“I looked around and felt like Washington really could be the best place in the nation to build a good life if people can actually afford to do that,” Sabio-Howell told The Urbanist. “I think that we could be a state where housing is abundant and childcare is affordable, our education and healthcare systems are world class quality, and we tax the record-breakingly rich corporations that build their wealth here in Washington to make that happen.” 

Sabio-Howell has spent the last three years as the communications director for Working Washington, a statewide labor advocacy nonprofit that fights to raise wages and improve labor standards. Working Washington was involved in the defense of gig workers’ minimum wage policy and flexibility protections when former Seattle Council President Sara Nelson tried to roll them back in 2024, a fight that Sabio-Howell said seemed impossible to win at the time due to lobbying from multi-million dollar companies. 

“We won anyway,” Sabio-Howell said about that fight, “because we saw that working people and the vast majority of Seattle, and I would also say Washington, believes in fair pay and good workplaces and an economy that works for working people. […] I have gotten used to taking on big fights against big money, particularly fueled by big corporations, and winning alongside grassroots people power.”

Sabio-Howell’s mother’s side of the family are immigrants from the Phillipines, and her father’s side of the family has lived in eastern Washington for generations. Both of her parents were educators. As a Millennial/Gen Z edge case, Sabio-Howell would be the youngest senator serving in the Washington State Legislature, if elected, bringing a fresh perspective to a body that tends to skew older. 

Sabio-Howell also has experience at the state legislature, having served as a legislative aide for Rep. Larry Springer (D-45th, Kirkland) and later as a communications specialist for the State Senate, working for five different state senators and the Senate Members of Color Caucus. 

“I could hit the ground running and would be eager to, because I think we need fighters and we need effectiveness, and we need a commitment to our community’s values,” Sabio-Howell said.

(Disclosure: Sabio-Howell has also served on The Urbanist’s election committee from 2022 to 2025, along with our Publisher Doug Trumm and Contributing Editor Ryan Packer. She served as co-chair for her last two years. The reporter of this piece has never served on that body.)   

A tough race

The incumbent, Pedersen, who is also the Senate Majority Leader, has served in the state legislature for almost 20 years. After a stint in the state House, he ran for the Senate seat in 2014. A gay man himself, Pedersen is known for championing LGBTQ+ rights, supporting the legalization of the sale of marijuana, and instituting more gun control measures at the state level. 

Pedersen is also a Yale-educated lawyer who practiced corporate law at Preston Gates & Ellis (now K&L Gates) for 17 years. Since 2012, he has worked as general counsel and executive vice president at McKinstry, a Seattle-based construction and engineering firm.

Pedersen raised about $240,000 in donations during the last election cycle in 2022. Sabio-Howell contends that in this last legislative session, he has shown a willingness to cut deals with the largest corporations, citing the $550 million tax break buried in the “millionaires” income tax of which Pedersen is the lead sponsor. (This tax break has since been removed by the House.) 

Pedersen has also expressed support of rolling back the estate tax increase passed last session. He told The Stranger he does not support his seatmate Rep. Shaun Scott’s new tax proposal, the Well Washington Fund, which would institute a payroll expense tax similar to Seattle’s JumpStart, because it is not politically feasible. 

“I think that Senator Pedersen’s alliance with corporations is fundamentally out of step with our district,” Sabio-Howell said.

Sabio-Howell referenced the historical outcomes of elections and ballot initiatives in the 43rd district. 

“We have affirmed over and over again that we believe in taxing the rich, in a fair and safe community for all of us,” Sabio-Howell said. “That makes me really excited about what kind of visionary leadership could be coming out of the 43rd, and I want to offer that this is our first chance in 20 years to choose our fighter.”

An affordability platform

Rather than cutting, Sabio-Howell wants to expand state investments in child care, education, housing, transit, and health care, and she wants to pay for this by taxing the ultra-wealthy corporations in Washington.

“It doesn’t feel like enough to me to defend a system that isn’t working for us, or to just hold the line on already inadequately funded programs,” Sabio-Howell said. “We need to be reinvesting in those programs and building them out to make sure they actually can work for people, particularly working people.”

While Sabio-Howell supports Pedersen’s millionaires tax, she doesn’t think it is adequate, particularly because any funding from the new tax wouldn’t be available until 2029. Unlike Pedersen, she doesn’t support rolling back taxes on the wealthy, such as the aforementioned estate tax reduction, and she would like to see the legislature pass a wealth tax and Scott’s Well Washington Fund. 

She doesn’t support the sales tax rollback in the millionaires tax that would have downstream revenue hit to Sound Transit. 

Among Sabio-Howell’s priorities are making universal childcare a reality and better funding K-12 education. 

“The paramount duty of the state legislature is to fund basic education, and that needs to be a critical priority, just based on everything we know about how that then sets young people and families up for success in Washington, and saves the state money in the long run,” Sabio-Howell said. 

While Sabio-Howell supports a wide variety of means to make housing more affordable, she is particularly enthusiastic about the idea of a statewide social housing program, citing her district’s strong support for Seattle’s social housing initiatives. She said she was disappointed that last year’s rent stabilization bill was so watered down.

“I think for so many of us, having our rent go up by anything close to 10% is also totally unaffordable,” Sabio-Howell said.

In addition to her desire to see further rent stabilization, Sabio-Howell said she would support efforts to do more to incentivize upzoning and strengthen tenant protections. She’s a proponent of the failed neighborhood cafe and corner store bill, talking about the importance of community building and place making.

Sabio-Howell said she expects to be a renter herself for the foreseeable future.

“The dark joke of people who are young is that it’s almost a laughable idea that we would ever be able to buy a house here in Washington generally, but particularly in the 43rd, a place where it’s actually a big, exciting step to move out of a studio apartment into a one bedroom,” Sabio-Howell said.

When considering legislation to make housing more abundant and affordable, Sabio-Howell emphasized the importance of such laws having teeth and dedicated resources for enforcement to hold communities accountable. 

Sabio-Howell said it’s the state’s responsibility to provide resources for a robust transit system in the state. She’s interested not only in building out Sound Transit’s connections but also providing more frequent service, better pay for operators, and possibly even lowering fares. She mentioned the dearth of both renters and regular transit users in office at the state level and how that impacts policymaking. 

Health care is another area that Sabio-Howell is interested in making more affordable, citing the increasing number of people who are losing coverage or having to forego it because of rising premiums. 

“When it comes to protecting and reinvesting in health care, that’s a place where the state legislature is on the front line, is maybe both our first and our last defense against devastating federal cuts,” Sabio-Howell said. 

In addition to using funds from the Well Washington fund to cover some of these gaps, should that legislation pass, Sabio-Howell said she thinks the state could eventually accomplish universal healthcare. During her time as a communications specialist at the senate, she worked with Senator Emily Randall on passing the Universal Health Care Commission, a first step towards that goal, and she spoke about taking additional serious steps in that direction. 

Sabio-Howell expressed support for even-year elections for local offices and converting Washington’s very part-time legislature to a full-time year-round body, which she said would allow more working class people to serve in elected office. 

On public safety and immigration

Sabio-Howell would like the state legislature to revisit some of the accountability issues related to policing that the public organized around in 2020, citing the legislature’s rollback of police use of force standards and high-speed pursuit standards in subsequent legislative sessions. She also spoke about the ineffectiveness of the $100 million police hiring incentive that Governor Bob Ferguson insisted on including in the budget last year, under threat of veto. Recent reporting from The Washington Standard revealed that no new police officers have yet been hired as a result of that program.

With U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) both expanding its surveillance apparatus and tapping into local surveillance data, Sabio-Howell says it’s important to protect immigrants from surveillance, along with the entire community. She also noted the need to protect consumers from surveillance surge pricing, referencing a bill that died earlier this session. 

“In general, government, and I mean this broadly, at the federal level, the state level, has really been so many years behind the ball when it comes to regulating big tech,” Sabio-Howell said.

Sabio-Howell comes from a mixed-status family, meaning a family with different immigration statuses. In the past, she has volunteered outside of the Northwest ICE Processing Center, helping people who had just been released without any money or means of communication, who often don’t speak English. 

“It’s extremely cruel,” Sabio-Howell said. “It’s a blight on our state, and it’s the state’s responsibility to do something about that.”

In addition to adding more parameters to protect data from ICE, Sabio-Howell outlined several steps she’d like to see the state take in response to ICE’s ramp-up of immigration enforcement. She supports the ban on law enforcement covering their faces, which has now passed out of both chambers. She’d like to either ban or severely limit ICE’s ability to operate in sensitive locations like hospitals, child care centers, and courthouses. She is interested in looking into stripping incentives from companies that work with ICE, making it more expensive to do so. And she wants more pathways for people to be able to sue ICE for violating their constitutional rights.

A way forward

Rather than trying to maintain the status quo in our state, Sabio-Howell believes in dreaming bigger and revitalizing and expanding the services that could make living in Washington and the 43rd LD even better. And she’s looking forward to presenting that bold vision to voters who might be ready for a different approach in leadership after 20 years. 

“It makes me really excited to think that we could opt into leadership that is moving in lockstep and shoulder to shoulder with our visionary values,” Sabio-Howell said. “Policy is something we build, not something that happens to us, and nowhere is that more possible or more true in our history.”

The post Labor Leader Sabio-Howell Launches Bid Challenging State Senator Jamie Pedersen first appeared on The Urbanist.

Pollet has earned a reputation of siding with the existing homeowners in his district over the new residents trying to move there, and became infamous for watering down housing reforms during his time as chair of the House’s Local Government Committee. In 2022, a striking amendment Pollet put forward significantly weakened a bill legalizing middle housing across Washington’s major cities, blunting its momentum and demoralizing housing advocates from Bellingham to Spokane.

In 2023, Pollet railed against HB 1110, that bill’s successor that was ultimately able to make it across the finish line. He did ultimately vote for it after securing an amendment allowing cities to hold off on zoning changes in specific areas, but has often been a “no” on the idea of reducing red tape for housing construction more broadly.

“Those years were low interest-rate years. We could have tens of thousands, maybe 50,000 or 100,000 more modestly-priced homes in the region right now, and they would be bidding over us, instead of us bidding over what’s left. And that’s a really huge and ugly, frustrating dynamic,” Davis told The Urbanist in an interview near his Roosevelt home.

A tech entrepreneur who has worked in enterprise sales after getting a doctorate degree from Harvard Law, Davis diverted his career after losing his city council race three years ago. He started a newsletter, which he dubbed Rondezvous, and got involved in some of the city’s biggest civic fights.

In 2025, Davis had a very busy year. He stepped up against a wave of cash that rolled in to promote the corporate-backed alternative to Prop 1A, the dedicated fund for Seattle’s Social Housing Developer. At a press conference in front of the Amazon spheres last February, he called out the city’s biggest corporations for trying to railroad a new source of progressive revenue.

As a consultant, he spent weeks bartering with legislators in Olympia in support of statewide parking reform, a bill that many seasoned housing advocates saw as a quixotic attempt. A slog that likely would have made Davis tear his hair out — if he had any — that work ultimately helped to get SB 5184 across the finish line, reducing housing costs and making redevelopment projects more feasible in every corner of the state. Then Davis turned his attention back to Seattle, setting up a progressive political action committee (PAC) to counter big-business spending in support of Katie Wilson’s successful mayoral bid.

Now Olympia is calling to Davis once again in a bigger way.

“I don’t think we can really move the needle on our core issues unless we take a regional and statewide and broader approach,” Davis said. “There’s so much more opportunity there.”

Davis has already lined up the endorsements of a number of prominent urbanists and housing advocates, including Transit Riders Union, Tech4Housing, Bothell Mayor Mason Thompson, former Seattle mayoral candidate Cary Moon, Patience Malaba, former Seattle City Councilmember Mike O’Brien, Seattle Social Housing Developer executive director Tiffani McCoy, House Our Neighbors executive director Naishin Fu, 43rd District Democrats Chair Ryan Driscoll, and safe streets leaders Gordon Padelford and Kelli Refer.

The affordability agenda

When Davis lists his priorities, the idea of making life more affordable for Washingtonians of all stripes comes through most clearly — though a sales tax holiday doesn’t make it onto the list. Davis wants to finally get the legislature to fully fund education, its paramount duty under the state constitution. And to make a major investment in child care, touting the goal of capping child care costs at 7% a household’s income that was a central plan in Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign. He celebrated expected increased investments in summer camp programs in Seattle under Mayor Wilson, but was clear that the legislature is going to need to step up to provide more funding.

“The year-round problem is something that we need really serious taxing power to address,” Davis said, pivoting the discussion to tax reform. As Davis announces his campaign, the Senate-advanced tax on incomes over $1 million has stalled out in the House. While some holdout Democrats undoubtedly would be happy to see no changes to the state’s tax code move forward, others are frustrated with the way the millionaires tax has advanced without explicit commitments to fund education or reduce the tax burden in other areas.

“I’m a big fan of the millionaires tax, per se. I’m all in for a 10% tax on incomes over a million bucks,” Davis said. “At the same time, it feels a little bit like a head fake. Cool, let’s do that. But in the meantime, we have an existing budget gap. We’re talking about cutting funding for toddlers with disabilities and 14,000 families who are supposed to get childcare, and sweeping hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars of climate investments out of the Climate Commitment Act.”

Davis wants to see broader tax reforms put on the table.

“If we if our tax rate was about like Minnesota, we would literally have enough money to fully fund education, have universal childcare, cover the deficit, end homelessness, and probably put another $500 million a year into transportation — sustainable transportation — with some leftover funds,” Davis said. “It’s stupid. We are choosing this scarcity and we’ve got a set of leaders that appear just completely beholden to a class of folks who have a big stake in keeping that scarcity in place.”

And then there’s housing. Davis wants to see the legislature fully fund housing choice vouchers to subsidize rents for existing tenants, keeping them from falling into homelessness. But housing supply will be a clear priority for him as well. He supports the elevator reform bill advancing through the House right now, and would focus on additional issues where the legislature could get out of the way of the construction of badly needed units.

“There’s just such a thick package of things that need to be done to really get us to a standard where stuff moves quickly. I don’t think we need to compromise on core safety or climate constraints around housing, just a lot of the stupid rules. There’s still so many stupid rules to fix,” Davis said.

Bus lanes over new highways

When it comes to transportation, Davis wants to help steer the ship away from the highway megaprojects that the legislature continues to be focused on, as the state’s existing infrastructure continues to fall into disrepair. He also wants the state to get off the sidelines when it comes to public transit.

“I don’t think we should be expanding highways,” Davis said. “We should paint one thousand miles of bus lanes in the busiest corridors in the region, and we should add 50% frequency to the top 100 bus routes. And then you take hundreds of thousands of people a day, and you make their lives easier and more convenient, and they get places fast, and you also end up attracting a lot more people to those routes, and you’re solving a transportation cost and convenience problem for hundreds of thousands of people.”

The state only directly controls a limited number of transit corridors around the state, but he would pair bus lanes on those streets with incentives to create dedicated space for transit. That would mirror the Free Youth Fare program, where the state offered operational grants to transit agencies that made travel fare-free for kids, and every agency in the state took the deal.

“The busiest corridors often do end up converging on the state roads,” Davis said. “If it’s a city’s arterial [road], you’d have to pair it with some sort of funding mechanism for the busses. It would just be a matching fund: if it’s a top 100 route, you get an extra four busses per hour in each direction, or something.”

Standing up to Trump

Davis also wants to see the state legislature significantly ramp up its work countering a rogue federal administration.

“I think the legislature is not doing a great job. So, here we have leaders saying we have an emergency, ‘fascism is coming out of the federal government’ — which it is. I’m like: Okay, what do we have this year, a mask bill where you could maybe sue somebody if they violate,” Davis said.

He wants to see a real mask ban for law enforcement with criminal penalties, and praised Senator Manka Dhingra’s bill that would sequester state funds that had been set to go to the feds if any of Washington’s federal funding is withheld. He also thinks the state should explore standing up a civilian response team focused on logistics and potential interruption of federal activities.

“We want the federal government to look at us and think like, not worth it,” David said. “I believe the rhetoric that we are in real, serious danger, and I do not see my representatives, many of them anyway, acting like it, and it’s pretty damn frustrating.”

Visit Ron Davis’s campaign website for more information.

The post Former Seattle Council Candidate Ron Davis Challenges Longtime Legislator Gerry Pollet first appeared on The Urbanist.

Wilson’s office framed the “Neighbor by Neighbor Initiative” as a “citywide, all-hands-on-deck effort to rapidly expand shelter across Seattle and start bringing people inside.” Wilson has set a goal of standing up 4,000 additional units of emergency housing or shelter in her first term, with 1,000 of those in her first year.

The first piece of legislation empowers the Director of Finance & Administrative Services to directly sign lease agreements with property owners for new emergency housing, such as tiny house villages or RV safe lots. This would eliminate a significant bureaucratic hurdle in standing up such facilities.

“We’re moving faster than ever before, but I want to see the ground start breaking, the hammers start swinging, and fewer people left to sleep in doorways and tents,” Wilson said. “That’s why I have transmitted legislation to city council that will help us deliver on the goal of opening 1,000 new units of shelter with supportive services across the city this year. Now I need your help to get sites ready, to support our front-line service provides, and to be good neighbors with the shelters we need to open around the city.” 

Sites for potential RV encampments and tiny home villages were identified within weeks of Wilson’s inauguration, with a state-owned parcel on W Marginal Way SW in West Seattle selected as the first to move forward. Glassyard Commons will be operated by the Low Income Housing Institute (LIHI) and will include space for 72 RVs and 20 tiny homes.

Wilson’s second bill would increase the limit on shelter size, allowing tiny house villages to grow as large as 250 people in a few select cases. That’s more that twice as large as today’s cap. Only one tiny home village that large would be allowed in each council district, with villages capped at 150 after that one gets stood up.

“The second piece of legislation will allow successful shelters to serve more people,” Wilson said. “Even the most successful shelters that do the best work and have the best relationships in their communities are currently limited to serve just 100 people. This is a very low limit, which is out of step with national best practices and what cities like LA, Tampa, and Austin are doing now, and it just doesn’t make sense when we have so many people sleeping outside with nowhere to go. My proposal would increase this limit to 150 people per site on an interim basis, provide support to address any potential public safety impacts, and additionally allow one location in each city district to serve up to 250 people in cases where it makes sense.”

It’s unclear how many village operators would take the City up on this new ability, should it be granted. Some operators, such as Chief Seattle Club executive director Derrick Belgarde, have expressed a preference for lower capacity sites so that they are more manageable and less prone to issues. The largest tiny house village site that the Low Income Housing Institute currently operates has 73 units, but most are in the 40-to-50 unit range.

The third piece of legislation reallocates $4.8 million in funding to get emergency housing creation started sooner.

“My team has identified $4.8 million from existing, underutilized City fund sources, which can be used to fund shelter and wraparound services,” Wilson said. “$3.3 million was derived from an underutilized revolving loan program that was difficult to deploy and not previously appropriated. An additional $1.5 million will be appropriated from the Downtown Health and Human Service Fund, which is a program from the 1990s that has not been used for a decade.”

Mayoral spokesperson Sage Wilson indicated that, while the one-time funds would be a boost, it would be hard to find such large sums lying around in future budgets. Former Mayor Bruce Harrell and the Seattle City Council left Wilson with a bleak budget outlook for 2027, with many one-time programs sucking up scarce city dollars as the city’s revenue forecasts look stagnant at best.

As in other public appearances, Wilson underscored that addressing the homelessness crisis was her highest priority.

“Seattle’s homelessness crisis is an emergency, and in fact, our city declared a civil state of emergency on homelessness more than 10 years ago in November of 2015,” Wilson said. “But for many years and through multiple federal administrations, we have not treated this crisis with the urgency that it demands. That pattern ends here with all of us.”

She admitted that many obstacles remained to meeting that goal, but she contended the city was increasingly aligned at putting in the work to get there.

“Let’s be clear about the challenges: Our rates of unsheltered homelessness are off the charts, even in comparison with our peer cities,” Wilson said. “We have a big hill to climb, and if the solutions were easy, it would have happened already. To address this crisis at scale, we are going to need to do hard things. But I’m also confident that we can do this, because homelessness is not only the number one priority for me and my administration, I know that it’s also the number one priority for the residents of this city, for businesses and many other stakeholders across the city.”

Wilson had not identified which councilmembers will carry each piece of legislation. That said, District 1 Councilmember Rob Saka did speak at the event and broadly offer his support.

“Seattle urgently needs more shelter capacity to meet the scale of our homelessness crisis, which has gone on for too long without meaningful progress,” Saka said. “After touring Sound Foundations’ Hope Factory in my district, I saw firsthand how tiny homes can be built efficiently at scale. Expanding tiny home villages and RV safe lots is an effective, compassionate way to move people indoors and connect them to services. I commend Mayor Wilson for addressing this crisis with the urgency it demands and partnering so closely with my office to get it done.”

Additionally, District 7 Councilmember Bob Kettle did offer a supportive statement for the mayor’s press release.

“Today’s announcement of creating potentially 1,000 new units of shelter is welcome news for it builds capacity,” Kettle said. “I appreciate Mayor Wilson’s focus on this issue. My office will continue to support ways in which the city can assist our most vulnerable populations and create that safe base for all.”

Housing committee chair Dionne Foster and land use committee chair Eddie Lin are also both broadly aligned with Wilson’s agenda around making progress on homelessness, but did not release statements following Wednesday’s announcement.

Although Wilson herself did not stick around for the second half of the speaking program or to take questions from reporters afterward, a long list of providers spoke, including those focused on substance use disorder treatment and wraparound services. Beyond Wilson and Saka, the program included:

• Steve Roberts, Hope Factory / Sound Foundations NW
• Sharon Lee, Executive Director of Low Income Housing Institute (LIHI) 
• Fé LopezGaetke, Co-Executive Director, Purpose. Dignity. Action 
• Grace Stiller, West Seattle resident and neighbor of Camp Second Chance 
• Ann Haruki-Pinedo, Central District resident and neighbor of True Hope Village 
• Chloe Gale, REACH Program, Evergreen Treatment Services 
• Jilma Meneses, President and CEO, Catholic Community Services 
• Derrick Belgarde, Executive Director, Chief Seattle Club 
• Brandon Ashford-Whitfield, frontline service provider and OPEIU 8 member 

Wilson is far from the first mayor to pledge bold action on homelessness. In fact, her predecessor Bruce Harrell pledged 1,000 units of emergency housing in first six months and 2,000 units in his first year, and came up well short on both fronts, which Wilson noted on the campaign trail.

Actions by the Trump administration shredding the social safety net and risking an economic crash are likely to exacerbate the homelessness crisis. That puts even more pressure on local leaders to queue up effective programs and try innovative solutions.

As an organizer at heart, Wilson also appears to be taking the strategy that a broader coalition is needed to tackle the problem, from big institutional players to everyday residents. The mayor launched a citywide call to volunteer to show support and be part of the solution. More information on options to get involved in support is available on the mayor’s blog. 

“We need to choose to come together as a city, because we can’t keep looking away from this problem,” Wilson said. “We can’t keep pushing people from place to place without bringing more people inside. And we can’t keep forcing our busses, our parks, our libraries, to function as social service providers. Neighbor by neighbor, we can do this together.”

The post Wilson Rolls Out Bills Expediting Emergency Housing for Homeless Residents first appeared on The Urbanist.

• 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.

The Elections Committee decides which candidates for office deserve The Urbanist’s endorsement. This volunteer commitment is around 20 hours, and requires some weekend and evening hours to complete interviews, vote on our selections, and write the endorsements.

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Where we need more information, we invite candidates for an interview with the Elections Committee, typically a virtual interview held in June. This allows the Elections Committee to engage directly with the candidates for follow-up questions. It also provides a unique opportunity to get to know candidates better and get your lingering questions addressed.

After interviewing the candidates, the Elections Committee meets to vote on endorsements. The process allows for the endorsement of no, one, or multiple candidates in each race, though selecting a single candidate is preferred. Members of the Elections Committee collaboratively summarize the endorsement reasoning in an article published before ballots are mailed out. Sometimes we also create graphics to promote our endorsements.

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The post Apply to Join The Urbanist Election Committee first appeared on The Urbanist.

The speech took place at the Langston Hughes Performing Arts Institute in the heart of the Central District, historically a Black neighborhood and cultural center. Wilson used the speech to lay out what Seattle would do to counter Trump attacks on immigrants, communities of color, and the rule of law. In a tumultuous and divisive time, Wilson sought to raise the banner of hope, community-building, and collective resistance.

“We all know that we are in a moment when our rights are under attack from so many directions, when it feels like at a national level, we are moving backwards when it can feel impossible to believe that our country will ever emerge from the storm clouds,” Wilson said. “And in these moments, it is so important to look to history and to recognize that we have stood at similar junctures many times before, and to remember how much has been achieved through social movements that emerged in the toughest times, brought people together, and won transformative change.”

Before getting into the affordability agenda, Wilson addressed gun violence concerns. She noted she and her team had grieved with the families of two Rainier Beach High School students tragically shot dead at a bus stop last month. The mayor pledged to redouble the city’s efforts to deploy an effective gun violence prevention policy.

“My office is working to develop a robust and multi-pronged gun violence strategy that will involve collaboration across City departments, County partners and community experts, including those who have lost loved ones to gun violence, Chief Barnes and other SPD leaders bring extensive experience in gun violence reduction that will be invaluable in this effort,” Wilson said. “And in the coming days, my office will convene a panel of local and national experts who will develop and launch a strategy that is grounded in a clear understanding of Seattle’s gun violence problem and is tailored to the needs of our neighborhoods and our communities.”

Housing and homelessness

As on the campaign trail, Wilson emphasized the issue of homelessness and clarified that her goal was for the City to produce at least 1,000 units of emergency housing in her first year — which would be the pace necessary to keep on track with her broader goal to produce 4,000 emergency housing units in her first term.

Wilson described how she intended to shift policy on homeless encampment removals (commonly called sweeps), which spiked under former Mayor Bruce Harrell. While she said the removals would continue to preserve community access to public spaces, she placed a greater emphasis on outreach, administering services, and offering viable shelter options ahead of removals.

“With well over 4,000 people sleeping unsheltered in Seattle as of last year’s Point in Time Count,” Wilson said, “I know that we have a big hill to climb, and dramatic changes will not happen overnight, but I am determined to add 1,000 new units this year with services matched to people’s needs, and we are on our way to reach this goal.”

The City has already started moving forward with siting a tiny house village/RV encampment on a piece of state-owned land in West Seattle, which would be able to accommodate 72 RVs and 20 tiny houses. That parcel had been eyed for similar types of encampments under previous administrations, but this one wasted no time in advancing it forward.

The mayor pledged “much bigger and bolder policy” to allow more housing to be built across the city, which her planning department has scoped out in phases.

“Seattle is a great city, and people and businesses want to come here and be part of it,” Wilson said. “That’s why we also need to build more housing of all shapes and sizes so more people can afford to live here. After last year’s Comprehensive Plan update, I am committed to advancing additional legislation to allow more construction of more housing in more areas.”

Wilson plugged her Renter Survey which she said has seen thousands of responses and is still open thru Feb 20. It will inform solutions for tenants. forms.office.com/pages/respon…

[image or embed]

— Doug Trumm (@metropolitanglide.bsky.social) February 17, 2026 at 12:15 PM

Wilson gave a plug for her renter survey, which is open through February 20 and available in 16 languages. With 6,000 responses already in, she said the survey will inform policymaking and clarify which issues are most pressing for tenants.

“We have heard about people forced to move every year because the rent just keeps going up so much faster than their income,” Wilson said. “We’ve heard about junk fees on everything from package delivery to mandatory concierge garbage service, and so much more. So this survey actually closes this Friday. So if you’re a renter and you haven’t filled out the survey yet, you still have a few days. Check it out at wilson.seattle.gov. I will be working closely with the City Council on policy in the months ahead. With their partnership, I hope to quickly provide renters some relief by reining in some of the most deceptive and abusive practices.”

Before she took office, the Seattle City Council already passed one idea that Wilson had pushed, banning algorithmic price-setting software that allow landlords to collude to raise prices. Wilson also gave social housing a shoutout, noting the windfall for the city’s new Seattle Social Housing Developer thanks to the high earners tax passed in a February 2025 ballot measure.

“I am thrilled to say that last week, our city council adopted the interlocal agreement, which will allow approximately $115 million to begin flowing to the social housing developer this spring. That is more than twice the revenue that was initially projected,” Wilson said. “We all know there’s a lot of wealth in this city, and it is very gratifying to know that we’re going to be able to use a very little bit of that wealth and put it to work building housing. It’s taken years to get here, and social housing, I think, really shows what sustained community led organizing looks like, and what it can achieve.”

Affordable Childcare

Wilson acknowledged the childcare cost crisis that the city a facing — an issue which her opponent sought to turn against her on the campaign trail by criticizing her decision to accept help from her parents to pay for childcare during the mayoral campaign.

“Thanks to the incredible work of the Department of Education and Early Learning and their award-winning Seattle preschool program and our child care assistance program, Seattle is actually already a national leader in this area,” Wilson said. “Now that’s really encouraging, but it’s also a little unnerving that we’re seen as leading, because any parent would tell you that there is still so much to be done. And I think it really just underscores how far the United States lags behind many other countries in our support for families.”

The mayor pledged to expand the pre-K and summer programs, while ensuring childcare worker earn living wages. She also pointed to the need for expanding the supply of family-sized housing.

“We need to bring down the cost of childcare, expand our pre-K program and summer enrichment opportunities, and also make sure that the people who are doing this work are paid enough to raise a family themselves,” Wilson said. “We also need to make it easier to site, start, and run childcare facilities in Seattle. Public space and housing are big parts of this too. We need to build more family-sized apartments and homes, expand offerings at our community centers and create more welcoming places for families to go and enjoy themselves without necessarily having to spend money. There’s a lot of pieces to this. But in the in the end, my job is to make Seattle a great place to live, work and raise a family, and part of that is making the whole arc of childhood an area of public concern.”

Food access

Wilson gave a nod to growing concerns over food deserts following Kroger’s decision to close of a number of grocery stories across the region, including a Fred Meyer in Lake City that a large swath of the city relied on. Wilson noted the history of Pike Place Market as a place for local formers to bring their produce directly to market, cutting out price-gouging middlemen, and hinted that kind of approach is needed again.

“One important step in that direction that long predates my administration is the Fresh Bucks program, which helps low-income Seattle residents afford fruits and vegetables at participating farmers markets, independent grocers and supermarkets,” Wilson said. “As of this year, we have increased monthly benefits and cleared the wait list, and Fresh Bucks is now supporting more than 17,000 households.”

The mayor stopped short of singling out a particular approach to expanding food access, but she did underscore that a new model may be needed and they’re working on it. The region’s largest union, UFCW 3000, represents grocery workers and has backed a Fresh Food for All campaign that included public option grocery stores. Wilson also backed the idea during her run — which helped earn her the union’s endorsement after the primary.

“We are also looking at new and alternative grocery models that better fit different community needs,” Wilson said. “Everyone deserves reliable, affordable access to fresh food in their own neighborhood, and we’ll be working to make that vision a reality.”

Business pitch

In a move consistent with her pledge to be a coalition-builder, Wilson spoke on the importance of business innovation and economic growth — and she even did some sports trash talking following Seattle’s victory in the NFL’s Superbowl. That made this segment of the speech almost sound like it could have been left over in a desk drawer from the Harrell years.

“So my message to Seattle’s employer community is that we want you at the table,” Wilson said. “We value your ideas, your investment, your partnership, and your willingness to stay engaged with us, as many of you are already doing, even if the work can be difficult, because Seattle has always been a city of builders. We build companies that change the world. We build research institutions that save lives. We build neighborhoods that reflect our values, and we build partnerships that make progress possible. And together, we can build a city that is more affordable and safer, where City Hall is known for good governance and delivering results that everyone can see and feel, a world class city that we can all be proud of.”

Wilson’s selection for Deputy Mayor, Brian Surratt, was also seen an olive branch to the business community, given his previous work as the City’s economic development director and CEO of Greater Seattle Partners, a “private/public partnership focused on attracting new business, promoting international trade, and growing our major industries for the region.”

On the other hand, Wilson did acknowledge business leaders were not likely to see eye to eye on every issue, with taxation often where the rubber meets the road.

Bus lanes and safe streets

While transportation was not framed as part of the mayor’s four-pronged affordability agenda, she did sketch out some plans to boost road safety, noting the continued failure to meet the City’s 2030 Vision Zero goal to end traffic deaths and serious injury collisions.

“I’m going to go off script for a moment here to say that a pedestrian, a young woman, was hit and killed last night in Capitol Hill, my neighborhood,” Wilson said. “We have to do better. We have to do better. We’re not on track for our Vision Zero goals, and we have to make it safe for vulnerable road users or people walking or people biking or people rolling to get around the city.”

Wilson mentioned she was excited for the crosslake opening of Sound Transit’s 2 Line — the light rail extension is scheduled for March 28. Plus, she reiterated plans to extend bus lanes to speed up Route 8 and noted Route 60 improvements and an overall boost to bus frequency are also in the works, to recover from pandemic losses.

“We are going to partner with the Seattle Department of Transportation to finally paint that bus lane on Denny Way,” Wilson said. “We’re going to speed up the crosstown Route 60, and advance a transformative Seattle transportation measure that gets us on track to restore and surpass the levels of transit service we had reached before the pandemic.”

The post Wilson Sketches Affordability Agenda in State of City Speech first appeared on The Urbanist.

The 2026 transportation levy delivery plan just released by the Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) includes a broad constellation of such projects, detailing the work happening at the city thanks to the eight-year, $1.55 billion levy approved in late 2024. That plan was in the works for months before incoming Mayor Katie Wilson took office, limiting the ability of her office to significantly shape what it looks like for 2026.

However, levy spending plans will ultimately form the canvas for much of the transportation work that will occur over the coming four years of her administration. Meghan Shepard, SDOT’s Director of Policy & Planning, told The Urbanist it was a “very exciting time” during a briefing on the plan last week.

“We’re really excited to have a mayor who has transportation and transit at the forefront of her priorities,” Shepard said. “The way that the levy delivery plan comes together is that it was in progress months ago. Projects require early analysis. A lot of them were in planning last year, where that analysis was happening. Some of them are just jumping into the hopper now and so the levy delivery plan that you’re seeing now is a picture of what is planned for 2026, to begin what we are looking forward to this year is that engagement with the mayor’s office and their priorities.”

The 2024 Seattle Transportation Levy was one of the crowning achievements of Wilson’s predecessor, Bruce Harrell, though it was criticized by transportation advocates as falling short of the level of investment needed to keep pace with a growing city. As a direct follow-up to the 2015 Move Seattle levy, which fell short of its campaign promises in several areas but pushed the city ahead in others, the new levy sets its sights lower, with far fewer signature investments spelled out. The 2024 levy includes much more flexibility to pivot away from a prescribed list of projects, if circumstances change.

While criticized at the time, that flexibility cuts both ways and could allow Katie Wilson to significantly shape the direction of the levy during her term, pushing investments toward higher-impact safety projects.

The workplan’s biggest opportunities

The 430 individual investments in the delivery plan, which add up to more than $190 million in expenditures just this year, run the gamut from mechanical upgrades to Seattle’s bridges to repair work on sidewalk staircases. The biggest opportunities for an ambitious administration looking to maximize transportation dollars are the relatively small number of major corridor projects. Those include explicit Vision Zero corridor projects intended to maximize safety, and major repaving projects that will also come with multimodal upgrades under Seattle’s Complete Streets ordinance.

The 2015 levy included Vision Zero corridor projects as well, but without a mayor with a strong vision for what those projects could accomplish, many of those upgrades fell short of their full potential. In fact, many of the same corridors targeted for upgrades during that levy are on this levy’s long-term list of streets that will likely be tackled, illustrating the fact that the City didn’t finish the job. Recent repaving projects have also left improvements on the table, though community advocacy has been able to push SDOT to get more ambitious about these major opportunities.

The Vision Zero corridor projects set to start construction this year would tackle Renton Avenue S in the Rainier Valley and Spring Street in First Hill, and are likely firmly baked. Beyond that, projects on S Othello Street/S Myrtle Street, Roosevelt Avenue NE/Pinehurst Way, Highland Park Way SW, and E Marginal Way in Georgetown will all advance further in design this year.

When it comes to paving work, Beacon Avenue, Western and Elliott Avenues in Belltown, S Henderson Street in Rainier Beach, and N 130th Street around Pinehurst Station present major opportunities. With those overhauls, the Wilson administration has the chance to support SDOT in redesigning these key corridors to align with the city’s broader transportation goals, something that hasn’t always been done in the past.

But few opportunities in the levy are greater than on Rainier Avenue, where repaving, safety work, and transit upgrades (to make way for the RapidRide R Line) all converge, especially around Judkins Park Station, where the road remains incredibly dangerous and deadly even as it welcomes thousands of additional neighbors via significant housing growth. If SDOT treated these projects as separate, the city would likely miss a once-in-a-generation opportunity to remake one of its most important corridors. Thankfully, early signs point to a coordinated strategy poised to gain backing from Wilson’s office.

“As a department, we’re very thoughtful about how we want to go out, engage with community, thinking about how we package those in a way to bring in these different elements, so that folks can have impactful engagement, and we don’t keep coming back to them time after time after time after time,” Serena Lehman, SDOT’s Levy Portfolio Manager, told The Urbanist. “So, we are working internally on that overall community communication strategy and how we want to engage.”

The delivery plan also provides the new administration with significant opportunities to move forward on another key campaign plank: transit improvements. Wilson’s top transit priority — advancing a bus only lane on Denny Way to get the Route 8 out of traffic — is on there, along with potential improvements on Olive Way that will help the same route. That project was already in the works before an Executive Order made expectations clear last month, a move that will certainly shoot it to the top of the priorities list and force SDOT to rethink some past assumptions.

Other transit upgrades on the list include a number of minor operational improvements across the city’s bus network, upgrades that likely fall short of full-on transit priority, but that will provide gains that can be reinvested back in King County Metro’s network. More exciting is the news that SDOT will advance work on a northbound bus lane for the Route 43 and 48 through Montlake, an improvement that was considered and rejected during a major corridor overhaul several years ago.

Even more notably, the delivery plan includes several as-yet-unidentified bus-only lane segments, a placeholder that leaves significant room for an administration looking to make big moves on transit.

“Transit, more transit lanes specifically, is really going to be a planning and design priority for us this year,” Shepard said. “That’s a really data-driven approach, where Metro’s travel time data really helps us pinpoint areas where we are seeing delay. So that’ll be an important criteria this year.”

The seeds of game-changing public realm improvements

The delivery plan also provides more detail than ever before on a brand new program created by this levy: “People Streets and Public Spaces.” Intended to create people streets that “activate business districts and community spaces” in line with neighborhood priorities, the program comes with nearly $70 million over the full eight years. While some of that funding is earmarked for specific projects that were handpicked by the Harrell Administration like the Occidental Promenade, many of the dollars will be able to unlocked in the name of grassroots urbanism throughout the city.

The delivery plan identifies several longstanding concepts that will enter the design phase: W Crockett Street in Queen Anne (the home of the Queen Anne Farmers Market), S Lander Street in West Seattle’s Admiral District, and 18th Avenue SW and SW Barton Street off Delridge Way. All three are prime candidates for pedestrianization in some form or another, finally creating a clear precedent for reallocating street space for community use in the heart of the city’s neighborhoods.

Shepard told The Urbanist that while these projects had been at the top of the list, the department is very cognizant of the need to look more broadly for opportunities for public realm improvements in neighborhoods that might not be battering down SDOT’s door.

“The thing that is really important to us is to ensure, through an equity lens, that it’s not just the communities who know about our programs or might know about [People Streets and Public Spaces] who get that opportunity,” Shepard said. “So, we’ll be doing the work and the touchpoints to sort of spread out to other neighborhoods and make sure they are aware of how they may be able to partner with us to try something out, or put in a small improvement. So what you’re seeing this year are some of the ones we know that there’s a lot of enthusiasm and action behind from community, so we’re able to get those in to motion this year.”

Another program that Wilson will get to influence is the Low-Pollution Neighborhood Pilot, has languished through several different administrations after starting life as a vague promise made by interim Mayor Tim Burgess in 2017. Last year, SDOT had identified an initial list of top candidate areas for neighborhood-scale investments intended to increase non-motorized travel and decrease emissions, but that list is still being refined in the light of the leadership transition happening now, The Urbanist has confirmed.

“This is a really good example of taking the opportunity to align with the priorities of the new Mayor’s office, so we do not have neighborhoods to share, and they’re coming soon,” Shepard said.

So far, Wilson’s biggest move on transportation has been to put a new interim SDOT Director in place, picking longtime Office of the Waterfront leader Angela Brady to replace Harrell’s pick, former SDOT Transportation Operations Division Director Adiam Emery. At a very brief appearance at the transportation levy’s oversight committee last week, Brady stressed her own experience with project delivery as a project manager on both the entire waterfront revamp and on SDOT’s overhaul of the Mercer Street corridor before that.

It remains to be seen whether Brady will put her stamp on the department in terms of policy, but she is poised to provide a steady hand until Wilson’s permanent pick to lead the department can be found.

The 2026 delivery plan may not be an illustration of Katie Wilson’s vision for Seattle’s transportation system, but it will provide her with a significant canvas to work with.

The post 2026 Levy Plan Sets Stage for a New Mayor’s Transportation Priorities first appeared on The Urbanist.

Julie Kang is running for the open seat in Seattle City Council’s District 5 this year, and is the first candidate in the race to qualify for democracy vouchers. She brings a successful career in banking, after co-founding Pacific International Bank, which focused on supporting Korean-American owned small businesses and grew to $200 million in assets before merging with Bank of Hope. 

While Kang emphasized that item when applying for an appointment to the Sara Nelson-led City Council in 2025, a year later in pitching herself to D5 voters, she is emphasizing her experiences in immigrant rights, education, and nonprofit work.

An immigrant from Korea and lifelong educator, Kang has a long list of professional, civic engagement, and volunteer experience, from serving as co-chair on the King County Immigrant and Refugee Commission to volunteering at her local food bank. She has never held elected office.

A passionate educator, Kang has taught at the University of Washington and Seattle University, training teachers to work with students who are multilingual and have diverse needs. 

“When we think about making decisions, policy decisions, I always say I put on my researcher hat, and I have to think about the whole continuum,” Kang told The Urbanist. “As a city council member, even though I am very active in my 32nd LD [legislative district] and the Democratic Party, we also have to think about all of the spectrum of political views and lived experiences, so I think that is a strength I bring as an individual.”

Kang is also a landlord, owning a single family rental property in District 5 that she told The Urbanist is her mother’s house. Public records show that Kang owns a third property in Lynnwood, in addition to the house in which she lives in District 5. 

Kang vied for the temporary appointment of the District 5 seat last summer following the resignation of then-Councilmember Cathy Moore. Moore served as councilmember for a year and a half before leaving, citing “health and personal reasons”. 

Moore was known for sponsoring the controversial Stay Out of Area Prostitution (SOAP) zone legislation, proposing a city-level capital gains tax, and supporting an update to the City’s Code of Ethics that would have weakened those rules: for example, by allowing councilmembers who are also landlords to vote on legislation that directly impacts landlords. 

In an unusual move, after her resignation, PubliCola reported that Moore sent in several questions to former colleague Councilmember Maritza Rivera to ask the potential successors to her seat. Moore also continued editing legislation after her resignation, with a special interest in expanding tree retention rules in the City’s growth plan.

The council ultimately chose to appoint Debora Juarez to the seat. Juarez had previously served as the District 5 councilmember from 2016 to 2023 and is now serving on an interim basis until the election this November. Whoever wins this race will serve out the remainder of Moore’s four-year term and will have to run again in 2027. 

Kang is facing off with climate advocate Nilu Jenks, who is running in the progressive lane.

The outcome of the race this year could shift the current power balance on the council. Right now the council is divided into three groups of three: Bob Kettle, Rivera, and Rob Saka constitute the centrist flank – along with the recently ousted Council President Sara Nelson – that ran hard on public safety; Alexis Mercedes Rinck, Dionne Foster, and Eddie Lin compose the solidly progressive wing; and Joy Hollingsworth, Dan Strauss, and Juarez sit somewhere in the middle. 

Community building through council

Recently, Kang had been running a program that brought teachers from all over the country to the Wing Luke Museum in the Chinatown-International District to learn Asian Pacific Islander (API) history. But when Kang learned the program, formerly funded by a National Endowment for the Humanities grant, had been defunded by the Trump administration, she realized she needed to do more. 

“I know as councilmembers, as elected officials, there’s so many squeaky wheels and so many things that the constituents are asking for, and we can’t get back to every single one of them, but we need to at least try, and we need to use our privilege and resources to get them to our constituents and our neighbors,” Kang said. “So for me, that’s why I want to run, because I am very fortunate to be in the space to have the knowledge, and I think I can be a bridge builder.”

Kang has been busy putting together whistle kits with ‘Know Your Rights’ information and distributing them to neighbors. Community members are disseminating whistle kits across the country in order for neighbors to alert those at risk of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) enforcement actions and allow for rapid community response. 

“What I have realized is that when you’re at the table where these discussions are being made at the higher level, we have more opportunities to represent our neighbors,” Kang said.

Kang pointed to her experience in banking and managing budgets as an educator as being illustrative of her financial literacy, a skill much needed by councilmembers who must deal with Seattle’s structural budget deficit. The City faces an estimated budget deficit of at least $127 million in 2027, with no long-term fix in sight. 

When The Urbanist asked about the ongoing budget hole, Kang first brought up Seattle’s sweetened beverage tax, questioning whether the proceeds of the tax are really going to provide healthy meals for Seattle’s students. The debate over the sweetened beverage tax has typically been between the harms of levying another regressive tax on Seattleites versus the health benefits of selling significantly fewer sweetened beverages in the city. 

When pressed further about Seattle’s budget woes, Kang suggested a combination of cuts with the option of new taxes. 

“We can’t just continue to tax, even though these are some opportunities to tax,” Kang said. “We have to look at what we are currently using, and are we making priorities based on the most needs of, for example, North Seattle? I think North Seattle has not always received our share of resources. Yet, I feel we’re getting more [than our] share of our challenges.”

Regarding the food desert in Lake City and food access more generally, Kang said at the food bank where she volunteers, they’re seeing people they haven’t historically seen before. She also mentioned the recent loss of the Amazon Fresh on Aurora Avenue N. Kang said she’d want to work in coalition with state electeds on bills and efforts to encourage grocery stores to stay. She didn’t have specific examples of what the council could do directly to address these food access issues.

Meanwhile, District 5 is getting a new Pinehurst light rail station at NE 130th Street, which Kang said is exciting. However, she emphasized needing more infrastructure to make density work. 

“Yes, we need the funding, but again, we cannot continue to fund to drive people out,” Kang said. “We need a city that works for working people. And we also have to prioritize how we’re going to think about all of our neighbors, starting with the young children who really need to get to school feeling safe to our elderly who want to stay in the neighborhood where they built a home for the last 30, 50 years.” 

Kang spoke about the difficulty of traveling from east to west in District 5 and wants to see some kind of connector or bus line that would address the issue. Later in 2026 after Sound Transit opens Pinehurst Station, King County Metro will launch Route 77, a crosstown bus connecting Bitter Lake, Lake City, and the light rail station. It’s unclear if Kang was referring to Route 77, or an additional improvement to the network.

She said she’s aware of accessibility issues like difficulty using strollers in areas of D5 or uneven sidewalks making it challenging for some elderly people to walk safely, and she also wants to be mindful of small businesses. 

Like her opponent Jenks, Kang would have supported Rinck’s Comprehensive Plan amendment last fall to add eight new neighborhood growth centers, calling it community building. The proposal was tabled but docketed to come back in “Phase 3” of the growth plan, following supplemental environmental work and community outreach process.

On public safety

With ICE detaining people off the streets throughout the country, Kang said she couldn’t currently support the use of surveillance in Seattle.

“Right now, surveillance cameras cannot work because even though we know, or we’ve heard, that the cameras function differently than the national ones and we are doing it the Seattle way, we should not collect data, because if we have it, if we’re ever subpoenaed, we don’t have control over it,” Kang said. 

Kang said she’d rethink her stance on surveillance if the sociopolitical climate changes, but right now the thought of surveillance causes people to feel anxiety and fear. 

Kang also disagreed with her predecessor on the SOAP and Stay Out of Drug (SODA) zones, saying she doesn’t support these policies. She cited the opposition of newly elected Seattle City Attorney Erika Evans to the SOAP and SODA zones, saying Evans is the expert. 

The SOAP and SODA zones were strongly supported by prior City Attorney Ann Davison.

“I want to make sure my constituents are on the same page, and if not, I worry more about the people who have different perspectives,” Kang said. 

As an alternative to supporting the SOAP legislation, Kang wants more resources to help with sex trafficking.

“I always say no mother wants to see their child go up and down [the street as a sex worker], but again, if their basic needs are not met today, do they know that they have options? Do we have enough resources?” Kang said.

Regarding gun violence, Kang thinks we need to educate and talk more about the consequences ahead of gun violence incidents. She spoke specifically about the danger to bus drivers who currently have to call King County to report incidents, with the county then reaching out to the City of Seattle, causing slower responses. 

“I think it’s important for us to see who owns guns, how are they stored, and then all of those stolen and unmonitored, the guns that we can’t account for,” Kang said.

In her statement of intent to be appointed to the D5 seat last year, Kang expressed interest in exploring “the possibility of a North Precinct location.” When The Urbanist asked about this idea, Kang said she liked the idea of moving the North Precinct to a location that is more visible and accessible and that might speed up response times. However, after speaking to Juarez, who has long been interested in something similar, Kang said that with the city’s current financial challenges, a new North Precinct probably wouldn’t be possible. 

Instead, Kang expressed the hope that between the expanded Community Assisted Response & Engagement (CARE) team and increased police officer hiring, response times to 911 calls will still improve. 

Unfortunately, CARE Chief Amy Barden has said 911 response times won’t improve without dispatch independence, which has been prevented by the recent Seattle Police Officers Guild (SPOG) contract approved in December.

Kang says she knows she doesn’t have all the answers, but she wants to make sure to put the constituents of District 5 at the center of decision-making. 

“With the current energy in the city, with leadership and the passionate and committed neighbors, I think we can build a district where people can live, work, belong, and thrive,” Kang said. “It just takes a leader who can voice that at the level where decisions are being made.”

The post Educator Julie Kang Enters Fray in D5 Seattle Council Race first appeared on The Urbanist.

Sam Steele will be the new interim head of the Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections (SDCI), Mayor Katie Wilson revealed in an email Tuesday to department employees. The 26-year veteran of City of Seattle government most recently served as SDCI’s director of inspections. Steele will start as interim director on February 11.

“I’m looking forward to working with Sam and the whole SDCI team as we deliver on an affordable and vibrant Seattle that works for everyone,” Wilson said in the email.

Steele worked his way up after Seattle Parks and Recreation hired him as a carpenter in 2000, Wilson noted, pointing to his long history with the City of Seattle that included several roles at SDCI and its predecessor, DPD, as well as at Seattle Center.

“I’m honored to step into the role of interim director of SDCI,” Steele said in a statement. “This department is home to some of the most innovative and dedicated employees in the city, and it’s a privilege to support the work they do every day, from permitting safe emergency shelter to upholding minimum housing standards, streamlining permitting and construction for future light rail and assisting small businesses as they activate streets across our community. I look forward to partnering with Mayor Wilson and colleagues across the city to strengthen communication, reduce barriers, and continue improving customer satisfaction and access to our services.”

In an email to staff sent later in the day Tuesday, Steele emphasized the department’s long history solving problems and innovating.

“This is a unique moment — one that gives us the chance to transform how we interact with customers and strengthen the relationships across divisions and the city,” Steele wrote. “Our department has a proud history of solving problems. We are one of the oldest in the city, beginning as Wharves and Bridges — hard to imagine now! Even 40 years ago, before computers were fully integrated, we managed the evolving codes and regulations that often created bottlenecks and confusion.”

Sounds like Belman is heading back to Sound Transit to become a Deputy CEO to Dow Constantine. She'd been with ST a long time and had previously filled in as acting CEO after Peter Rogoff's departure.

[image or embed]

— Ryan Packer (@typewriteralley.bsky.social) January 29, 2026 at 4:43 PM

SDCI Interim Director Brooke Belman announced her departure last week, but will remain on until February 10. Belman is returning to Sound Transit, where she will again serve as a Deputy CEO, this time under CEO Dow Constantine. She served as acting Sound Transit CEO in the gap between the firing of Peter Rogoff and the hiring of Julie Timm. She served as Deputy CEO before leaving to take the SDCI post.

Before Belman, SDCI had long been helmed by Nathan Torgelson, a 35-year veteran at the City of Seattle. Last March, former Mayor Bruce Harrell announced the two had mutually agreed to part ways — although Torgelson remained on though the summer.

The reasons for the leadership change were not entirely clear, but some within Harrell’s cabinet did appear to grow frustrated with perceived resistance within the department to efforts to streamline design review and the broader permitting process. Seattle has longer permit review times than many peers locally, including Tacoma: An ECONorthwest analysis found Seattle’s permit times exceeded 18 months on average for projects undergoing full design review from 2010 to 2020.

State legislation ended up forcing the department’s hand in some areas, as the SDCI effort to reform itself became bogged down in a contentious stakeholder process and ended up proposing minor tweaks rather than a wholehearted overhaul. Starting in June 2025, HB 1293 required that all design standards are “clear and objective” and sets a maximum of one public meeting per project. Previously, Seattle had often required three or more meetings, particularly in wealthy neighborhood with organized resistance to new housing.

Even then, the City had to rely on an interim ordinance to meet the state deadline, with permanent legislation still pending.

Each year, SDCI reviews and approves more than 55,000 land use and construction permits and conducts approximately 240,000 on-site and 10,000 virtual inspections, according to the Harrell administration. However, permit applications are trending downward sharply, which will be a challenge for Steele to tackle as the department’s new leader.

Averting a housing slowdown appears to be a priority for Wilson, but the task may not be easy. For his part, Steele has pledged to shift paradigms and indicated a willingness to jettison old practices that are no longer serving the city well.

“Today, I challenge each of you to break stride with past practices and help write the next chapter of the building department,” Steele wrote to employees. “Let’s leave a legacy of how we turned the corner and solved our own problems.”

Correction: The original version of this article said Mayor Wilson and Sam Steele emailed OPCD employees on Monday. Those emails were actually sent Tuesday afternoon.

The post Wilson Promotes Sam Steele to Lead Seattle Permitting Department first appeared on The Urbanist.

Rico Quirindongo, the head of Seattle’s Office of Planning and Community Development, did not mince words when bringing up the Center City Connector, the long-deferred project to finally connect the city’s two disconnected streetcar lines. In early January, Quirindongo was briefing the Seattle Planning Commission about the City’s growth plan for the downtown area, a proposal that conspicuously leaves out the beleaguered project.

“There’s no money. It’s not in the transportation plan, the federal dollars that [Mayor Jenny] Durkan put on hold, those are not coming back to us, and the price to do it is twice as much as it was five years ago. It’s dead,” Quirindongo told the commission.

Though an off-the-cuff moment of candor, but Quirindongo is likely not wrong. The current cost estimate to build the 1.27-mile connection along First Avenue, uniting the First Hill and South Lake Union streetcars together into a unified system, has skyrocketed to at least $410 million. Even if the City were able to re-secure the $75 million recommended to the project by federal officials in 2016, no City dollars are earmarked for the project.

The Seattle City Council voting to remove the project from the city’s Capitol Improvement Program in 2024 appeared a final nail in the coffin. An effort to restart the project and once again win federal grants would have to contend with a Trump administration that is much less friendly to transit projects — especially in Blue states.

A price tag edging into the half-billion range is daunting for a local streetcar or rapid bus project, though it’s basically a rounding error for a Sound Transit light rail project. The latest estimates put West Seattle Link as a $7 billion project and Ballard Link at more than $20 billion.

Incoming Mayor Katie Wilson told the Seattle Times last year that advancing the First Avenue streetcar was unlikely to be prioritized if she were to take office, while at the same time criticizing prior administrations for stringing the project along. Various Seattle Mayors had embraced the project to varying degrees since it was first studied in 2012 under Mike McGinn. Most recently, Bruce Harrell embraced the idea in theory, rebranding it the “Cultural Connector,” but didn’t make any substantive moves to secure funding.

“I doubt that the Center City Connector will emerge as a funding priority in my first term. Either way, we owe voters a clear explanation, and a commitment to never again let projects like this stagnate for so long,” Wilson told columnist Jon Talton last fall.

Bridging the network through downtown was expected to significantly increase ridership on the whole system, and the lack of that connection clouds the future of the two existing lines, which were built for different purposes without a long-range vision for the decades ahead.

This Friday, the First Hill line turns 10 years old, a piece of transit infrastructure that has matured into a workhorse of the city’s transportation network. As detailed recently by the Capitol Hill Seattle Blog, the 10-station line between Pioneer Square and Capitol Hill has nearly surpassed its pre-pandemic ridership numbers, becoming more than twice as efficient as the overall King County Metro bus network at moving people per service hour.

The First Hill line’s success stands in stark contrast with the South Lake Union line, which opened in 2007 and is not expected to return to its very modest 2019 ridership levels until sometime in the 2030s, if ever. At just 1.3 miles long, South Lake Union line is too short to be useful to many transit riders, while the First Hill line is nearly twice as long.

While more than 1.2 million riders jumped on a First Hill Streetcar in 2024, the South Lake Union line saw less than 20% of that figure, and has been hovering around 200,000 annual riders since 2022 — lower usage numbers than many Metro bus routes. While the First Hill Streetcar has surpassed 4,000 daily riders, the South Lake Union is consistently living well below 1,000 daily rides.

Despite return-to-work policies prompting employees in South Lake Union to go back into the office, many of those workers are choosing other modes, including bus routes that didn’t exist when the streetcar first opened, like the C Line and the Route 40. Soon the J Line will provide another option a few blocks away on Fairview Avenue.

Across downtown, streetcars would not be scurrying up and down Jackson Street if not for Sound Transit, and its 2005 decision to skip a light rail station in First Hill on the way to North Seattle. Designing a tunnel that could serve First Hill and then jog back around to Broadway and John Street proved to be a technical feat that the agency couldn’t confidently accomplish, and so the streetcar became the neighborhood’s consolation prize. In addition to paying for the majority of the $135 million needed to build the line, Sound Transit agreed to pay $5 million per year for operations — but only through 2023.

The limited duration of that funding agreement means the City of Seattle is now primarily responsible for maintaining an asset that was intended to connect riders with light rail indefinitely. While King County Metro is responsible for funding core bus service in Seattle, the agency has never taken the same responsibility for funding streetcar operations, even as it serves as the operator through a contract agreement.

As costs to maintain the two lines have increased, past City leaders had to get creative about funding sources that could plug the gap between dedicated streetcar revenue (including fares) and what it actually costs to keep the system running. Recently, the Harrell administration turned to the 2020 Seattle Transit Measure to plug that gap, a voter-approved funding stream directing a 0.15% sales tax toward bus service and related investments.

Six years ago, the City subsidy going into the Seattle Streetcar network was $5.4 million, a number has gone up to $13.4 million this year, dollars that could be used elsewhere in the city’s transit system. The 2026 budget adopted last fall diverted funding from transit capital upgrades — spot improvements intended to improve passenger amenities or speed up buses — into the streetcar budget to account for expenses growing more rapidly than expected.

The Wilson administration will face a choice around the streetcar system within just a few months, as they assemble a proposal to renew the 2020 transit funding measure. Wilson herself is already signaling that service levels and transit reliability will be her primary focus, and an early executive order this month targeting improvements for the Route 8 on Denny Way cites the benefits of a “robust, reliable transit network.” Without an entirely new funding source, choosing to continue to subsidizing the streetcar system with transit measure funds will coming with an opportunity cost, limiting Wilson’s ability to invest in transit more broadly.

Another hurdle on the horizon: the South Lake Union streetcar will likely have to shut down for as long as eight years during construction on Sound Transit’s Ballard Link Extension to allow for construction of the station planned at Westlake Avenue and Denny Way. That looming infrastructure project, which Wilson will put her stamp on as she joins the Sound Transit board this month, will likely color the entire discussion around what to do about the South Lake Union line.

The First Hill Streetcar celebrates its birthday this week as a successful piece of the transit network, a line that has fulfilled its mission to connect riders in one of the city’s densest neighborhoods with light rail. But the storm clouds on the horizon for the Seattle Streetcar are getting harder to ignore.

The post Seattle Streetcar Faces Uncertain Future as Newest Line Turns Ten first appeared on The Urbanist.