well, and has been for a while. 

Hugging your opponent in that position, you could look at that as a political strategist or cynically, but also maybe just agrees. She seems pro-growth. She used to be a banker, founded a bank called Pacific International Bank, which now is Bank of Hope. She grew that bank into a 200 million in assets. And they support small business owners who are largely Korean American, although other groups as well. 

So, she’s someone who’s coming at this from an economic development angle. So, that, that business versus labor divide could show up in this race. And also, who knows, maybe there could be more candidates. There’s a third candidate in this race, but sort of an unknown. I think his name is Silas or something like that. 

[00:48:34] Amy: It’s early days, so it’s hard to say if we’ll get more candidates. I will say especially given the success of progressive campaigns in the last two cycles, it would not be at all surprising, for moderates to co-opt more of the progressive language, which, which happens anyways, right? Like, that’s not like that’s a new thing. But it seems like politically a savvy move at the moment. 

Also candidates don’t always follow through on what they say they’re gonna do, which of course is hard for voters ’cause, it’s hard to necessarily know, right? You try to be as savvy as you can, but, obviously if someone chooses to misrepresent their views, it can be hard to find that out until afterwards. 

[00:49:22] Doug: Another big way that candidates cleave in these Seattle City Council races is in their relative enthusiasm for cutting spending versus adding new revenue sources. And that’s definitely gonna come up in this race. And I think both candidates are being a little bit judicious, but one thing we definitely saw in the Kang interview is we need to do some cuts, is definitely a traditional business talking point, and she was using that. 

So that could be something to watch. And she said some openness to new taxes, but I’m not sure that will materialize or how strong that will be. But, something to watch. 

[00:49:55] Amy: Yeah, it seemed like she wasn’t super familiar with the different progressive tax options, and definitely expressed willingness to explore them, but then kind of pulled back a little bit later on when we were talking about it. So I will say in general, things are a little bit less clear cut to me after that interview, than my interview with Nilu. After my interview with Nilu, I was pretty clear on where she stood on things and a little bit less so with Julie Kang. 

[00:50:28] Ryan: Well to end on a later note, we’re gonna chat a little bit about our city and our region, and talk about the destinations that you always recommend to a Seattle visitor, either coming for the first time or one who hasn’t been back in a while. What are the top places that you always recommend that a Seattle visitor get to? Amy do you have, do you have three? 

[00:50:51] Amy: I have so many, way more than three, but I’ll narrow it down to three. I think the place that I have taken people the most is Snoqualmie Falls. Some of them have seen Twin Peaks, some of them just like waterfalls. It’s great for people who have lower mobility ’cause you don’t have to walk that much to see the falls, but there is a walk if you have higher mobility. So it’s really versatile and there’s just a lot of greenery and stuff around there. So it has what I would call a Pacific Northwest vibe, which is really nice. So that would be one of them, I think. 

One that I would now add is a troll hunt, you know, all of the troll statues that are now in our area. I think that would be a really fun thing to do. Actually I still have one to go, so it’s a fun thing for locals to do as well. But it’s also a fun thing for out of towners because they’re spread over the region, right? So it forces you to go out to Vashon Island, for example, or to go to Ballard. So you can see more of what’s around here. 

And then my third one would be the Museum of Flight, because I just think it is so cool. It has the space section where you can go in and see what, like, what all of. It looks like. And then there’s this huge hanger where you can walk into all these different models of airplanes. 

I’m not even an airplane nerd like at all, but I just think it’s so interesting and I wanna go into every single one that’s open and just kind of take a look and see how things look differently in the different airplanes. 

[00:52:21] Ryan: Those are great. 

[00:52:24] Doug: I wouldn’t have predicted that for you, Amy, but that, that makes a lot of sense when you say. I mean, we are the Jet City. 

[00:52:28] Amy: I mean, I like to explore, and I’m also kind of nerdy, right? So there you go. 

[00:52:34] Ryan: What are your top three? 

[00:52:35] Doug: My top three and I have too many like, like Amy, but I’m really gonna lean into this is the Mariner city. This is the city on the Salish Sea, so they’re gonna be nautically themed. You gotta get on a boat, you gotta get to a beach, and you gotta eat some seafood. 

And there’s a lot of different ways you can do that depending on what you’re into. But, the lowest barrier one is taking the water taxi over to West Seattle and going to Alki. It is a great way to get on the water and get a great view of the city, as you pull out of the harbor. 

And then for beaches, there’s so many options. But in the summer, Golden Gardens and there’s also lighthouses you can go to, like the lighthouse at Discovery Park. There’s a great walk, I think Amy talked about before in Lincoln Park, right by the ferry terminal there. So it’s easy to combine these things if you’re only here for a short time. 

But, when you’re at the beach, find a low tide and there’s charts you can check, you can, um, go tide pool hopping and look around for all the weird crustaceans and anemones and starfish and all those things. And if you find a Pacific North West dork, like me or many of my friends, they’d be happy to try to help you spot some stuff. And 

[00:53:42] Amy: Also off Alki, you often see seals and otters and other marine life like that, which is cool. 

[00:53:49] Doug: Oh, absolutely. Yeah. I would say if you’re trying to do that kind of nature hike. Do not put headphones in because you wanna be able to hear all that. You wanna be able to hear the birds. And uh, if you’re ever at the beach and you hear this weird, like, it sounds like a really deep inhale, like someone swimming, but it’s too strong to be human, that’s probably a seal coming up for air. 

And then you gotta go put your head on a swivel and look for that seal. ‘Cause no matter how many times I see seals, it’s always fun. And there’s a lot of spots where they hang out routinely, like by the Ballard Locks, like you said, by the ferry terminals. And there’s also a secret little dock area, it’s owned by the Port of Seattle, right across from Un Bien, on the way out to Golden Gardens. 

And then for seafood, there’s a ton of options. But, if you’re more on the sushi side of things and you have a little money spend, I would say Sushi Kashiba at Pike Place Market is really great. Tough to beat. And then there’s a ton of places you can get fish and chips. 

[00:54:42] Ryan: Amazing. 

[00:54:44] Amy: What about you, Ryan? 

[00:54:45] Ryan: I think number one is, no question you gotta go to the central library. You gotta see the Koolhaas architecture. You gotta go to the red floor, you gotta go to the top and look at the view. 

Number two, I’m gonna give it to Volunteer Park. You’ve gotta get to the conservatory, you’ve gotta get to the art deco Asian Art Museum. Enjoy a little bit of, especially on a nice day, people out and about. 

I think for number three, I was gonna go with Smith Tower, which is always my favorite, you know, budget Space Needle. And it’s better because you’re, you’re a little bit closer to the city. You can kind of see the cars moving and people walking and people on bikes as opposed to being up so high you can’t even see anything. That’s why I love Smith Tower. 

But I think actually for number three, I’m gonna go with Georgetown, really get a full experience of the city if you’re down getting a meal, walking around Georgetown, getting a sense of the Seattle history, Seattle’s oldest neighborhood. Take that Pioneer Square. 

And then there’s also, if you come on the right day, you can get to tour the old Georgetown Steam plant, which is actually my favorite municipally owned building in the city. It’s one of the coolest things you’ve ever seen. It’s an old steam plant that used to power the Interurban that went down to Tacoma, but it’s been kept up in great shape. It’s being restored right now actually, so  

[00:56:00] Amy: It’s so cool. They did a whole theater thing there like a couple years ago, like a, a spooky Halloween theater thing that I excitedly went to. 

[00:56:09] Ryan: Yeah, they did a full play that was built for that space like 10 years ago that I saw three times and it was amazing. It’s one of my favorite places in the city. Yeah. Well, thanks so much for joining us for another, packed episode of The Urbanist Podcast. Getting into the stories behind the headlines. 

We’re gonna head back to cover stories around the region, but we’ll be back in your ear holes in another two weeks. And, look forward to seeing you soon.

The post Urbanist Podcast: Crosslake Light Rail + ICE-Triggered Constitutional Crisis first appeared on The Urbanist.

Ryan recently covered a myriad of housing bills working their way through Olympia. Bills allowing smaller elevators and scissor stairs could make midrise buildings more feasible to build. The hosts discussed the pros and cons of legislation allowing residential construction in commercial zones in mid-sized (and up) cities, which was requested by Governor Bob Ferguson, but perpetuates a corridor urbanism approach that focuses apartments near crash-prone, polluted highways.

The bills we referenced include:

• House Bill 1175 – Neighborhood cafes
• HB 1443 – Allows Mobile Dwelling Units on all Residences
• HB 2228 – Legalizing Scissor Stairs
• Senate Bill 5156 – Legalizing Smaller Elevators – Sightline Institute has a video explainer for more info.
• SB 6002 – Regulate Immigration Officials Access to License Plate Readers – Read Amy Sundberg’s article for more.
• SB 6026 – Requiring Mid-Size Cities to Allow Residential in all Commercial Zones.

Plus, Amy and Doug recounted their first interview with Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson since she’s been installed in office. And the crew talks about their go-to parks for false spring reveling.

This episode of The Urbanist Podcast was edited by me. Episodes also air on KVRU 105.7 FM radio Thursdays at 4pm, on a once every two weeks cadence, give or take. Thank you to Crystal Fincher and Shannon Cheng of KVRU for their assistance producing our podcast.

Episode Transcript

[00:00:00] Ryan: Hello and welcome to the Urbanist Podcast, a show touching on the biggest headlines at The Urbanist, and offering a deeper look from the reporters breaking the stories as an independent reader supported publication. The Urbanist has been covering the Seattle metropolitan region since 2014. We do advocacy journalism for better cities. 

You can find us at theurbanist.org. My name is Ryan Packer. I’m a contributing editor here at the Urbanist, and with me is the rest of our newsroom publisher, Doug Trumm 

Doug: Hey Ryan. Good to see you.  

Ryan: And reporter Amy Sundberg. 

Amy: Hey, everyone. Great to be here. 

Ryan: Every couple of weeks the Urbanist Podcast will recap the biggest headlines happening around the region and take you beyond the stories on the site. This week the Washington State Legislature convened for its whirlwind 60 day legislative session. 

There’s many topics they’re trying to tackle, the budget, transportation, housing, and policing among them. And we’re gonna go ahead and start running down what’s happening at the legislature, over the next few weeks as they try and get bills advanced, during their first big deadlines. 

Amy, what are the things that you’re tracking right now? 
 

[00:01:12] Amy: I am tracking so many things. I have this very long list. It’s not even a spreadsheet because I’m not organized. But one of the main things that legislatures are gonna be tackling this session is the budget, because they do have a budget deficit. So there are several bills around that effort to balance the budget. 

Of course, Governor Ferguson has come out in favor of the Millionaire Tax, which we talked about last time, which would be an income tax on income over a million dollars. So it would not affect 99 point something percent of Washingtonians. It seems like he is less favorable towards other new revenue ideas. But that is not gonna stop some of the Democrats from bringing them forward. 
 

[00:02:03] Ryan: Yeah, I know there’s a proposal from Shaun Scott, one of the most progressive legislators in the Democratic caucus, in the house in terms of a statewide payroll tax similar to the Seattle Jumpstart Tax. Have you seen that get any early attraction in the first few days, Amy? 

[00:02:20] Amy: I haven’t heard much about it, although it does have many sponsors, which is promising. I know that Governor Ferguson said he was, quote, not a fan end quote of this idea of a statewide payroll tax. But, Representative Scott has the idea that a lot of the money that this would generate would go towards backfilling some of the expenses that the state will incur because of the Trump administration’s changing of policy. 

So it would help with education. It would help with healthcare, and other really important priorities like that. Another interesting thing is, as a Seattleite of course, is that if we had a statewide payroll tax, I don’t know that we’ve seen a lot of capital flight from Seattle, but if it were statewide, of course no one would have any incentive to leave Seattle and go elsewhere in the state, which I think is an interesting thought. 
 

[00:03:20] Ryan: Doug, you’ve been watching The Urbanist ramp up its legislative coverage over the years. How is this session working out so far. I know it’s only day, day three, but in terms of past sessions and what, what are you tracking? 
 

[00:03:33] Doug: Yeah, it feels like a little bit of a odd session, especially for a short session. They have a lot of budget problems to dig out from under, with a multi-billion dollar deficit. Normally they’re dealing with the budget in the long session, but when this problems spill over to the next year, then they’re still dealing with that. 

So it seems to have robbed a little bit of the ambition, but obviously if they get their framework for a millionaires income tax, that would be a big accomplishment, even if it’s something that doesn’t start collecting money until 2029. We’ve never had an income tax in our state and it’s starting to become very difficult to grapple with some of our budget issues without one. 

But there’s still obviously going to be some bills moving. This week we had a piece from you that was laying out okay, like, here’s the housing bills that are moving. And I thought that did a really good job of, showing there’s still impactful bills here, more on the margins or on the edges. It’s not like the big sweeping zoning bills that we saw over the previous years. But it’s these nitty gritty bills that will hopefully help builders actually take advantage of that zoning. So we saw a number of those bills focused on more affordable building methods. And that includes scissor stairs, elevator reform, and things like that, that could help, you know, make sure that there’s not like these unforced errors here, that makes building untenable. 

[00:05:05] Ryan: Yeah, I think what I said on the site in my legislative preview was they tackled the elephant in the room, which is our inclusionary zoning and our parking mandates, and things like that. And now we’re getting into the, the thousand paper cuts that make housing more expensive, you know, requirement to have two sets of stairs and you can’t make them consolidated together like with a scissor stair building. 

It’s very wonky, very wonky stuff. The elevator issue got a lot of attention last year in terms of the ways that the US isn’t a big outlier. The U.S. and Canada are a big outlier in terms of requiring every elevator to accommodate a, a lay down stretcher, which paradoxically leads to a lot of buildings being built without elevators or without redundant elevators. 

So when one breaks down, you have to use the stairs. And so I think that one’s gonna get a lot of attention. I think it generated a lot of controversy among the firefighter community and the very powerful elevator unions, which people don’t really, I think, know too much about, that there are very, very small number of unions that control who’s able to maintain all of the elevators in the US and it’s a little bit of a mafia in terms of the very controlled situations and the standards that are in place. We talked to the bill sponsor. He thinks he’s gonna take a little bit of a retreat of a position, kick it over to the State Building Code Council to make the really big decisions, which I think is gonna disappoint some people who are hoping for bolder action on that. 
 

But I think it ultimately might be the only way that we’re gonna be able to get that across the finish line. 
 

[00:06:41] Doug: Yeah, and it is super wonky. The elevator reform bill is Senate Bill 5 1 5 6. For those who wanna track its progress or weigh in on, on the state site, we’ll include a link in the podcast notes. But you know, the elevator pitch, see what I did there, for that bill is that by requiring such large elevators, we basically get no elevators, in many, many smaller projects in particular where they may not be required. 

In Europe we see, and in Asia, for that matter, we see buildings going in, they have these smaller elevators and they actually have them. So there’s a much higher number of elevators per capita in those places. So we’ve regulated ourselves into an absurd outcome where, we want these elevators, but because we’re requiring gold plated version that fits a a large stretcher, we’re not getting it. 

So it’s hard to argue with and maybe this new approach from Solomon will bear more fruit where it’s not dictating from the state legislature, but punting to the, the building council to, to do, so hopeful for that. And then the scissor stair bill, if you’re wanting to look that up, is, is House Bill 2228. 

And similar reasons there. By requiring not more efficient stairway design, we’re just using more of our building space for hallways and stairs instead of housing. And obviously if we’re in a housing crisis, that that should be our priority. 
 

[00:08:04] Ryan: Yeah, and there was one more splashy bill that the governor actually proposed, got put forward through Senator Emily Alvarado outta West Seattle. It would essentially require all major cities, I think over 30,000 in population to allow residential uses on commercial properties. So, strip malls, big box stores that are underutilized would be required to let developers build multifamily and they couldn’t require ground floor retail. So that’s a little bit of an interesting bill. I’d be curious for your thoughts on that, Doug and Amy, in terms of where we’re encouraging housing development. 

I think it’s a little interesting. A lot of the capacity, like in Seattle is already in these places. We’re not really seeing people build there. Aurora is pretty much zoned for residential, but it’s not becoming… people aren’t really redeveloping these big sites to build housing now. It’s not clear to me whether this is gonna be a big change. And there’s the issue of a lot of these areas that are zoned for commercial zoning are along highways and in the areas of the cities where you wouldn’t necessarily wanna live. And so there’s an environmental justice aspect to this. 

I kind of see this as one element of this very popular idea right now, coming up in certain elements of state government, which is like corridor urbanism, where we’re gonna only change the areas of the cities that people don’t really like and kinda leave the nice neighborhoods alone. 
 

[00:09:43] Amy: I think it’s really tough too, because as you said, it is an environmental issue and it’s a health issue, right? In terms of pollution, and what that does to the body over time or as a child. And in terms of desirability where people would prefer to live, where they can afford to live, are they pushed into less desirable locations because of what they can afford? 

And then at the same time, we have so little housing, right? And so I think there’s the, the push to try to get more housing however is possible, even if it means instituting this corridor urbanism. So I think a big question is how, how do you push back on that? Or how do you make sure that it’s balanced so that you allow as much housing as possible, but allow it also in more places. 
 

[00:10:34] Doug: Yeah, I, I think it’s necessary but not sufficient. We, we just need to put housing in places where people actually wanna live, has got to be more of our policy going forward. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do this when we’re in the midst of a crisis, and some of these strip mall areas and commercial corridors, hopefully aren’t quite so polluted road, backwater places. 

But many of them are. And the 30,000 cutoff is interesting ’cause many of the places that come to mind for me are in those smaller cities, the Mercer Islands of the world. And they won’t be affected by the bill. At least, unless they change that population threshold. 

The corridor’s approach is something that’s popular with Challenge Seattle and Chris Gregoire, the former governor of Washington, someone who’s, who’s very close with the governor, someone the governor said he has on speed dial, and is a great conduit for him. So, he jokes that housing, housing, housing are his top three priorities and he’s trying to do things and then this was a requested bill from him. 

But, it still seems like a bill that’s maybe a little behind the times. It’s something we still need, but we gotta be thinking about the next steps about how to get housing off of those busy corridors where people don’t actually wanna breathe the air or have their kids play outside. 
 

[00:11:51] Ryan: Yeah, or just get better at converting those corridors into places where people are safer and wanna spend more time. I think that’s a big question about this. We recently wrote about a proposal for State Route 99 through Snohomish County, which is gonna be subject to the new Complete Streets mandate, that was passed in 2021, requiring biking and pedestrian facilities to be evaluated for state highways. 

And so, if you’re gonna be creating a place that has bike lanes and transit lanes and is a little bit more of a pleasant corridor, but I haven’t seen necessarily a political will behind more intense treatments to actually make these places more walkable neighborhoods. 
 

[00:12:36] Doug: Yeah, I live three blocks off of Aurora and it makes a huge difference. Granted, a benefit of there being a hill there as well. But, I think if we’re only focused on those first few blocks, that’s not gonna really be that desirable of housing, that healthy of housing. And your point about these strip mall conversions being trickier than people think is well taken, ’cause there’s plenty of those on the map that we’ve been hearing about forever but haven’t fully happened. Whether, whether Northgate, which I think will happen eventually, or Totem Lake, some of these big malls that, that haven’t been converted yet. Even though, you know, there’s been huge civic dreams and big numbers in their planning schemes counted on for those. 
 

[00:13:16] Ryan: Amy, I know there’s a number of public safety bills that you’re tracking. What are the top ones that, that people should know about? 
 

[00:13:24] Amy: Yeah, one of the things I am interested in is whether the state is finally gonna move on the public defender problem, which we’ve reported on in the past. And basically there just aren’t enough public defenders in the state of Washington and they’re also working very long hours. They’re not very well paid. And so the State Supreme Court basically made new caseload standards to try to help make it more tenable. But those caseload standards mean they have to hire more lawyers, so it’s going to cost more. And Washington State is unusual in that right now the state doesn’t really contribute to the cost of public defense, which is a constitutional right. 

So the question the last few years has been, is the state gonna step forward and take some of that expense on, of course, with a budget deficit, nobody wants to. So, it’s an interesting question. I know Senator Jamie Peterson said last week at the state legislature preview for media that he was more interested in not having the state get directly involved in funding, but instead lift the property tax cap for counties, which is something that we’ve also talked about before. So that basically counties would be able to raise more money through property taxes in order to pay for public defense. So it’s gonna be interesting to see which avenue they choose to take, or if they kick it down the road another year, which is what they’ve been doing so far. 

Another bill that I’ve been following and will be following closely is the automated license plate reader bill. It is sponsored by Senator Yasmine Trudeau. It is trying to establish some rules around the usage of these license plate reader cameras, that we have been covering for the past year or so, that have a lot of data privacy issues. 

The most concerning reporting I think over the last year has been that we’ve been able to tell that many law enforcement agencies have been sharing their data with ICE, and ICE-related immigration activities. And also there was a report of the data being shared for a Texas law enforcement agency was looking for someone who had been seeking an abortion. So, data had been shared in that case as well. So, we, we know about these few cases, but in general we think that probably there’s a lot more going on that we don’t know about. This bill is trying to put some safeguards around the data. It’s still in progress. It’s supposed to have its first hearing towards the end of January. 

So, there are still some outstanding issues as to what the bill will actually say, but it’s something that I’m following very closely. 

And that’s SB 6 0 0 2, I believe, if people wanna track that. And I’ll be doing a deep dive analysis of exactly what’s in that bill and you know, also how it could be made stronger and better. 
 

[00:16:34] Ryan: And so obviously that bill is a direct response to what we’re seeing happening in the federal government, in terms of ICE behavior. Are there any other bills that you see the legislature putting forward to just directly respond to the pretty egregious behavior that we’re seeing at the federal level right now?  
 

[00:16:53] Amy: Yeah. The other one that’s getting a lot of press is the mask ban for law enforcement bill, which the governor has spoken about many times. Like I’ve seen people seem in general to, to have a lot of enthusiasm for it. I think it’s already had its first hearing. I don’t see any reason why it can’t be passed relatively quickly. 

I’m a little bit, maybe less. It’s not that I don’t think it’s a good bill or even a good idea, but I feel like we don’t know exactly what effect the bill will have in practice. And it seems kind of insufficient and I’m a little bit worried that we’ll have a quick pass of this bill and then not do anything else. 

But there’s a similar bill that passed in California, and there’s currently legal action around that. So, once that case resolves, we’ll have a better idea of what this bill would actually do in practice here in Washington. But right now it’s kind of in limbo in terms of whether or not it would be able to be enacted, how it would be enforced, who would enforce it, right? 

Who’s gonna go up to ICE agents and be like, actually, you can’t be wearing the mask. Would it be local law enforcement? Because I think that could be a problem. 
 

[00:18:07] Ryan: Yeah, I know Portland is also considering a bill like this right now. But it sounds like you think it might be a little bit more symbolic than anything. 
 

[00:18:15] Amy: I mean, we’ll see, I think it really depends on the court case. And yes, it does feel a little symbolic. And, like I said, I don’t think it’s a bad bill. I do think that there’s some value in, in stating one’s beliefs firmly. If, if that’s what the bill ends up achieving, I don’t think that’s nothing.

But I also would like to see more urgency from our lawmakers. And I don’t want anyone to be lulled into a false sense of security. 
 

[00:18:44] Ryan: Great. Well, like we said, there’s only 60 days in the session, which is very short. You know, I think it is clear that there are no budget years anymore. Every year is a budget year with everything that’s going on in the federal government. So it’s interesting to see that we’re just kinda going with the flow in terms of the 60 day session. 

The governor could call an emergency session anytime he wanted to, but we’re giving ourselves a very condensed timeline to get these very big proposals across the finish line. I think the first deadline is early February for committee bills. And so we’ll be tracking all of those and seeing what ends up falling by the wayside due to that, that short timeline. 
 

[00:19:25] Doug: Yeah. Ryan. One bill I was curious about circling back to housing a little bit, was the mobile dwelling units bill, House Bill 1443. I know that’s getting pushback from the Association of Washington Cities, which they often push back on housing capacity bills. But, do you think it has an actual shot, and how big of impact could that be? 
 

[00:19:46] Ryan: I think that bill definitely has a lot of potential. It’s a holdover from last year, so it’s already been kind of considered a little bit. So we might see some, some clear movement, since people already know what they’re, they’re dealing with. I think it’s seen as a very easy win in terms of letting people do what they want with their property. 

If they want to build a very cheap relative to a lot of other types of housing, essentially accessory dwelling unit, except it’s on wheels. But like you said, there’s some concern, mobile homes fall in a different category of tenant protections in Washington, and so it’s not clear who’s in charge of ensuring these things are up to code, whether they can be inspected, how cities are able to deal with these if there are problems. And so I think that’s an interesting element. 

Over the past couple years we have seen opposition from AWC to a lot of bills that wasn’t able to stop it. You know, parking reform was pretty opposed by them. Middle housing at one point was, was not really their favorite bill, but they, they were able to get across the finish line. So I’m interested to see whether they kind of are able to put their foot down and say this is too much for us. 
 

[00:20:58] Doug: And is it mostly a age in place expand your family kind of bill? Or is it being framed as helping with the homelessness crisis, like getting cheap units out the door quickly? 
 

[00:21:08] Ryan: I think it’s more, more just like giving people different options. I don’t see people proposing like a, you know, 50 unit MDU development or something like that. It’s like if you have a backyard and you want to be able to do something cheaply and efficiently with a utility hookup, not a full sewer connection, it’s a good option. 
 

[00:21:29] Doug: Well, another big development early this year that has massive budget implications for Washington State is the interstate bridge replacement project, which is an I-5 bridge to between Portland and Vancouver, Washington that has been on the wishlist of highway builders and lawmakers for decades here. 

And, you know, it felt like it was inevitable at a certain point, but then it turns out that there’s new budget estimates that are way larger than initially thought. Ryan, you broke this story, at least in this region. I know City Observatory got their hands on the data, but walk us through what, what happened here? 
 

[00:22:10] Ryan: Yeah, so this is essentially the biggest highway project in Pacific Northwest history. It is framed as a bridge replacement, but the scope has long been more than that. Five miles of expansion of I-5 to add two lanes, which they’re calling auxiliary lanes, seven interchanges and ramps and all this, as well as, you know, a bike walk path and a light rail extension of the existing yellow line, a MAX line. 

So, this has been slowly advancing. The two bridges that carry I-5 over the river are very old. You know, everyone’s concerned about what’s gonna happen. But they’ve been trying to jam all these different elements into this project. It was already the most expensive highway project in history, and now the cost estimates are anywhere from $13.5 to $19 billion, depending on whether they’re able to do a fixed span instead of a movable span bridge that lets boat traffic through. 

Washington and Oregon had already put forward a billion each for this. And they had gotten some pretty big federal grants. Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell teed up a grant program in the 2021 infrastructure bill that was essentially just for this project, really big bridge projects, giving them a very large amount of money. 

But, even with that, they only have around 6 billion assembled and that includes tolls. And so, there’s not a whole lot of extra spare change in either states’ budget, especially Oregon, which is in really dire straits right now in terms of where their transportation budget is. They’re probably gonna repeal their transportation package that passed last year, which was very modest. 

And so have start over from square one, and so a lot of people are questioning whether this project is gonna be able to move forward at all. 
 

[00:24:03] Amy: One thing that really struck me about this story was that it only came to light that the budget had ballooned so much, because of a public records disclosure request that somebody made. What was going on with that? Why? Why the secrecy. 
 

[00:24:19] Ryan: Well, to provide the benefit of the doubt answer. It’s a very large project. There’s like dozens of different individual elements that they have to cost out and do their rigorous analysis. I think even if a final number wasn’t available, the fact that you’re in the 13- to 15-billion-dollar range is like something you should give people a heads up on. 

They spend around two years just being like, ‘we’re gonna have these cost estimates soon, but costs are going up, so you should be prepared for that.’ And without this, we were gonna probably go through another legislative session without this information. And so it’s a big issue to get your head around. 

And like I said, it’s unclear whether the two states are gonna be able to come up with any additional money for this. 
 

[00:25:07] Amy: Saying that they can’t find any additional money is, is there enough money to replace the bridge even and just take out everything else, or what would be another way forward? 
 

[00:25:19] Ryan: Well, that’s what Jake Fey, the chair of the House Transportation Committee in Washington told me last week. 
 

[00:25:26] Doug: And that’s a pretty big step for Fey, I believe, because he’s been one of the bigger proponents for keeping these highway expansion projects on the dockets and framing them as necessary even when they do sneak in some this expansion, if I’m remembering correctly. 
 

[00:25:43] Ryan: So Fey said that they have enough money to replace the bridge, knock the old ones down, just do a very minimal replacement project, but that’s not what the scope of this project is, and it hasn’t been for many years. And so they are trying to reuse the environmental documentation from the previous iteration of this project, which was pretty much the same thing, 10 lanes. 

It’s not clear to me at least whether you can just pull that out and just do this one little part. The light rail has gotten a lot of attention. It got called on Antifa Superhighway during the last congressional race in that district, which was the famous Joe Kent, Marie Gluesenkamp Perez race. 

I think it’s part of the project. You have a high capacity transit component. They looked at doing bus rapid transit. They settled on light rail, but like that is in there. So the question of whether you just phase that, do it later. It seems like you’re gonna have to redo your environment documentation, and we’ve been working on this for years. And it’s just not clear whether we’re gonna have to derail the entire thing. I don’t, I don’t see how we get to. And, the intense irony is that for years transportation advocates in Portland mostly, as well as some on the Washington side, sustainable transportation advocates, I should say, have been saying: ‘right size this, it’s too bloated.’ 

And now we’re at the 11th yard line and only because we are having a huge cost overrun are, they kind of saying: ‘Hey, maybe we need to right-size this.’ 
 

[00:27:17] Doug: Yeah, it, it only when their back is against the wall, for sure. I think the light rail’s a little disappointing in what they had envisioned. It sticks to the freeway, but obviously for multimodal advocates, it’s at least a foot in the door to be like, well now we have the crossing. 

We can look at expanding it later or figuring a way to maximize its value later, even if it’s not ideal places for transit-oriented development. 

I do think that in the longer term, there’s all these dreams about high speed rail, and this process has not inspired hope in that, maybe if we had started from scratch, we would be talking about how to make a high speed rail ready bridge instead of half-ass light rail ready bridge. 

Because it doesn’t feel like a huge win to really have. Relying on that old environmental study is also leaving you with 1990s or 2000s priorities. Now the dream’s a lot bigger, and this bridge isn’t gonna solve the I-5 transportation pinch in any stretch of the imagination, even with those extra lanes through Clark County. But high speed rail would be something that would scale and would meet travel demand in this corridor to a large extent. So yeah, they have to figure that out. 

And, the other thing that really struck me about this story was the extent that the US Coast Guard, again, is creating huge roadblocks to local projects that are really important. We saw this come up in 2022 when Sound Transit was trying to deal with the Ballard Link light rail planning. They wanted to do a bridge over Salmon Bay to get to Ballard. And then the Coast Guard comes in and says, you need 205 feet of vertical clearance because it came out later through our reporting that they wanted to make sure super yacht industry had a, a good foothold in Seattle, I guess in the other side of the bridge. 
 

That’s why you need whopping 205 feet of clearance even when the George Washington Bridge, which carries 99, was what sound transit had been working with as the amount of clearance they could provide. And you could do that with a fixed span, but it becomes astronomically more expensive to try to do 205 feet of clearance with a fixed span or if you’re adding a movable bridge, it’s also expensive. 

That’s what we see here with the Columbia River being a major thoroughfare for freight traffic and they’re the Coast Guard’s pushing them to go higher and that’s adding a lot to the budget. 
 

[00:29:45] Ryan: Yeah, I mean, it’s part of a larger issue where our standards are totally different than they were during the era when we were building a lot more things. Like, I just think of, speaking of light rail Ballard Link, the sizes of the stations for Westlake, something like five times as big as the existing Westlake Station, even though, we already have the exact same type of thing that we already would wanna build, but we can’t build it that small because the standards are totally different now 40, 50 years later. 

Exactly the same way that the bridges that exist now, you couldn’t build those today. And so in part, transit and highway projects are both subject to this very different environment for permitting things. And, you know, I’m happy to say that it’s slowing down a highway project that was gonna make the climate worse, but it’s kind of an across the board problem. 
 

[00:30:37] Amy: Well, and right now it might be preventing a highway project, but clearly it’s also preventing transit projects, right? Light rail or high speed rail that I think all three of us agree we really wanna see more of. 
 

[00:30:50] Ryan: A hundred percent. I think it’s a big reason why the costs for transit in the US are so much higher than they are elsewhere. 
 

[00:30:56] Doug: And the plans don’t connect either, right? Like you have this nice renaissance, or whatever you wanna call it, in downtown Vancouver. And they have this nice development and there’s this nice waterfront and then they wanna put a giant freeway bridge and interchange right on the edge of it. Like that’s not gonna help their downtown. That’s not going to promote more housing wanting to be there, more people to be in that housing. , So, figuring out how do you make your vision for your urban development match your transportation network? It feels like we let highways get whatever they want, and then everything else has to fit in between in the gaps. 

[00:31:32] Ryan: Yeah. Legislators are now gonna be forced to deal with this. I’m tracking to see what they’re saying about this. I don’t ultimately expect any decision to get made because it’s in a holding pattern. But I’ll be curious to see where things go from here. 
 

[00:31:50] Doug: Yeah, I would be surprised if they leave this in limbo, because one thing we’ve seen out of the playbook of these mega projects for highways is the project’s never done. It’s only broken into segments or put on pause and, and there’s this air of inevitability around them. 

So I don’t think they’re gonna admit defeat, but they might have to put it on the back burner for a while. 
 

[00:32:10] Ryan: Yeah, I mean, one of the things about this project is I’m worried about starting construction and then ending up running outta money in the middle of it. I don’t think people really realize how long the timeline is for this. They’re not expected to get done with this thing until the mid 2030s. 

And it’s gonna be a very long time of construction if they end up starting this. So what happens if, even if they’re able to assemble funding and then costs go up even more, and they’re in the middle of this 12-year project? I think we saw that with the 520 bridge in Seattle a little bit, but it’s not really sustainable for us to keep working on the same project over and over again in terms of our budget issues. 
 

[00:32:55] Doug: Yeah, it reminds me of how that the Tacoma section of I-5 the joke is it’s always under construction and they’ve finally got that to a place recently where everyone’s like, oh, there’s not construction there anymore. That could very much be the future for Clark County too, where it just becomes one of these 20 year stop and start projects. 
 

[00:33:12] Ryan: Well, let’s turn our attention to back to the city of Seattle. Doug and Amy, you guys got to do a pretty cool thing and go to City Hall and talk to the new mayor, Katie Wilson, for an exclusive 45-minute interview. How did that go? 
 

[00:33:27] Doug: Yeah, that was pretty fun. I don’t remember being up on the seventh floor of City Hall before. Bruce Harrell didn’t invite me, Jenny Durkan didn’t invite me. I don’t know how many more invites we’ll get, but it was cool to see. We got to go out in the little balcony there on the seventh floor and look down on the city. 

And, definitely was a cool feeling to see that coming together, to see some new opportunities emerging. Obviously there’ll be a lot of work to actually seize those opportunities, but yeah, it definitely felt like both energy and also they got a lot of balls up in the air and they’re, they’re starting to try to juggle them all. Amy was that your impression as well? 
 

[00:33:58] Amy: Yeah, there’s a lot going on here in Seattle. And I think it’s a heavy lift just to assemble a team and get started on things. That’s what we’re gonna be seeing is that beginning to get things moving, but it remains to be seen exactly how long that will take. 
 

[00:34:16] Doug: Yeah, we’re sorry you missed it. Ryan, you came down with the flu that week and, and you were supposed to be there as well, but I’m sure there’ll be more opportunities. 
 

[00:34:23] Ryan: Yeah, I was sad to miss it. I think a lot of people are watching for the Wilson Administration’s first moves. I think some people are surprised we haven’t seen an executive order or a big press conference yet. And you know, the comparisons to Zohran Mamdani are kind of hard not to draw. Obviously it’s a much bigger city government over there in New York City. But there have been a lot of policy rollouts. And so, what is your read? Do you think people are being a little too impatient? Or what? 
 

[00:34:54] Amy: I think things take the time they take. So, I think if, if people feel impatient, that’s understandable because there’s a lot of urgency right now. There’s a lot of important things that need to be done. But also I think giving someone a little grace at the beginning of their term is fair. 

I take your point too, that New York City is very different than Seattle. Just for starters, it’s a lot bigger, not just the city government, but just in general. I don’t wanna have expectations that are correlated to where we’re at. 
 

[00:35:25] Doug: Yeah, I think it’s too early to draw any firm conclusions. I definitely think that they have some pretty big aspirations, and maybe our focus on some of those big items rather than having some splashy thing that they can do in the first few days. And they have the state of the city speech next month, and I think that’ll be when we start seeing the big stuff really getting pushed, hopefully. And, maybe it’s still ducks in a row time. But, yeah, some interesting stuff if you read between the lines, and we asked about Wilson’s vision for SDOT and both in SDOT and at, the Seattle Police Department, she’s working with people who had already been there. She did remove the SDOT director, Adiam Emery and replaced her with another senior staffer who was actually over at the Waterfront, Angela Brady, as we talked about, I think in a previous episode. But, we asked her about that, and she stressed the value of continuity, especially in a time of wanting to prep for the World Cup and wanting to get some things done immediately, not wanting a period of upheaval.

And her reasons are similar for keeping Shon Barnes, not wanting to rock the boat when hiring is finally recovered for the police department and wanting to keep some things moving and collaborations with the civilian CARE department. So that’s kind of a gamble that some of those folks who’ve been there a long time will, will come over to her side of things, and can actually carry out culture change even if they’ve been in that culture for a while. 

I think it could work, but obviously there’s no guarantees. What are you feeling about the SDOT approach Ryan? 
 

[00:36:55] Ryan: Yeah, the fact that she moved so quickly to replace Adiam Emery, who, to be clear, was an interim director, never got confirmed by Bruce Harrell as an intentional choice, you know, I think was a clear signal of the importance of that department. But she did face a limited universe of people who would be able to start that job on day one. 

You mentioned that Angela Brady was at the waterfront, but she had been at SDOT before that and, and the Office of Waterfront works very closely with SDOT on a lot of projects. You know, it’s, it’s standalone department, but it is kind of within SDOT in some ways. 

So I think, she’s clearly signaling that she has big intentions for that department. But I’m waiting to see what the fruit of that is. We’ve got this huge transportation levy, a lot of investments that were already in the pipeline, and so it remains to be seen what her stamp of change looks like. 

I’m watching these big Vision Zero corridors and whether SDOT feels like they have a little bit more of a someone who has their back when it comes to making bold changes on these dangerous streets and not being afraid to reallocate space. But so far it’s only been a few weeks. So we don’t really have a whole lot of stuff to go off of. 

Doug, I’m curious for your reaction to her talking about Sound Transit. 
 

[00:38:17] Doug: Yeah, people seemed struck by the fact that she really emphasized regionalism in that answer. When I asked her about, how are you gonna approach these pretty weighty issues that Sound Transit. They’re deeply over budget on some of their long-term aspirations for expansion. 

And also it’s just generally the operations budget’s costing more than they thought. So they have to get their house in order. No time for her to have an easy first few months here in her Sound Transit board gig. She’s immediately gonna have to go into what they’re calling the “enterprise initiative” to solve their long-term financial woes. But yeah, I think focusing on regionalism is something that is somewhat a break from her predecessor Bruce Harrell, who he was kind of a hands off as a member somewhat. 

He didn’t have the most sterling attendance record, or he was there, but he didn’t say much. But there were some meetings where he really would have a big impact. That came up a few times, but one of them was like, once he had lost the primary, he suddenly wanted to be more out front on Sound Transit issues. 

And that might’ve happened anyways, because that was sort of the topic of the day was how to find budget savings on the various lines, including Ballard Link and West Seattle Link. And that’s a politically fraught topic, but he had this press conference where he threw down the gauntlet and said: ‘we’re not cutting our projects. They’re too important.’ 

And, it wasn’t really regionalism that came across from that press conference. So, that seems to be one big difference. Katie Wilson is still saying: ‘well, we’re not really wanting to cut our projects. We don’t wanna cut any of the projects.’ But more of a collaborative olive branch approach where you’re saying well, let’s figure it out together rather than all back into our corner and beat our chest about how important our particular projects are and how great our cities are. But just look more broadly than that. 

[00:40:00] Amy: I’ve been really interested in the debate about whether we should have one tunnel or two tunnels for light rail. So I was really interested that Katie Wilson just came right out and said that she thinks we need to tunnels, and it’s because of reliability of the system, right. Which certainly is a thing that we’re seeing in terms of the whole light rail kind of shuts down and you have to take a shuttle bus from one station to another station. 

It’s often on the weekends and so people are trying to go out and have fun, see their friends, whatever. And it can be really difficult or time consuming to use the transit network. So I thought it was interesting that she didn’t hedge at all, so she seemed pretty clear as to where she stood on that issue. 
 

[00:40:47] Doug: Yeah, she didn’t need time to get up to speed on that one. And that you’re right. That was a super interesting answer. And it’s very top of mind for riders right now because we are in the midst of a period of several weekend closures. The second weekend of January was one of those closures and it’s very disruptive. 

And if you thought you were gonna count on light rail suddenly, the agency itself says it might take a half hour longer, maybe less if you figure out a bus route that’s an alternative. But, you know, it’s disruptive and conceivably if you had two tunnels, you wouldn’t have to suffer through that quite so badly. 
 

[00:41:18] Ryan: Yeah, well the board set aside the two tunnel issue in December, right before Katie’s set to go on the board. I think we saw an interesting tactic from Dan Strauss who’s gonna be sitting on the board with Katie, more of a, I think a tactical decision, political, if you will, in terms of his framing of the second tunnel, which was, he used the analysis that Sound Transit produced to say: ‘Ballard would be fine without the second tunnel. We can get to Westlake connect to the rest of the system. The second tunnel is actually for all of you guys, for Everett, for Tacoma, for the Eastside, in terms of providing that redundancy. And so it was a little bit of a: Hey, if you guys think this is so important, then maybe you should pay for more of it. 

I thought that was pretty interesting. I don’t know how far it’s gonna go. The second tunnel is very unusual in that it is paid for by everybody proportionally to the riders that are expected to use it. Ballard has the biggest amount of riders. It’s the most useful line in the ST3 program. But it is beneficial to all the systems. And so it’s an interesting way to calculate that because ridership is what you want. So it’s like kind of punishing the area of the system that is expected to generate the most ridership a little bit, a little bit backwards, I think. 

So I don’t know if they’re gonna rethink that, but it does set up an interesting conversation about the payment. I don’t know that we’re gonna have a full reconsideration of the actual second tunnel issue. Now that we’ve kind of set it aside. 
 

[00:42:55] Amy: One of the other things that’s gonna be really important for Mayor Wilson is standing up housing, in order to try to alleviate some of the homelessness problem. And, you know, she made a campaign promise to stand up 4,000 new units by the end of her first term. So 4,000 units in four years. 

But she also is working against a clock, because of the World Cup that is coming in June and wanting to have a bunch of extra units, so that she can move people off the streets into safe and, more humane housing, as opposed to just sweeping them elsewhere in the city. 
 

[00:43:35] Doug: Yeah, and she was very careful, as she has been in other interviews, not to set a specific number beyond the 4,000 for her whole four year term, which is probably good politics. I mean, we saw with Mayor Harrell what happens when you set a target and then don’t meet it, and then you just start making up new definitions of words to try to cover up the fact you didn’t do it, such as like, ‘well, we identified those units. We didn’t build them, but we identified.’ And that’s how he approached his 2,000 goal for his first year. But yeah, I mean, it’s a bold goal. Interesting that they both set similar goals. She actually doubled his goal, granted giving herself more time. 

But it’ll be a big lift. She would stress that it was her number one priority, so she’s probably gonna move heaven and earth to try to make it happen. That wasn’t the only World Cup preparations though she had in mind. 
 

[00:44:22] Ryan: Yeah, so that’s the emergency immediate housing moves. But there’s also the long-term zoning issues and whether she’s gonna be able to break Seattle’s longstanding zoning dichotomy of the single family home zones separated out from the apartment districts. 

Doug, what was your kind of read on how she’s gonna be approaching the city’s zoning plan? 
 

[00:44:47] Doug: Yeah, she mentioned that she wanted to lean on the supplemental environmental impact statement, which is something that emerged as something they need to do because they kept adding stuff to the plan late in the process. So, you know, she’s taking advantage of this phased approach where they’re gonna keep the stuff that’s already in process and has the environmental work, they’re gonna keep that moving. But, they’re gonna try to use the, the fact they have to do this supplemental EIS to add some new stuff on there, where it won’t impact the timeline for the other things. 

So that was interesting. Definitely something she said in the campaign trail. And there’s a few different points in her interview where she said, ‘well, yeah, my position’s still the same.’ So, she’s definitely seems like someone who wants to hold to her campaign pledges. And just ’cause she’s gotten office and she’s seeing where things face obstacles doesn’t mean she’s gonna give up on them. 

I think that’ll probably mean things like wider corridors along transit corridors where we’re allowing apartments or at least larger buildings than are allowed there currently. It could mean more neighborhood centers, which is our term for these new kind of mini urban villages that we’re adding around the city. 

And Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rink proposed eight additional ones. And, that seems like something that Wilson would support, although she didn’t say that specifically in this interview. Those are things that were told they had to go through the supplemental EIS, and it sounds like they wanna do that and maybe more. But I know, Rico Quirindongo, the director of the planning department of the city recently spoke to this issue too, and I know you were tracking that, Ryan. So what did he say about this as well? 
 

[00:46:24] Ryan: Yeah, I think they were kind of on the same page. Very methodical approach to getting things lined up. They have a pretty packed work plan, on top of anything that the mayor would want to add on their plate. City council kind of overloaded the buffet during the comp plan process. 

And they had to go back and say: ‘we’re gonna have to do a lot more review of these things.’ Parking, trees. Of course we have to do a lot of tree work always. And then the neighborhood centers and things like that. And so I think a lot of people have been pushing Katie to reopen the comp plan. It’s clear that’s not gonna happen. We’re gonna let the comp plan kind of implement itself. And then build on that. And so I think the pace is gonna be more methodical than a lot of people would want, but ultimately I think it makes sense. 
 

[00:47:14] Doug: Another thing from the interview that seemed to jump out at our readers, at least based on what they were saying online, was when Amy, when you asked about the Office of Mass Engagement that New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani is rolling out, you asked if she was planning something similar, she just said, not imminently. 

And then, then after the answer she kinda said, yeah, I’m just gonna be constantly compared to, to Mamdani, aren’t I? And you know, she was laughing as she said. So I think it was lighthearted and glib, but people were reading into that a little bit. Or maybe just thought it was funny as well. 

But, I think that is a joke that was probably true that she’s maybe sick of hearing about it or it’s just getting ready to hear about it for four years. But yeah, definitely it’s tough when you’re, you’re held up against someone who’s sort of becoming a little bit of a internet superstar, whatever you wanna call him. 
 

[00:48:00] Amy: Yes. She definitely was joking. And I think you know the reason that I asked that question is because I had heard her give an interview, I think right after she was elected, in which she talked about wanting to have a different strategy for communicating with the public with Seattleites. 

And with her background as an organizer, she’s repeatedly stressed how she wants to bring that kind of philosophy and approach to the mayor’s office. So I was wondering if there was kind of more concrete plans there beyond, beyond what I just said. And when I was preparing for the interview, I was doing a little research to think, you know, what could that look like? 

And it just so happened that Mayor Mamdani had just made this announcement about this new office, which I thought was a good example. And it’s about engaging more with communities. It’s about keeping in touch with the grassroots campaign that, that basically succeeded at getting him elected in the first place and keeping that alive and going for, you know, future campaigns, for future things that he wants to do that are big in the city, which I think is smart and strategic. 

And then he’s doing stuff like, he’s having a rental ripoff, which there are hearings that they’re gonna have across the city of New York where New Yorkers can share their rental horror stories. And then Mamdani has promised that, you know, they’ll consider those stories and try to make policy to address some of those stories. 

So I just thought these are creative ways to engage with the public and I wanted to know what her thinking was there. But I think the answer is we’re gonna have to wait and see. 
 

[00:49:40] Ryan: Well, it sounds like we’re waiting and seeing on a lot of things. We’re gonna be keeping busy over the next couple of months with the Wilson administration getting going and the legislative session pressing on. Before we go, we’re kind of in the middle of a little false spring outside in Seattle right now. 

It’s pretty nice. The sun is shining. I’m curious for what you guys, where do you head when you have the first sign of false spring? What is your first trip? 
 

[00:50:05] Amy: I really love Lincoln Park. Of course, you know, I live in West Seattle, so it’s very convenient for me, but I like to go down to the edge, by the water. Lincoln Park’s kind of on a hill. So there’s the forested part up above. And then there’s this nice walk by the water and I just love to go and walk all the way down the water and then all the way back, I find it very soothing. 
 

[00:50:28] Ryan: Yeah, I wish they could get that heated salt water pool open during the wintertime. 
 

[00:50:33] Amy: Yeah, that would be great. There is a water slide, which I always get excited about, even though I don’t swim there. 
 

[00:50:41] Ryan: It’s pretty fun. What about you, Doug? 
 

[00:50:44] Doug: Yeah, I always love the [Washington] Arboretum. Tough to go wrong with the arboretum, and there’s such a wide collection of trees and plants there that there’s always something that’s, you know, beautiful or flowering there. So, I try to get there in, in multiple seasons, since it’s a relatively easy place to bike to as well, since it’s on the Washington Loop. 

And not too far from me. So that’s the big one. I also love exploring Discovery Park, so I like Amy. I like the mega parks, in particular. But, yeah, I just try to get out in any way I can in the spring. What, what’s your favorite go-to one, Ryan. 
 

[00:51:19] Ryan: Well, you kind of took mine too. I’ve definitely become a arboretum regular with the G Line heading right there, which is pretty great. But I guess I’m gonna go with the waterfront. Always happy to get down there, but when it’s a nice day, pretty, pretty excited to be able to have that on our front porch for downtown. 
 

[00:51:38] Doug: and it keeps getting better too. 
 

[00:51:41] Amy: We’re just so lucky in general here in Seattle, we have so many parks that I feel like whenever I get… I wouldn’t say I get bored of them, but if I am like, oh, I need a little change, I have like a huge list of options. And there’s the big ones, and then there’s so many little ones that I, I feel like I could spend the rest of my life visiting all of them. 
 

[00:52:02] Doug: Yeah, I, I feel very lucky too. There’s always Green Lake, Carkeek, Golden Gardens. I try to keep it moving and on the waterfront, we are about to get a big refresh on the port side of the waterfront, in Centennial Park. So I just bike through there and it’s a pile of dirt right now. But you can tell that they’re getting closer to planting things and it being ready to show it out for the World Cup people. And then Seattleites for ensuing months. 
 

[00:52:27] Ryan: Yeah, you’re right. I, I actually have been kind of avoiding that area subconsciously. I think I’m gonna be going down there a lot more once it finally gets, gets open. 

Well, thanks so much for joining us here on The Urbanist podcast. Happy to come into your ear holes every two weeks. Hope you have a great day. And remember to get outside. 

The post Urbanist Podcast: Olympia Preview and a Highway Boondoggle first appeared on The Urbanist.

This episode of The Urbanist Podcast was edited by yours truly. Episodes also air on KVRU 105.7 FM radio Thursdays at 4pm, on a once every two weeks cadence, give or take. Thank you to Crystal Fincher and Shannon Cheng of KVRU for their assistance producing our podcast.

Podcast Transcript:

Ryan: Welcome to The Urbanist Podcast, a show touching on the biggest headlines at The Urbanist, and also offering a deeper look from the reporters breaking the stories. We’re an independent reader publication, covering Seattle metropolitan region since 2014. We do advocacy journalism for better cities.

You can find us at theurbanist.org. My name is Ryan Packer. I’m a contributing editor here at The Urbanist. With me is the rest of our newsroom, publisher, Doug Trumm.

Doug: Hey, Ryan. Happy New Year. Good to be here.

Ryan: Happy New Year, Doug. And we also got reporter Amy Sundburg.

Amy: Hello there. Great to be here at the beginning of 2026.

Ryan: Great to have you here. Glad we’re all back together for a fresh brand new year. Every couple weeks, The [00:01:00] Urbanist podcast recaps the biggest headlines happening around the region.

Right now everyone’s talking about the new mayor of Seattle, Katie Wilson, who was sworn in Friday, January 2nd when we’re recording this, a few hours after that.

So, that’s what we’re really excited to chat about, and dig in on, on all the speeches and the signals that the new mayoral administration is, is sending out so far.

Amy, you watched the speech. What were your takeaways?

Amy: I was really excited to see the, the changeover of power. It was a lengthy ceremony with a lot of different speeches, which I actually liked because I liked to hear the different perspectives. It was really interesting who the new administration chose to speak.

Ryan: One thing I thought was notable was that they held the event at the first floor of City Hall. Anybody who wanted to come in could come in. It was open to everybody. It seemed like a very clear signal that they’re [00:02:00] trying to make an accessible administration that’s not press invite only to your speeches.

You know, everyone can stop by and listen to directly what the mayor wants to say. And she explicitly said that if it’s your first time at City Hall, then she wants you to come back and advocate for things.

Doug: Yeah, that definitely seemed like she was emphasizing that both that openness and like practicality. I was near a guy who I thought he was gonna start heckling her, but luckily he lost interest. Because obviously that’s the downside of that approach is you can’t control the crowd.

But nothing, as far as any people trying to disrupt the speech. So it relatively went off without a hitch.

Amy: I think too, it really jived well with her message during the campaign. And I know, right when she won, when they had finished counting enough votes that it was really clear that, that Katie Wilson would be our next mayor. She did have a very small press event, which I attended, and it was in a really tiny space, so it was very limited and [00:03:00] brief.

It was very short, and I think that stressed some people out, that they weren’t invited and that they weren’t allowed to go. So I thought it was really good that for her big formal inauguration, it was completely the opposite.

Doug: Yeah, and her election was close as you alluded to. She won by a little over 2100 votes. So the speech kind of tried to reiterate that she’d be the mayor for everyone. On the flip side of things, her speakers were largely from the grassroots advocacy world.

So I think she was trying to be a break from the traditional big time players only approach to city government. That was very much Bruce Harrell and Jenny Durkan. While being the mayor for everyone, but really trying to get more working class people, everyday people, more of the downtrodden people represented in the room.

Ryan: Yeah, a lot of those speakers that led up to this direct swearing in were callbacks to her prior [00:04:00] advocacy. You know, we had Ifrah Abshir, who was a former high schooler at Rainier Beach High School when Katie Wilson was working with high schoolers to get free youth transit passes and a win that was ultimately taken statewide.

But the groundwork was laid when it was the Youth Transit pass work. These years later coming back to highlight her. And there was the organizer with Nickelsville, Jarvis Campucion, who went through a litany of all the advocacy that they had worked together on, with Nickelsville and the coalition to end homelessness and all the different iterations that were just still kind of spinning our wheels.

I think that was ultimately one of the hardest parts to listen to of the speeches because it was emphasizing the fact that we’ve not made very much progress on those issues. Which isn’t to say that the advocacy was a failure. I think it’s ultimately the failure of our policy systems to actually tackle the, [00:05:00] the crisis at the scale that we need.

But it was really emphasizing the need for a change of, of direction.

Doug: Yeah, and I thought Jarvis’s point that he hadn’t been invited to City Hall in 10 years and they declared a state of emergency just over 10 years ago. They declare the state of emergency to actually end homelessness. And, he talked about the moving of goalposts and just eventually just settling for a reduction, because they weren’t really getting it for a while.

It definitely felt like there’s new energy around actually doing big things like drawing down homelessness closer to functional zero. And, and I don’t think you can solve things like that without, bringing into people actually living that.

Maybe they don’t get to write every policy, but they should at least be in the room having input, that’s real input rather than just policies thrown at them.

Ryan: Yeah, and there was John Burbank who used to be the head of the Economic Opportunity Institute, , who also called back to Katie’s [00:06:00] roots, starting the Transit Riders Union and talking about how that came to be.

Doug: And Burbank’s a columnist with the urbanist occasionally, so it’s always good to see someone who puts their stuff out there with us out in the real world.

Ryan: that’s true. And obviously the current executive director at the Economic Opportunity Institute is Rian Watt, who serves on our board. So we were half close ties to that, to that organization. But I thought he did a great job of really painting Katie’s advocacy as, as grounded in community.

Amy: And he also has been a big proponent for a new progressive revenue of course, Wilson has worked really closely to pass the Jumpstart payroll tax that has really saved Seattle more than once since it’s been passed in terms of getting our budget to balance without a lot of very, very painful cuts.

And I felt like it was a signal of her continued interest in progressive revenue.

Ryan: Yeah, I think that was one of her big applause lines actually during her speech was that she campaigned on taxing the rich. People [00:07:00] really wanted to hear that in the crowd. Before we talk about her speech directly, I thought the most powerful speaker before that was Cynthia Green, who’s a long time eight decade resident of Seattle and advocate, has a a center named after her in Skyway.

But she was really, I think, really zooming out and showing what a big deal it is that someone who didn’t have the backing of money or the big business or the big political endorsements was able to, to become mayor. I think she was really really effective in painting what’s happening right now as a seismic shift in the direction of city government.

Doug: Definitely, and she alluded to the price that she paid to be an early endorser of Katie. Obviously there was a lot of pressure, especially in the African American community with a lot of the families who’ve been in Seattle a long time, having close ties to the Harrell family, if you get out and, and put your name out there for Katie, that, that rubbed people, some people the wrong way, but she [00:08:00] stood by what she did and, and ultimately was looking more at outcomes rather than just going with the pedigree or family ties.

Ryan: Uh, what did you think of Katie’s speech, Amy?

Amy: I thought it was quite powerful. And of course, I mean, I thought it was fascinating, right? I, I analyze these things for fun. So , one thing I noticed is that if you’ve gone to any of Bruce Harrell’s events over the past four years, you’ve heard about One Seattle. Probably a lot.

Doug: Too much.

Amy: Yeah, Katie Wilson explicitly said in her speech, there isn’t just one story for Seattle. And so I felt that I was very symbolic of the shift that she wants to bring to city government. I also think one of the lines that really seemed to resonate with the crowd was about bread and roses, about trying to get people what they need, but also that people deserve more than just what they need, right? That they deserve beauty, that [00:09:00] they deserve the arts, that they deserve fun time, that they deserve leisure, and that we need to value unpaid labor and unpaid pursuit, as well as the, you know, traditional paid labor.

Ryan: Yeah. You know, one word that wasn’t uttered in any of the speeches today was urbanist, but Katie painted a very clear picture of the type of city that she wants us to move toward. And to me it is an essentially urbanist vision. She talked about the need for more sustainable transportation, easier transportation, safer transportation, not a means to an end, but as, as a goal to get to a city where everybody has breathing room and a place to live and the ability to thrive.

And, you know, the same could be said, and she did say for housing affordability and the need to make housing more, more affordable. And so, income inequality is it’s killing [00:10:00] cities. And so when you’re talking about making a city that everyone has a place in, you’re painting an explicitly urbanist picture to me.

I thought it was incredible the way that she laid it out. Not with just saying I want abundant housing, but actually really making clear why we advocate for the things that we do.

Doug: Yeah, definitely. And, with the fact that she had Pauline Van Senus, who is better known as the “Transit Ferry”, actually swear her in. It’s a very unconventional choice you might say. Usually it’s like a judge or some, some high ranking official. But I think that was a really symbolic choice.

And this is someone who was a founding member of the Transit Riders Union, along with Katie Wilson and her husband, who was the mc for the event. So there’s a lot of Transit Riders, Union energy in the swearing in, and that was definitely a signal that we’re gonna care about transit, and affordable ways to get around for folks, safe ways to get around for folks.

That came up more than any speech I can think of on a swearing-in [00:11:00] day in Seattle. Both on the transportation and housing side, which are two of the hugest costs that people have to contemplate in Seattle, along with childcare, which is also been vocal about trying to address those costs.

So affordability, just pervading that.

Ryan: Yeah. And Pauline is someone who had to deal with being brutally attacked, a couple years ago on Third Avenue, cleaning up the bus stop that she does as a thankless task. But she, she got through that and. She’s back out there on the bus stops beautifying our city again. So that’s someone who understands the impact of public safety and obviously is someone who is very close with the mayor. But I thought that was also a another little subtle indication that Katie’s not, not blind to the idea of that public safety is a huge impact on all the other things that we, we talk about when we’re trying to advocate for a better city.

Amy: And all of these things feed into one another, [00:12:00] right? Like if you have more affordable housing, usually your public safety will improve, for example. So it’s good to be able to think of it as a holistic system and not just, you know, these very separate subject areas. I also really liked, I mean, to go back when she said we’re in danger of losing some of the things that make Seattle special. That really resonated with me personally, because before I lived here, I lived in the Bay Area in California I was born there, and I’ve been here almost 10 years now, but I was in the Bay Area for most of my life before that.

And, I was a writer, a science fiction fantasy writer . I saw firsthand people, my, my artistic peers and colleagues being priced out, having to leave the Bay Area, or they could only be in the Bay Area if they worked in tech or if they had a partner who worked in tech. And since I moved up here, the scene is very different, right?

And part of that is [00:13:00] because there are more people who are here who, who don’t have tech money, and they could just afford to be here. And I’ve been very worried about that changing , as prices get higher and higher and it’s harder to afford to live here. So it was really encouraging to me to, to hear some of the things I’ve been thinking about being said by Katie Wilson in her first official speech. Uh.

Ryan: A hundred percent. Yeah, I, I also found that to be very important and very moving. I totally agree with you, Amy. I’m pretty involved in the theater scene in the city and it’s night and day compared to what it was 10, 15 years ago in terms of the number of smaller independent theater companies that are able to, to put on productions.

I’ve seen, I’ve seen it happen before my eyes basically. The pandemic obviously was a big accelerator for a lot of those changes. But, the art scene is something that doesn’t get a lot of attention, and I’m really excited to see her [00:14:00] explicitly calling it out on day one.

Amy: I also really liked her focus on community and on organizing and encouraging people to keep coming to City Hall to stay involved. I feel like a lot of people these days feel disconnected. And there’s a real need to rebuild trust in what government can accomplish, especially given what’s happening in a federal level.

And I think clearly that is one of Wilson’s goals is to show people what local government is capable of doing and how it’s capable of making a better life for the folks that live here.

Doug: Yeah, she, she seemed to despite being an, unapologetic policy wonk, she shied away from some of the academic language around this. But she was really bouncing around the idea of how late stage capitalism is kind of soulless in many ways. And that we’re trying to create ways [00:15:00] to, to connect both, like you were mentioning, by organizing and then the art scene and the theater scene, and all sorts of creative acts like that.

And it definitely, I think, came across as refreshing to folks who are, who are feeling that, that we’re just not doing enough on those fronts. We’re not investing, we’re not focusing on the things that people actually moved to Seattle for. We’re a city with a famous music scene and a famous art scene in some ways.

So yeah, let’s actually embrace that rather than sort of letting get pushed to the side in favor of the shiny and the new and the techie.

Ryan: Ultimately I think the energy today was pretty incredible in terms of, I mean, this is the first mayor that we’ve elected from the progressive side of the city in 16 years. But I think the pressure is, is gonna be on the Wilson administration to, pretty quickly deliver. So obviously I [00:16:00] think the speech was very well crafted , and I think Katie knows that the, the policy is gonna be the, the thing that ultimately proves whether her administration’s gonna be judged as, as an effective one.

Well, we’ll be tracking the Wilson administration very closely here. Very excited to report that the Urbanists will be sitting down with Katie Wilson next week. So we’ll have takeaways from that, likely on a future podcast, but definitely on the site by mid-January, so check back for that.

I think we’re gonna switch gears and head to the statewide lens here and talk about, uh, the newly released budget that Governor Bob Ferguson. It’s his first budget proposal after taking office last January. And, there’s some interesting things to talk about when it comes to this package that he’s sending over to the legislature for their consideration. Amy, what were your high level takeaways from Ferguson’s Budget?

Amy: Yeah. He definitely had a difficult task in front of him. He had a [00:17:00] deficit to plug of over $2 billion. And he had pledged before releasing this budget proposal that he would not institute any new revenue or raise taxes in any way. What that means, practically speaking is that you’re gonna have to cut, right?

Like those are your two main choices. And that’s what he did in this budget. He cut about I think $800 million worth of investments that the state was making. And he also took about a billion dollars from the state’s rainy day fund, which is traditionally an emergency fund, right?

It’s for help for the state if there’s a recession or serious recession, if there’s a, some kind of emergency, like a pandemic or, you know, a lot of wildfires or, or something of that nature. Obviously we’re not in that kind of emergency right now, but he did choose to take about half of those rainy day funds to plug [00:18:00] this hole temporarily in his budget. One of the other interesting things that he did was reallocating the, the Climate Commitment Act funds, which I know you covered Ryan, so maybe you could say a little bit more about that.

Ryan: Yeah, so, this is money that is over and above what was collected and accounted for earlier this year, sort of the latest round of carbon auctions under the 2021 Climate Commitment Act, which is a cap invest program that puts a cap on emissions and charges polluters, to trade credits.

And so, it’s about 700 million. He is wanting to divert more than 500 million of that over into the working family’s tax credit. And that is explicitly something that’s allowed under state law, but lawmakers had held off on doing that. Instead, they were using general fund dollars to fund this tax credit.

And so what it [00:19:00] essentially means is that it’s a little bit of a, a spreadsheet trick because you’re able to not put any new money into new Climate Commitment Act programs and then use the rest of the budget to kind of stay balanced. And so, ultimately, that’s a lot of climate programs that won’t, won’t see new investment because we’re just choosing to kind of divert that money into something that was already funded.

And so obviously I think the Working Families tax credit is a great program. It’s one tool that’s making our tax system less, less regressive. It’s giving people money back on the sales taxes they already pay, but we have federal governments that that’s attacking climate action. So this is a lost opportunity to have a lot of really great investments in transit, clean energy, sustainable flood resilience is what I’m thinking about in terms of what we just had to go through in December.

Climate groups are not happy with that, [00:20:00] obviously. Unsurprisingly and are hoping for a different option.

Amy: Yeah, a hundred percent. And I think also wildfire mitigation, right, is another one that instantly springs to mind for me. It hasn’t been maybe quite as bad the last couple years, but it’s still an ever present danger here in Washington.

Ryan: Yeah. The thing that kind of made the Climate Commitment Act, money diversion a little bit, sting even more was this fact that he’s also proposing $3 billion in new bonds, for the state transportation budget just to go toward bridge preservation and highway maintenance as well as to purchase three new ferries.

The state transportation budget is already more than 11% debt service, which is actually more than the entire state ferry system and, and way more the double what the state spends every year on public transit. And so it’s more debt that the city that the state’s gonna have to pay down the line just to do [00:21:00] basic maintenance on its transportation system.

At the same time that we are cutting all these programs that we’re gonna pay for, like I said, transit and sustainable transportation boats.

Amy: Are you worried at all about how that will impact the long-term outlook for the state budget? 

Ryan: I mean, yeah, especially for the transportation budget, especially because a lot of that’s relying on the 6 cent gas tax increase that we just approved earlier this year. Gas tax revenues are, are not expected to increase. They’re expected to decline as we switch to EVs, as cars get more fuel efficient.

And we do actually expect people to be driving less on a per capita basis. And so it’s not clear that there is another revenue source that’s gonna be able to kind of step in. And the legislature has talked for years about a road usage charge. I don’t see that happening until things get really dire.

So we’re taking out the credit card and that’s worrying. Especially [00:22:00] because like I said, these are, these are basic things. This is keeping highways repaved, which is the idea that you’re using debt for that is pretty alarming in terms of what it says about your priorities because, a big portion of the existing state highway budget is, is for new projects like highway expansions in Spokane, south King County, et cetera.

Amy: Right, right.

Doug: And those bonds just lock that money away. I mean, sometimes people forget how that works, but usually that means 10, 15, 20 years of money is just accounted for. You’re just making it, it more difficult. And obviously there’s a time and place for debt, but it doesn’t feel like repaving highways is the best use and definitely feels like a stretch and I wasn’t even sure you could bond for some of these things because usually you want to have collateral, but I guess you could still patch a road and treat it as collateral.

Ryan: Yeah. That’s a good point. It’s interesting to me how differently the idea of bonding [00:23:00] gets covered in the media compared to the idea of, say, increasing the gas tax. I feel like these are treated so differently. It’s just like utilizing existing revenues is like a phrase that’s comes up when you talk about bonding.

It’s like there’s a cost that’s gonna get paid for down the road. But I don’t think this is a foregone conclusion to issue bonds. You have to have a 60% vote in the legislature. I think that’s gonna be tough to get either every single Democrat and a few Republicans, or to get a bipartisan coalition to sign on the idea of, like I said, taking out the state credit card.

Doug: Yeah, and it’s not like Ferguson proved that he has strong relationships in the, uh, the legislature in the first year of his office. So it’s gonna be a tall order.

Ryan: Well, three was, three years ago, Jay Inslee proposed to do 4 billion in bonding to pay for housing, which was kind of a [00:24:00] moonshot proposal, that died a pretty swift death in the legislature. I think transportation bonds, it’s a little more wonky. There’s, there’s different sources of that. It’s not an exact apples to apples comparison, but I think, I think it’s still gonna be very, very tough.

Amy: The budget proposal also, well, as I said, it is balanced partially through cuts. So there are a lot of state programs being trimmed, delayed, cut. It sounded to me like many departments will have their budgets cut and then they’ll have to decide how to deal with that basically. Which is almost certain to lead to at least some layoffs.

So we won’t know until, until the departments make their decisions exactly what that’s gonna look like or how many people are going to be laid off as a result of this budget proposal should it go through. And another thing, well, a couple other areas [00:25:00] in which there are cuts that I found a bit concerning was education and healthcare, particularly education, which already received cuts in the budget that just passed this year during the legislative session now is looking like it’s gonna receive even more cuts, which obviously isn’t, isn’t good news for anybody who has students in their family is a student, has educators in their family. He’s calling for an additional 3% cut to the University of Washington and Washington State University, and a 1.5% cut to all the other regional universities, the community colleges, the technical colleges, all of that.

There also is are gonna be, uh, delay, I guess they’re capping how many people can sign up for the Working Connections Childcare Program. They’re eliminating some slots to the [00:26:00] Transitions to Kindergarten program, which is for four year olds who need some extra education or help before they go to kindergarten.

So there’s gonna be a lot of impacts. Oh, also they’re supposed to give additional money to school districts that can’t raise as much money as easily because they don’t have as high property values so that when they, when they have a property tax levy to fund education, it’s just not gonna bring in as many dollars.

And that is gonna be delayed or cut. So it’s gonna have some wide impacting consequences to the state’s education system, which I think a lot of people are worried about already.

Doug: Yeah. It’s not like their schools and universities are in this great fiscal shape either and definitely, one of those critics was state superintendent Chris Reykdal, who put out a statement that was highly critical. And he said, unfortunately, this budget proposal takes a austerity approach.

He goes [00:27:00] on to talk about how this should actually be a time when we’re working to go the other way and make our tax code more progressive, so that the people least able to pay aren’t shouldering the largest share of the burden. Obviously he, he pissed off his state superintendent with this idea, and it will strain budgets in the education system.

Ryan: Yeah, but, as dire as those cuts are, that was not really what the headlines about the budget proposal were focused on. Instead they were looking at Ferguson’s newfound support for a state income tax. What happened there, Doug?

Doug: Yeah, so this, this kind of came a little bit as a surprise just because Ferguson had spent so much effort in his first year in office saying, I don’t support new revenue. And there’s obviously a big caveat here. He said, I support the state income tax, but I don’t want to implement it until 2029 for reasons.

And, he did get into [00:28:00] those reasons. I’d being a little facetious , but, he gave a, that you would need time to set up the infrastructure to collect the tax. ’cause we don’t have income tax in our state. Only the federal income tax applies here. So, there’s something to that. It would, would take some time.

It wouldn’t take three years, but it would take a while to actually set up the infrastructure and collect the tax. But then the other reason he gave is he’s expecting both a legal challenge in the courts and potentially a write-in campaign from conservatives who’ve been very active in that front. Whether that’s Tim Eyman, or more likely now Brian Haywood, who ran a repeal effort for the Climate Commitment Act, which is a our cap and trade carbon tax. , So, they’re expecting the rich people to fight back, which I do think that’s true, but at the same time, it doesn’t necessarily, I don’t know why you would need to then concede that you’re not gonna even try to get money for three years.

And that ends up putting it, collecting money only in Ferguson’s second [00:29:00] term. So, yeah, this whole budget goes back to that whole approach of Ferguson not wanting to be the one to raise the new revenue. So he pushes it onto other people, whether that’s the legislature last year to come up with what avenues they did have without a push for a bigger new source , which ended up being like B&O tax and things like that, to patch the budget along with some cuts. Because Ferguson also didn’t get very specific about which areas he wanted to cut. So, it’s that same kind of chaotic approach where he’s not really leading per se, he’s just kind of setting a vague framework and hoping that the state legislature does their work for them.

But, at least it’s something in the fact that he supports the income tax now, which would only apply to millionaires, which is probably politically savvy approach. When it does go to ballot, likely if, if they’re able to collect enough signatures to try to repeal it.

Amy: Just to be clear about what this tax is that we’re talking about, it only applies to Washington residents who make more [00:30:00] than a million dollars a year. So it doesn’t apply to people who like have a house and they bought it and it was really cheap back in the day, and they’ve had it for 40 years, and now it is worth more than a million dollars.

That’s, that’s not what this tax is about, and I think that’s important to state upfront.

Ryan: It’s not a wealth tax. 

Doug: And there’s also a proposal for a wealth tax, but that’s a whole, whole different thing, which Ferguson doesn’t support.

Amy: What it actually is is 9.9% on adjusted annual gross income of over a million dollars. So only the money over a million dollars. So it will apply to less than 0.1% of Washingtonians. So it’s very carefully and narrowly tailored to, to basically tax the rich.

Doug: Yeah. And yet, it somehow still collects was it over $3 billion a year they expect, if I’m recalling 

correctly, 

Amy: yeah. No, it’s a significant revenue source. 

Doug: Yeah, that, that’s a very wealthy 0.1% of the Washington [00:31:00] state when you, when you figure it that way.

Amy: Yes. Yes. And, and you know, there’s questions. I think Ferguson has been very clear since the beginning of the year that he really doesn’t wanna rely on any new revenue that is at risk in any way. Right? So I think that’s the idea behind the 2029. That’s when we’ll collect this revenue because by then, like all those risks will have been worked through.

The flip side is you’ve, you’ve given up billions and billions of dollars of revenue in that time that if it does survive, the state could have had to invest in some of these programs. There’s also gonna be, of course, I’m sure this will shock nobody, a big debate as to what to spend any new revenue like this on.

And how much to spend on things like tax relief for small businesses or eliminating certain sales tax on certain items or bringing down the overall rate versus [00:32:00] investing more in things like education and in healthcare. And I bring up healthcare specifically because, the healthcare system in this country is, is in trouble, right?

It has been in trouble. I think the strain of the COVID pandemic in 2020 was really hard on it. And, now with federal level policy, we can expect things to be getting a lot worse fairly quickly.

Ryan: Yeah, I think that doesn’t get enough attention. We talk a lot about whether the tax system is directly regressive and whether we could make it less regressive, but we don’t really talk about the regressivity of massive cuts to the state budget that will have impacts on the ability for people to get healthcare for people to get education.

I think a lot about this in the context of the county’s budget, which is considerably constricted, and the governor has not supported the idea of letting the 1 [00:33:00] property tax cap, which is strangling county government, king County in particular, but also all counties across the state who are tasked with ensuring public health and, and keeping clinics open.

And those cuts that they have to make because we don’t want to raise revenue and in really any way at all are really hurting the most vulnerable.

Doug: Yeah, that was bizarre. The, that Ferguson would block that particular thing. ’cause usually officials are good at giving other levels of government permission to raise new revenue because they don’t have to personally take the heat. But he kind of fell on that grenade. And it was kind of unclear for what reason. Especially in a time of high inflation, that cap is particularly burdensome.

Amy: And counties in particular. I, I think people get confused about the difference between cities and counties in Washington state and counties in particular just have so few tools at [00:34:00] their disposal to try to collect or raise new revenue. So they do their best, but I often feel like their hands are kind of tied and in order to untie those hands, the state legislature needs to act. That that is the solution. That is, I think, the only solution.

Ryan: Yeah, king County can’t raise a jumpstart tax. They, they’re not allowed to do that. Shaun Scott has a bill this session to allow them to impose a B&O tax, which could be one tool in the toolbox, but it is, I think, misunderstood a lot in terms of even the ability to do things, to actually get out of the, the budget crunch that they’re in.

We will be watching the entire machinations of the budget, which are expected to take over the majority of the 60 day session. It starts in just 10 days on January 12th.

Doug: That’s a lot to get done in 60 days.

Ryan: yes, but stay tuned for future episodes as we chat about that. Here on the [00:35:00] Urbanist Podcast on KVRU 105.7. Let’s go into something a little lighter. Let’s talk about 2026. Expectations, predictions, things we’re watching. It’s gonna be a busy year for urbanism in Puget Sound. We’ve got a lot of city councils changing around, new mayor, Sound Transit is up to a lot of stuff. What, what are you tracking this year, Amy?

Amy: Well, surprising no one. I’m gonna be tracking a lot about public safety. We do have two new executives, in Seattle and in King County who are gonna have their own ideas about public safety. And I will say by public safety, I’m also talking about homelessness. Because those two just are so intertwined, at least in our region, that I, I think you can’t talk about one without the other.

So I’m gonna be watching that really carefully. As well as, surveillance, which I think was a big topic [00:36:00] in 2025, and I think it’s gonna continue to be a big topic in 2026, both here in Seattle and, but across, across the state as, as we’ve been seen, with license plate readers, for example.

And there is most likely going to be an important bill at the state legislature this session about those license plate readers. So that is one of the first things that I’m probably just gonna be really intensively watching, and talking with folks about because, I think not all the details have quite been ironed out on what’s gonna be in that bill, but it’s going to potentially really impact the future of surveillance in this state.

So it’s something I, I guess looking forward to covering. And, I mean, surveillance is kind of a grim topic, but it is interesting.

Ryan: Amy on, on the topic of homelessness, you know, I noticed Girmay Zahilay was at Katie Wilson’s swearing in today. I’m watching both of those [00:37:00] newly elected officials and what they’re gonna do with the King County Regional Homelessness Authority. Is that one thing that you’re tracking about what’s gonna happen with, with that organization?

Amy: Definitely, definitely. And I mean, it’s been painful to watch sometimes how, how the county and the city kind of struggle to work together and some of these intractable, seemingly intractable problems, I should say. I think they can be solved . are ones that happen on a regional level so they’re not just focused in the city of Seattle.

And homelessness is probably the best example of that. Gun violence is another example of that. And, some of the folks I’ve talked to have been disappointed, at the poor communication between the county and the city and their inability to, to coordinate and work together, which could be a game changer in terms of actually making some progress on some of these really important issues that I think everybody that lives here cares about a lot.

I think that will be something to watch is how much does it seem [00:38:00] like the county and the city of Seattle are on the same page this year? Does that shift at all? Or are they just gonna kind of continue fumbling around, and sometimes talking and working around one another?

Ryan: Yeah, I think in the past we’ve seen the county executive show up at city events when they have a direct interest, if it’s a King County Metro project. But I, I’m seeing something a little different here. I think Girmay and Katie Wilson are legitimately interested in, in working together.

Amy: Yeah. Yeah, that’s what I think as well. And I have been hearing, I think people are a little more hopeful about that. Obviously, we have to wait and see how it ends up panning out. But, this is a time of opportunity for both the county and the city. Even though, you know, both of them are having some budget issues, it’s still, there’s still opportunity to really improve things.

Doug: Yeah. And I wonder if just the sheer power of them being similar age. They both had their daughters along with them at that event, and I was kind of struck by Oh yeah, [00:39:00] these people are at a similar point. Um, obviously Girmay took a little bit different path than than Katie did since Katie’s a first time politician , at least as far as elected office goes. But yeah, I think they’ve made some signals. They made a social media video together, where they kind of seem like they had a good rapport and maybe that will get tested once they actually have to work on policy. But, hopeful that they can iron out some of those things because the regional homelessness authority, obviously some of the critics lately have been crowing that they’ve been right. Because they haven’t been able to solve some of those issues that they, they hoped that if they just formed an regional entity, some, some of the stuff will get fixed, but they haven’t come up with the major new revenue source. So Seattle continues to provide most of the money for that, and then King County chips in another chunk.

And, towards the end, former mayor Bruce Harrell was making a big deal about how the suburban cities had to chip in more. But that was the original fight at the beginning, whether or not they were going to get this off the ground. That was the [00:40:00] thing that people were saying then, and it’s still true now.

So it’s, it’s a sticky issue and hopefully they figure it out. But some of these things were predicted.

Amy: Well, and it continues to be an issue of great urgency. And again, I hate having to keep calling out the federal level of policy because it’s, it’s grim. But because of some of that policy that’s coming down from a federal level, that is gonna impact our homelessness numbers here in King County . So it’s likely to get worse in some ways. And so if we aren’t really being bold and making strides, we’re really gonna see that, in terms of the number of people who are homeless on our streets is gonna go up, right? And more people here are going to be really, really directly suffering, as a result of these federal policies.

So, it makes it even more important that leaders at a local level really step up and figure out what they can do [00:41:00] to at least ameliorate some of that damage.

Doug: Yeah. Some of these things have, like you said, have the potential to throw a huge number of people into homelessness ’cause people want to equate homelessness with like a moral failing. But we know that’s, that’s rarely true. And, kicking millions of people off of their healthcare that through the loss of public subsidies like that’s going to be a huge pressure on people’s budgets as well as these huge Housing and Urban Development department HUD cuts, that are gonna hit people’s pocketbooks.

And as far as how many people can get subsidized housing. So definitely a dangerous time. Need all the resources we can get. New revenue sources, everything.

Amy: But on a, on a happier note, since, since a lot of this is really heavy stuff, we have some important levees. That are coming up this next year.

Doug: Yeah, and here’s one of my predictions. The Seattle Transit Measure is up for renewal, [00:42:00] and this is a measure that provides about 39 million, if my memory serves, of funding per year. Originally it was intended to almost overwhelmingly all of it going towards supplementing our bus service, so you get more frequent service on major routes.

But over the course of the last two administrations, it sort of became a little bit of a grab bag. A good chunk of it ended up going towards, as Ryan reported, hiring planners to do Sound Transit 3 preparations. Which I guess that’s important, but not exactly what was originally sold to voters.

It also was funneled towards some transit security investments, and some street upgrades, which sort of makes sense, if they’re improving bus flow. But I think Katie Wilson’s approach and she’s someone who rides the bus a lot, not just the perfunctory, occasional ride to the stadiums or something.

I think she’s gonna leverage this money to truly improve the experience for most bus riders, [00:43:00] the service levels for most bus, bus riders. So I think it’ll be more reemphasized on, bus service and hopefully we’re able to get more, more bus frequency on some of our routes that that people are coming back to the bus. But to get back to our ridership level we had 2019, which we still haven’t reached in the pandemic and post pandemic era. It’s gonna take getting back to that frequency level because, you only can fit so many people on buses if they’re not coming , and people lose interest. So we know that that’s what drives people to actually ride the bus: fast, frequent, reliable bus service. And that’s something Katie’s thought about for a long time, so I’m optimistic.

Ryan: Yeah. Well, one thing that the sail transit measure is paying for right now is the operations of the Seattle Streetcar. And it’s a pretty big operating subsidy to make up for the lack of fare revenue, especially on the South Lake Union line. And so I think Katie Wilson’s administration’s gonna have some tough choices to make around [00:44:00] whether to continue using that funding source for that or put it toward broader transit.

It’s a pretty clear trade off in terms of keeping this one streetcar line in South Lake Union. I think First Hill Streetcar is a much higher ridership. It’s over a million people a year, but South Lake Union is, is only in the couple hundred thousands.

So, the question is, I think, gonna be put on her doorstep. Katie Wilson has hired Alex Hudson, who used to be the executive director at Transportation Choices Coalition and Commute Seattle to be her transportation advisor. It seems like that a big part of her portfolio is gonna be getting that, that levy ready for renewal.

I would expect to see a more intense focus, like you said, on, on transit frequency as well as making sure that the Orca cards that are paid for by the transit measure continue to be in there for low income people, people in public housing. But also what I’d [00:45:00] like to see from that is more direct accountability measures in terms of the improvements that we are making to our bus lines.

Actual metrics around if we’re gonna spend 5 million to upgrade a bus, we are actually saving, you know, 30 seconds a minute on every trip as opposed to just sprinkling improvements there and kinda hoping that they work .

Doug: yeah, Katie is someone who’s very, you know, she’s detail oriented. It’s not going to be something where she just only swoops in for the ribbon cutting. I don’t think that’s the kind of mayor we’re getting, at least, at least having known her for about a decade.

So hopefully that that’s not something that gets lost in the shuffle. And she’ll also have the Seattle Transportation Levy dollars, which are kind of open-ended, as we’ve reported at The Urbanist , which could have been a risk if you have someone with bad transportation values in office. But, now we have an opportunity to make that open-ended revenue source work for us.

So maybe that’s where she can find some of the money [00:46:00] for bus lanes and queue jumps and things like that, that make the bus go faster. And then you have those service hours to then make sure that those faster buses aren’t getting overcrowded.. 

Ryan: Yeah, it’s definitely something we’re gonna continue to watch. How Katie Wilson shapes the overall priorities that the Seattle Department of Transportation.

Amy: I also am very excited. Just a quick shout out to the library levy that’s coming up this year as well. I love libraries and also they’re very important third place, a place where people can come, they can get inside from the cold, from the heat, whatever’s going on. Access the internet, access all sorts of resources.

So, it’ll be good to see our libraries continuing to be funded, perhaps at, perhaps at a higher level than they are now. We shall see.

Doug: They’re wildly popular. W ell, and Ryan, I know you’ve been to every library, I think in the city and you’re working on the county. They’re just, they’re just spaces that are [00:47:00] really community beacons. And most of them are, are beloved. Um, so I think it’s something that you’ll probably see pass in, you know, 70, 80% range.

I, I think how we can wisely invest to, to keep getting more out of our libraries, whether it’s improving the existing ones or potentially thinking about a new library here or there. It’s something that I think Seattle voters would be happy to support.

Amy: Yeah, and I mean, I, it’s an opportunity to present a levy to the voters that maybe has a slightly more bold vision for libraries, which would be fun to see.

Ryan: Yeah, that’s gonna be a quick turnaround for a Katie Wilson administration. I think they need to start talking about that in April. But, yeah, definitely join you in the library fan club. I know with the last library levy in 2019, I remember an amendment from Mike O’Brien to add a little bit of money to keep the libraries open until 9:00 PM, on certain weekdays, which would’ve been huge.

Ultimately, the pandemic really put the kibosh on that. And they went back and said, would you [00:48:00] prefer us to do other things like keep libraries open on Fridays and stuff like that. So, but that was originally one of the promises in the last levy. I hope we can get to other cities, libraries are until nine, 10 o’clock at night.

And you know, people they don’t go to bed at 8:30. So. I, I did hear a rumor about potentially using the library levee to fund the Seattle Channel, which would be an interesting use of funding. It’s a little bit of a budget supplantation trick, I think ’cause they were previously funded by utility fees that are cable fees that are going down.

But could be a good use of resources. Obviously Seattle Channel their projects are very hand in glove with things the library works on.

Doug: Yeah, it seems like the basic infrastructure of the city and I can see an argument for it.

Amy: What else are you gonna be looking for this year, Ryan?

Ryan: One big thing I’m gonna be tracking is the implementation for the Comprehensive Plan. We just approved the comprehensive plan earlier [00:49:00] this December. But there’s gonna be a phase two and a phase three that are actually gonna look at changing zoning. Phase two is gonna be looking at neighborhood centers, places like Tangletown and Madrona and stuff like that to zone those areas to allow more apartment buildings.

I think those fights are gonna be contentious. We’re, we’re no longer haggling over the boundaries of those neighborhood centers, but we will be haggling over the exact zoning, whether it’s townhouse zoning or actual apartment zoning. But the other element is the transit-oriented development zoning.

The, the Bruce Harrell Comprehensive Plan proposed very narrow upzones along certain transit routes, but those were not actually directly included in the comp plan. So it’s gonna be a kind of a whole free for all in terms of there’s nothing checking council member from just wiping a zone that they don’t like off the map.

It’s [00:50:00] not in the comprehensive plan. So that’s gonna be an interesting fight. I think we’re gonna see neighborhoods like Queen Anne, Wallingford come out to oppose those zoning changes.

Doug: Yeah. And, advocates were frustrated that those transit corridor rezones weren’t wider. And I don’t know the extent they, they can completely reverse that, but, you know, maybe, maybe they could be having a two block or three block radius could be something that gets discussion rather than the Harrell administration settling into this one block radius, which is exactly what advocates said they didn’t want, because many of our transit routes are on very polluted, busy, dangerous arterials where people aren’t gonna really feel comfortable having like their kids play in the street or anything like that. And everyone, like single family homeowners, wants to be on a nice quiet street. But that’s something that we reserve largely for those owners, rather than renters.

Ryan: Agreed. I think the big limitation there in terms of especially, Katie Wilson wanting to make the plan more bold, is gonna [00:51:00] be not the comp plan, but the environmental review and whether it’s was studied previously. And so that’s gonna be the question of whether they’re gonna go back and be able to get that updated environmental review done in order to check the box and be able to move forward.

My sense is that it’ll probably be a future phase and not part of phase two.

Doug: Yeah. I guess depends if the new Seattle City Attorney takes a more bullish approach, because Ann Davison, our former Seattle City attorney, the last Republican in Seattle office, she just didn’t want to really risk going to court. And that might just be something that’s coming from staff. We’ll have to see. Or maybe, Erica Evans will be more willing to be like, well there’s maybe risk, but there’s high reward.

So, uh, I’m curious to see.

Amy: Yeah, I don’t really have a sense of which way she would go on something like that, so that will be interesting to watch.

Ryan: We will be tracking these topics and many more as the weeks unfold here in [00:52:00] 2026. We’re very excited to be rebooting this podcast and getting back into your ear holes. Um, I don’t know why I said that. Um,

Doug: oh, I like it.

Ryan: This has been The Urbanist Podcast on KVRU 105.7 fm. I coming to you about every two weeks right now as we get our full podcast schedule back into full rotation. So, all you crazy cats out there in radio land, this has been The Urbanist Podcast. I’m Ryan Packer.

Amy: I am Amy Sundburg.

Doug: And I’m Doug Trumm. Have a happy New Year. Hope that good things are in store. [00:53:00]

The post Urbanist Podcast: New Year, New Mayor, New Budget first appeared on The Urbanist.

Check out our recent articles for more information:

• Thousands Packs Trains for Opening of Federal Way Light Rail
• Federal Way Link Stations Not Seeing a Housing Boom
• Seattle Approves Controversial Police Guild Contract, Three Councilmembers Dissent
• Katie Wilson’s Transition Team Features Mix of Advocates and Insiders
• Katie Wilson Charts New Course on Public Safety and Homelessness

This episode of The Urbanist Podcast was edited by your truly. Episodes also air on KVRU 105.7 FM radio Thursdays at 4pm. Thank you to Crystal Fincher and Shannon Cheng of KVRU for their assistance producing this episode.

Podcast Transcript:

Ryan: Welcome to the Urbanist Podcast, a show touching on the biggest headlines at The Urbanist, and also offering a deeper look from the reporters breaking the stories. We’re an independent reader supported publication, covering the Seattle Metropolitan region since 2014. We do advocacy journalism for better cities. You can find us at theurbanist.org. I’m Ryan Packer, contributing editor. We’ve also got Doug Trumm publisher,

Doug: Hi, Ryan. Excited to break down the stories.

Ryan: And we’ve got Amy Sundburg.

Amy: Good to be here. Excited to talk about, what’s been happening this week.

Ryan: Every couple weeks, The Urbanist will break down the biggest headlines. Here’s what we’ve got on deck for you this week. We’re gonna talk about Sound Transit opening a brand new extension down to Federal Way. We’re gonna talk about Katie Wilson, incoming mayor of Seattle, and her assembling a crack team of top staff and transition team members.

Ryan: And we’re also gonna talk about the newly approved Seattle Police Officers Guild contract.

Amy: [00:01:00] let’s go ahead and dive in and talk about the new light rail stations, because that’s very exciting for everybody I think.

Doug: Yeah definitely. And Ryan and I were there for all of the hoopla and fun times and, uh, a lot of people riding the trains for opening day. What did you think of the opening day, Ryan?

Ryan: It was a very exciting day, finally bringing light rail into South King County. Getting all the way to Federal Way. This is a day that’s been worked towards since 2008 when voters approved the Sound Transit 2 ballot measure, which envisioned getting all the way to what’s now Star Lake. Ultimately, the Great recession in 2009 prevented them from getting south of Angle Lake.

Ryan: But, with the 2016 follow up Sound Transit 3 measure, we were able to get all the way to Federal Way.

Amy: What is this expansion gonna mean for the people that live and work in South King County?

Ryan: It’s a much better connection to the regional transit network, especially from, I’d say downtown Federal [00:02:00] Way, as well as students accessing college at Highline College. There’s quite a bit of, of parking along the alignment, the trackway follows I-5. And so it’s a little more park and ride oriented than maybe the, uh, the northern section through, you know, Seattle, the University of Washington, Capitol Hill.

Ryan: But ultimately it’s gonna be better access to the region.

Doug: Yeah I think the airport connection’s gonna get a lot better too. Which I found out the reverse way when I was thinking about how I was gonna get down there for the opening from, I live in Fremont and if you connect on the A Line from the end of what used to be Angle Lake, obviously it was the end of the line.

Doug: You’re still looking at a half hour to get all the way to, uh, downtown Federal way. So that’s gonna be more like 16 minutes, I think, is what they said. So that’s a, that’s a pretty nifty connection for folks along there. And, obviously it’s not just people flying out, but thousands and thousands of people work at the airport.

Ryan: Yeah. One of the deputy CEOs [00:03:00] at Sound Transit shared with me that on his train, uh, the first one to leave Federal Way, there was a, a pilot who knew that the service was starting at 11 o’clock and used it to get to the airport in the very first revenue service train.

Amy: That’s amazing. I love stories like that. so Ryan, you mentioned that the light rail was aligned with I-5. What was the other option and what were the pros and cons?

Ryan: Yeah, so about 10 years ago, we had this big debate. Transit advocates were pushing for an alignment that went along, uh, PAC Highway SR 99, essentially directly serving the businesses and amenities that are all along the highway. But a lot of businesses were concerned that their property was gonna get taken for that alignment.

Ryan: There was also concerns about traffic impacts from temporary closures and all these impact concerns. And so ultimately all three cities along the route. Des Moines, Kent and Federal [00:04:00] Way all got on board with pushing the route over to I-5. And you know, the northernmost station at Kent Des Moines is, is pretty close to both, like, it’s a kind of most, the most narrow part of the area where I-5 and 99 are pretty close together.

Ryan: So that’s not a huge difference, although Highline College was ultimately pushing for their station to be on. On the same side of 99, so students don’t have to cross that really dangerous, noisy highway every time. Kent had been proposing to do a pedestrian bridge, but that ultimately never materialized.

Ryan: Star Lake is really the big missed opportunity. It’s right along I-5, along a wetland. There’s very little TOD. Sound Transit is not even developing any affordable housing at that site, which they are. The other two with the property they had to use to acquire to build the line.

Ryan: That’s kind of the big opportunity as well as potential infill stations will be a lot harder to add in the future. [00:05:00] But coming back and adding more stations between other ones, it’s gonna be a lot harder to do that.

Doug: Yeah, riding the train, for me was the first time I know you got to go on the early press ride, Ryan, you know, it was really a huge mix of what kind of uses and just generally was built when as you went by. You go by some pretty empty areas like forest and the wetland.

Doug: You mentioned obviously McSorley Creek Wetland, which actually was also a problem during construction because that’s part of why they had to delay due to a landslide.

Ryan: Potential landslide, right, Doug?

Doug: potential landslide, yeah, I guess it may be a bit sensationalized in the reporting but bad soil conditions that they sort of knew were there, but they didn’t expect ’em to be that, that bad. But that, that’s why this project’s opening and late 2025 instead of 2024, which is kind of the plan for most of the last decade. But, you end up going through a, a great variety of areas. There was some low density housing, some high density housing. Didn’t necessarily stop at all the high density housing, [00:06:00] but, yeah, the three stations we do have a, a real mixed bag. And I think Star Lake’s probably gonna be weak link there with a lack of TOD opportunity and, and just not as much there now either besides a big parking garage.

Doug: Yeah, 

Amy: you quickly define TOD?

Doug: Oh, I hate that. I’m always the one trying to do that, when I’m editing and I didn’t do it when I was speaking. Transit oriented development, which it’s a little bit of frustrating from, from a urbanist perspective ’cause it should all be transit oriented development. Right. But, obviously we have to differentiate from the normal way we do things, especially in the suburbs where, we’re just building a lot of low density housing with largely single family homes that it’s really hard to serve a transit whether we wanted to or not.

Ryan: Yeah, I think Federal Way is the big opportunity here. You know, they have pretty grand ambitions for what I think a lot of people would kind of laughably consider a, a downtown now. The idea that Federal Way has a downtown as kind of a, a running joke. And so I think we should encourage those plans.

Ryan: They have four big sites that Sound Transit’s gonna [00:07:00] directly develop right now. Those are pretty far along actually in the process, those are gonna have retail on the ground floor and start to kind of create a mixed use district. They also have this very large parcel home to a former target that they have been working with the development agreement on with a developer which could bring like as many as 1600 units, through phased development.

Ryan: So you’re potentially looking at a very different federal way in 10 to 15 years.

Doug: Yeah, it, it certainly feels like there are things at the Federal Way Station. They’re just not that close to the, the station itself and. We learned as we were going to our little urbanist afterparty where we went to a Italian restaurant near the station, but not near enough not to have to cross two stroads to get there.

Doug: And a stroad is the urbanist term for an overbuilt road, street road that is very unpleasant to cross. We waited probably over 90 seconds just to get across one intersection, because there were so many [00:08:00] protected turns for cars. And then you’re just waiting to get your turn chance to cross both of these roads as a pedestrian, and you feel like you’re trapped in a mall parking lot hell.

Ryan: Yeah. Federal Way still has a long way to go to get out of that car-centric planning mindset. Their long-term vision, rather than slimming down that major road is to dig a tunnel so the cars can pass, pass underneath and you can have pedestrians crossing on the top of the surface, but not have to actually slow any cars down.

Ryan: While I don’t think it actually will ever happen is a great illustration of kind of the mindset of current Federal Way city planners.

Doug: Yeah. That’s not downtown thinking, is it? 

Amy: So how successful do we expect the new line to be? Like how many people do we think are gonna be riding?

Doug: Well, I can give you the official agency projection, which, uh, I think was last revised to 18,000 to 23,000 daily passengers is what the extension will contribute. And to give you some context, [00:09:00] the 1 Line before this extension averaging more than 110,000 rider daily riders. That was buoyed by the addition of Lynnwood Link in 2024. So it’s definitely a growing ridership. This is gonna help a little bit, but it’s not gonna be like, a night and day thing.

Ryan: I think due to the fact that it’s a much longer trip to get to downtown Seattle than it is from Lynnwood, on the other end of the line. It has to go through the Rainier Valley to get to downtown. Sound Transit is gonna continue running express bus service between downtown Federal Way and downtown Seattle, in illustration of the fact that it’s not actually saving you a lot of time to jump on the train, like Doug said, it’s gonna be great for airport travel, but it’s not gonna be, I think the game changer that Lynnwood has been, especially because Lynnwood’s gonna have four minute service with the 2 Line extending up there.

Amy: Yeah four minute service is a big deal. I think it makes people a lot more likely to give it a try.

Doug: yeah, [00:10:00] I know a lot of my friends are excited for that. Even folks who aren’t died in the wool urbanist. It just makes it so there’s not really that mental barrier of like, oh, is the train gonna come and am I gonna make, make my trip in a reasonable amount of time and not be late? And beyond the airport connection, the silver lining of a not very quick route into downtown Seattle, where you go through Rainier Valley. I think there are a lot of, uh some trip demand for folks who like to go to Columbia City, say from Federal Way or from from Kent Des Moines. That that is a lot faster trip because much of our transit system forces you to go downtown to transfer. And, now you have some connections along this line that, that are not forcing you to do that to make a connection like that so that that’ll be an improvement.

Ryan: Now that sound transit’s gotten to Federal Way, what is next is the two line which is finally gonna extend across I-90 into Bellevue between Seattle and the Eastside. Recently [00:11:00] we’ve been hearing rumblings about a spring opening and CEO Dow Constantine has confirmed that the train will open no later than May 31st of next year.

Ryan: Well in advance of the World Cup Games in downtown Seattle. So everyone’s eagerly anticipating that opening is gonna be a huge deal when we’re finally able to bridge the Eastside and Seattle with very frequent train.

Doug: Yeah, and get Judkins Park in Seattle service too and Mercer Island. They’ve been waiting a long time.

Ryan: My question about the two line, where should the grand opening be?

Doug: I’ll, just say Judkins Park ’cause I’m Seattle for life, but, uh, 

Amy: I think I think it should be on the east side because the east side hasn’t had the connection. So it makes sense to me to maybe have it over there or you could have a dual head celebration. So have it on one side and then have it move to the other side. Actually, I think that’s probably the most fair.

Ryan: [00:12:00] But then will it be in Mercer Island, which has spent a very intense amount of time fighting its light rail station?

Doug: would say if Mercer Island can approve a big upzone before the opening, then let’s give it to them. But if not, uh, no. No thank you.

Ryan: Well, that up zone might be happening under the threat of a lawsuit, so we’ll see.

Doug: We always knew we were gonna have to coerce them. Right. yeah, it’s probably gonna be Bellevue, but it feels weird ’cause they’re already open. But yeah, that is, I didn’t think about that question and it is a kind of sticky one. I think probably still thinking about that one. It sound transit. ’cause the segmented opening really complicates things.

Ryan: One thing is for sure, it’s gonna be a huge party.

Amy: Well, there’s a lot to celebrate.

Doug: And one other piece of news, which is a little minor piece of news, but it kind of fun. One thing that happened at the urbanist holiday party was that Claudia Balducci gave a little speech and she said she is going to be on a ride across the lake with some other. Sound transit staff and officials. Uh, so they are [00:13:00] actually taking passengers across there, which is another of these mini milestones. We’re counting every single milestone, as they get the floating bridge service working. ’cause that’s been a huge engineering feat to figure out how to run a train across the floating bridge.

Doug: But, it feels even closer now that we know that they’re actually taking people across.

Ryan: Yeah, hopefully the press ride isn’t too far behind. We can give our write readers a little preview of what’s happening. It’s my understanding that once the line enters simulated service, which will probably be happening a few weeks to a month before actual start, as riders will be able to use the, the trains north of International District.

Ryan: So you’ll be able to get that, that four minute service we’re talking about ahead of time.

Doug: That’ll be so awesome. And with the two line full opening, that’ll be a full build out of Sound Transit 2 or ST2. , And that was approved in 2008. So it did take about 17 years. But that still feels huge to have [00:14:00] fully completed a package like that, and it’s, I think over 62 miles of light rail lines, accounted for in that.

Amy: Yeah, I mean, it definitely makes a difference to the whole region to build out infrastructure like that.

Doug: Yeah. And Sound Transit 3 isn’t going quite as smoothly, but obviously we will have even more expansions on deck with that. But that’s probably another podcast episode.

Ryan: Moving on to our next topic. Let’s get into City of Seattle News. We’re just a few weeks away from the new Katie Wilson administration taking office, the first progressive mayor we’ve had in quite some time. It’s gonna be exciting to watch, and we’re gonna read the tea leaves when it comes to senior staff hires and the broader transition team.

Ryan: Amy, what have you been tracking when it comes to the transition team and who Katie Wilson’s bringing on to help her lead the city?

Amy: Well, you can see with her transition co-chairs kind of where a lot of her priorities [00:15:00] lie. Tiffany McCoy is the co-executive director of House Our Neighbors, a social housing. organization. And I think that just shows how dedicated Katie Wilson is to really pushing social housing and making sure that it gets done as well as we can do it here in Seattle.

Amy: So I found that one really encouraging. Karen Estevenin, who is the executive director of Protec17, shows Katie Wilson’s strong labor ties, right? So that was not a surprise at all, but always, always happy to see it.

Doug: Yeah. And those two struck me as definitely a thank you. I mean, they stand in their merits for sure. These are, these are well connected people with good ideas. But, Protec17 was the first major union to throw their weight behind Katie. And, that was before the primary when, when that wasn’t the obvious pick. A lot of labor was worried the mayor was gonna punish ’em if they, if they did something like that. And, Estevenin and Protec17 threw their neck out there and now they [00:16:00] in a better position because of it. And Tiffany McCoy similarly, was an early endorser, but also the fact that we had a social housing measure in February that the mayor kind of flubbed that by being the face of the opposition. You know, Wilson has credited that with why she even jumped in the race. So, those two are instrumental in, making sure this, this race went the way it did.

Ryan: Yeah. The other two co-chairs are Andres Mantilla of Uncommon Bridges, who used to be, the director of the Department of Neighborhoods and Brian Surratt, who’s been the CEO of Greater Seattle Partners, but used to lead the City O ffice of Economic Development.

Ryan: The way we describe this on the site is a mix of advocates and insiders, and I think, it’s clear that even with the selection of her co-chairs for transition, she’s making signals that, she’s gonna bring in people with deep background in making city government work, but also continuing [00:17:00] to highlight people who will push the city to do better.

Ryan: With Tiffany McCoy, especially leading the charge in terms of making sure that we are still advocating for new ideas.

Doug: Yeah And I thought Quynh Pham was an interesting pick, as executive Director of Friends of Little Saigon, because they’ve been working on a public safety approach for Little Saigon that isn’t based on just hotspot policing and punitive enforcement. They’re looking at a holistic approach.

Doug: I think that could be a signal that’s, that’s something that Katie Wilson wants to do on a larger scale. And really, especially with that effort too, because I know 12th and Jackson has been this intractable problem for so long. but we keep kind of doing the same approach it seems like.

Amy: Yeah, I was really interested to see Pham on there as well. And I do think it’s a strong signal of of more neighborhood based approach to public safety that Wilson has talked about on the campaign. She’s really interested in developing these relationships with various neighborhoods.[00:18:00] 

Ryan: Doug, how,

Doug: And those folks aren’t people who endorsed her as far as I know, like with Surratt and Pham and Mantilla. So, she’s showing she’s not just gonna play political favoritism, but also try to work with everyone. I think even though there are a few of her, her loyalists there too,

Ryan: Doug, how much do you think people should read into the members of the transition team? How much are they gonna really influence policy after January 1st?

Doug: You know, normally I would say. Don’t read too much in these tea leaves. But I, I have talked to a few people who have said, when we go to these transition team meetings, which granted are just starting now in December, but that they felt like they were really well run and that, that they were really asking for real feedback and, and trying to actually capitalize on the knowledge.

Doug: And, that goes to speak to what some people are trying to say about Katie Wilson from the beginning is that this caricature of her as this like progressive firebrand like Kshama Sawant was, was not really the [00:19:00] Katie Wilson, anyone actually knows who’s worked with her. She is the ultimate policy nerd. And she’s gonna have a thorough process and actually hear from people. That’s at least the person that people know. And obviously people can be different once they’re actually in power but so far I think people have said, oh, this, this is a transition team.

Doug: It’s not a checking in a box. It’s actually looking for real feedback and I think the thing people always try to guess when they announce it is usually a few other people become appointees. And we’ve seen that with Brian Surratt being a co-chair and now he’s the deputy mayor. So obviously that one if you’re in that committee and getting a chance to talk to the Deputy Mayor, that’s gonna be a part of a relationship and feedback that he’s gonna carry with him probably for his whole term.

Amy: I think one thing that’s also really important to remember about Wilson is that she has a really strong background as a community organizer, and she has stated repeatedly both on the campaign trail and since. We know that she’s going to be the next mayor, that that’s how she intends [00:20:00] to lead.

Amy: And so it doesn’t surprise me at all that that first transition meeting was extremely well run because Wilson’s experience is in talking with people, bringing them all to a table, trying to get people on the same page. My guess is that we’re gonna see a really different style of leadership coming out of City Hall come January 1st.

Ryan: Doug, you mentioned Brian Surratt is gonna be Deputy mayor. Do we have some other ideas of who is gonna be filling the top jobs in the Wilson administration?

Doug: Yes, Yes we’ve been getting a little trickle here and there. In, within that same announcement, there was a handful of other names. For example, we know, Katie Wilson’s Chief of Staff is going to be Kate Brunette Kreuzer, who is a old friend of the publication for sure.

Doug: As someone who was on our, on our board at one time, I believe. And, Brunette was at Futurewise before this, and was their development director. But, has, has known Katie for a really long time through Transit Riders Union and, and other things where she [00:21:00] has been active. So, chief of staff can subtly be this pretty important role because they control who has access to the mayor and runs their cabinet. So, that is someone who urbanists should feel good about. Because she’s been doing work with Futurewise, The Urbanist and other folks who for a long time.

Doug: And then I can just run down the list of names. Jen Chan was appointed director of departments, which is sort of like a deputy mayor role. But and I think for the better, Mayor Elect Katie Wilson is not doing the four deputy mayor thing that that Bruce Harrell did.

Doug: And I think, Mayor Durkan had like three deputy mayors. Is that right? 

Doug: Uh 

Ryan: Deputy mayor, inflation is a real thing.

Doug: Yeah, it’s a real thing. So it’s a reorg and I think that’s probably for the better. So that, people know what the, what the hierarchy is, and what people’s responsibilities are ’cause you can say, deputy mayor for this and this and this, but I think to most people it’s just like, okay, you have four deputy mayors. It’s kind of [00:22:00] confusing. Who do I ask for help when stuff getting sorted out between the departments. That’s a pretty senior role I think, and she’ll be the liaison between the mayor’s team and, and all the different city departments, which there are a lot of.

Doug: And then Seferiana Day is the director of communications coming over from the Office of Planning and Community Development, where she was the communications director. And Alex Gallo Brown is the director of Community Relations. He was Katie’s campaign manager and a union organizer with UFCW before that. Definitely someone who she built a good relationship with over the campaign.

Doug: And

Ryan: another signal that they’re gonna continue the community organizing through the administration, right.

Doug: yeah, yeah,

Doug: Well, actually, Seferiana Day has a background in community organizing too. Both, indirectly through OPCD, but earlier in her career. And she also was with Upper Left Strategies. So someone with some political savvy. Obviously we would like Katie Wilson not to get the old Mike McGinn treatment and have all the local [00:23:00] media painting her as outta touch or ineffective. So I think, they’ll have to think about how they’re what they’re doing rather than it get communicated by their enemies.

Doug: And then we have Aly Pennucci, which I know is something Amy, you’re familiar with , as someone who covering the budget closely.

Amy: Yeah so Aly Pennucci will be the director of the city Budget office. And Ali Panucci was a long time central staffer for Seattle City Council. And when she left, I don’t know, a couple years ago, I think it was, there was a lot of concern because she was just known to be very, very good at her job, very knowledgeable.

Amy: So, there was the feeling that the city was losing a lot of its institutional knowledge when she left. So it’s great to have her back on board and get that institutional knowledge back at City Hall, as well. Yes, I’m a huge budget nerd. I think everybody knows that by now. And, Katie Wilson is gonna be facing a very challenging budget.

Amy: Her first budget , there’s gonna be deficits, there’s gonna be a lot of issues. Even if she [00:24:00] wasn’t interested in revamping it, it would be very difficult. But if she’s interested in doing anything differently, even more so, right, because obviously it’s always easier to just stay with the status quo.

Amy: So having someone as experienced as Aly Pennucci to lead that effort, I think is very encouraging.

Ryan: Once again, we’re seeing evidence that, despite the idea that Katie Wilson’s gonna come as a very inexperienced mayor that we’re, we’re getting really people with a very long history at City Hall who know what they’re doing and are gonna be able to really pick up that job on, on day one.

Doug: Yeah. And the last person that they’ve announced is Nicole Vallestero Soper, who’s the director of policy and innovation. Either you followed what she’s been up to.

Amy: No, I was just gonna ask what the Director of Policy and Innovation does. I think that that’s a new title, right?

Doug: I think so. Yeah. There’s usually [00:25:00] someone who’s like the policy lead, but I don’t think the Harrell administration had a one for one replacement of that, but they had a large cabinet with people maybe with policy and innovation in their title separately.

Ryan: Amy, what do you think about the idea of only having one deputy mayor instead having someone who’s in charge of the department heads, but also maybe we will, you know, let them actually do their jobs?

Amy: Yeah, I mean, we’ll have to see how it goes at the end of the day. Predictions are just that. They’re predictions, but we don’t actually know. But I would say , from what I’ve heard about how City Hall has been operating in the past, I feel like this is a strong effort to move away from infighting and backstabbing and like a dysfunctional, overly competitive culture, to something, yeah, where people maybe have a little bit more direct control over what they’re doing, a little bit less hovering kind of oversight and maybe less about like the political game and more about actually getting things done. That might be wishful thinking [00:26:00] on my part, but I think that’s what it signals, whether or not that’s how it works out in practice.

Amy: We’ll have to see.

Doug: Yeah, I mean, we’re reading a lot into the tea leaves this early, but. I think so far signs are good.

Ryan: There’s one more person who I don’t think has been officially announced, but, Alex Hudson, who ran for the District 3 Council race in 2023 and had been the executive director at Commute Seattle. Sounds like she’s gonna be also heading to the mayor’s office. That role is a little bit up in the air, but , in terms of her policy background, we can be sure that they’re gonna be involved in the 2026 Seattle Transit Measure renewal, which figures out how the city invests in public transit purchases, bus service from King County Metro, and pays for bus passes and things like that, as well as the monumentous decisions that are gonna come in front of Katie Wilson as a Sound Transit Board member next year.

Doug: Yeah, And that is another [00:27:00] old tie to The Urbanist with someone who served on our elections committee as well.

Doug: Oh, and I’ll add that, Nicole Vallestero Soper, Director of Policy Innovation , she was at last, at Puget Sound, Sage, which is a very influential group advocating for communities of color especially in south King County. And she worked on the 15 dollars minimum wage in SeaTac, which Katie also helped on. So, definitely another close ally, someone who has a lot of experience collaborating with the mayor and, and it looks like that position is responsible for developing and advancing specific policies that fulfill the mayor’s vision.

Doug: So, kind of a catchall position, but someone that likely will work pretty close with the mayor.

Ryan: Yeah, coming from Puget Sound Sage into the mayor’s office, sounds like, the Dionne Foster move.

Doug: And another good ally for the mayor having Dionne Foster on the council side.

Amy: Do we have any other thoughts about signals that these picks could possibly mean.

Doug: Another thing this process at least signals is that they are thinking [00:28:00] a lot about how they wanna present themselves and kind of forging a new way. The fact that their transition team, they met at Centilia Cultural Center, which is at El Centro De La Raza in Beacon Hill, it’s also where Katie Wilson had both of her victory parties.

Doug: So it’s turned into a defacto base for them at least, until they’re informally in the seventh floor of the city hall. But, having that event, it was partially open to the press, so Katie gave a public speech and then so did her co-chairs of her transition team, and then they had the co-chairs available for media interviews. We weren’t able to get there, but, I think just the fact that they put that out there, shows that they’re trying to say, ‘Hey, if you wanna talk to us about this stuff, we’re, we’re available. That is always the case, with every administration when they wanna do a lot of the stuff behind closed doors. And once they are in office, then you have the gatekeeper from the press shop that you have to go through. That might be the case once they’re in office. But right now they’re trying to reset and really offering [00:29:00] some access here, rather than have it be behind closed doors.

Amy: All right, well, let’s move on to some more big recent news, which is the passage of the new Seattle Police Officer’s Guild, a.k.a. SPOG, labor contract.

Doug: Yeah, you were there. Take, take us through what it felt like to be in that room, Amy,

Amy: I was watching, I was watching, and I was posting on Blue Sky because I knew a lot of people would wanna know what was happening as it was happening. There was a lot of public comment to start out the meeting. Most of which was asking the council members to, to not pass the contract, to vote no.

Amy: And then once they got to the contract. First of all, there are two contracts. I wanna be clear about that because I think it can be confusing to folks. There were two contracts that the council was voting on. The first one was the Seattle Police Management Association , which is different than the SPOG contract and not what everyone was talking about.

Amy: So [00:30:00] it SPMA, as they’re called, they represent higher ranking officers. So like lieutenants and captains. And their contract, while it could still definitely be improved, is a lot less egregious than the SPOG contract. So it doesn’t receive the same level of attention.

Amy: Also, it covers a lot fewer total officers. There just are less captains and lieutenants than there are officers and sergeants. So, it affects a lot fewer people who work at SPD. So they voted for the SPMA contract first, which is a different contract. And it passed unanimously, which was expected. And then they, they did the big vote, which was the SPOG contract, which has all kinds of issues that, that we can dive into, but the big surprise of the day was that Councilmember Rob Saka of [00:31:00] D1, voted against the contract, which was not something that I saw coming. But earlier that day, he published an op-ed at the Stranger, stating his intention to vote no. And at the actual meeting, he spoke for almost a whole half hour, I think it was 27, 28 minutes. He spoke about all his thoughts about the SPOG contract, including why he was not going to vote in favor of it, and

Doug: The full Saka experience..

Amy: It was maybe the longest speech during a council meeting that I’ve ever heard. I think it was, I don’t remember one being that long before. So it was, it was interesting because of course, there was a lot of tension in terms of what was gonna happen with the vote. Yeah, but also it just went on and on and on and on. So, yeah, that was a memorable experience. He brought up some of the weaknesses of the contract, most notably in accountability, which [00:32:00] I was happy to hear because I do feel like there are different aspects of the contract, and accountability often gets a short shrift, in my opinion. And that’s really why he was voting no, was because of the almost non-existent gains in accountability that the contract offers us as a community. did say some things that were not perhaps the most, uh, tactful, in terms of his colleagues on council,

Doug: Tact isn’t his signature move.

Amy: Um, yeah. So, that was very dramatic, but long.

Doug: Yeah.

Ryan: Amy, what types of police accountability measures were advocates hoping might be in the new police contract?

Amy: Yeah. So, it’s hard to talk about because a lot of it is very in the weeds. So if you’re not familiar with it, it, it doesn’t necessarily have a huge amount of meaning. So I’m gonna try to be less wonky and just explain it [00:33:00] in a lay person’s terms. But basically there was this landmark, well, it was, it was called landmark at the time, accountability ordinance that was passed in 2017. It was supposed to be this really big deal in terms of really turning a corner of police accountability in Seattle. And then the very next year, a new SPOG contract was passed that really didn’t implement this landmark mark accountability ordinance. And in some ways even perhaps went backwards. So, what advocates really wanted to see is this, this ordinance, which is now eight years old, right? So that’s a long time to wait. It was supposed to be implemented as soon as possible, but it did have to be bargained, parts of it. They wanted to see it finally be implemented and it still isn’t.

Amy: And that is kind of the easiest way to understand what’s going on with this contract. There are a lot of nitty gritty things that are involved with that. But [00:34:00] the other thing to remember is that this is an ordinance that was passed eight years ago. And it was meant at, even at the time that it was passed, it was meant as a floor of accountability.

Amy: Not a ceiling, but a floor, like the very basics. So it was not fixing all of the accountability problems, it was just let’s get it a little bit better to start and then we can build from there. And yet Seattle has been completely incapable of even reaching that floor. And then as time continues to pass, of course people get more and more upset and trust continues to erode because we’re not able to make any additional progress because we aren’t even able to meet that basic level. 

Amy: I would say the other major issue with the contract, aside from money, it is very expensive. So that’s a third major issue. But, the second major issue is what it does with the CARE department and the CARE team, which is our alternative response here in Seattle, for people who [00:35:00] don’t have a gun and a badge who are supposed to go out and address behavioral health calls and, and that sort of thing. There’s been a big movement to have a response like that in Seattle since 2020., And it has just suffered so many setbacks and problems and foot dragging. But this contract was supposed to be the one that really allowed that team to thrive and allowed them to finally answer 9 1 1 calls by themselves without having to have police there , which was a really big deal. Allow them to grow at an appropriate pace for what the need was for their services. Basic things like that. And what this new contract does is it allows the team to grow, which is great, but what it doesn’t allow them to do it, it technically allows them to do solo dispatch.

Amy: So they are allowed to go to 9 1 1 calls by themselves. But it puts so many limits on those calls and in terms [00:36:00] of when they’re allowed to do it, that in practice it’s gonna be hard for them to answer a lot of the calls that they are best suited to answer. And it also really takes away from the independence of 9 1 1 dispatch. And unfortunately, if we wanna see a call response times for 911 calls go down, which I think everyone agrees would be great. We need to have that independence of dispatch to be able to send who is best suited as a first responder to each individual call.

Doug: And it definitely feels like there’s irony there in that they’re allowing the CARE team to grow larger, but then they’re saying actually you can’t do this, this, this, and this, and this. So it’s, they’re gonna have all these staff that are gonna be very hamstrung in what they can do, and it doesn’t seem like in a very efficient way to run things.

Ryan: We keep hearing that the police wanna spend their time going to crimes and spending their time, dealing with crimes. So why, why is their contract hamstringing the departments that’s intended to be able [00:37:00] to free up their own resources?

Amy: I mean, it’s political theater, right? Like it, in my opinion, the CARE team has become a very valuable bargaining chip, that SPOG can use as kind of a battering ram to get the other things that they want in the contract. So, I mean, I think that’s basically it. Because it is true that in general, most police officers would prefer to not answer these sorts of calls. And it’s also true that they’re generally very safe for these alternative responders to respond to. So it’s not actually an issue of are they gonna be in danger? And, and there are, there are a bunch of protocols in place should it turn out to be a more dangerous situation than people originally thought.

Amy: And what we see in these sorts of programs across the country is that actually it, the danger to the first responders is not a big deal. That, that they’re able to dispatch them [00:38:00] appropriately to the type of calls that they should be responding to and that they are fine and they can always call police for backup if that’s necessary.

Ryan: Amy, you mentioned that Rob Saka was a surprise “no” vote. Were there any other council members who might have been expected to push back more on the contract?

Amy: So, the final vote just was 6-3. So the contract did pass as expected. The three no votes were Rob Saka , Eddie Lin, the new D2 council member, and Alexis Mercedes Rinck. The fourth that we might’ve expected to see vote differently was Joy Hollingsworth, who’s the D3 council member. And the reason we might’ve expected to see something different there is because on the campaign trail and specifically on the Hacks and Wonks podcast , Joy Hollingsworth said that there were some issues within this SPOG contract that would make her not support it. And those issues [00:39:00] were part of this. For example , she said that she wouldn’t support a SPOG contract that didn’t give subpoena power to the accountability bodies in Seattle. And there are various reasons why that’s crucial. This new contract does not give subpoena power to these bodies. That’s yet to be negotiated.

Amy: We still don’t have it. So I think people thought because she said yes, I don’t support that, that that would mean that she would say no to this contract. Also, she doesn’t serve on the Labor Relations Policy Committee, which five of the council members do. So a majority of council, which means that legally she could vote no with no worries of an unfair labor practice. No legal problems, right? She, she didn’t have that constraint on her vote. So I think some people expected her to possibly vote differently, but she did vote yes on the contract.

Doug: Yeah, and I would add that I think a lot of people have written off his vote on this issue now [00:40:00] because of everything that’s happened in the last couple years. But Dan Strauss is normally kind of in the progressive ish wing on other issues. But on this one, no one was really counting on his vote, but used to be a progressive solidly.

Doug: And, and I think his reaction 2023 we had to face election and was worried about the defund criticism was like, oh, he put out that mailer said defund was a mistake. And you know, it looks like that wasn’t like a temporary save your skin kind of move for Councilmember Strauss, but that he has shifted right on this issue and isn’t gonna stick his neck out to try to push for a contract with more police accountability in it. 

Amy: Councilmember Strauss did make a speech about his vote that he was gonna vote yes. And he said that, that we couldn’t wait. That the CARE team, we couldn’t wait for it to expand, which I thought was a little interesting since if you’re expanding it, but they can’t answer the calls they’re supposed to answer. I, I don’t know. I thought that was interesting logic, um,

Amy: [00:41:00] And that we couldn’t wait. Another interesting wrinkle, and again, this is deep in the weeds, so I apologize in advance, but, the city has finally agreed to take SPOG to interest arbitration on a few key issues of the contract. And that would not necessarily be able to go forward if the contract didn’t pass. So he was concerned about that. I don’t know how I feel about those reasons, but those are his stated reasons for voting in favor. 

Doug: Arbitration is such a crapshoot. It’s hard to say, like whether that’s an outcome or, or anything close to a Sure, sure 

Amy: Yeah I think the other thing just to remember about this contract, and I especially say it because Councilmember Bob Kettle has mentioned in more than one of his remarks, pushed back on the idea that this was a rushed process. So I do just wanna note that while we’ve been working on getting a SPOG contract for years, we had kind of a weird interim last year, but [00:42:00] trying to get these new accountability provisions has been the work of years. It feels rushed specifically because of the fact that Mayor Bruce Harrell introduced this contract a few weeks before the election. Right.

Amy: And the fact that this is being passed now right before Katie Wilson takes office, right before we get a new council member right before we get a new city attorney, means that these new elected officials will not get the chance to weigh in on an issue that is of supreme importance to public safety in Seattle, and they might not get that chance for their entire term because while this contract runs through the end of 2027, it is not unusual for the negotiations for the SPOG contract to be very lengthy.

Amy: And it wouldn’t be surprising if they used a delaying tactic to try to wait out Mayor Katie Wilson and see if they can maybe get a more favorable mayor into office [00:43:00] that they can negotiate with instead. So it really does not allow these elected officials to have a say in these important issues of police accountability and alternative response.

Doug: Yeah, I think if the centrist faction is gonna be pushovers like this, it actually like invites that, right? The fact that Mayor Harrell over his two contracts that he negotiated gave officers a 42% raise over five years, but didn’t demand accountability in return for that , or just as nature of doing business.

Doug: I guess it is a quid pro quo in labor negotiations, but it shouldn’t be. Like, some of these things shouldn’t be bargained, but as long as we’re doing it, you gave ’em 42% raise, but you didn’t get much back for it.

Doug: Some people have argued we’ve actually gone, either neutral or backwards on accountability over the two contracts that Harrell negotiated, and SPOG is sitting here. Like what incentives do they have to deal with Katie Wilson? At least if she’s a one term mayor. , And we [00:44:00] know they’re probably at some point gonna set the goal of making her a one term mayor. If they don’t like how she’s governing, which seems pretty high likelihood when she’s, her focus is let’s be more holistic, let’s get CARE up and running.

Doug: She, she still wants there to be effective policing, but not gonna be like a Harrell level of bending over backwards. 

Amy: Right, right. Well, and I will say, at least in my opinion, this contract is an excellent deal for SPOG. They really held the line well in terms of what’s important to them, and what they want. Of course there’s that interest arbitration I mentioned that we’ll have to kind of wait and see how that plays out. I imagine that will take a long time, like a year, maybe more. But aside from that, they did very well. And this is also gonna be a contract that’s very expensive for the city. It will cost an additional $131.7 million from 2024 to 2027. And we don’t actually have that entire amount in our planning reserves.[00:45:00] 

Amy: So it’s gonna make the, the budget issue even trickier for Katie Wilson and the council going forward.

Doug: And there’s already a big budget deficit that they’ve left on her doorstep.

Amy: Exactly, exactly. So this just takes even more money away from anything else that it could be spent on, to spend on this new contract, which includes things like special event premiums. , And officers still get extra money for being willing to wear body-worn cameras. That type of extra money for that most law enforcement agencies that has been phased out over time because now it’s just considered standard. But the SPOG members will still get that extra pay. So, you know, there’s, there’s a lot going on there, but when we’re, when we’re having a tight budget, I don’t even wanna say year, it’s gonna be several years, right, like every little bit counts. So it’s something to be aware of.

Doug: And, and what is the starting salary of a Seattle police officer up to now? I know it’s well over a hundred thousand.[00:46:00] 

Amy: Yes, a new recruit police officer will make $118,000 in 2026. And that’s versus in 2021, that that same new police officer would’ve made $81,000. So 118 versus 81 , in the course of five years. Granted, we have had inflation during that time, it’s hit all of us, but that’s still a very, a very significant increase. And it goes up quickly as well. So within six months, that new officer would be making more

Doug: Yeah, you’re pretty quickly at like, what, like 130,000 or something like that?

Amy: 126. Yeah.

Amy: So yeah.

Amy: And I would say that’s base salary. Right. So that doesn’t include the kind of inevitable overtime payments and that sort of thing.

Doug: That’s a lot of money. There’s not many positions in the city where you can be making that just as not a senior level position. Obviously, they have to pay market rate for some specialized positions, but, you know, [00:47:00] most people are not making that. And, that’s why so much of the city budget is going to the Seattle Police Department.

Amy: Exactly exactly So this contract does nothing to help mitigate that in any way. It just continues, kicks the can down the road and continues that same problem. We are hiring more police officers now, so as we hire more police officers, that budget crunch is just gonna get more and more painful.

Doug: Yeah, and it’s interesting, circling back to Councilmember Strauss’s argument for why he voted for it. There’s sort of certain logic to it. They have this CARE expansion right before them, and I get how he wants to grab that. But as we mentioned, there’s a lot of obstacles to effectively deploying them under this contract too, so it’s a mixed bag. But I know you’ve talked to Chief Barden about how to overcome those, so I’m curious if you have thoughts about if they’re gonna be able to work around some of these restrictions and be able to get some people out in the field even if it’s not responding to 9 1 1 calls.

Amy: Yeah, I think they’ll have to, and I think Chief Barden is ready to. She [00:48:00] tends to be a very creative and proactive thinker. She has several ideas. She’s instituted a deal with King County so that CARE responders can go directly to King County Jail once someone is being released and help with their reintegration into the community, which I think is so smart. She wants to have similar relationships with local area hospitals, for when they’re discharging patients that might need assistance. There’s also the possibility of integrating the CARE team into 9-8-8, which is the relatively new mental health line that is being touted as an alternate.

Amy: You know, you call 9 1 1 if there’s a life threatening emergency, but you can call 9 8 8 if, if you’re having some kind of mental health issue. So, that design isn’t as optimal as having CARE be dispatched through 9 1 1, which is why there’s been so many efforts to, to bargain it the other way. But if if there’s [00:49:00] no other option they can go the 9, 8, 8 route. And try to design it that way. They also just go proactively around the city now and look for people who might need help. And that has been somewhat successful. And the police still have the option of tapping CARE and saying, ‘Hey, this is a call that you would be good for.’ And kind of referring CARE to the call. Obviously it’s not as efficient as having 9 1 1 do it directly, but if the police wanted to get on board more with alternative response, they certainly could and they could help make it a lot more effective.

Doug: Yeah at least that’s something. And it’s interesting that care is sort of recreating the role of a beat cop because, there’s so much research suggesting that that proactive policing is a good use of police time, but it feels like pulling teeth to get SPD to do that.

Amy: Right. Well and there are barriers like that would make a police officer doing that. [00:50:00] Like people might be afraid to talk to a police officer, right. Whereas with a CARE team member, they would be more willing to accept the help or to share what the problem is in the first place.

Doug: Well obviously we’ll have a lot to see whether Chief Barnes can keep his position, whether they’re able to get CARE up and going.

Doug: Obviously, we’ll have to actually wait and see once Wilson’s in power to see how some of these things shake out. But before we go, we wanted to talk about something a little more fun, which recently Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck added a new item to the city’s official legislative priorities that they bring to the state legislature to try to ask, suggest legislation, get things moving.

Doug: And she wanted to promote more passenger only fairies, foot fairies for short. And I’m curious what you two, if you had your magic wand, what foot ferry do you want in, in our region to whisk you away to some magical getaway or commute that you have? 

Amy: Yeah, I would love a ferry to Port Townsend. I [00:51:00] think that would be a super fun, like weekend getaway. I would love to not have to have a car and just, you know, whisk over there and, and enjoy my time there. And then whisk, whisk back to Seattle. I think that would be great.

Ryan: Yeah, the secret urbanist stronghold of Port Townsend, one of the first cities in the state to get rid of mandated parking with new development. They just actually this week just did a big upzone as part of their comprehensive plan. So they’re really on the housing abundance train over there.

Ryan: So the, the next step is abundant transportation options to get there from the big metropolitan regions. I guess I would probably go with a better way to get to the San Juan Islands. I think, obviously a foot ferry from Seattle would be great. I think that would be a pretty long trek, to spend on the ferry all the way from from downtown.

Ryan: Another alternative would be. Bellingham, kind of a multimodal hub. You’ve got the ferry to Alaska in Bellingham. You [00:52:00] could have another ferry. You’ve got the Amtrak station. And getting off the Amtrak and getting onto a ferry to Friday Harbor, I think seems like a really great idea to me.

Ryan: What about you, Doug? Where would you.

Doug: I know we kind of have a split in this, Ryan. Oh, I mean, a hundred percent stole mine. I was gonna say San Juans, but I know you Friday Harbor’s kind of your go-to spot partially. ’cause there is more transit options to get there. But I’m a big fan of Orcas Island. I just have a lot of fond memories there, a lot of trips there. And have to go through Anacortes to take the ferry there. And it’s a slower car ferry. A foot ferry from Seattle would be awesome. And, obviously it’s a small island, but there is a state perk on it. And if we could get a bus to take you down the main highway of of the island, that kind of goes everywhere in this weird little, U-shape island, then you would really have it made to do a to a car free trip there. So that’s my own little plug. I guess it’s selfish ’cause that’s where I like to, to go, uh, a long weekend or what have you. 

Doug: But I also agree about Port Townsend.

Ryan: What do you think [00:53:00] about closer to home, do you think Lake Washington will ever see passenger ferry service go from Kirkland to Laurelhurst?

Doug: Uh probably not. The problem we have is that we are, we’re getting this great light rail line there, so I think you’re better off transferring once you cross the lake that way. But yeah, it, I could see them doing some sort of tourist focused line, but it’s hard to compete with a bus or a train going across the bridge for those lines.

Ryan: Yeah. One thing I’ve heard is that the University of Washington is pretty opposed to the idea of any, any passenger ferries in their vicinity ’cause of the impact on the UW Crew program.

Doug: They’re really proud of the boys in the boat, I suppose. Crossing the sound is, is such a bigger hurdle. Oftentimes people even drive around if they’re going on a trip because of frustrations with the ferry having long lines or just being unreliable in general. So that’s where a lot of my focus is. But, it is a dream question.

Doug: So wherever wherever you want the [00:54:00] ferry to go. That’s fine to dream. But, as far as getting the money for it, it’s, it’s a tough question in a time with a lot of strained budgets.

Ryan: This all stems from a discussion around the Mosquito Fleet Act, which was proposed last year, which would’ve empowered local governments and port districts to come up with their own funding mechanisms to support their own routes and kind of empower local government as opposed to just drawing the line on a map.

Amy: Well, I like to imagine a future where there’s just passenger fairies everywhere. I think that’s a lovely, a lovely image to end with.

Doug: Yeah, and representative Greg Nance from Bainbridge obviously has a vested interest being on an island to, to propose the Mosquito Fleet Act. But it is obviously a magical part about being here. Been fortunate enough one time to even see whales from the ferry. So, you get the full Puget Sound experience when you’re on a ferry and definitely a fun way to get around and get to all these beautiful places. Like you mentioned Port Town, since it’s with a historic downtown, as far as I know, they haven’t landmarked [00:55:00] any parking garages there unlike, unlike in Seattle’s downtown.

Ryan: Don’t give them any ideas. Doug,

Doug: No. 

Ryan: King County Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda, actually wants to study a triangle route between Vashan Island, downtown, and Des Moines. So, that might actually happen sooner than you think.

Amy: Oh, that would be great

Doug: That’s cool. I’m actually on team Vashon. I like Vashon more than Bainbridge, but, who can? There’s no bad islands.

Amy: I like them all.

Doug: Well, that’s it for this episode of the Urbanist Podcast. You can hear us Thursdays on KVRU, which is 105.7 FM on your radio dial in the Seattle area.

[00:56:00] 

The post Urbanist Podcast: A Light Rail Opening and Police Accountability Door Closing first appeared on The Urbanist.

Despite trailing by seven points in the first drop of results, Urbanist-endorsed challenger Katie Wilson pulled off a comeback in late returns to win the Seattle Mayor race. Amy and Doug discuss how Wilson was able to defeat an entrenched and well-funded incumbent, and why this race was closer than other Seattle contests, where progressives otherwise dominated by wide margins this year.

All around, it was a triumphant election for most of The Urbanist’s endorsed candidates, from Everett to Tacoma.

We aim to drop a new podcast every few weeks to recap our biggest headlines and peek ahead to stories on the horizon. Episodes will also air on KVRU 105.7 FM in Seattle. Our typical slot is 4pm Thursday. A big thanks to Crystal Fincher and Shannon Cheng of KVRU for their help getting this podcast off the ground.

If you’d like to do deeper on election results and implications, check out some of our recent coverage:

• Kirkland Voters Maintain the City’s Course, Rejecting Anti-Growth Push
• Pro-Housing Candidates Make Gains All Around Puget Sound
• Katie Wilson’s Transition Team Features Mix of Advocates and Insiders
• Harrell Concedes to Wilson, Ushering in a New Era in Seattle
• Wilson Defeats Harrell
• After Victory, Zahilay Announces County Executive Transition Team
• Katie Wilson Pulls Away from Harrell, Leads by 1,346 Votes
• Katie Wilson Takes 91-Vote Lead in Dramatic Seattle Mayor Race
• Evans Trounces Republican Seattle City Attorney, Shares Plans for Transition
• Wilson Trails in Early Results, Seattle Mayor’s Race on Nailbiter Course
• In Last Stand, Harrell Intensifies Negative Attacks on Wilson
• Progressives Rally Behind Katie Wilson in Home Stretch to Mayoral Election
• Katie Wilson Jumps In Seattle Mayor Race as Progressive Coalition-Builder

The post Urbanist Podcast Election Extravaganza: Puget Sound Progressives Prevail first appeared on The Urbanist.

The panelists were housing leaders in the private, non-profit, and public sectors:

• Patrick Cobb, developer, architect, and a founding partner of Stack, a firm specializing in urban infill development.
• Naishin Fu, Co-Executive Director at House Our Neighbors, a nonprofit focused on expanding social housing.
• Michael Hubner, Long Range Planning Manager at the Seattle Office of Planning Community and Development (OPCD).
• Jesse Simpson, Director of Government Relations and Policy at the Housing Development Consortium of Seattle-King County and a board member at The Urbanist.

The panel touched on a wide range of housing topics, including the basics of what a Comprehensive Plan is, how Seattle’s phased approach to approving its plan will work, and the best avenues that advocates have to improve the plan and push for more housing. Additionally, panelists dove into the economics of homebuilding and how to ensure regulations actually translate into housing built, given the considerable headwinds that builders are facing.

In particular, the discussion touched on stacked flats as a means to add more housing in formerly single family zones, and how obstacles to their economic feasibility could be overcome (check out this op-ed for more suggestions). Stacked flats also hold promise for allowing more space for both family-sized housing and ample tree cover and green space.

Transcript

The transcript was auto-generated and edited lightly for blatant errors and clarity. Apologies for the errors that made it through.

Diego Batres  00:00

Hello, everyone. Thank you for coming. For those of you who don’t know I am Diego. I’m the director of events at The Urbanist. Thank you all for coming. This event has been put together in a collaboration between the Urbanist and Seattle YIMBY. Thank you to Chris, who is manning the desk back there, for representing Seattle YIMBY and helping with the lift from getting this going a couple things before I let you all hear from the people you are here to hear from, first off, bathrooms and water to your left, down that hallway. Two, the structure of our panel tonight. The first half is going to consist of questions dictated by our wonderful moderator, Doug, who is also the publisher of The Urbanist questions that were submitted in advance. Some of these have been sort of condensed down, because there are definitely questions that we’re all asking the same thing, but sort of just slightly not worded the same. So we’ve condensed those to the thrust of the question.

So, the first half, roughly an hour is going to be of that. Then we’ll have a brief intermission. We will also, then, during that time, collect the index cards for those of you who have written a question down, and then the second half of the panel will consist of getting through as many of those as possible. Obviously, can’t promise that we can get through all of them. We are starting a little bit delayed due to the traffic I’m sure everyone experienced in some form or another.

Finally, the last thing I will say before I let you go is it would be remiss of me not to mention that we are in the middle of The Urbanist subscriber drive, spring. Subscriber drive. I love putting on these kinds of events. I think they’re really valuable. I hope you find them useful. If you find yourself feeling more informed, or have something an opinion you have challenged or generally want to support more of these kind of things. Here to point the QR codes at the front or back desk. I guess depending on how you orient the room, to leave us a little donation, it really helps get this sort of thing going and off the ground. Because what we love doing these things, they aren’t free. YIMBy is also an advocacy organization. Of course, I’m sure we’re going to hear more about how you can get involved with various activities and advocacy wings through our panelists. But also, if you just want to get involved with YIMBY sign up for their emailing list up in front. They’ll follow up with you. They also have a QR code up there for their Slack. So join that as well. That is all. If you need something during the panel, come grab me or Chris. With Chris is back there. Raise your hand, Chris, and we’ll see what we can do for you. Other than that, I’m going to hand it over to Doug.

Doug Trumm  02:47

Thanks for coming, everyone. Doug Trumm, publisher of The Urbanist, thanks to our panelists, thanks to coming on a sunny day to help all of our wonderful audience. And also thanks a ton to El Centro de la Raza for this lovely space. And I’d also love to put in the plug now is a great time to be giving to nonprofits doing work with immigrants. And I don’t have to draw a map on that one. Why that is but they could also use your support, and this time, join me in donating to them, in addition to us during our drive here, but we’re going to try to cover a lot with the comp plan. Try to break it down for folks who are just getting up to speed and trying to get into some detail. For folks who kind of feel like they have the basics, but really want to get at the issues at play.

But let’s start by introducing our panel. I’ll start down at the end.

We have Patrick Cobb. He’s a developer, architect and a founding partner of stack, which is a local architecture firm specializing in infill development, the kind of stuff that we’re going to try to promote with this plan.

Then we have Naishin Fu, who is Co-Executive Director of House Our Neighbors, which is a nonprofit focused on expanding social housing. And they are fresh off of winning the Prop 1A campaign to get a dedicated funding measure in that measure was a 26-point win, that is going to mean more than $50 million a year for social housing. So definitely exciting development for people who want to see more housing.

And then we have Michael Hubner, who is a long range pointer, and I’m not going to order now, because I’m going alphabetical, sir, but Michael Hubner, who is a long range planner at the Seattle Office of Planning and Community Development, OPCD, and he’s also been at Puget Sound Regional Council before that. So he’s definitely very seasoned in the comprehensive planning process and long range planning in general, and has been the city’s point person on this plan. So, you’ve been to a lot of these.

And then we have Jesse Simpson. He’s Director of Government Relations and Policy at the Housing Development Consortium of Seattle King County, and also a board member at the Urbanist and the co-chair of the Complete Communities Coalition, which is the Urbanist is a member of — and many other groups. That’s kind of our clearinghouse for comprehensive plan advocacy. And if you’re not familiar with Housing Development Consortium, they’re sort of an alliance of all sorts of different people who make nonprofit housing happen, from financing to actual builders, the providers all of that. 

Doug Trumm  05:39

So yeah, let’s go down the line with sort of some warm up questions. I think it makes sense to start with Michael, since you are our expert for people who are just getting up to speed, give us your kind of your five-minute elevator pitch on what’s going on in the One Seattle Comprehensive Plan and how it will affect and hopefully improve housing outcomes in Seattle?

Michael Hubner  06:02

Great turnout. Thanks, Doug, thanks for everybody for coming out. Five minutes is a big plan, and I’ll assume it’s a couple of people in the room, at least, who may not know that much about this process. But very briefly, the city updates its comprehensive plan, which is a 20-year plan where we plan for how we’re going to accommodate population growth, job growth, housing everything the city does as we grow and develop. We do it every 10 years. We update it for the next 20 years. We started this process several years ago. Whenever we update a comprehensive plan, we consider what are the major challenges facing the city, and the slam dunk answer for this update was housing, housing supply, housing diversity, housing affordability. People in communities were telling us this. The data was telling us this, looking at the housing market and what was coming online, and the state legislature was telling us this as well. And there were a series of state laws that were had been passed, that were that were setting the ground rules for what we do as a local government to plan for housing.

So this is very much a Housing Center comprehensive plan. So we started several years ago. We’re now at the process where we, on the executive side in Office of Planning and Community Development, have handed the plan off to the city council. We’re also working on zoning legislation that implements the plan. So for those of you are going to be doing some advocacy and maybe want to be engaged in the process over the next little bit, that’s a really important point to bear in mind, there are several pieces of legislation. There’s the policy plan, which is comp plan, and then there’s zoning. And I can talk about the two couple pieces of zoning legislation, but I do want to highlight where we landed with this plan and what it does in terms of providing new housing opportunity across the city. One is that it expands the capacity and the ability to build what’s called middle housing, housing that’s between a single family, detached home and an apartment, things like duplexes, triplexes, town homes, small apartment buildings called stacked flats, which are at roughly the scale of a single family neighborhood, cottage housing and courtyard apartments, among among others, and that these would be allowed across the city. That’s a new state law that we have to do that.

But what we did is we drafted doing it the Seattle way. We went above and beyond the state law in several areas. I can certainly touch on those as we go through the questions tonight. So that’s number one, middle housing. Number two is starting with our current growth strategy, which is based on urban centers and urban villages. We’re in an urban village right now at Beacon Hill or the light rail station. The City, for the past, really, 30 to 35 years, has planned for growth around about two dozen different distinct neighborhoods across the city. There are against this neighborhoods and almost all of our housing growth in those areas. We entered this plan cycle talking about, where else in the city should we be planning for housing? Not only just more apartments that we see here, but middle housing, a more diverse set of housing in all neighborhoods. So there’s several ways in which the plan goes above and beyond the middle housing of that area. Number one is, we’re expanding some of our urban villages and urban centers. About six different urban center urban villages we’re now calling those urban centers, are being expanded. Those are significant expansions in some areas, like upper queen, Anne, Greenwood, Phinney and several others, we have a new urban center around the light rail station and northeast 1/30 Street, that’s a new link station that’s going to be opening in the next couple of years. And there’s a whole new area for new apartment scale development in that area, as well as the expansion areas, think five to. Eight story apartment buildings, and then we have a brand new type of place that we’re planning for growth in the city, called a neighborhood center. These are like the urban villages. They’re denser. They have a mix of uses, maybe local shops and services at the core, good transit service, and a several block area, so smaller than an urban urban center around which we would be planning for new housing opportunities. Think four and five story apartment buildings.

There are 30 of the new neighborhood centers in the plan that the mayor has proposed to the council. And the last piece are our transit corridors. We have bus service, a very rich network of bus across the city, and there are a lot of those areas which currently are zoned for neighborhood residential essentially what historically has been single family zoning. This was another opportunity that OPCD and the mayor identified for creating new housing opportunity, primarily five story apartments in some places, four story along, along all most of those stretches of transit where there’s transit service at approximately every 15 minute headway or more frequent, these are great places for people for new housing, where people have access to the rest of the city, using the transit on those corridors. All together, the zoning changes, they implement this plan double the capacity that the city has to meet our housing needs going forward, and increases our middle housing capacity from less than 10% of our potential to more than 25% so that’s a big new portion of what can we build in the city that will be in that middle housing space? There’s more affordable housing, home ownership opportunities in the middle housing, and there’s more housing opportunities in all of our neighborhoods, a lot of which have been historically very exclusive of new housing generally, and more affordable housing types, like middle housing specifically. So this plan is doing a lot in a lot of different domains of housing. It is implemented both through the policy level and those very specific zoning maps.

We released draft zoning maps last fall. We got a lot of public comment on the zoning maps. We heard a lot of positive things. We also heard a lot of concerns from neighborhoods where the greatest change is proposed. That’s something that we have taken in as an office and we are taking a look at that legislation before it goes to Council. This is primarily going to be in the council’s hands in the coming months, and I’m really looking forward to hearing what people are thinking about the plan, and hear what some of those ideas are going forward in the very near term, just in terms of dates, I know there’s interest in engaging in the process the select committee on the comprehensive plan is having ongoing meetings right now. The next one is next week on the 30th that’s a special topics meeting, but maybe more of interest to the attendees.

There is a hearing is scheduled for the 19th of May to hear from the public on interim legislation, which is the first step, interim legislation to implement that new middle housing zoning. Later in the summer, there’ll be public hearings and other meetings of the Select Committee on the Comprehensive Plan legislation and on additional zoning legislation. So I think I’ll stop there. I’m sure we’ll get back into process and the content to plan with other questions.

Doug Trumm  13:20

Thanks, Michael, yeah, let’s go over to Naishin. As a social housing advocate, what are you looking for at the point in the plan, as far as you know, new, new opportunities for social housing, and perhaps where the plan could go farther.

Naishin Fu  13:43

Thanks for having us, Doug, in Seattle again. My name is Naishin. I just want to make clear that I speak for House Our Neighbors. We are not the social housing developer that is a separate entity, so I do not make decisions about actually how this housing will be built. But we have a lot of we still have a lot of thoughts. So just a little background for those who may not be familiar with social housing. Social Housing is a form of affordable housing. It is publicly owned, so owned by the government in perpetuity. It cannot be turned over to the private market. It doesn’t have a profit motive. It is permanently affordable. So those who live in social housing, you won’t pay over 30% of your income in rent, and third it is mixed income. So while traditional affordable housing is limited to usually to 60% of the median income, or 80% of the median income, social housing can go higher.

In Seattle, our recommendation is, you know, to serve those zero to 120% median income, so you can actually cross subsidize a little bit more than the rents of the higher incomes to help subsidize the lower incomes. And you can operate and maintain a building without continuous subsidy, and everyone is still paying an affordable rent. The problem is. Can’t build social housing in most of the city right now, we as housing neighbors are looking for a comp plan that addresses the exclusionary zoning issues and allows multi family social housing throughout the city, you know, near parks, near schools, near transit and neighborhood residential areas. And we also need to make sure that social housing and affordable housing have height and other bonuses available to them to make projects more feasible. King County’s projections, you know, when I was looking at them, it says over the next 20 years that over 70% of the housing is needed for those under 80% of the median income. I don’t know all the numbers, but I don’t think that the new housing that’s being built that 70% of it is affordable to those 80% making 80% of the median income and below. So right now, we are building as much desperately needed affordable and public housing as we can, and we need more of those, but those resources are limited, and a lot of it is from the federal government, and I think we know that right now, for the next two years, the federal government is not going to come to our rescue, and the funding might even be threatened so now that we have this tool of social housing.

So, in Seattle, we have passed I-135, in 2023 by a 14 point margin that created a social housing developer, and this past February, we passed Prop one, a which funds the developer. It was not legal to fund it in the first initiative, so we have to break it up. So now there is a funding source for social housing. We have this new tool that enables us to grow our stock of affordable housing, of public housing that that can counter the private market we have, you know, ourselves, seen firsthand. We’ve traveled to Vienna and Singapore, and you know, we’ve seen like in Vienna, almost half of their population lives in social housing, and they have this huge stock of publicly owned housing as well as housing on the private market. But really the housing costs are affordable to most residents because they have this strong program. Montgomery County, Maryland is somewhere in the United States that has been building social housing for the past few years. I believe I have heard that its production of affordable units so lower income units kind of matches that of the rest of the affordable housing industry in their area. So we have proven in this country that it works.

And so I know social housing was included in the original comprehensive plan draft that was put out by OPCD. It was listed as an anti displacement strategy. It has since been removed, stripped out, I think, in the mayor’s plan. So we need to see it back in and called out as a part of the strategy to address our housing crisis. And also, again, as I mentioned, to be included in the bonuses and exemptions granted to affordable housing developers. And last, I’ll say, like, first, it’s also not just about, like, just more housing units, but communities. You know, this is a great example. There’s housing here, there’s community spaces that can be used by organizations. We’re having an event here next week, mixed income communities, cross class communities, intergenerational. That is what we’re looking to build and foster a community atmosphere. Thanks.

Doug Trumm  18:21

And you can pass it to Jesse, because he’s up next. Thanks. Yeah, in your work, you know, your day job with mostly affordable housing developers. So same question, but for the conventional affordable housing space, what are you seeing as the unique new opportunities and maybe room for improvement?

Jesse Simpson  18:38

Yeah, I think in a big picture, what the affordable housing developers, which encompasses a full range from permanent supportive housing developers like Plymouth Housing, including El Centro de la Raza and other similar community based developers doing more like 50 and 60% AMI housing, and then Your long standing workforce housing developers like her Bellwether Housing, all of them serve different populations at different targets, but in each case, the developments that make the most sense are the mid rise apartment building, the basically what you can see as you look right around this plaza. It’s the most economical form of building to go in, that basically six to eight story mid rise development, where you’re still able to use wood frame and it’s over a concrete podium. So in terms of how the comp plan can better support affordable housing development throughout the city, to expand the neighborhoods in which it’s allowed to be built. We really need to be expanding mid rise opportunities beyond just the existing urban centers and places like downtown and Capitol Hill and other urban villages that have seen the vast majority of the affordable housing that’s been built built there.

So, I think in terms of my, my assessment of the Comprehensive Plan as proposed by the mayor and the OPCD is that a lot of the strategies for how to encompass more housing over the next 20 years are right on the mark in terms of expanding regional centers around transit, allowing middle housing, broadly creating new neighborhood centers and allowing more housing along the transit corridors. Consistently, though what we have as the complete communities coalition advocated for us to turn each of these dials up. So looking at expanding on along the frequent transit arterials, allowing for multi family mid rise housing in the area, in the walk shed, around bus stops, rather than just on the arterials themselves, to add even more neighborhood centers and expand their bounds to ensure that they’re big enough to support a grocery store, as well as to expand this proposed stacked flat bonus, which I think we’ll talk about a bit down the line, and make that more usable, to expand the affordable housing density bonus that’s proposed in the plan, which I think is a great step, and to expand that city wide and create a similar bonus in the low rise zones, so that affordable housing developers like El Centro are able to do the development that makes the most sense for them in a broader swath of the city.

Doug Trumm  21:39

Thanks. And now we’ll get into Patrick and you worked as a architect and developer, and it’s really important that we think about market-rate development too, because obviously that’s still the lion’s share of what gets built in the city. And even if we wanted to change that, that would take a long time. We’re going to need for-profit development for the foreseeable future. And what are you seeing as a developer and architect that’s good in the plan and what you’d like for improvement?

Patrick Cobb  22:08

Yeah? Well, being a developer has been […] really fun the last few years. I’ll bring it a little closer. I’m not as practiced up on the stage, but it’s been a lot of fun the last four or five years trying to develop properties and kind of the, I guess, the financial constraints that are happening when it comes to interest rates and inflation and just kind of lack of land to develop. And I think that that’s a big part of it is expanding the opportunities for flexibility with market-rate developers to be able to build more and build a more diverse type of housing mix in Seattle. And I think just in general, I think Michael and the city of Seattle has done a great job with the new comprehensive plan, and kind of the direction that we’re going, kind of, you know, looking back a little bit.

So I’ve been developing in Seattle since 2013 and So originally, it’s really hyper focused on townhouse development, single family development and low rise zones. So that’s your LR-1, -2, -3, and then later expanded into doing larger scale, mixed use, multifamily types of projects. And, you know, one of the things about that is it was highly constrained in terms of where you could build those projects. And it was, it was kind of predetermined by how the how the code, how the land use code and zoning, what you were allowed to do. So there were places where you built five over twos. There were places where you built town homes and your LR zones, and then you had single family, which made up a vast majority of the land area in Seattle. And so it really made us focus on as developers when we’re acquiring land on those LR zones and NC zones, where you could build mixed use, multifamily, and where you could build townhouses, which I think what that led to, just in my broad kind of view of it, was a kind of a lack of diversity in, you know, especially economic diversity in the single family zones, where a lot of the wealth was was kind of held at and and kind of isolated certain people to what they could specifically afford.

So I’m really excited about the new code. We’ve been looking at, you know, probably 10 to 20 properties a week, and looking at, you know, how does it pencil today? How is it going to pencil once the new code passes? And starting to look at, well, what can you do in a NR zone from or today, maybe it’s a tear down and it’s a single family. I think we saw a lot of positive movement when ADUs and DADUs were introduced to the market, and just looking at how those have been, I mean selling and kind of the how it’s been received by people who are looking for new homes in the city, there’s really been a pretty big shift from people looking for townhomes, to people looking for that type of product.

And so [I] kind of see that as a precursor to, well, how is this going to roll out, and how are people going to receive new new development? And single family, what previously was Single Family Zone, just in general, in terms of the flexibility that the types of homes that can be built. I mean, you’re going to be able to do apartments, you’ll be able to do condominiums, you’ll be able to do town homes, you’ll be able to do single family and as a you know, as a developer, the way I see it is, how can you make it more of a free market, kind of a free market landscape, so that developers can build what is the highest and best use for a location and respond to the demand of the buyers that are in the market. And I think the new, the way that it’s it’s structured now opens up a lot more to where we can really look at a single family neighborhood that already is served by a lot of the great infrastructure that Seattle has, from transit to, you know, parks and amenities, and then kind of think about, well, you know what? What is the highest and best use for this location, what is the need in this location? And then respond to it versus being really defined by, well, what can I put here?

I can put a three-level box that holds 1600 square foot; it’s a townhome. That’s what’s allowed. Or I can put, you know, the largest single family home. We can be a lot more flexible in terms of responding to what the need is for people who are moving into the city. So that’s, you know, just in general, it’s been a really positive reception of the code.

You know, there are, there are certain things that could be improved. There’s, you know, some parking requirements, maybe being able to expand the quarter mile to half mile radius around approved transit stops where you can, you know, reduce the parking requirements for new projects. But in general, I think it’s been a really good reception, and I think it’s going to help.

I think what I’m seeing from neighbors and friends and just people I’m talking to is, you know, a lot of people are nervous, right? A lot of homeowners are nervous, who love their neighborhoods, who love their homes, and are afraid of change that’s happening. And I think, you know, my message to that, or kind of, how I think about it, is, well, I’m looking at, you know, 500 properties a year, and how many of those actually are, what will pencil or will be financially feasible? Well, 500 maybe I look at 25 out of that, 500 that’s worth underwriting and site planning and starting to actually try to develop, and then out of that, we may get five properties that we can actually develop.

So I think the view, you know, the way I see it, is it’s not going to be like tomorrow. Suddenly, all of the neighborhoods change, and there’s developers coming in and they’re tearing down houses left and right. I think it’s going to be more of a 10 to 20 year kind of transition plan where, over time, kind of parcel by parcel, in an incremental growth, the neighborhoods will change, and they’ll start to become and you know what, what they’re going to be, and the city will have time to kind of respond to, you know, the positives and the negatives, to ensure that you know the outcome is actually good, good for the community and good for our neighborhoods and a good place to live.

Doug Trumm  22:16

Yeah. Thanks, Patrick and slow us down for using too much jargon or anything. I will say, ADU, DADU accessory dwelling unit, and DADU is just detached accessory dwelling, which think of as a backyard cottage, whereas an ADU is in the [primary] building itself, basement flat. Sometimes the shorthand for that. So we use that term amongst ourselves very often. So everyone’s like, Ah, sorry that we didn’t get that because we’re using the insider thing. But yeah, ADU, DADU. It’s fun to say, so maybe learn that one, and we’ll all start throwing that around. But yeah, thank you for that answer. And you know, being our mail list is what it is between YIMBY and The Urbanist. We got a lot of questions about, you know, how we can get more housing in this plan, and maybe with adjusting now, with this, this first audience question, which was sort of looking at: how can we kind of get this city council on board with expanding housing in the plan, and whether that’s through neighborhood centers, transit corridors, increased bonuses for stack flats. What avenues are you seeing?

Jesse Simpson  29:26

I want to take a step back here and talk a little more about the general politics of housing in the city. I think I’ve been involved in the outreach that the city has done for this comprehensive plan for two and a half years or so, starting from some very early scoping conversations that were like, What could we possibly build, and having neighbors together in these big 10-person conversations. Where they were talking about what the biggest priorities are. And you know, a lot of people, even those who would, you know stereotype as NIMBYs, were actually very pro housing and recognizing the importance of creating more housing opportunities throughout the city of Seattle. And then at this abstract level satellites are overwhelmingly agree that we need more housing, and it says you get closer and closer into the way you mean that lot next to my house, you want to allow five-story apartment buildings on the more difficult that the politics of this become and I think we’ve seen that reflected in terms of the tenor of the public feedback to the comp plan as we move through the process.

So I think Council is hearing a lot from anti-housing advocates, people who like their neighborhoods as they are, don’t want to see them change and aren’t personally feeling the pinch of the housing market. I think they need to hear a lot more from people who are feeling the pinch of the housing market, whether that’s as a renter or a senior on a fixed income and facing difficulty remaining in their their housing, because as we move through the final God knows how many months, years, maybe, of the process, it’s going to be critically important for people to show up and let Council know we still believe we need more housing. We want you to put housing first in this comp plan, and we want you to work to strengthen the mayor’s plan and not water it down in terms of how receptive council members have individually been about potential for improving the plan, making tweaks.

I think overall there’s a fairly strong Council majority for at least holding the line on the plan as it’s been proposed by the mayor’s office and OPCD. But will, I think they’re overall in a state of if we’re going to downzone any area compared to the plan, we’re going to need to upzone another area in practice that can become a little bit inequitable, as it means shifting a proposed up zone of an existing single family area down and then increasing that density, maybe on the arterials in the existing commercial areas. So that’s going to be one of the main pressure points as we are moving into this process.

I view our own role as the Complete Communities Coalition to be pointing to ways that the council can equitably add housing opportunities, so adding more neighborhood centers in the places with low displacement risk and great access to opportunities, North Queen Anne, North Broadway. There’s many other examples, and I think also just keeping on beating the drum of what what Seattleites have been telling the planning staff and Mayor’s Office for for years now, through this, through this process, that Seattle needs to allow for a lot more housing to be built, and that we’re not going to see progress on the main social issues facing the city until we do so,

Doug Trumm  33:34

Yeah, and I think we have scientific polling to point to that shows, usually, yes, specifically in your neighborhood. The result is, is, I think two thirds, roughly, of people generally say, Yeah, more housing, please. So sometimes the loud meetings aren’t always the most indicative. We’ve been doing good about saying this just kind of five-minute rule thumb, but I thought we’d slow down a little bit just because it one thing that’s really complicated with the comp plan process is it’s now phased and we have this interim ordinance. So that’s what sort of the legislation in Council’s, you know, purview right now is this interim ordinance, which became a thing because of a legal appeal from six different neighborhood groups, mostly homeowner-dominated groups, exclusively homeowner-dominated groups. Could you break down how that phasing will work now, with the interim ordinance going into then a permanent ordinance, phase one, and then a phase two, that’s kind of stretching to 2026, so maybe we should be working on that.

Michael Hubner  34:43

Let me take a first cut. Great. Let me take a first cut at that. First of all, it was not our preference or our vision that there would have to be an interim ordinance just to complicate what was already a complicated process. So we feel your pain. Yeah, we experienced that ourselves every day in the office, having to deal with it, the appeals, unfortunately, and it was great for just more process and just making sure the council was continuing to consider the content and the policy issues that the appeals have been dismissed. We’re certainly happy about that.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t soon enough to allow us to have new zoning in place in our neighborhood residential before a state deadline of June 30. So that’s why the interim the importance exists one path forward on the interim order ordinance, just to keep it simple, and that’s certainly the message we as an office of the giving to council is there’s a state model code for the new housing, middle housing requirement under the Growth Management Act, House Bill 1110, and that narrows it makes it more straightforward. What we should probably do with an interim ordinance is keep it within the box that the model code has, and any of the issues or questions or potential modifications to the interim code would have to be adopted in the permanent legislation anyway. So, that’s something Council is chewing on that.

In other words, if there were amendments to the interim ordinance, the permanent legislation would also have to be amended. They’d have to have the same conversation all over again several months down the road. So I hope, versus myself, speaking, that the wisdom and efficiency of doing that would mean that this interim ordinance is something that Council could get through pretty quickly, as is, it would only be in place for a relatively short time, and I’ll look to Patrick here. My guess is most developers are going to wait for the permanent legislation before investing too much in new development proposals under the interim code, especially because our permanent legislation has a lot more features, and in many cases, would allow building more housing under the permanent legislation. So I know there’s a little bit of a longwinded answer, but I hope the interim code is simple. Get it out of the way once the interim code is acted on by Council, which will be by the end of May.

Number one is comp plan legislation. That’s the policy plan, several hundred pages. It has a high-level map of where growth goes in the city called the future land use map. We also call it the growth strategy that gets adopted by council, probably at nearly the same time as that is going through Council. I mean, we’ll see how the process plays out, the permanent legislation for the middle housing for HP 1110, will also be acted upon by council, so to have those conversations at the same time, the comp plan is super important, because how many neighborhood centers, how many expanded urban centers, and some of the other key sort of foundations of the growth strategy will be determined in that plan, the specifics of the zoning into LR2 or LR3.

That’s going to be a conversation for another day, and unfortunately — and this was discussed at the last select committee meeting — there’s not going to be enough time before the budget process starts in the fall for the council to really take up the rest of the zoning legislation that neighborhood centers, the transit corridors, the other places where we’re talking about LR3, mid-rise zoning and more of the apartment scale changes that, unfortunately, is going to be taken up after budget, and likely would it would have to be addressed passed by council in early 2026 so there’ll be some time. So the focus in the near term is comp plan and middle housing, neighborhood, residential, permanent legislation. That’s where I would focus efforts, and that’s where you’ll have opportunities to engage.

Doug Trumm  38:59

Did you want to jump in on the if developers are going to build under the interim audience?

Patrick Cobb  39:07

Yeah, well, it’s risk, right? Yeah. We don’t know if we’re buying a property. We don’t know what we can do with it. It definitely adds risk before you start making investments in design. So as soon as I saw the interim plan, I was a little bit worried, but it’s either go now or wait another six months, or…

Michael Hubner  39:26

It’s a free country.

Doug Trumm  39:29

Yeah, Michael, I’m curious if there was any discussion of, like, would there just be value, just letting the state model code go into force, or if that is our own in that whole separate risk?

Michael Hubner  39:37

Yeah, we certainly have looked at that. Unfortunately, the state model code, and this is, I won’t go into the details of it, but the state model code is not written like a real development code. It leaves a lot of things ambiguous. It would have some conflicts with how, just generally, our own code is constructed, if it just went into effect. It would lead to a bit of chaos. From a permitting perspective, it might even create some legal risk for the city. In terms of best thing, of committing to permit development is much better for us to have our own code drafted by the city. So that’s why we’re running it now.

Doug Trumm  40:16

And I don’t know if you have your PSRC ears out there, but are any cities doing that? I think I would have heard about it from Ryan Packer by now, but is anyone just going to do that?

Michael Hubner  40:25

I’m not aware of any. I know there are a lot of cities that are struggling with but timelines to get their comp plans and the middle housing legislation done. I’m not aware of any interim ordinances that are being considered by other cities. But I’m also not aware of any other city that has been appealed under SEPA for their for their EIS like the city has. So we had uniquely impacted by that

Doug Trumm  40:53

Before we move, just to break that down so it’s clear. The neighborhood centers: that will be in 2026 based on the current timeline we have here, and that’s where most of the multifamily apartment type zoning is. So we’ll have to wait a little bit for that. But, we are getting to that in time. And, then, we’re all referring to, House Bill 1110, passed in 2023, Jessica Bateman’s bill that that’s why there’s this state code. Anyways, I think we covered that. But just bears repeating, like there’s the state mandate that we’re up against. This stuff is happening one way or the other, because the state model code will go into effect. But yeah, Bellevue just it’s sort of advanced.

Michael Hubner  41:42

I just want to clarify. This is because I know this is really important to people in the room. The number and size and location of neighborhood centers will be in the comp plan. So that’s not waiting until 2026. Yeah, the zoning is like how tall the zoning would be in the neighborhood centers will be in 2026. So, that’s super important to keep in mind.

Doug Trumm  42:01

Yeah, so the discussion will be ongoing but as far as when a developer like Patrick can go build it, you need the zoning for that. You can maybe start planning a little bit. I don’t know it’s dicey, but we got a question about Bellevue, because they just kind of are advancing the plan. It’s not done yet, but we kind of got a picture of where they’re going. And the Bellevue Planning Commission is considering extending the areas where six plexes would be allowed to a half mile of rapid ride bus stops. And JJ audience member asked if there’s any push for Seattle to take a similar approach, because, as we heard earlier, it’s quarter mile right now, but it’s possible they could change that theoretically, and the state bill says quarter mile is the bare minimum, but as Bellevue showed, that you can go above and beyond if you want. I put that one as a free for all. Anyone wants to jump in.

Naishin Fu  43:02

We want to turn up all the dials. So I think you’ve already addressed this. Yeah, you did kind of do want to turn up the dials. And I would agree that we should turn up this dial. I’ll just say, personally, I used to live outside of Boston, Massachusetts and Cambridge, in a in a triplex, and it was half mile from from the subway, and I walk there every day, and that was very normal. I think a lot of people would rather make that choice to walk half a mile or bike half a mile to get to transit, then move way further out, you know, and have to have even longer commute. So,

Jesse Simpson  43:40

Yeah, my first reaction to this is, I want to distinguish between just what what the city has done with the sixplex zoning, which is allowing for increased density within that quarter mile around the major transit, the RapidRide and etc. And what Bellevue has done, which actually allows increased floor area ratio so you can build a bigger building, which makes it a lot more attractive for developer to do and practice. I think that the city’s six approach to sixplexes in the current draft is not anticipating that too many will use that particular bonus, it’s there as an option if the developers want to carve up the housing proposed into smaller homes, basically. But I think the practical uptake of it will be on the lower side, the more substantive bonuses that they’ve proposed are the stack bonus, which allows a fair amount of increased development capacity for small apartment buildings, basically in the neighborhood residential areas and. As well as a quite large affordable housing density bonus, which allows you to go up to four stories and quite a bit larger as a building. But half of the homes have to be affordable to low income people.

Michael Hubner  45:17

And I would just briefly say, No, we’re not. We haven’t been considering. It’s not in the proposal to have to expand the quarter mile to a half mile for the allowing six units. But, and I don’t know the details of the Bellevue proposal, but I suspect how we address density and our proposed neighborhood, new neighborhood residential zoning, goes beyond, I suspect it goes beyond Bellevue in that for larger lots, because we use a lot area per unit standard for how many units you can build on a site for larger lots, even if it’s outside of a quarter mile of a major transit stop. You, in many cases, you can get to five, six or even more units, because it’s a larger lot. That’s not required under state law. We just thought that was a rational, predictable, city wide approach to regulating density,

Doug Trumm  46:15

We got a question on the city’s economic feasibility study, sort of on a similar topic, because we’re still in neighborhood resident residential zones here. But the city, for folks who aren’t familiar: as part of this process, they typically do a economic feasible stability study, just to make sure the housing that’s on paper is, you know, hopefully, actually gonna get built. And, I mean, they’re not like gospel, but it’s a good idea of where we’re at, as far as if this housing is going to pan out. And the study found that about 79% of lots did not pencil out as feasible, at least on the economic assumptions they use right now. And obviously, there’s some concern that those market fundamentals aren’t going to get better if we head into a recession or other chaos coming from, you know, I guess, the federal or international trade situation. But anyway, you know, what is Seattle thinking? As far as you know, is that, does that feasible ability study? Is that acceptable level? Are you looking to maybe recalibrate to try to get more of those lots to be feasible? What did you make of that study, Michael?

Michael Hubner  47:36

You know, it’s kind of a: is it a glass half full or glass half empty.

Doug Trumm  47:40

It’s better than it was before.

Michael Hubner  47:43

I guess I want to start there, which is, we had an original feasibility. We want middle housing to get built in this is not just a paper exercise. It’s not something just to to technically meet the requirements of a new state law. We very much want to see new middle housing built in the city. As I think I mentioned earlier, there’s a really small slice of existing zoning that allows middle housing now, and it’s not a huge part of what is actually being built in the city right now. It’s significant, but it’s not as big as it should be. So we’ve been trying to draft this new neighborhood residential zoning with feasibility in mind. It’s complicated. Depends on feasibility for what? And last spring, spring of 2024 the draft we put out of the public had a floor area ratio, one of the development standards which was designed to do a certain thing, which was encourage larger, smaller units on sites.

But I think rightly, we heard from the public record, from The Urbanist and the HDC others, that that was put a damper on project feasibility, and we need more units on more places, so we upped the floor area ratio to a 1.2 for wonks in the room. You’ll know what that means, but allowing more building on a site, and we ran it through this we had ECOnorthwest, a firm that does a lot of this work, run it through their model. The second time, it boosted the number of sites that are feasible. Patrick was talking about feasibility. I can’t remember the exact percentage. It was not quite double, but it increased by a significant amount how much middle housing we would get those a great change. We’ve been doing a lot of other things.

The density, the per lot area density, way of regulating density, is another thing we tried to do to encourage feasibility. The stack flat incentive that’s also aimed at project feasibility. You know, having 20% of our existing neighborhood residential sites as potentially primed economically to have four or more units and new forms of housing that we’re not producing right now is actually a lot. It’s we’re talking about about 70,000 new units coming online on those. Sites that would be a big increase from what we have right now. It is based on assumptions that are the current market conditions. Those market conditions could look better for that kind of development in the future.

And what we’re basically going to walk monitor closely what happens year on year, see what we get, and we’ll have opportunities to tweak the development standards to see if we can make projects easier and cheaper to build. What was the you said you looked at 500 properties and you ended up with 25 or that’s a bad that’s our percentage is better than his. I mean, that’s just the real it’s just the reality of development. A lot of sites are not going to work. It’s stuck out there.

Doug Trumm  50:38

Yeah, and that’s a good segue, because we’re going to Patrick next. I think the other thing the city studies and that city found is a lot of this is probably going to be townhomes, but there is this new opportunity for stack flats. It’s hard to sort of gauge what that has. It just hasn’t been built that much. Part of the problem middle housing in this country is we don’t really build that anymore, so we gotta get those muscles we’re going and we do build tandems, but things like that are rare. But it could be there’s, there are architects who are excited about it. Michael Eliason wrote something for The Urbanist. If you want to get in, geek out about that, check out that article.

But yeah, the stack flat bonus, it’s received a lot of positive attention, as you know, Jesse brought it up. And can you tell us more about, you know what stack flats are for folks who aren’t familiar, Patrick, and then also, you know what, what we can do to make sure, you know, there’s a path for those, whether that’s zoning, regulations that would incentivize them get this fledgling industry going.

Patrick Cobb  51:40

Yeah, sure. So stack flats are essentially just stacked apartments or condos with a walk up with a stair, unless, I guess you want to design it with an elevator, you could do that, but it’s a pretty efficient form of you know, it’s a wood-frame structure so you don’t have the concrete podium like you would see in a five over two, where you might have two levels of concrete and additional wood frame above it to kind of maximize your density. These tend to be more Low-Rise Residential, which is, you know, really unique.

Yeah, I was thinking about this a little bit, and about how, you know, whenever you see most multifamily in Seattle, most of the new multifamily is built more like five over two podium product, and it’s usually built by professional developers who are using institutional capital from large investment groups. Maybe it’s coming from insurance companies, pension funds, etc, that are being applied to building these much larger, much larger projects. And, you know, it’s just, it’s a different kind of way of going about development than if you’re going to build kind of a parcel based, you know, small-scale walkup. And so just thinking about, like, I think there is an opportunity in your in your low-rise zones, in your in our zones for smaller scale investors who maybe live in the neighborhood or live locally, to be able to acquire property and build something that could, you know, generate long term wealth, something that’s been really interesting is a discussion point among some other architects.

I was talking with Johnson architects, and they had built a project with a group of residents who wanted to age in place. And so they had all gotten together. They lived in a neighborhood. They didn’t want to leave the neighborhood, but owning and maintaining a single family home was just too much for them, and so they got together. They pooled their resources. They acquired a property, they developed a property, and they they’ve moved in subsequently, and are living in a multifamily building where they have their own apartment, and then they lease out other apartments in the building. I think that’s really interesting.

I think the other thing is that I’ve been kind of banging my head on is, how do you do condos in Seattle? Large-scale condos have a lot of risk, a lot of difficulty for developers and investors who are coming into into Seattle and want to do that type of product. You randomly see the Canadian developer come in and they’ll try it out, but it’s been really hard to get it to work on wood-frame product in neighborhood areas, and so I think maybe, you know, there’s a lot of risk there because of being potentially sued through a class action lawsuit, whenever you have 100 different residents and a window fails, and you know that type of thing happens, but maybe in a smaller scale product type of six or eight units that may reduce some of that risk of a class action lawsuit and open up an opportunity to do condominium flats that I think could appeal to homeowners who don’t want to walk up four levels in the town home. Maybe that doesn’t work for them. Maybe they want to live in a flat that’s really efficient and they can, they can get in and, you know. Maybe, maybe there’s ADA opportunities, or, you know, accessibility opportunities for people who who can’t walk up for flights of stairs to able to access their unit but still live in, you know, neighborhoods that they love. So I’ll stop there.

Doug Trumm  55:16

Yeah, thank you that. And I think that goes back to just the general point of what would housing look like if we started from the user standpoint, like, what kind of house would you like to live in? Is it a four-story tight, skinny box or not? You know, like, it’s great that we have that option, but I don’t think a lot of people, it’s their what their platonic ideal thing is. So a stack flat is one way to address that problem, while still, you know, getting a lot of housing on a small lot. So yeah, I wanted to also talk about social housing in that context. Like, are these neighborhood residential zones an opportunity for advocates? You think in, you know, stack flat something you’re looking at, are you still mostly similar Jesse mentioned, like with affordable housing developers, mostly looking at these larger bit rights and, you know, multi family, bigger zoning areas.

Naishin Fu  56:12

I think we’re looking at it all, yeah, and we’re not, I’m not as much of a longer politics, whereas everyone else appears. I don’t know exactly the feasibility numbers and what, when and how and what will work, but for social housing, I mean, we just want flexibility, wherever it is to start. And I again, I don’t speak for the developer, but I believe to start for the first projects, likely larger projects would make more sense. But you know, this developer is going to have be able to balance across its portfolio. So if it has a number of larger buildings, it could maybe do a smaller building in the neighborhood residential zone with flats. And, you know, make that work. We do love the idea of flats. We hope social housing can serve families. We do know from talking to developers that the social housing model, you know, has fewer pressures, I guess, to create volume of units, and maybe has a little more leeway to create more family-sized units.

I know I have kids in public school. I know our public school enrollment is declining and we need more families to stay here and and that, you know, coming from a parent’s perspective, a stacked flat, a three bedroom is is much more friendly to a family than a town home is, which a lot of families in my neighborhood live in right now, and similar for retirees.

So I love your comments about starting with the user. I’m actually a former tech worker, as I’m sure many people know, why I was a product manager, software product manager, and we always started with the user. And so coming from a social housing advocate perspective on like, what would it take, I would like to start with the question, which I think it’s probably too late, but what would it take to make social housing and affordable housing feasible in neighborhood, residential zones, and then, you know, create our boundaries that way, instead of trying to shoehorn it the other way. So, yeah.

Doug Trumm  58:08

Maybe next time. So we have one question that really just wanted to drill down on cost control issues in general, just the cost of building housing keeps creeping up in that that inevitably ends up costing folks more in their housing. So Patrick, I’m curious if you could help this audience member, what is being done to make it easier and cheaper to build in Seattle, and how can someone help in those efforts? Whether they’re talking about advocacy, or maybe they mean, just like, you know, if they’re, if they’re, I don’t know, maybe their investor too, but, you know, what do you see the high impact things here?

Patrick Cobb  58:53

That’s a that’s, that’s a tough question. It is tough.

Doug Trumm  58:55

Yeah, solve your entire industry five minutes. Yeah?

Patrick Cobb  58:58

Well, I mean, I think back, you know, 2014 or ’15, we were getting pricing for town homes around 150 bucks a foot. Now, whenever we’re looking at a new, a new project, and we’re looking at, you know, town home construction, or even single family, it’s, you know, 300 it’s 275 to 330 bucks a foot. So that that’s a that’s a big issue, that’s like doubling the cost of construction, and then on top of that, obviously you have to get a construction loan to carry that cost. And so now you’re incurring more interest, you know, and that just kind of snowballs. And guess what? All of that gets passed on to the homeowner, to the buyer or the renter, in some way to be recouped so that you can pay back the bank, whether it’s short term or long term, so that that’s been a really big issue.

And you know, obviously we have really high labor costs here. Material costs have gone up. Inflation has been really tough over the last few years coming out of Covid and so. I’m hopeful that that’s, you know, flattening out so that we have some predictability. And that’s probably what I want to like focus on, is predictability, because I think that that has been really tough with new projects. And this is where we’re, like, we really partner with the City on developing projects. They’re probably the group that we speak with the most during the course of a project, from your first, you know, your first meeting, your preliminary application, and your preliminary, you know, going into city, like, constantly, kind of going trying to work together to complete a project.

And so, some of the really big costs that we’ve incurred have been through, like, right-of-way improvements. So that’s where, if you’re doing a project that requires street walks, it requires wheelchair ramps, it requires sidewalks, could be infrastructure improvements. So you have to bring in electrical and so you have to work with Seattle City Light. You have to bring in your sewer. You have to connect it to all the homes Seattle City Light, for instance, I waited last year for, I think we were delayed by it took us eight months to get a crew to come out and connect our primary power after we had already installed all of the electrical to all of the units on a project. And so in like, half the project basically just stopped construction because it was almost completely done and we were almost ready to sell the units, and we were basically sitting on a completed project that was incurring, you know, like, maxed out construction cost and interest rates from the bank. So that was, that was tough. And so I think that’s where you know, not to, not to, you know, blame the city or because they’re doing great work.

It’s really hard, but it’s really about, how do you get that predictability so that you can work together, so that whenever you’re ready to make that power connection, to get your electrical meters, you know, to bring in your sewer, that can be done, and then how can we work together to maybe reduce some of the costs that are incurred where we have to do infrastructure improvements that get put on on the developers plate, versus being carried by, you know, by the city’s budget.

And I think that, if we’re adding significant density and people into the neighborhoods, there’s going to be a lot of infrastructure improvements that are going to have to happen. And so who ends up paying for that? Is that going to be the developer? Because I guarantee, because I guarantee you, if you buy a single, a 5000 square foot lot, and you want to put four units on it, and you’re told that, hey, you don’t have a water main that connects, right? And you have to extend it 300 feet, that’s going to be, like, $400,000 to make that extension, and then the project doesn’t work. And so that’s going to be a, it’s going to be a big, kind of a critical piece is, is making sure that the infrastructure is there for those future projects. So, yeah, predictability, continuing to work with the city to kind of find a way to to be quicker, be be more expedient, with the delivery of projects without any unnecessary delays.

Doug Trumm  1:02:59

Yeah, thank you for that. And that reminds me, I have a question from Donna Breske that’s going to be on this topic. Donna is a practicing civil engineer who is on sort of a personal crusade to get water hookup fees and other utility fees under control from Seattle Public Utilities, because that’s been one complaint of especially small developers, but also even some affordable housing developers have gotten hit with huge assessments. And luckily, one that was a poster child for one of these articles got reversed. It was actually on Beacon Hill, Pacific Village. I think it was. It was going to have to pay million dollars for a fire hydrant and water main associated with it. It turned out the fire department didn’t want it. So thankfully, we got that one taken off, but it would have been a million dollars that this affordable housing developer would have had to pay, and probably cost some hours and stress working on that problem, and hopefully not too much delay.

Patrick Cobb  1:03:58

I might add one more thing, yeah, and this may not be popular with everybody, but Mandatory Affordable Housing [fees] in areas where it’s required, I think that has been one of several components that has stopped a lot of large scale, multi family projects from moving forward. So whether not saying it’s right or wrong, I think it’s good, it’s necessary to have that kind of funding set aside, but it has made it, you know, much more difficult to move those projects along.

Doug Trumm  1:04:26

Yeah, I think the city has to be really strategic about when, when that feasibility point is being killed. And I know there’s a Portland solution where missing middle projects are not a part of that program, 20 units or less. So I don’t know if that’s something they’ll look at, but definitely want to make sure that you know that it’s going to be zero if they don’t have projects, so you don’t want to set a percent too high. But yeah, Donna’s question was sort of, you know, and she actually said it’s part of the comp plan, because, you know, the long term sewer plan is. Is, it’s a part of the comp plan. It’s an element of it, the forgotten element. But she’s seen the impact as a civil engineer, because there Beacon Hill isn’t a good example that there’s a lot of neighborhoods that are designated. And sorry, you’ve really signed up for some nerdy stuff here. But there’s no water hook-up areas where, basically, if you owned a single family home and you wanted to build a fourplex or a sixplex, that you’re going to contact the Seattle Public Utilities. And congratulations, you live in a no hookup area. If you want to build here, you have to pay for water main improvement, which, in one of our stories, the number she quoted was $700,000… I don’t know if you’ve looked at that issue, Michael, or maybe you as Patrick, but is there anything you can do to kind of gets more certainty — at least certainty, if not lower prices for developers.

Michael Hubner  1:05:58

On that front, we could probably spend another couple of hours talking about this. I mean, this is a really complicated topic, and I’m not the right person to get into all the details. I certainly can’t speak for City Light in your eight months, and I’m not going to get into the Donna Breske specifics. We’re certainly familiar with the issue she’s raised, but just a couple quick so I just and I just for clarity for everybody. You won’t find in the comp plan, all of the details around both the water plan for area as of growth, there are high level policies in there. But I think the important thing I wouldn’t want to convey is City Light, Seattle Public Utilities, these SDOT, all of these departments of the city that build out the bones that allows housing to get built and serves neighborhoods have been at the table through the whole process. They do develop their own more detailed plans. They are very aware of the new maps of neighborhood centers, other places where this new density plan for we have a housing sub cabinet that convenes regularly across departments in the city that’s been meeting for quite some time.

I think having this new growth strategy really focuses the attention of that group too, on what can we do now to ensure that housing can get built more efficiently, more predictably and less expensively for folks who provide it, like Patrick and affordable housing producers too. So we’re working on that. The Comp Plan does not solve all of that. The Comp Plan provides, I hope, more certainty and more collaboration across departments at the direction of the mayor as we’re doing this. But there’s work certainly yet, yet to do.

For a nice, approachable way of hearing from some of those departments, we did a presentation at the Select Committee on the Comp Plan. Can’t remember the exact date. I think it was either the 29th of January, or might have been the 5th of February. Excuse me for not remembering exactly which date, but if you go to the council website, there was for the recordings of those meetings. I was up there with a whole panel of these capital departments at the select committee. They gave really nice, very, very bite-sized, 10-minute presentations on exactly how they do this, reference, their plans, their process, how they provide what’s needed with new development, both in a long-term perspective and as projects come in the door. It’s a nice primer for those who want to do a deeper dive on this. We’re definitely trying to make improvements.

Doug Trumm  1:08:39

Any hot water takes before we move on, Patrick?

Jesse Simpson  1:08:44

I’ll just say affordable housing developers deal with the same issues. I could go through plenty of random horror stories that we hear, but in general, we find that it can cause many issues when the utility, when the utilities don’t talk to the permitting people early enough and force a redesign pretty late in the process. So it’s it’s something that affordable developers have run into, and it just ends up costing the public more money and reducing, you know, how many affordable homes we’re able to build with the limited resources we have.

Michael Hubner  1:09:23

If I could mention one other category we haven’t even touched on, which is design standards and design review. That is something that we’re directly working on. So in the new zoning legislation, we have very in the proposal, very simple, objective design standards in our neighborhood residential but also a simplified version for low rise. And then the design review process is something that Department of Construction and Inspections is preparing legislation to comply with new state law that there be simplified, objective processes in place for Design Review. You look for that as legislation coming forward is something you may want to be engaged in to make sure it works to get us more housing built more cheaply, and…

Doug Trumm  1:10:08

That’s a June 30 deadline as well, right?

Michael Hubner  1:10:12

I think so. Don’t quote me on it. It’s not something our office is working on. It won’t be in place by that by June 30, but it’s coming quite soon, at least. I don’t think it’s it would be in the land use committee and not in the select committee. It’s a different path of the council, but they’re gonna be busy. They’re gonna be busy like I say. It’s a different department that’s working on that legislation now.

Doug Trumm  1:10:35

A topic that we heard a lot about from from folks who submitted questions in a very near and dear topic to any, any Seattleite, any true mossback: trees, I think there’s a broadly shared goal of having more tree canopy. And I guess where people start disagreeing is how? So, you know, maybe starting with Jesse. What do you see as the way that we can plan for more trees?

Jesse Simpson  1:11:07

hot topic. Quick audience participation. How many of you were at or watched the February 5 public hearing on the comp plan? Kind of curious. Okay, pretty good portion. Thank you all. Yeah. So trees were a big topic of conversation. There. You thought we were talking about the tree code. I think if you were plugging into this from the from the get go, it is definitely the prime concern that opponents of new housing raise at this public hearing and expect in future public hearings. I think there’s trees are they’re important. They have an emotional resonance here within this region. I think we all want to see Seattle increase its tree canopy. I think where it comes down to is where that is prioritized.

If you’re looking at an individual lot where there are trees, I think there should be greater flexibility and incentives to preserve those trees, to shift around the building on a lot, but in some cases, that may not be enough to be able to preserve a tree if you’re adding additional housing, and that becomes a bit of a value judgment of, do you care more about trees or housing in those unfortunate edge cases where good policy can help with this dilemma is in terms of creating that flexibility and incentives to try to create, try to enhance our tree canopy as we are adding more housing in every neighborhood.

One other thing I think the city should do a better job of in terms of the tree canopy, is focusing on the right of way. So looking at, where can you expand trees in the planting strips in, if people are familiar with the kind of Northeast edge of Capitol Hill where you’ve got the trees that actually block off an intersection within the within the side neighborhood streets. You know, why can’t we have that in more than just the like mansion row of Seattle? I think it’s expanding that kind of tree canopy in the Right of Way is a direct way for the city to be leading in terms of expanding our tree canopy as we are adding more housing, and it can have an added benefit of increasing safety for people walking and rolling around the neighborhood,

Naishin Fu  1:14:00

I’m going to assume good faith that folks who are advocating for trees are coming at it with concern for the environment and climate change. And just want to zoom out and say, you know, we all at our organization, care about that as well, and we do think we need more tree canopy. We also don’t want to just look at the tree canopy in a vacuum in terms of what impacts climate change. So one really cool thing that housing neighbors did last year was we worked with students from the UW Department of Geography. I think we came with the idea. They did a lot of the work. They analyzed geospatial data on housing density. They mapped housing density with tree canopy coverage and emissions. And two key findings were that, and this has been shown in other areas like the New York Times, I think as well, the areas with more density had lower per capita carbon emissions. And then also areas with the most tree canopy coverage had the highest per capita carbon. Emissions areas like mountain lake being kind of the top of that curve, because they’re, you know, associated with single family areas, larger homes, more cars, more energy needed.

So not to say that the tree canopy is not important. It is. We love when we’ve gone to Vienna, we’ve had colleagues go to Singapore, we see really abundant housing there, and also amazing green space, a lot more than here. So again, I’m not the wonk, and I don’t know what what are the knobs you do to make that happen, but just to say that we have seen that happen, and we have seen really amazing social housing that is dense and also include a lot of green space. And I think a lot of that goes to what Jesse was saying in terms of flexibility and being able to preserve some of that while allowing building as well.

Michael Hubner  1:15:51

So the city is committed to and set a goal for a 30% tree canopy by 2037 is something that’s restated in the Comprehensive Plan update. We firmly believe that we can get there while also providing for the housing needs of the city, middle housing, more apartment, more areas for more apartments, and we’ve designed the growth strategy proposal and the zoning to get us there while recognizing that there’s a lot of attention to zoning for development related to the tree canopy, and I’m glad it’s been touched on here, which is there are a lot of different tools and arenas that the city can be active in to promote tree canopy. It’s not just about what happens on private property within that limited space of what we can do with the zoning proposal.

We do have a new approach for tree planting and crediting and incentivizing more tree planting and planting of the types of trees that provide more canopy benefit or more significant canopy over the long term, and we’re taking a long term view of the canopy as well. There are going to be some trees lost through development. That’s just a natural, just expected part of the development process. We do have, we went through a big, long process of developing a new tree COVID that does provide a lot of protections to existing trees. I know there’s a lot of debate about about that particular code, but that’s in place, and that helps.

What we can do through the comprehensive plan and zoning is aimed for the long term is, how can we help new development, with middle housing, with new opportunities for people to live in the city and drive less? That’s a fascinating finding, by the way, from that class foot, plant more trees on-site. Plant more trees in the right of way through street improvements as development occurs, and do more in our other public lands, like parks. It’s the full package next on the 30th. It just so happens that the primary topic for the next select committee is trees and tree canopy. And apropos of everything, I just said, it’s not just going to be OPCD presenting to the select committee, but the Office of Sustainability and Environment, other other folks who are working at the city, SDCI, others who are contributing to what we’re doing at tree canopy. To give the council that full picture.

Patrick Cobb  1:18:24

Developers jump through a lot of hoops to try to get trees taken down. That’s, I mean, that’s the reality. So if you are looking at a property and there’s a tree that you can’t remove, it tends to limit the number of units that you can put on the property, which essentially devalues the property from the perspective of a developer. So that’s that’s just generally the case, whether you love trees or don’t love trees. It’s always a little bit of a challenge. I’ve also seen some incentives where, you know, I think this is good, where you have incentives, or maybe you can encroach into a setback further, or you can build higher. Isn’t always. It still adds cost, because if you’re going to build a three level townhome, and then suddenly you have to build a four level townhome, it’s a different cost. It’s a different design. It adds complexity.

So it’s always going to be a challenge, but I think it’s so important that we retain a lot of the trees that are already on the properties, and that we improve the public spaces. Because, you know, the best cities in the world, where you have the most urban development, you know, if they have a great public space that are green and welcoming. I mean, that’s really where people should be. But I have a beautiful willow tree in my backyard. I’m never going to cut it down.

Doug Trumm  1:19:42

We are going pretty good on time here, so I want to make sure we get to some of the audience questions. Diego, how do you want to do that? Are we going to jump right into it or take a brief pause while we got the best?

Diego Batres  1:19:53

I think everyone take a brief intermission. Our panelists going to use the bathroom if they may or may not have been aching to. That per minute reminder down that hall over there, I and Chris will come around and grab index cards from folks who have questions, and we’ll try and rattle through as many of them as we can after like a five minute intermission, yeah, see you all back here in five.

[INTERMISSION]

Michael Hubner  1:22:06

What’s important from just from a housing outcome perspective, we think is because we are up proposing upzones in from neighborhood residential to Low Rise 3 as the most, the most, by far, the most common proposed changes from neighborhood residential to a Low Rise 3 that’s along the transit corridors our neighborhood centers expansion areas that’s a pretty big boost in development capacity and MHA would be applied like we do now, when we do upzones like that in those areas.

Jesse Simpson  1:22:49

Just the one thing is, Council could add it to the neighborhood residential areas, but it’s not in the mayor’s proposal

Michael Hubner  1:22:57

It has been discussed by council on the day us, just at a very high level. And then we did do a presentation on MHA a couple of meetings ago. So yes, that’s something they will be considering.

Doug Trumm  1:23:12

And I know that Councilmember Cathy Moore has expressed the interest in maybe adding it as she seems pretty curious about that. We have a lot of questions here, getting at the housing cost issue from another way, which we touched on a little bit but worth more discussion. You know, as far as like, red tape in there was mention of permanent reform and sort of an effort that the council is also working on a little bit right now. Actually, this our current council member in this district, Councilmember, Mark Solomon, has mentioned it’s a goal of his during his interim term through November, to do some streamlining. Thoughts from anyone about the impact of that and what you’d like to see, as far as that cutting of red tape and permit streamlining. How about Patrick, since you’re the developer, yeah, you know what you would what’s your goal? What was the biggest thing you’d want to see from the city’s Council effort to do so, a little bit of permitting reform or a lot of it?

Patrick Cobb  1:24:20

Well, I don’t know if they’ll take on but I was building my list after I answered the question earlier on, how it made it easier and faster? I think it’s just, you know, it’s efficiency, how quickly you can get you can get through the process, how quickly you can permit things with that predictability,

Doug Trumm  1:24:37

yeah, and coordination between departments and just knowing the answers quicker.

Patrick Cobb  1:24:41

Yeah, that’s true. You do find yourself a lot of times like trying to connect the dots between different different groups, or you talk to somebody that you know, no, you need to talk to this person in this other office. And I would love to see the this. And I don’t know if this happened already, but I. You still love to be able to actually go to the 20th floor and talk to the planners and actually talk to people face to face. That’s what I would love to see come back, is the ability to actually go downtown and go up that elevator and talk to people.

Doug Trumm  1:25:15

Sorry, yeah, you’re not the only architect or developer brought that up. The city did a panel, and that was that came up anything just here, or should we keep going?

Naishin Fu  1:25:24

Yeah, very much in favor of streamlining or cutting out design review. But I know that there are existing exemptions already for affordable housing, which is great we would like for social housing to also take part of those exemptions right now, it wouldn’t qualify because the exemptions are based on the median income you’re serving with housing. Since social housing can serve a higher range of incomes, it does not qualify for these same exemptions now. But if we want more social housing, I believe the voters have said we do. Then we also need to include, you know, either publicly owned housing or social housing, however you want to define it in in those

Doug Trumm  1:26:17

We got some questions too about sort of the larger planning process, you know, in what a we can do with this current plan to make sure that there’s not further delays. And I guess there’s implied further question of like bigger picture, if there’s a way to do this more efficiently in the future, so we’re not right up against the deadline.

Michael Hubner  1:26:44

Well, briefly, just being in the trenches on this, we appreciate SEPA reform, state environmental policy act and helping us not get bogged down in appeals over environmental review, we actually got the appeals dismissed because of some recent state changes in state law on SEPA. So we appreciate that it’s also something we may look at as a city. Our own city code talks about how we would proceed when under appeal, and are there ways to speed up and not delay processes going forward. Nobody within city government certainly likes that.

We want to get issues in front of Council and with the mayor moving things forward. And so that’s that’s certainly one in terms of the current process, as I kind of led with, is to very soon, the entirety of the legislation, all of the zoning legislation and the comp plan, will be in the hands of the council. And the council has some, you know, sets its own schedule and its own process. I think there is a reality of the budget. Well, I think probably everybody understands that there’s a very significant conversation around the city budget, but understanding that lobbying your council members about having an expeditious process and considering the comp plan and the zoning could help in short term.

Jesse Simpson  1:28:11

Yeah, and just to build on to that, the next public hearing for this will be the interim middle housing legislation is on May 19. That’s up Monday. It’ll be at 9:30am yeah, not my decision, but we’re pushing as many people as can to show up to their express support for the interim legislation and urge the Council to take up the rest of the comp plan as quickly as possible. I think also one, one thing that stuck it out to me is the importance of state leadership on land use actions that like, I don’t know if we would be where we are now, with middle housing being proposed to be allowed city wide, if it weren’t for the state’s leadership on HB 1110, was certainly part of the conversation. But I think the fact that the state has said it’s just mandated makes it quite a bit easier for the city to come to neighbors concerned about the speed of change.

And what we’ve seen in this past legislative session is some real leadership in terms of passing the transit-oriented development bill, HB 1491 which will allow for mid rise housing in all of the all the areas around major transit, like the bus rapid transit, as well as light rail. And so that as we look ahead to 2029, and the half check in time of these horrendously long, comprehensive plan timelines, that’s going to be a real game changer in terms of going even further than what’s in the proposed plan. And I there’s similar leadership that the states stick out in terms of parking reform to eliminate parking mandates for affordable housing and many other types of types of housing.

Doug Trumm  1:30:15

We got a couple questions. We were talking about transit oriented development a little bit, TOD, but there’s also people interested in BOD, bike corridor development and ferry oriented development, FOD. These aren’t actual acronyms. So, yeah, I’m curious, Michael, if you could shed some light, if anyone’s ever thought about like, Well, okay, well, does it make sense to think about bike, major bike quarters that way, or the ferry that way, as being a center for development.

Michael Hubner  1:30:47

Well, those are two very different transportation.

Michael Hubner  1:30:53

So, on the bicycle side, and by the way, I bicycle into City Hall every day that I can, which is most days. And do appreciate as a biker, when I see a business or some kind of opportunity right near the trail, I’m often do stop myself, so I that’s appealing to me, just from a, just a just a resident perspective, I would say the bicycle trails and bicycle basically places where there are bicycles, where there is people moving through is just one of a constellation of things that we look at in terms of places that are appropriate and good places to plan for more housing and more commercial. I don’t think alone like a bus line or a train line. I think has a different gravity, a different level of traffic. So it is just part of the picture.

We certainly look at the trail maps and the bike infrastructure in the city, and it probably is just or more as important as when we’re planning for new neighborhood centers and other places for growth that we are creating the bike ways of different different ways to be able to get in and out. So it follows the growth of where we need the new bike infrastructure, ferries. I actually think ferries are maybe Jesse. I’m trying to remember if the new TOD bill includes ferries. I think it does.

Jesse Simpson  1:32:15

I think it did in the first iteration. Someone in the audience might be able to correct me here, but I believe it was taken out.

Michael Hubner  1:32:23

Was it, okay? Well, in any event, we do have one of our neighborhood centers is near the near the Fauntleroy, and the line near the ferry dock there are other downtown is obviously already downtown. So I think it’s more of an issue for non Seattle jurisdictions in terms of ferries, it’s been a regional conversation for some time as to what role ferry, dock, station areas should play. I like it personally.

Doug Trumm  1:32:51

And sorry, Michael, I think I have another one for you. So you’ve been getting the work out here, but I’ve heard you give like a 15-minute answer at the Wallingford Community Council, because I’m not going to do that now, no, you got asked the same question five times. But, you know, I guess the question basically gets it. How much new zoning or you could say how much new housing capacity is too much? And, it’s never enough to some in the ambience here. But yeah, how do planners think about this issue? Because it’s complicated, because you’re looking at projections.

Michael Hubner  1:33:27

It is. I’m not going to actually say any numbers in my response. That’s just about ideas so and then you may fill in the numbers later. We we don’t just look at how much we have grown. We just don’t. We don’t look at future projections. We look at a whole array of data to tell us what our major challenges are and around housing. We know from looking at how much we’ve been growing in terms of jobs versus housing, we know population versus housing, we’re falling behind on those measures. We know from market signals which are very strong and blaring. This is an emergency home prices, rents, cost burden for low and moderate income households for renters, 20% of renters, all renters, are paying more than 50% of their income for just, just however we focus their head, racial disparities and housing on down the line, we look at those things to tell us that a fundamental is we need to provide more housing in the city so that the status quo is not enough.

So that’s really the philosophy that guided this plan, is that not doing the minimum. Now, what is too much? We didn’t address the plan from a numbers perspective. We’d rather ask the question. Just said, we need more. We need. Lot more, where are good places to plan for more housing, the neighborhood centers, the transit corridors. Expand our urban centers, so that if there’s a light rail there, or just a really strong bus node, or a major business district, that a full walk distance around those places was going to be zoned for apartments.

We’ve put all those things together, and we came up with what this plan does is it provides for capacity for about 330,000 housing units. That’s about double the current capacity that theoretically what can be built. That’s a big number. It’s a lot more than our state mandated minimum. We think it’s actually very reasonable to zone for to plan for a lot more than your minimum, for a number of reasons, we’ve always grown faster than projections in the city for the past 30 years. I went back and looked over the old projections and the old growth rate the city has grown basically twice as fast as everybody in the region thought we would grow for the last two and a half decades or so. That’s probably going to continue. So we ought to be ready for it. That’s good planning.

And we need to provide enough room for the market to find locations that make sense for a developer like Patrick, for affordable housing developers to find appropriately zoned, 567, story sites, so they’re not competing with the market rate developers for a shrinking universe of sites for new housing. So 330,000 is a big number, and some people think that that’s our question. Is that too much? We think it’s an appropriate response to all of those signals that we need to do more?

Doug Trumm  1:36:40

Yeah, thank you. That was succinct. In Seattle added over 14,000 homes last year, which is a high water mark in least recent history that I looked at. So certainly good sign, but a lot of permits were, meanwhile, very low, so there’s certainly mixed signals as far as that goes. And the increased zoning might change that.

Jesse Simpson  1:37:05

But yeah, and just to tag one thing onto that too, I think looking at this historically, in New York and LA in the mid century, mid 20th century, they saw that they had zoned housing capacity that was like 55 million for this for New York, and like 30 million for LA, and that began a major down zoning of both cities to try to align zoned capacity with just how much additional growth they were going to expect, to try to channel it into a given area, and I think not by happenstance. That’s also when you start to see a housing crisis emerge in those cities, as you’ve restricted the ability of developers, of people to add new housing to the market, to free up to free up additional homes and reduce the competition that is continuing to drive up prices. Yeah, I appreciate the OPCD’s approach to looking way beyond just what number is correct and thinking more about how to encourage housing choices through this conflict.

Doug Trumm  1:38:23

Yeah, yeah. And sort of thinking about what the downsides are different versus, if you don’t have enough capacity, the downsides are pretty big people don’t have homes, versus the downside of giving yourself padding is less. We could get into that, but probably sufficient to say.

Michael Hubner  1:38:40

One more thing on that too, and I can’t remember who said it earlier. Well, I know it was Patrick. You I really like the way you talked about what neighborhoods should expect in terms of change. That was another thing that we definitely thought about in designing the proposal with the council right now, which is if every neighborhood has a more significant role in terms of having their housing opportunities, opportunities to develop market rate and affordable housing. No, no, the market demand is not going to be funneled into a limited number of spaces.

Like we hear a lot, and I get it, I hear from people in Ballard, for example, north of downtown Ballard, there was a lot of redevelopment to town homes in recent years, and it was a big change to that area. I’m not necessarily saying it was, in and of itself, a bad thing, but it certainly was a very different experience than other neighborhoods, largely because it was one of the few areas in the city where you could build townhomes, if we’re allowing through middle housing in many more neighborhoods, your change is going to be more spread out, more incremental, a little bit more organic, and with a lot more flexibility for developers as well.

Doug Trumm  1:39:52

We got a question, and we’ll try to be quick, because we’re running out of time, but the question mentions that most new apartment buildings are mostly studios and one bedrooms. Sizes are shrinking, and what are we doing to ensure that larger multi family includes two bedrooms and other amenities so that there’s more family-size housing? And we can also look at family-size housing more broadly in our minute on this topic.

Naishin Fu  1:40:20

I think I already talked about this earlier, but social housing does offer increased opportunities for family-size units because it is, it does not need to make a profit, so it has a little more leeway to, you know, not only just create the most number of units possible. I know, affordable housing, I think, has some restrictions too. That kind of incentivizes more units. But social housing, as long as they can make a pencil out just, you know, make sure they can operate and maintain the buildings that offers a little bit more room to build family size units, two to three, you know, bedrooms. Again, I want to when we say family-size, people think it’s out of a single family home. But I know a lot of families living in town homes in one bedroom or two bedroom apartments. Families come in all shapes and sizes. So we need to, you know, two bedroom can be also family-size units.

Doug Trumm  1:41:14

And Patrick on the on the marker inside is, is there any hope for that? You know, come back with a dingbat or something like that, that that is, I think that’s like the little garage on the bottom with the like three story apartment on top. You know, in some of that is the older stock of condos or apartments that are little bit larger, but that might have just been a creature of the 80s or whatever 70s, when people are something like that. But can developers even make that work in Seattle? Or is the price is just too high?

Patrick Cobb  1:41:46

You know, I think that there are locations or it’ll work because, you know, the way it’s perceived, in a pro forma, whenever you’re doing your financial modeling, and you’re you’re taking comps, is that the smaller the unit, the higher your rent, right? Like, that’s been, kind of, sort of is on a sliding scale. As you move in from your straight up one bed to your two bed, your three bed, your rent per foot goes down, and then your model tanks. Whether that’s true and it’s actually built or not, is sometimes debatable, because it costs more to build smaller units. So sometimes it backfires. But I think a lot of times, when you go into actually, you know, establishing what the direction of the project is, it’s really easy to kind of say, Oh yeah, the average unit size is going to be a one bed. It’s going to be 670, square feet, with some smaller studios, and then maybe some two beds, and then maybe one three bed, sort of somewhere lands in the in the project, because you can’t figure out what to do with the corner or something like that.

We did have one project I was working on that was over closer to the Roosevelt Station that worked really well for two beds. And I don’t know why exactly it was working, but I think it just had to like there was a demand for two and three beds in 2022 2021 where they were achieving rents that were comparable, or just a little bit below smaller units. And so in that project, we had a much larger percentage of two beds and three beds. So sorry to get into the boring economics of it. That’s a lot of times it drives it, and I know there’s a need for it, and I would love to see more two and three beds in multi family rental buildings well.

Doug Trumm  1:43:28

And I think this will be our last question. Thanks everyone for sticking around for this whole in-depth and very involved, and we’ve been here two hours. Hats off to you, but this seems like a fitting last question for the housing advocates, you know the comp plan. Phase One, the permanent electrician being pushed to or no, sorry, phase two being pushed to 2026 do we expect the 2025 elections to pivot on housing at some level.

Jesse Simpson  1:44:00

Yeah, housing is one of the top issues we have locally, so I expect it to be, well, I don’t know we’ve got, we’ve got two different council members from D2 in the in the room right here, both are running on housing. They’re here this evening. I think the like Alexis Mercedes Rinck is run on as a very strong housing advocate. Dionne Foster challenging Sara Nelson has a strong housing platform. Sara Nelson is a housing champion in her own sense, though, has some different ideas about taxation than Dionne, for sure, you know in terms of how they differentiate themselves, I don’t know how much that’s going to permeate the discourse. But it remains to be seen, and it’s certainly going to be a topic of conversation. And

Doug Trumm  1:45:07

And you just won an election on housing. So this is a great topic for you.

Naishin Fu  1:45:12

I think that regardless of where the comp plan is that it was going to be, housing is going to be a tough issue for everyone, I hope. And I just want to say that all of you can ensure that that is the case as well by asking your candidates those questions. I know, for House Our Neighbors, we’re going to be doing candidate questionnaires. Maybe we’ll do an event. We’ve heard from candidates already that they are getting a lot of questions from, you know, possible constituents about social housing, and that’s great to hear. And they’re listening to those so what? What voters are asking really matters, and so keep the topic of housing top of mind and social housing.

Doug Trumm  1:45:51

Any last thoughts?

Patrick Cobb  1:45:55

Yeah, I have a couple. So just kind of behind the you know, we were talking earlier, and I never gave a response on this, but it’s 300,000 is that enough to kind of aim for? And something that’s been kind of a discussion point among a lot of investors and developers in Seattle is kind of running to, oh, I’m not going to develop in Seattle anymore. I’m only going to develop on the Eastside. I’m going to develop in Kirkland. I’m going to develop in Bellevue or Redmond. I’m never going to develop in Seattle again. I hear that from lots of people I know and and obviously, you know, I think that’s wrong. I love Seattle, and personally, you know, this is a place I want to develop in forever.

And I’m really excited to see how, how the new land use code, how these new opportunities can help to bring back investment to Seattle, like we are in competition, to some degree, with our neighbors across the water. We are in competition with other cities in the country when it comes to investment in new housing and and, you know, having more money flow into our city, and we have a top tier city with wonderful neighborhoods, with a lifestyle that, you know is, I’ve lived in Dallas, I’ve lived in New York, you know, I’ve lived in a couple other places. And I would say, like our lifestyle here is top notch, and people should want to be here, and investors should want to be here. So how do we grease that? How do we make sure that we stay, you know, kind of the premier location within the entire Pacific Northwest. So anyways, that was my last little plug.

Michael Hubner  1:47:29

I just want to say thank you for having us here from the city that this conversation is a really high-level conversation on housing and great audience and great questions. My hope for next year, I’m not going to say any try to stay out of politics for obvious, obvious reasons, but I did. I was telling Jesse — we were both at the HDC luncheon today, and the City of Bellevue won an award for their housing planning. And I was for just from a selfish staff perspective, hoping there were some elected officials from Seattle in the audience feeling a little bit jealous of their Eastside neighbor for winning an award. So maybe next year you’ll have a housing panel be the day of the HDC luncheon, and Seattle will have won an award for its great comprehensive plan.

Doug Trumm  1:48:18

Well, that’s our show, everyone. Thanks for coming. And I think we do have to clean up the space, but if you want to mingle, the plaza is obviously open. It’s a great thing about this space is we have a beautiful pedestrianized public plaza.

The post An Audio Recap of The Urbanist’s ‘Future of Seattle Housing’ Panel first appeared on The Urbanist.

Hacks and Wonks host Crystal Fincher (who is a political consultant and also a board member at The Urbanist) has purchased KVRU 105.7 FM, along with former Deputy Mayor Monisha Harrell. As they relaunch the station, they will be expanding programming beyond Hacks and Wonks. Another thing to watch!

Sundberg appeared on an April 16 episode focused on federal rights rollbacks and budget attacks. Seattle City Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck joined for the episode as well, breaking down her committee’s work to fight Trump’s attacks on human rights, social services, and local budgets. Rinck pushed for the committee to be formed to grapple with the local impacts of federal chaos. Sundberg has been on the beat covering that committee’s work.

Packer appeared on this Friday’s week-in-review episode that touched on the state budget woes, both in the operating budget and the beleaguered highway expansion program. Listen at Hacks and Wonks, your favorite podcast app, or below.

Amy Sundberg and Alexis Mercedes Rinck episode

Ryan Packer episode

The post Urbanist Reporters Appear on Hacks and Wonks Podcast first appeared on The Urbanist.

Hack and Wonks host Crystal Fincher is a political consultant who also serves on The Urbanist’s board. Fincher regularly brings up transportation issues on her show, and, after outlining the vision zero saga, Fincher and Packer discussed Seattle’s $1.55 billion transportation levy that will be on the ballot in November, and what help it might offer to the ease the crisis. Ultimately, they landed on the levy being a necessary step in the right direction, even if firmer safety and climate commitments are needed in the future.

Washington’s Vision Zero initiative was adopted in 2000 with the goal of eliminating traffic fatalities and serious injuries by 2030. Seattle and Bellevue joined suit in 2015 with local Vision Zero campaigns pledging to end road deaths by 2030. However, each of these campaigns have faced significant setbacks. “Recent data from the Washington Traffic Safety Commission paints a grim picture: road fatalities in the state climbed to 810 in 2023, a stark increase from fewer than 500 in 2014,” Hack and Wonks noted.

Transportation safety experts attribute much of the problem to road designs, particularly wide arterial streets with high speeds, in addition to the proliferation of oversized cars with high hood heights that create blind spots and increase the likelihood of killing pedestrians. As the episode noted, experts advocate for several strategies to make streets safer, including right-sizing infrastructure, implementing road diets, and improving pedestrian and bicycle facilities.

Packer highlighted several strategies that can make streets safer:

1. Right-sizing infrastructure: Reducing oversized roads to better fit community needs.
2. Road diets: Reducing the number of lanes on wide arterial streets.
3. Complete Streets policies: Ensuring streets are designed for all users, not just cars.
4. Improved pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure: Adding sidewalks, crosswalks, and protected bike lanes.
5. Speed management: Implementing speed-limiting technology in vehicles.
6. Enforcement: Using traffic law enforcement, including camera enforcement, while addressing equity concerns.
7. Education: Complementing other strategies with targeted safety education programs.

Give the episode a listen for a full rundown of the safety crisis and what we can do about it.

The post Ryan Packer Talks Vision Zero, Traffic Safety on Hacks and Wonks Podcast first appeared on The Urbanist.

Watt and Fincher covered the biggest takeaways and surprises so far, including a crowded statewide contest for commissioner of public lands. They noted this razor-close race illustrated the case for an election reform to allow ranked choice voting to avoid undemocratic outcomes where voters clearly prefer one party but fail to elect an aligned candidate because of a disparity in number of candidates on each side.

“We have one, two, three, four, five Democrats running,” Watt said. “Between them, they have 56% of the vote, and what we are likely to end up with is two Republicans in the general election. I think this is the strongest possible case for ranked choice voting in Washington state that you can imagine.”

“I don’t know if I’m ready to say this race is over yet and the two Republicans are likely to advance,” Fincher said, suggesting that Upthegrove still has a chance to make up the deficit, particularly as later votes are counted in populous counties.

That appears to have been prescient, as Upthegrove jumped into second place in Friday’s drop, with a big bump from King County returns. Having opened up a one-point lead, Upthegrove appears likely to maintain that lead over Republican Sue Kuehl Pederson and face former U.S. Representative Jaime Herrera Beutler in the general election.

A rare even-year election for a Seattle City Council seat, namely the citywide Position 8 seat, could indicate the tide is turning from centrist backlash to progressive resurgence. It also suggests that wave was buoyed by odd year elections that suppress votes, particularly from tenants and voters of color.

“Alexis Rinck, who ran an extraordinarily strong campaign for a first-time candidate, was able to consolidate a huge range of the Seattle left – from the progressive left to elements of the center left in the city,” Watt said.

In 2023, centrists dominated the four open seat races for Seattle City Council. The only progressives to survive were incumbents Tammy Morales and Dan Strauss — though Strauss only survived by moderating his positions. The new centrist majority preceded to appoint Tanya Woo — who ran against Morales but lost — to replace outgoing progressive Teresa Mosqueda (who won a seat on King County Council) cementing their majority.

However, even with a supermajority, the centrists have struggled to advance new policies, with an extended period of getting up to speed on lawmaking and procedures. Proposals like reducing wages for gig workers and for tipped workers have run into resistance and been tabled for now. But even as they get the swing of legislating, these lawmakers may find themselves out of step with voters, Fincher argued.

“These citywide election results seem to be the most conclusive poll we’ve had out of all of them, showing that the public is not aligned with where the majority on this Council is,” Fincher said, noting they were elected on the issues of public safety and reducing homelessness, not to cut wages, oppose taxes on the rich, and slash social services.

Listen to the whole episode for more!

And disclaimer: Watt noted that he was expressing his personal opinion on the show.

The post Rian Watt Talks Primary Results on Hack and Wonks Podcast first appeared on The Urbanist.