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.

Nilu Jenks is running for the open seat in Seattle City Council’s District 5, hoping to advocate for climate action, democracy, affordability, and community safety. 

As a first-generation American whose parents immigrated from Iran, Jenks was inspired to run by the climate emergency and the urgency of uplifting environmental justice in Seattle, which runs the gauntlet of issues from affordability to transit and pedestrian infrastructure to child care. Jenks also spoke of the importance of strengthening democracy in our country and wanting to show that Blue cities can deliver on meeting people’s needs and providing a good quality of life for everyone.

“I want people to have faith in our democratic process and our institutions, and build trust in them,” Jenks told The Urbanist. “I think community is where a lot of our answers lie, but we need a system that supports that, where we get to come together and hang out and talk to each other and have real discussions rather than just labeling each other.”

Jenks ran for the same seat back in 2023, earning The Urbanist’s endorsement, but she came in third place in the primary behind Cathy Moore. Moore cruised to victory in the moderate lane, defeating equity consultant ChrisTiana ObeySumner, who ran in the progressive lane, by nearly 30 points. 

Normally the District 5 seat wouldn’t be up for election until November 2027, but Moore resigned from her seat last summer, narrowly missing the deadline that would have triggered a replacement election later that same year. Moore cited “health and personal reasons” for her decision to resign, although the announcement came close on the heels of her controversial push to weaken the ethics rules that govern the council’s behavior. 

The council chose to appoint Debora Juarez, who had held the District 5 seat from 2016 to 2023, to serve on an interim basis until the election this November. Juarez has indicated she would not seek reelection.

Jenks is a mother of two teenagers and has a long history of community organizing. For the last few years she has worked as the Political and Partnerships Director at FairVote Washington to advance voting reforms that foster a more inclusive and representative democracy. She’s also spent a lot of time advocating within the schools, including serving as a board member of Roosevelt Alumni for Racial Equity (RARE) and a PTA Advocacy Chair at John Rogers Elementary School. 

Jenks is the first person to declare her candidacy for the District 5 seat. The outcome of the race could swing control of a closely divided council to progressives, or keep centrists narrowly clinging to power, if progressives again fail to win the seat. The victor will serve only the remainder of the term (13 months) before facing reelection.

Affordability and climate friendly policies

Jenks voiced support for adding more density to Seattle and said she supports Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck’s Comprehensive Plan amendment from last year to add back eight new neighborhood growth centers. 

“Density where humans live is where we need to be denser to protect, and that’s a climate-makes-sense policy, and it’s important to translate to the public the why,” Jenks said. “We can do this and make it work and have a really fun city.”

Jenks is also interested in making public transit, walking, and biking safer in District 5, especially for children. Safety and reliability are keys to making more people choose public transit over cars, she said. 

Citing the importance of reliable ways to connect to light rail, Jenks wants to focus on safety improvements like protected bike lanes and good pedestrian access for the new Pinehurst light rail station at NE 130th Street and the other two stations in District 5. She also pointed out how difficult it is to travel from east to west in the city, emphasizing the importance of regular and reliable buses to address this issue. 

Jenks framed the new “food desert” in Lake City created by the closure of the neighborhood’s Fred Meyer grocery store as an urgent issue. Jenks lives in Lake City and emphasized how the neighborhood is also a pharmacy desert without any 24-hour pharmacies where people can get their medications filled easily.

Adjusting zoning and permitting to make it easier to open grocery stores is something Jenks would like to pursue, as well as working with UFCW 3000 (the region’s largest union) to see what can be done to bring more grocery stores back to the market. She also supports farmers’ markets and the idea of direct buying from farmers’ stalls to offer an alternative to big corporate grocery stores and provide access to fresh produce. 

Jenks mentioned the importance of supporting smaller stores in Lake City that meet people’s needs, such as Goodies Mediterranean Market. 

If elected, Jenks says she will champion 1,000 new units of affordable housing in the district during her term. She wants to support new Mayor Katie Wilson in her affordable housing goals while also exploring ways to prevent displacement.

“You know, as we build up, the light rail stations opening have a really big impact in community,” Jenks said. “I think we saw that on the south end, and maybe that growth wasn’t managed as well. So how can we protect people that live here out of the upzone and make sure that they have the ability to return back to their communities and neighborhoods as things change, or give them the ability to buy into some of the housing? Because this is a community.”

Jenks is also interested in working with the state legislature to find a way to make a land value tax work for the state. Proponents argue a land value tax would spur urban development and raise revenue in a fairer way compared to conventional property taxes.

The importance of safety

Jenks said she was motivated to announce her run early in this election cycle because of the brutal actions of U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement (ICE). 

“I just couldn’t watch my neighbors now being kidnapped or killed by ICE, and feel like maybe I could do something and not let people know that’s my intention,” Jenks said. “Very much so it’s my intention to protect all our neighbors and expand the definition of safety from unsheltered to undocumented, and yes, that includes sex workers too, and their neighbors. It’s all of us.”

Jenks herself has birthright citizenship, and there was a time when her parents became undocumented before obtaining citizenship themselves. 

Jenks wants to see if there’s anything the City can do to notify people when ICE kidnaps a family member. She believes in the importance of a strong relationship with state electeds, mentioning her support of the current bills banning face coverings for law enforcement and regulating license plate readers. She mentioned community policing and the idea of hiring police officers who live in the communities they serve. 

“I do know that there’s a lot of limitation on what we can do over federal government, but what we can do is train each other,” Jenks said. “You know, all these whistle trainings that you’re seeing out of Minneapolis, it’s happening in Seattle on a smaller scale. I’d love to see a bigger community response in that regard, so that we know what to do ahead of time.”

When asked about her thoughts about the surveillance expansion vote last year in council, Jenks was unequivocal in her opposition: “I actually emailed them at the time and said, ‘Please don’t do this.’ This is not the time when we’re falling into authoritarianism. It’s not the time. We don’t have the federal protections in place for us to decide that we can do this the right way.”

She mentioned the disproportionate impact these surveillance tools have on immigrants and people of color. 

After the Parkland High School shooting in 2018, Jenks helped organize the largest gun buy-back program in the nation in San Mateo County, and she plans to bring a gun violence prevention lens to the council. 

Jenks emphasized that over 50% of gun deaths in the U.S. are suicides, making it important to provide adequate mental health supports for folks. She also supports additional gun safety legislation at the state level. 

When asked about the Stay Out of Area Prostitution (SOAP) orders championed by her predecessor Moore, Jenks said she wants to see the data, but thinks it hasn’t been supportive so far. She wants to speak more with the people most impacted, particularly workers in the sex industry.

“I think part of it is, how do we provide more resources to that community? And, you know, build up Aurora to be more of a neighborhood,” Jenks said. “I don’t think it was the right move. I think there were other ways that we could have done that didn’t involve, again, relying on criminalization, and where you can go, where you can just move around, right? So at this point, I’m like, well, show us the data, and let’s work with the community.”

Strengthening democracy

Seattle will be implementing ranked choice voting for the first time in 2027, and Jenks is ready to be a champion on the council around this process. In addition to working on voting reform in her day job, she sits on the King County Ranked Choice Voting Advisory Committee. 

Jenks said it will be important to engage in a lot of voter education next year around ranked choice voting, as well as ensuring Seattle’s Department of Neighborhoods has the appropriate funding to facilitate such education while not leaving anyone out. She also spoke of attacks on democracy at the federal level and how proportional ranked choice voting can act as a remedy for some of the curtailments the U.S. Supreme Court might make on the Voting Rights Act.

“It’s very important for Seattle to get this right,” Jenks said.

The D5 race is only just getting started, and Jenks has already received several progressive endorsements, including from Washington State representatives Darya Farivar, Julia Reed, and Brianna Thomas, House Our Neighbors co-executive director Tiffani McCoy, and Seattle School board members Liza Rankin and Vivian Song.

“The two things I think we need leadership on this council […] is the climate and democracy and understanding how that relates to us on a local level, from local journalism to implementation of RCV (ranked choice voting) and how climate can actually guide us towards justice for people living in the streets who don’t deserve to live in smoke,” Jenks said. “I talk about democracy, but really what I mean is trust that these institutions can serve you and also that you have a right to your voice.”

The post Climate Advocate Nilu Jenks Announces D5 Seattle Council Campaign first appeared on The Urbanist.

The ideological differences between Foster and Nelson were stark, with Foster joining the Council’s resurgent progressive wing. Meanwhile, Nelson anchored a centrist majority and recruited a slate of more conservative candidates who swept into office in 2023 and controlled the Council for two years, before voters appeared to tire of that approach.

While centrists had focused on austerity and appeasing business interests, Foster has echoed Mayor Katie Wilson in wanting to broaden the focus to everyday Seattleites struggling to get by and carve out a cultural space in the city.

“Listening to Mayor Wilson talk about, not only do people deserve bread, but they deserve roses, and rest, and space to live their lives,” Foster told The Urbanist, referencing the incoming mayor’s inauguration speech last week. “There’s a lot that we agree on, right? I think we agree on the need for new revenue. I think we agree on focusing the agenda on housing. I’m so excited to collaborate with the new mayor on expanding the shelter capacity.”

Wilson has set an ambitious goal of creating 4,000 units of emergency housing in her first term. Both Wilson and Foster have also set the goal of increasing housing capacity and production at all income levels via improvements to Seattle’s growth plan. The zoning component of that plan is still being ironed out, after the state-mandated plan fell woefully behind schedule under Mayor Bruce Harrell’s watch. With these strong housing stances, Foster earned the endorsement of The Urbanist Elections Committee (on which we serve).

Foster underscored the need to improve housing outcomes and affordability in a speech following her swearing-in ceremony.

“Our neighbors want to be able to raise their families here and have access to good schools and safe neighborhoods,” Foster said. “Our neighbors want the busses to come on time. Our neighbors want us to build the damn trains. Our neighbors want to feel safe crossing the street. Our neighbors want safe places to sleep at night. They want more housing and more places around the city, and they want thriving third places to spend their day, whether that be a park, a library, or a neighborhood business, and they all want to be able to afford to stay in the city that we all love so much.”

While laying out a firm foundation in progressive values, Foster also pledged collaboration across ideological divisions.

“My commitment to you as your newest city council member,” Foster said, “is to work, to negotiate, to collaborate, and sometimes to fight every day to help build this city alongside anyone who wants to push in the same direction, so that we together can make life better for everyone who makes Seattle the city that we love.”

A focus area for Foster looks to be easing displacement pressure, which is weighing heavily on working class Seattleites, especially communities of color and families struggling with child care costs.

“I am really excited to start to work on policies that are going to help make it easier to build more housing and also to protect our neighbors who are getting displaced,” Foster told The Urbanist. “I think we want to be able to talk more about the displacement that’s happening in the city for folks, and look at what we can do to continue moving the ball forward and keep people in the city.”

Foster will chair the housing committee, overseeing issues like renter protections, Seattle Office of Housing investments, and appointments to the Seattle Social Housing public development authority’s governing council.

Foster expressed excitement to be sitting on the land use committee, which will be chaired by fellow newly elected councilmember Eddie Lin, who handily won a special election in District 2. Since Lin was taking over for an appointee, he took office at the end of November, getting a head start on the rest of the 2025 class.

Like Foster, Lin will bolster the progressive wing, which had been getting a little lonely for Alexis Mercedes Rinck until reinforcements arrived. Rinck also took a new oath of office Tuesday, after coasting to reelection with 81% of the vote.

While mostly snubbed from the public safety committee, progressives are heavily represented in the land use committee, with features Lin, Rinck, and Foster, along with Dan Strauss and Joy Hollingsworth. The housing committee will feature the same members, but with Debora Juarez swapped in for Strauss.

Foster’s victory forced Council to elect a new president of the body, and councilmembers unanimously elevated District 3’s Joy Hollingsworth. Hollingsworth is to the left of Nelson and likely to act as a swing vote between the solidly progressive camp and the ardent centrist camp. Neither side has a rock-solid majority, which brings the risk of legislative gridlock as well as the opportunity for creative politics to forge new coalitions and a way forward.

The post Dionne Foster Takes Office, Aiming to Tackle Housing Issues first appeared on The Urbanist.

The role of Council President is usually an administrative one, without much fanfare involved. But Nelson wielded the role in a more heavy-handed way: making major staff changes that were seen as ideologically motivated, assigning legislation that she sponsored to the committee she chaired, and drawing a hard line against disruptions in council chambers that often ground council meetings to a halt.

With the Nelson era officially over, Hollingsworth starts her term as President on a council that is much more ideologically fractured than the one she was elected to serve on just over two years ago. The addition of Foster, and new District 2 Councilmember Eddie Lin, has significantly bolstered the council’s progressive wing, and the election of Katie Wilson as the city’s first progressive major in 16 years will also likely change council dynamics as well.

“This is my promise to you all and the residents of the city of Seattle: everyone who walks through these doors will be treated with respect and kindness, no matter how they show up, in their spirit, their attitude or their words,” Hollingsworth said following Tuesday’s vote. “We will always run a transparent and open process as a body. Our shared responsibility is simple: both basics, the fundamentals, measurable outcomes, accessibility to government and a hyper focus on local issues and transparency.”

Seattle politicos are predicting a closely split city council, arguably with a 3-3-3 composition, with two distinct factions of progressives and centrists, and three members — Dan Strauss, Debora Juarez, and Hollingsworth herself — who tend to swing between the two. Managing those coalitions will be a big part of Hollingsworth’s job, with a special election in District 5 this fall likely to further change the dynamic.

Though it took Tuesday’s vote to make the leadership switch official, Hollingsworth spent much of December acting as leader already, coordinating the complicated game of musical chairs that is the council’s committee assignments. In a move that prioritized comity among the councilmembers ahead of policy agendas, Hollingsworth kept many key committee assignments the same as they had been under Nelson.

Rob Saka will remain in place as chair of the powerful transportation committee, Bob Kettle will keep controlling the public safety committee, and Maritza Rivera will continue heading the education committee, which will be tasked with implementing the 2024 Families, Education, Preschool, and Promise Levy.

There are plenty of places for progressives to find a silver lining in the new assignment roster, however. Foster will chair the housing committee, overseeing issues like renter protections and appointments to the Seattle Social Housing PDA’s governing council.

"Our neighbors want to be able to raise their families here, and have access to good schools and safe neighborhoods. Our neighbors want the buses to come on time. Our neighbors want to build the damn trains. Our neighbors want to feel safe crossing the street." -Seattle CM Dionne Foster

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— Ryan Packer (@typewriteralley.bsky.social) January 6, 2026 at 4:00 PM

Alexis Mercedes Rinck, who secured a full four-year term in November, will helm the human services committee, a post she’d been eyeing for much of her tenure and which matches her background working at the King County Regional Homelessness Authority. Labor issues have been added to her committee as well, and she will vice-chair the transportation committee.

Lin, a former attorney in the City Attorney’s office who focused on housing issues, will stay on as chair of the wonky land use committee, after inheriting the post from interim D2 appointee Mark Solomon last month. Thaddaeus Gregory, who served as Solomon’s policy director and has extensive experience in land use issues, has been retained in Lin’s office.

The land use committee overall will likely be a major bright spot of urbanist policymaking this year, with positions for all three progressives along with Strauss and Hollingsworth. The housing committee will feature exactly the same members, but with Juarez swapped out for Strauss.

In contrast, Kettle’s public safety committee will feature Eddie Lin as the sole progressive voice, and Dan Strauss’s finance committee, which oversees supplemental budget updates that occur mid-year, won’t have any of the council’s three progressives on it at all. Strauss will also retain his influential role as budget chair.

But the biggest issues facing the council in 2026 will be handled with all nine councilmembers in standalone committees: the continued implementation of the Comprehensive Plan, the renewal of the 2019 Library Levy and the 2020 Seattle Transit Measure, and the city’s budget, which faces significant pressures after outgoing Mayor Bruce Harrell added significant spending that wasn’t supported by future year revenues.

Hollingsworth will likely represent a big change in leadership compared to Sara Nelson, but with such a fractured council, smooth sailing is far from assured.

The post Joy Hollingsworth Takes Helm in Seattle Council Shakeup first appeared on The Urbanist.

Harrell’s framework has faced significant criticism for not going far enough to accommodate future housing growth in Washington’s most populous city, including from the City’s own planning commission.

On top of the 8-0 vote to adopt the plan itself, another unanimous vote will put new zoning standards in place across the city’s lowest-density zones, with beefed-up allowances added by the council that will allow builders to make small-scale multiplex development more easily pencil out as feasible. One local architect described those new standards as leading to Neighborhood Residential (NR) zones that are “fundamentally changed.” Formerly known as single family zones, NR areas account for nearly three-quarters of the land in Seattle zoned for housing.

Nonetheless, Seattle’s biggest housing debates still lie ahead. While the new Comprehensive Plan lays out the locations for 30 new neighborhood centers — areas of higher-density zoning, mostly focused around existing commercial districts — the exact zoning standards for those areas won’t be adopted until next year as part of the plan’s second phase. That phase also includes lifting apartment bans in the blocks directly along some of the city’s most frequent transit corridors, something that is much less prescribed by the plan and therefore more up for grabs.

Beyond that, the City has pledged a phase three, which will look at zoning changes to “urban center” neighborhoods that are already Seattle’s densest areas, like Northgate, Capitol Hill and Alaska Junction.

“When I talk to our neighbors about the Comp Plan, I often say that it’s the wonkiest thousand-page document that has such a deep impact on our day-to-day lives, because at the heart of this, the Comprehensive Plan is about how we will live our lives: where people can live across our city, how we will ultimately move through our city, and it represents our shared future,” Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck said ahead of Tuesday’s vote. “This update to our Comprehensive Plan represents such an important start to make Seattle a more affordable place to live, while also reconciling with our racist history of land use within the city.”

At first glance, the timing of passing a Comprehensive Plan now might look like a missed opportunity for the new mayoral administration, led by Mayor-elect Katie Wilson. On the campaign trail, Wilson had been critical of Harrell’s proposed plan for not going far enough, and it now represents the new floor which her administration can build upon. Rather than the plan itself, the biggest limiting factor in 2026 will be how quickly Wilson’s administration can conduct environmental review to make additional changes. In some ways, not having to worry about adopting a major Comprehensive Plan update at the same time will likely prove to be a gift.

“If we only plan for housing to match expected population growth, that’s a recipe for continued tight housing markets and unaffordable rents, with homeownership remaining out of reach for most,” Wilson told The Urbanist’s elections committee earlier this year in explaining why she supported going further than Harrell did. “We should be adding more neighborhood growth centers, expanding the definition of ‘near transit,’ granting social housing the same density bonus that other types of affordable housing get, eliminating parking minimums, fix the stacked flats bonus so it actually results in building stacked flats, exempt smaller projects from [Mandatory Housing Affordability] fees so they will pencil out, etc.”

The city council also came up against the barrier of the environmental review process when trying to pass their own amendments. Rinck’s proposal to restore eight neighborhood centers that had been explored earlier in the plan’s development wasn’t able to make it in for that reason, and instead it ended up in a resolution which also passed Tuesday, laying out a laundry list of changes for the city’s Office of Planning and Community Development (OPCD) to work on in 2026.

OPCD will have to juggle those priorities on top of any new goals added by Wilson, which could ultimately prove a challenge given the department’s limited staffing levels.

The council did make one substantive change to the plan before its final vote, removing a small area west of 18th Avenue that had been set to be added to the First Hill/Capitol Hill Regional Center. Filling in a “donut hole” of lower density within one of the city’s most transit-rich neighborhoods had been proposed by the Harrell Administration, but Comprehensive Plan Committee Chair Joy Hollingsworth raised concerns about lumping that area in with Capitol Hill’s regional center instead of the Central District urban center, which will extend east of 18th. Keeping a boundary at 18th was seen as essentially splitting this historically Black neighborhood in two.

Hollingsworth had intended to put forward an amendment moving all of the area into the Central District urban center, but that amendment would not have come with enough public notice to be legal.

“The intention behind this, the second phase to this, is during Phase Two of the Comprehensive Plan, is to then post a 30-day notice for us to upzone that area, particularly for that to be the Central District Urban Center,” Hollingsworth said.

Despite the fact that OPCD spent years holding open houses, attending community council meetings, and taking feedback on the proposed plan, Comprehensive Plan Committee Chair Joy Hollingsworth pledged even more outreach around the plan’s second and third phases. An alleged lack of outreach on the plan had been a concern raised by Councilmember Maritza Rivera and by Cathy Moore, who resigned from the council earlier this year. But to many housing advocates, those concerns seemed to come from a place of assuming that the City should be responding more vigorously to incumbent property owners who wanted to see the plan scaled back, even more than it already had.

“We will have better outreach to everyday people, from our [OPCD] department to our office as well, to make sure people’s voices are heard and that we get everyone’s voices across the city, that is really important” Hollingsworth said.

Eddie Lin, the council’s newest member who took office just three weeks ago, framed the decisions made around zoning and transportation as part of this process as foundational to how the city achieves its goals — or doesn’t. Lin will chair the land use committee next year, barring a committee shakeup next month.

“The reason we are in the position we are in today, around affordability, around homelessness, around unsafe streets is because of mistakes that we have made in the past. And this doesn’t solve all of those mistakes, but I think this puts us on a better path, moving in the right direction” Lin said. “This past weekend, we lost the life of a bicyclist in Beacon Hill, and that was pretty devastating for our community. And if we want to make real progress on Vision Zero, we have to think about how we’re addressing our built environment, how we’re building dense walkable neighborhoods with good infrastructure for pedestrians, for bicyclists, and that we’re transitioning away from our over-reliance on vehicles as our primary mode of transportation.”

While the biggest housing discussions are still in the future, finally adopting the Comprehensive Plan is a big lift, and the city won’t have to consider another major update to its growth plan under state law until 2029, as part of the Midpoint Comprehensive Plan Update. But given the new administration’s focus on housing affordability and sustainable transportation, the issues laid out in the plan will likely remain front-and-center.

The post Seattle OKs New Growth Plan, but Biggest Zoning Battles Lie Ahead first appeared on The Urbanist.

Councilmembers Alexis Mercedes Rinck, Eddie Lin, and Rob Saka voted against the new SPOG contract, citing lack of progress on key police accountability issues. Rinck flagged continued obstacles to deploying civilian crisis responders. 

“The badge earns trust not from its shine, but from the conduct behind it,” Saka said. “The proposed SPOG CBA (collective bargaining agreement) is a bad deal for the City of Seattle. Accountability provisions contained in that contract are too lightweight and do not at all close the gap between what’s set forth and our accountability ordinance, our city values, and the terms and conditions and the final agreed upon contracts. For those reasons, I will be opposing and voting against this deal.” 

Both Saka and Lin referenced personal past experiences with police brutality.

“It’s important to recognize that the grief and the anger and the frustration that led to the nationwide protests in 2020, those are just as real today as they were then,” Lin said. “We have never addressed the root causes, the generational trauma that was inflicted upon our communities. It continues to be inflicted upon too many. And you know, we can’t just sweep it under the rug. We can’t just ignore it or move past it, although many people would like to, because it is a festering wound that will continue to impact our communities, continue to impact our ability to provide true public safety.”

Councilmember Joy Hollingsworth voted in favor of the contract, in spite of saying on the campaign trail in 2023 that she would oppose a SPOG contract that didn’t grant subpoena power to the Office of Police Accountability (OPA) and the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) and didn’t remove limitations on how many OPA investigators are allowed to be civilian versus sworn. The new SPOG contract doesn’t achieve either of these goals. 

Councilmembers voted unanimously in favor of the less contentious Seattle Police Management Association’s (SPMA) new contract. Both police guild contracts cover the term from 2024 to the end of 2027. SPOG represents the rank-and-file of the Seattle Police Department (SPD), while SPMA represents SPD’s lieutenants and captains, a much smaller number of employees. 

The mayor’s office takes the lead role in negotiating the contract with SPOG leaders, but the City’s Labor Relations Policy Committee (LRPC) plays a key role in the bargaining process, and consists of five city councilmembers. By design, this composes a majority when it comes time for the council to vote on the contract. Should any of those five councilmembers vote against a contract approved by the LRPC, SPOG could choose to file an unfair labor practice, saying the City didn’t bargain in good faith. 

However, some police accountability and civilian alternative response advocates, tired of waiting for reform that continues to be kicked down the road, believe such an action would be worth the legal risk. Beyond the lack of accountability wins, critics contend the contract’s generous terms will strain the City budget and siphon resources from other programs that contribute to safety and wellbeing. 

The SPOG contract raises the starting base salary of an SPD officer to $118,000, with a pay bump to $126,000 after six months. This base doesn’t include overtime, special event bonuses, or the newly negotiated premiums for language fluency and education. 

The negotiated raises, bonuses, and special incentive pay are not tied to accountability standards. Officers with a colorful misconduct record – or, in the case of backpay, even officers who have been terminated – will receive the same negotiated benefits.

Council’s central staff estimates that the contract will cost the City an additional $131.7 million during its term. Financial planning reserves will cover the additional costs through 2026, leaving $43.6 million in extra 2027 spending unaccounted for. Any net new officer hires in 2027 would also require SPD’s budget to grow. 

Outgoing Mayor Bruce Harrell made the completion of bargaining for this SPOG contract a priority before the end of his first term. Its passage now, however, a few short weeks before he leaves office, means that Mayor-elect Katie Wilson, along with new Councilmember-elect Dionne Foster and City Attorney-elect Erika Evans, won’t have as meaningful a chance to influence police accountability and alternative response, both important issues in Seattle. 

Accountability in the contract

Police accountability didn’t used to be included in police guild contracts, which typically cover wages and working conditions. Moving accountability issues to the bargaining table has drastically reduced their transparency to the public; accountability measures are now enshrined in difficult-to-understand legalese in labor contracts and require confidentiality during the bargaining process, meaning the public doesn’t know what’s happening until a full contract is presented and inevitably framed as a fait accompli. 

In turn, this shift to bargaining away accountability has contributed to reduced public trust in police departments, as well as local government overall. 

Seattle’s landmark accountability ordinance, passed in 2017, was meant to enshrine a basic level of police accountability, a minimum floor that advocates and community groups intended to build upon and improve in subsequent years. While some aspects of the ordinance needed to be bargained with SPMA and SPOG, that bargaining was intended to happen quickly to allow further progress. 

However, a new SPOG contract passed in 2018, negotiated by the office of then-Mayor Jenny Durkan, broke that promise and failed to bargain key aspects of the ordinance, which remain unrealized to this day. As a result, the City has been unable to enact basic police accountability measures, and the conversation has remained essentially frozen for the last several years. 

This inability to make accountability progress was a major inspiration for the movement seeking to divert police funding to other programs, which caught fire in 2020 protests reacting to the killing of George Floyd at the hands of police. The defund movement unsuccessfully pushed to cut SPD funding by 50% in 2020 — instead SPD funding has grown — outpacing growth rates at most other departments. Seeing the continued power of SPOG to block commonsense accountability measures while SPD responded violently to protests against police brutality highlighted the systemic issues with policing and the failure of earlier reform efforts. 

The newly passed SPOG contract continues the status quo, with the accountability ordinance remaining unfulfilled. 

A small gain in the contract that allows longer retention of OPA misconduct files regardless of outcome of the investigation is the result of needing to be in compliance with a state law passed in 2021. The clarification of the 180-day investigation clock modifies a system that some experts have recommended against in its entirety. OPA’s civilian investigators may now assist in serious misconduct cases that might end in termination, but they can’t be the sole lead on such a case. These changes are incremental at best. 

On the other hand, SPD will now be allowed to deal with “less than serious” misconduct cases in house instead of referring them to the OPA, in a move SPD leadership has been requesting for years. While this change could potentially free the OPA to spend more time on serious cases while building the leadership skills of SPD officers, the implementation of the system will be key. Removing the OPA entirely from the system and relying solely on the OIG for any review, as the contract states, could lead to problems, as in-house discipline still needs to be consistent, timely, and fair. 

The City and SPOG will be entering interest arbitration to determine several issues around arbitration used to appeal disciplinary decisions around officer misconduct. That being said, information about the issues being arbitrated provided by Mayor Harrell’s Chief of Staff Andrew Myerberg indicates that while the changes sought by the City would be an improvement, they would still fall short of the 2017 accountability ordinance, which requires disciplinary appeals to go through a public hearing in front of the Public Safety Civil Service Commission (PSCSC).

The interest arbitration process could take several months to complete.

The CARE team

Supporters of the contract have been citing its new provisions for the Community Assisted Response and Engagement (CARE) team that provides alternative civilianized response to behavioral health-related calls that don’t require a police response. The contract makes the CARE team permanent and allows it to expand at will.

The contract also allows the CARE team to be “solo dispatched” directly from 911 without police co-response. However, the contract also imposes so many restrictions on when solo dispatch is possible as to serve as a serious impediment to the team actually being able to do their jobs. 

For example, the CARE team is not allowed to go by themselves to help anyone in a private residence or business, a car, or a homeless encampment. They also aren’t allowed to respond alone if there is any chance a crime has taken place such as public drug use or possession or if expected drug paraphernalia is present, which includes aluminum foil. 

All these restrictions prevent the independence of Seattle’s 911 dispatch to determine which responder should go to which calls. CARE Chief Amy Barden has repeatedly explained that dispatch independence is required to make 911 call response times faster. 

Earlier this year, the City championed a bill at the Washington State Legislature, sponsored by Rep. Shaun Scott (D-43, Seattle) that would have provided the right for the City to establish an alternative response team that wouldn’t need to be bargained with law enforcement personnel. SPD’s Dan Nelson, who at the time was an assistant chief, testified before the House committee. 

“Alternative responses to non-criminal 911 calls is crucial for ensuring that individuals in crisis receive the most appropriate care while allowing law enforcement to focus on serious public safety concerns,” Nelson said at the hearing. “We have proven that the rank and file appreciate the service, and they leverage the service.” 

In early March, SPOG’s President Mike Solan released an episode of the police guild’s podcast that featured doctored photos of Mayor Bruce Harrell, Scott, and Nelson dressed in colorful clown wigs, condemning the bill in question.

Several months later, in mid-September, a post on SPOG’s X social media account announced Nelson’s demotion from assistant chief to captain with the caption FAFO (eff around and find out). The post appeared to take credit for Nelson’s demotion as a retaliatory response after he supported the bill that would ensure the smooth operation of alternative response. 

Options moving forward

In addition to continuing to push important accountability issues into interest arbitration, many elected officials have highlighted the importance of a state-level fix that would remove police accountability issues from the collective bargaining process entirely. 

A bill that would have achieved that goal was introduced in the state legislature in 2021 and again in 2022. However, it faced stiff opposition from organized labor, who worried that even narrowly targeted changes to collective bargaining could represent a slippery slope for labor rights in the state.

“Our system is fundamentally broken,” Saka said. “Our state law keeps it broken. It is past time to address this root cause. Washington’s system is built to produce weak oversight. State law prevents cities like ours from unilaterally strengthening police disciplinary rules. That means anything and everything tied to misconduct must be specifically negotiated, bargained for, and agreed to by both parties. Under current state law, even police misconduct matters are considered routine or standard, quote unquote, terms […] and conditions of employment.”

Saka went on to explain why police misconduct in particular shouldn’t be considered standard or similar to other collective bargaining rights.

 “Police officers carry the state’s authority to use deadly force… Nothing about this solemn authority is routine or standard,” Saka said. “This authority to use force and potentially take a life requires a stronger set of oversight, not oversight designed to collapse during negotiations. The legislature must act. The legislature must change this law now so discipline and misconduct rules cannot be bargained away. Without that change, Seattle will continue to face contracts that undermine our values. Lives are literally dependent on it.”

Barring a state law change, another possible recourse is to change the City Charter mandating the existence of SPD so it can be disbanded, as was done in 2012 in Camden, New Jersey. In Camden, the city opted to build a new department from scratch. 

During his Seattle City Attorney campaign earlier this year, Rory O’Sullivan suggested something similar: that Seattle move to disband its police department and instead contract its policing services from the King County Sheriff’s Office.

“The point that I was trying to make during the campaign was […] that SPOG has created a whole bunch of roadblocks, and, I believe in a number of instances, hasn’t really negotiated in good faith,” O’Sullivan told The Urbanist. “And so the City should be prepared to keep all options on the table. And one of those options is marshaling a charter initiative to change the charter to allow the City to contract with the county as a bargaining piece to hopefully give the City a better opportunity to hold SPOG accountable.”

Aside from the two larger possibilities outlined above, Wilson will have to get creative in finding ways to move police accountability and alternative response forward during her first term. Since the new contract runs until the end of 2027, SPOG will have the option of stalling and working without a contract for two years in an attempt to avoid having to bargain with Wilson, should she fail to win a second term. 

Chief Barden of CARE already has a lot of ideas of how to deploy her team of alternative responders. While she’s hoping SPD will be willing to refer appropriate 911 calls to the CARE team, she’s also setting up arrangements with the King County Jail and local hospitals to be able to receive direct CARE response. The CARE team could also potentially be dispatched through 988, which isn’t a body of work SPOG can attempt to claim. 

Plus, the CARE team can continue its proactive patrols in areas where crisis calls are common.

In addition, Wilson can find ways to encourage better accountability directly through SPD and the accountability agencies, focusing on issues that don’t have to be bargained. For example, SPD’s promotion process could be reformed, requiring consultation with a candidate’s supervisor and review of their misconduct record instead of relying solely on test scores. The department’s backgrounding process that resulted in the disastrous hire of former Officer Kevin Dave could potentially be reviewed and changed.

Wilson could encourage more enthusiastic support for the CARE team from current SPD Chief Shon Barnes, whose services she just announced she will be retaining. Wilson will have the opportunity to decide who should serve as the director of the OPA, as the current director Bonnie Glenn only serves until the end of 2026. 

In a written interview with The Urbanist last month, Wilson underlined her commitment to transparency, which has often been lacking around issues related to SPD. 

“I want people to see a city government that’s transparent about what we’re doing, what’s working, and what challenges we’re facing,” Wilson said. “That’s how we rebuild trust so we can make real progress.”

However, undoing the damage from another SPOG contract that falls short will be an uphill battle, and it could take a long time. Harrell signed the new contract on Thursday, three weeks before his term ends.

The post Seattle Approves Controversial Police Guild Contract, Three Councilmembers Dissent first appeared on The Urbanist.

In the coming days, the Seattle City Council should do what it has failed to do for eight years: vote to reject a proposed police labor contract that continues to undercut police accountability. The proposal is a bad deal negotiated by a lame duck mayor, giving police a big pay raise while allowing them to continue to block accountability and hinder the City’s civilian crisis responders. 

Councilmembers will claim, and mostly exaggerate, potential legal consequences for voting no, ignoring the certain legal consequences of voting yes: tens of millions of dollars of court settlements to those harmed by unaccountable police.

At an October 22 press conference, Mayor Harrell presented the terms of a proposed new union contract with the Seattle Police Officers Guild (SPOG), which represents rank-and-file SPD officers (officers, detectives, and sergeants). Harrell claimed that the proposed contract “significantly strengthens police accountability meeting key elements of the 2017 Accountability Ordinance.” This is false.

This proposed two-year contract includes terms that continue to undermine foundational elements of the 2017 legislation. This contract rolls back existing accountability measures, such as now proposing that the Seattle Police Department self-investigate what they determine to be minor complaints.

Over eight years after passing the 2017 legislation the Seattle City Council still appears to only be able to aspire to outdated accountability measures that they then vote against, as they did in voting for the 2018 and 2024 SPOG contracts. The 2017 legislation was a half-a-loaf compromise, yet we are still failing to salvage all of those few slices.

Below, I elaborate on the major concerns that make this proposed contract unacceptable, even for people who believe in the most modest of accountability measures. I am focusing on the most significant issues impacting police accountability and ignoring other major issues like the continuing restrictions on who the Office of Police Accountability (OPA) can subpoena in an investigation, continuing problems with calculating investigation timelines, pay rates, SPD monopolizing traffic control during major events, a decades-long call to reform the corrupt off-duty employment practices (still governed by 33-year-old agreements), and so on.

Issues of police accountability – as opposed to police reform, training, or policy – are most crucial after a federal consent decree ends. In the nearly three decades of federal consent decrees on policing there is a pattern of police returning to former bad practices at the end of federal oversight. 

“The influence of a consent decree may gradually build up over time before lapsing post-treatment,” researchers John L. Worrall and Zachary A. Powell wrote in 2019.

Contract would undercut accountability for many years into the future

Sustaining whatever modest gains in police behavior that have been made in Seattle will require strong accountability measures. As important as these half-measures were in 2017, they are far more important now.

The Seattle City Council voting on a police contract of major importance just days before a new mayor, a new city council member, and a new city attorney take office is undemocratic and cynical. Given that police contracts take years to negotiate – with old contracts remaining in force until a new one is agreed upon – approving this contract would unfairly saddle newly elected Mayor Katie Wilson with restrictions she very likely won’t be able to change while in office.

In fact, passing this contract will give SPOG strong incentive to never negotiate with Mayor Wilson. SPOG is likely calculating that it’s better to delay and work the last two years of Wilson’s first term on a lapsed contract hoping that another centrist, like Harrell, sweeps into power and offers far more generous terms, including retroactive pay covering the years worked under an expired contract. When it comes to police contract negotiations, the incentives the City has created are counterproductive and continually undercut accountability.

Make your voice heard at City Council

To weigh in, email all nine city councilmembers at council@seattle.gov. Call or email them at their individual lines of contact as well. Attend and testify at the Seattle City Council meeting on Tuesday December 9th at 2:00pm, or call in with public comment. And, if they do not vote then, show up again on December 16th at 2:00pm. 

Here are some tips for making public comment. Demand that they reject the proposed SPOG contract or, at the very least, delay any vote until after our new citywide councilmember, city attorney, and mayor have taken office in January.

The four foundational accountability elements the contract undermines

The four foundational elements of the 2017 legislation were:

• Moving away from having SPD officers investigate themselves when it comes to complaints or misconduct,
• Setting a clear and reasonable standard of evidence to be used in investigations into officer violations of training or policy,
• When officers appeal disciplinary decisions, having a process that did not continue the history of favoring officers, reopening investigations, and reducing discipline due to a history of leniency in police discipline, and
• Requiring the OPA to categorize and potentially investigate all complaints.

These elements are critical — even if inadequate and outdated — to the operation of any police accountability system that was to function better than what had preceded it.

In all four of these areas, the proposed contract rejects the 2017 legislation. The failures of this contract are not hidden: proposed contract “Appendix E” (starting on page 91) is labeled on the bottom of the pages “Effective through December 31, 2023,” indicating that this is from the contract finalized in 2024, whose terms are now simply folded in to the new 2025 contract. The newly proposed contract makes no significant advances over prior SPOG contracts from 2018 (except for the 2024 contract allowing two additional civilian investigators at OPA while still prohibiting those investigators from leading most, if not all, serious investigations).

Who investigates police abuse

A major advance in the 2017 legislation was that, after more than a century of police investigating police, there would be the possibility of only civilians investigating police.

Section 3.29.140(C) of the 2017 police accountability ordinance states (emphasis added): “Within 12 months of the effective date of the ordinance introduced as Council Bill 118969, intake and investigator personnel shall be entirely civilian or a mix of civilian and sworn, in whatever staffing configuration best provides for continuity, flexibility, leadership opportunity, and specialized expertise, and supports public trust in the complaint-handling process.”

The 2017 legislation established that the Office of Police Accountability (OPA) director could create an exclusively civilian body of investigators to investigate complaints against police officers. Eight years later this provision of the law remains blocked. The newly proposed SPOG contract restricts the number of civilian investigators to a maximum of four (out of around a dozen total investigators) and prevents them from independently leading an investigation that could result in substantiating serious allegations (potentially almost all investigations; see “Appendix D,” pages 89-90).

Not appreciated here is the fact that the non-civillian investigators in the OPA are exclusively SPD sergeants, who serve as regular SPD officers before spending one to three years in OPA and then returning to their regular duties at SPD. How is it remotely possible for such an investigator to hold another officer accountable when months later they may be again serving alongside them?

This failure to implement civilianization of OPA investigators in the new contract is egregious given that the last head of OPA, Gino Betts, repeatedly stated his desire to have 100% civilian investigators. Even more egregious: the state of Washington in 2021, in creating the Washington State Office of Independent Investigations, had long ago adopted a model of only having civilian investigators investigating all cases they take up. How is state legislation so far ahead of Seattle’s?

The standard of evidence for officer discipline

The 2017 legislation established a preponderance of evidence standard (meaning anything above 50% or “more likely than not”) for upholding a complaint and discipline. This was a major advance for accountability.

The proposed contract changes this standard radically to an ambiguous “elevated standard of review,” nebulously higher than a simple preponderance, but something short of “beyond reasonable doubt.” This is clearly outlined in Section 3.1 of the proposed contract (page 9) which states that “an elevated standard of review (i.e. – more than preponderance of the evidence)” will be used “for termination cases where the alleged offense is stigmatizing to a law enforcement officer.” Since many violations, including material dishonesty, is stigmatizing, and an investigation into a trivial violation could subsequently reveal material dishonesty, almost any investigation can fall into this category.

How officers appeal potential discipline

The 2017 legislation (under 3.29.420 A(7)(a)) required that all officers who appeal a disciplinary decision must do so through a hearing, open to the public, in front of the newly formed City of Seattle Public Safety Civil Service Commission (PSCSC).

The proposed contract, page 102, allows officers to go through the current and extremely flawed process of independent arbitration, a process which is closed to the public and uses standards of review that advantage the officer. For example, as noted above, an arbitrator would make decisions based on an ambiguous and highly subjective evidentiary standard, would be allowed to examine the case “de-novo” (in essence reinvestigate a closed investigation), and consider new evidence and witnesses that the officer failed to disclose earlier.

The rationale in 2017 for the exclusive PSCSC appeals process was that a person employed by and living in Seattle would make decisions rooted in the values and expectations of the local community. Arbitrators, who are selected from a broad geographic area without ties to Seattle, would, as a matter of historical precedent, make decisions based on a history of what would happen to an average officer who engaged in a similar violation in other cities. In essence, arbitrators virtually guarantee that the long history of badly behaving police facing only trivial sanctions would be perpetuated. 

A perfect example of this happening in Seattle involves the case of SPD officer Adley Shepherd, where an arbitrator (in this case it was a mediator who served as a tiebreaker in an older appeals process) overturned the police chief’s termination of Shepherd and instead meted out a trivial 15-day suspension. For the arbitrator, a cop unnecessarily punching a woman in the eye, hard enough to break the eye socket, wasn’t that serious.

Mayor Harrell claims that the proposed contract makes one very narrow gain in the arbitration process: that if an arbitrator determines a violation occurred and that there should be discipline, that the arbitrator should give “deference” to the discipline imposed by the police chief. This is a trivial fix, whose efficacy depends on “deference,” to an extremely biased system.

It should be noted that while a police officer gets numerous attempts to reverse or appeal discipline decisions, the complainant gets exactly none when their complaint is rejected or fails to be upheld (there was a companion ordinance in 2017, still ignored over eight years later, that mandated the investigation into and possible development of a complainant appeals system).

Who gets to investigate complaints

The 2017 legislation required the OPA to potentially investigate all complaints, even complaints that arose within the SPD. The new contract mandates that many of these complaints can now be dealt with internally by the SPD, undercutting transparency and accountability. This hands more power to control investigations and discipline back to the police.

On page 16 of the proposed contract it states that “less than serious misconduct” complaints submitted to OPA will not be investigated by OPA but will instead be forwarded to SPD for internal investigation and decisions around discipline. Similarly, if the SPD receives a “less than serious misconduct” complaint from the community or from other officers, the SPD gets to determine how it is to be dealt with, without involving OPA.

Given the continuing failure of the OPA over more than eight years to properly classify complaints (e.g., the continuing problem of complaints not being investigated because they were classified as “contacts”) and the failure of the OIG to properly audit OPA’s work (see here and here), this change is a disaster.

Consider the 2014 case of William Wingate, two years into the federal consent decree, which resulted in a federal jury finding that the SPD officer engaged in racial discrimination and awarded $325,000 to Wingate. A crucial finding, resulting from outside investigations, was that SPD intentionally failed to report or consider this case as one of racial discrimination (SPD officers would falsely claim that no one made a discrimination or bias complaint). 

The newly proposed SPOG contract returns Seattle to the days when the SPD gets to decide when and if an incident is serious and what they think the violations might be. This allows officers to bury claims of racial discrimination and misconduct – in order to maintain community trust – by simply ignoring or pretending to have misunderstood those complaints.

SPD retains control over how CARE responders are dispatched

The proposed contract still maintains tight restrictions on the types of incidents that the newly created Seattle Community Assisted Response & Engagement (CARE) can respond to without SPD officers (called solo dispatch) and gives SPD far too much discretion in determining if a particular call meets the SPD requirements for CARE’s solo dispatch or involvement.

Appendix I (pages 107-110) of the newly proposed SPOG contract outlines the conditions for Seattle’s new CARE department to solo dispatch to a behavioral or mental health crisis. Note the date of this appendix indicates that this is taken verbatim from the prior 2024 SPOG contract.

The only advance from previous SPOG agreements is that there are now no limits on the staffing for CARE. However, the restrictions as to when CARE can solo dispatch and the complete authority that SPD officers have in making a decision to allow solo dispatch, negates much of CARE’s utility. These failures are well documented by Erica Barnett and Amy Sundberg.

Conclusion

Seattle’s 2017 police reform legislation was a floor – maybe more accurately a basement – when compared to police accountability systems developed in Newark, New Jersey, Nashville, Tennessee, and other cities. There has been a failure in public understanding that federal consent decrees on policing only impose constitutional standards, not community standards or just standards. At their best, they are only a floor.

There is a common type of police killing referred to as “lawful but awful,” that is, police killings that are perfectly constitutional but are criminal, unjust, or unheard of in other countries. Neither the federal consent decree or the 2017 legislation addressed the problem of lawful but awful killings, nor did they  prevent the widespread abuses of protesters in 2020.

Similarly, SPD officers continue to kill people who only had a knife or no weapon in their hand, oftentimes experiencing a serious mental health crisis, as happened most recently in March this year.

As antiquated and inadequate as Seattle’s 2017 legislation is, to leave parts of that unimplemented for the foreseeable future is unconscionable. You will hear questionable claims from the current mayor and council members about “binding arbitration” and “unfair labor practices.” Don’t be fooled.

You will be told that some unresolved issues will still be bargained over during the term of the new contract, a process called “binding arbitration,” where a labor arbitrator listens to the city and SPOG and then decides what is fair. It is absurd to allow fundamental issues of public safety and police accountability to be decided by a random arbitrator.

Additionally, the public has not seen actual agreements that lay out precisely what issues and parameters will be subject to binding arbitration, except for a City Council staff memo that claims this will happen on only two issues related directly to accountability (the discipline appeals process and who can be subpoenaed, see items 4 and 5 on page 4 of the memo). Without documents from SPOG indicating precisely what the issues and parameters are, that both sides have agreed to submit to binding arbitration, this cannot be evaluated or taken seriously.

You will also be told that if the council fails to vote for the proposed contract that SPOG will launch an unfair labor practice (ULP). That happens frequently in labor relations and is not something to fear. In fact, after the people of Seattle have waited patiently for over eight years, walking away from an unacceptable SPOG contract and facing a hypothetical ULP would be a relief and offer some glimmer of hope.

When council members vote on the proposed contract, on December 9th or 16th, it should be a vote for hope and not a vote based on imagined fear or endless failed promises for the future. It should be a vote that ends the repeated cycle of the City acceding to SPOG’s demands while SPOG blocks the most moderate of accountability measures.

The post Op-Ed: Seattle Council Must Reject Harrell’s Police Guild Contract, Demand Accountability first appeared on The Urbanist.

While Lin officially started in his new role last week, when King County’s election results were certified, Tuesday was the time for his first remarks as an elected official.

The new councilmember credited his focus on housing affordability and lifting up marginalized communities for his win over Adonis Ducksworth, who was a transportation policy advisor to Mayor Bruce Harrell.

“I think our message resonated strongly around housing affordability, around taxing wealthy corporations, around just being a strong voice and doing strong community engagement with District 2,” Lin told The Urbanist. “We are the most diverse district, and that means there’s a lot of barriers to representation.”

In a speech after taking the oath of office, Lin said many people in his district are struggling and need help, from the parents paying $3,000 per kid for childcare and struggling to afford the high cost of family-sized housing to people lacking housing altogether.

“I think about our unhoused neighbors, especially as winter approaches, who don’t have a roof or heat or safety or a bathroom to use, and I wonder how that’s possible in such a wealthy society, and how things have only gotten harder and worse 10 years after declaring a state of emergency for homelessness,” Lin said.

Lin embraced the goal of abundance in housing and community resources, and ultimately concluded his speech with a note of hope and collaborative spirit.

“When we have an abundance mindset and share our power and resources, we foster a community where we take care of others and they also take care of us,” Lin said. “And as I reflect on that world that we can foster, that world of abundance that happens when we come together as communion, it becomes crystal clear to me that I am not alone in this work, that we are not alone in this work, and that the resources and tools that we need, that our kids and elders need to flourish are right here in this room and all around us. It is us working together, growing together, talking and collaborating together.”

Lin noted the strong sense of belonging and community he has felt in Seattle. That stood in contrast to a childhood in Durham, North Carolina in the 1970s and 1980s, when he said he felt his Asian heritage as a source of shame and his biracial identity was only recently legalized and still controversial to many. He gave a shout to the many local Asian American leaders that blazed the trail for him.

“I think a bit about the shame and embarrassment I felt as a kid being Chinese and Taiwanese in a culture and society without strong Asian role models,” Lin said. “Versus the pride I feel now about my heritage, especially living here in Seattle, where we have such strong and rich Asian, American, Native Hawaiian, Pacific Islander history and culture and leaders, whether that’s folks like Wing Luke or Ruby Chow or David Della or Velma Veloria or Sharon Maeda in the crowd here today.”

In an interview with The Urbanist following the speech, Lin put a little bit of meat on those rhetorical bones, saying raising progressive revenue would be a top priority to ensure Seattle is funding enough housing and social services to meet the crisis. Lin vowed support for “anything we can do to rapidly expand shelter, tiny home villages” to get unhoused people inside. At his very first council briefing the day before, he noted a lack of references to progressive revenue in the city’s draft state legislative agenda for 2026, and suggested a potential amendment could be on deck.

Lin pledged to pursue broad solutions to increase community safety and “find creative, new ways to deal with public safety that are not just an enforcement approach.” He noted environmental design is too often overlooked, but that the City has experimented with traffic barriers near Aurora Avenue N to deter drive-by shootings.

When asked how he would vote on the proposed labor contract for the Seattle Police Officers Guild, which outgoing Mayor Bruce Harrell is seeking to get approved by Council before he leaves office, Lin said he was still making up his mind. Critics contend the contract offers a big pay raise that will strain the City budget while still failing to implement Seattle’s police accountability law approved in 2017 and hamstringing the City’s new civilian crisis responder department.

Clearing a path for an expansion of the civilian-run Community Assisted Response & Engagement (CARE) department was among Lin’s priorities, and he said he was happy to see the cap on civilian responders lifted — though the police contract adds new restrictions to the circumstances when the CARE team can respond without police co-response.

“The other top priority for me is accountability, greater civilian oversight,” Lin said “And I don’t think there was enough progress made on that front in this round. So, yeah, that’s going to be a tough one for me, but look forward to diving in and learning more.”

Shifting balance on council

Lin was sworn in earlier than other newly elected winners around the region because he is replacing an appointed councilmember. In those circumstances, state law stipulates the election winner take office as soon as election results are certified. The opening for D2 Council seat was set in motion by Tammy Morales’ resignation in January — even as she had nearly three years remaining on her term. Council voted to appoint Mark Solomon as a temporary replacement until the next election.

Lin will now serve the remainder of Morales’ term and face reelection in 2027.

Lin's message resonated across D2. His opponent Adonis Ducksworth only won a handful of precincts. This WA Community Alliance map shows precincts Lin won in green, with only a few orange beachheads for Ducksworth. www.theurbanist.org/2025/12/02/k…

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— The Urbanist (@theurbanist.org) December 2, 2025 at 2:22 PM

Morales cited mistreatment and ostracization by her colleagues as a major motivating factor for her resignation. Morales was often the lone progressive vote in 2024, after centrists picked up three seats in the 2023 election, seized control of Council, and installed Sara Nelson as Council President. However, Nelson lost her reelection bid by a wide margin, and progressive nonprofit leader Dionne Foster will take over her seat next month. In other words, Lin will have more allies than Morales did.

Working with Katie Wilson

Ahead of the primary, Lin endorsed Katie Wilson’s successful mayoral bid, noting similarities in their messages and plans around affordability and taxing the rich. (Both candidates were endorsed by The Urbanist Elections Committee, on which I serve.) Wilson won District 2 by 12 points despite the fact that Harrell lives in the district and used to represent it as councilmember.

“Affordability is a top issue for District 2,” Lin said. “People are getting pushed down to District 2 from other parts of the city because of affordability. And then people in district two are getting pushed further south, or getting pushed onto the streets. So, yeah, I do think we certainly feel it pretty acutely, the affordability crisis around child care, housing, groceries, utilities, property taxes.”

Lin's affordability and housing abundance message was a hallmark of his campaign from the beginning. His first interview with The Urbanist is here: www.theurbanist.org/2025/03/10/e…

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— The Urbanist (@theurbanist.org) December 2, 2025 at 2:16 PM

Lin pointed to road safety as another salient issue in Southeast Seattle, which is a major hotspot for deadly crashes and has fewer safe facilities for people walking, rolling, and biking.

“Her resume and her messaging around transportation, safety and transit, with MLK and Rainier being some of the two most dangerous roads, I think that resonated with folks,” Lin said. “Super excited to get to work with her and have a strong partner on floor seven.”

Lin said a recent vigil for victims of fatal car crashes held in his district was top of mind.

“As I think about community, I also think about another event I attended on Saturday, organized by the Rainier Ave Committee, a group that centers the voices of Black youth,” Lin said. “They held a vigil for victims of traffic violence on the corner of Othello and MLK. And I felt both a sense of sadness for the many lives lost traffic violence, and also hope, seeing the energy of our youth and advocating for a better future [so that] traffic violence and our addiction to vehicles as the primary mode of transportation can become a thing of the past.”

The post Eddie Lin Becomes Seattle’s Newest Councilmember first appeared on The Urbanist.

The fee adjustments are intended to stave off significant budget cuts at the department and stabilize its revenue, which is 90% dependent on collecting permit fees from builders. Even so, the budget sunsets or defunds around a dozen full-time positions at SDCI. Those staff reductions come on top of cuts enacted last year.

Without adjusting fees up, the department’s core staffing reserve would be on track to be completely exhausted by the end of 2026, with SDCI’s overall permit fund at risk of depletion by 2027 or 2028.

With the adjustments, a homeowner looking to build a 500-square-foot backyard cottage will pay an additional $543 for permits, and the developer of a 230-unit apartment building will pay an additional $50,000, approximately. And as SDCI officials explained to councilmembers Monday, the adjustments signal a broader recalibration of the city’s construction market, as fewer large commercial office buildings and high-rise residential projects move forward — projects that bring in higher permit fees under the city’s tiered fee structure.

“Over the past decade, we’ve seen a lot of larger, high-value projects coming in the door, which brings in a lot more revenue compared to smaller and mid-sized projects, and it has sustained us quite a bit over the years, but there’s a structural change in the types of projects coming in the door now,” SDCI finance director Shane Muchow told the Council. “So, we have a lot of these smaller and mid-sized projects coming in the door, and the amount of revenue that we are earning from those projects is not enough to cover the cost of doing business.”

While the number of construction permits issued by SDCI has been rebounding in recent months after reaching a low point in 2023, the valuation of those permits has not been rebounding — a fact that reflects the dearth of larger projects that had been commonplace in the city. Fewer construction cranes downtown ultimately meant that SDCI needed to find a way to recoup more revenue from lower-value permits.

If the boom in smaller housing projects prompted by recent changes to encourage development in the city’s lower-density zones actually materializes, that structural imbalance may very well continue indefinitely, with the city’s commercial building market showing no signs on an uptick in the near future.

“We historically tied the cost of that permit to the value of the project, because that was seen as essentially a proxy for the relative complexity, a proxy for the amount of time,” Central Staff Director Ben Noble said. “As it turns out, we were probably, in some sense, overcharging the big projects — they were a source of revenue that helped keep the fees down for the smaller projects. Larger projects have gone away, on the whole, so we are now left to recover fees from a smaller set of projects that have less value.”

Monday’s procedural vote to increase the permit fees ultimately passed only on a 5-3 vote, after concerns were raised by Council President Sara Nelson and Councilmember Maritza Rivera. But coming on a final day of procedural votes ahead of a final committee vote Thursday, the ability to avert the change — without unbalancing the carefully assembled 2026 budget by millions of dollars — was limited. (Mark Solomon joined Nelson and Rivera in voting no.)

“It is a really hard vote because I don’t like saddling the projects that are least in a position to absorb these costs than the bigger projects that are in a better position to absorb the costs,” Rivera said Monday. “This is really it’s difficult. We’re trying to incentivize more development across the city. Everything’s getting more and more expensive, and that just makes it hard. And to pretend it’s not hard […] does a disservice.”

At a September 30 budget work session where SDCI officials presented the draft budget, it was Councilmembers Alexis Mercedes Rinck and Debora Juarez who flagged the fee increases. However, no subsequent budget amendment attracted enough to support to advance throughout October.

“This is a small drop in the bucket for a lot of projects. I think what they’re looking for are reduced interest rates, better economic conditions, more macroeconomic changes that can help drive the development,” Muchow told Juarez, in response to a question about whether the city expects its permit fee increase to broadly impact the viability of building projects. “I don’t think that this is going to affect that.”

Nelson, who is set to leave office at the end of the year, suggested that funding to offset the increases should come from “underspend,” or dollars that are left at the end of the year when departments aren’t able to fully allocate them to projects. The underspend at the city’s Office of Housing has been a particular target for Nelson, despite the fact that many of the large, complex housing projects funded by the City would not move forward without the dollars put in by the city on a “first-in” basis. While the underspend at a specific department might be significant in a given year, those dollars carry forward to fund their intended purpose and diverting them away would ultimately impact City services and commitments.

“What I think is good policy is sending the signal that we want more economic activity in this town. We want more building. We want more housing, etc. And so to me, this is sending the wrong signal at precisely the wrong time,” Nelson said. “Meanwhile, we know that there are $10 million regularly in the underspend. And so to me, it seems as though we really do have to prioritize both our human capital and the future of this city and wanting to attract more business growth in building and housing and so that is, that’s just where I’m coming from.”

Ultimately, the hope is that with the larger permit fees, SDCI can maintain its staffing levels through until the city’s next building boom — a prospect that looks dimmer and dimmer as the clouds of a potential nationwide recession on the horizon continue to gather. Even with the $8 to $9 million added to SDCI’s coffers under current projections, the department is still set to use up more than $10 million from its reserve fund in both 2026 and 2027.

“SDCI recognizes the historical cyclical nature of the building business. So in good times, it very purposely builds up reserves, potentially very significant reserves,” Noble said. “These cost centers are running in the red. We are spending more on the staff than we are taking in fees right now, and we are running down those balances. We are doing this very purposely to keep — I’m going to invoke some economist-speak here — to keep our human capital. So we have a bunch of City folks who are very well trained in this work. And if we let them all go during slow times, when the better times come, we have to go find them again, maybe not the same people, and then retrain them.”

The post The ‘Structural Change’ About to Make Homebuilding More Expensive in Seattle first appeared on The Urbanist.

As sold by its proponents, the vision behind the zoning tweak was a potential “Maker’s District,” with smaller, more affordable industrial spaces that become feasible to develop with residential uses above. Under city code, half of new apartments in Urban Industrial (UI) zones like the stadium district one have to be set aside as affordable to households making anywhere from 60% to 90% of King County’s median income. Because of that, Nelson and her allies touted the bill’s passage being as a major win for affordable housing in Seattle.

But with significant freight corridors in the area including First Avenue S, Edgar Martinez Drive, and Royal Brougham Way, the council needed to repeal an existing prohibition on residential uses within 200 feet of a major truck street in this area — corridors that tend to be the city’s noisiest and most dangerous. The Port of Seattle and BNSF appeal called the city council’s process “hasty and irregular.”

Specifically, the appeal contended that the City had skipped over several requirements under state law to complete such a change, and that the environmental review conducted was not specific enough to understand the impacts of allowing hundreds of new homes in this specific area, close to some of the Port’s biggest container terminals.

In agreeing, the ruling by the Growth Management Hearings Board (GMHB) lays out multiple “failures” on the part of the City of Seattle ahead of a final 6-3 council vote on March 18. They include unmet public participation requirements under the state’s Growth Management Act (GMA), a requirement to provide the state’s Commerce Department 60 days to comment on the proposal that was bypassed, and violations under the State Environmental Policy Act (SEPA) when it comes to review of potential impacts.

Rather than sign or veto the ordinance, Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell left it unsigned, allowing it to take effect this summer and letting the city council take full ownership for the change.

Notably, the board ultimately concluded that the 990 potential units of housing touted by both supporters of the bill and its opponents is overinflated, and that it would only be likely to produce around 375 units of housing within the vicinity of First Avenue S, given the limited number of parcels that would be impacted. While the stadium transition overlay district includes around 53 acres apart from the stadiums themselves, the board found that only around 7.5 of those acres are developable.

The board also found the city relied on the 2022 Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for a broad citywide industrial land reform, rather than conducting a separate analysis of the impact of Nelson’s bill more specifically. The city also did not complete a required Director’s Report laying out public comments received on the bill and how it was responding to them.

“There is no evidence in the record that the City considered the maximum potential development of property impacted by this Ordinance, let alone in a concentrated area. Nor is there evidence in the record that would demonstrate the City considered the environmental impact of placing 375 residential units in a liquification prone zone,” the ruling states. “the Board is left with the firm and definite conviction that the City’s failure to produce and consider the required Director’s Report before adopting this Ordinance was clearly erroneous and therefore concludes that the City did not comply with its code and, as a result, the GMA’s public participation requirements.”

The board did dismiss some of the Port’s other claims about the change, including the idea that more housing in the stadium district would have a negative impact on freight mobility and traffic safety in the neighborhood.

“While it is evident that intermodal rail facilities as well as truck traffic accessing the Port facilities rely on the City’s Major Truck streets […] there is an absence of evidence which would demonstrate the Ordinance, by its terms, fail to encourage or otherwise thwarts the goal of efficient multimodal transportation systems or that it is contrary to regional priorities or not coordinated with county and city comprehensive plans,” the ruling states.

Nelson has been touting the stadium district bill as one of her major accomplishments in four years, noting that she had to overcome “significant opposition” to get it across the finish line. That opposition included over 30 state legislators who wrote to the council in late January contending that the change would “likely harm current and future employment opportunities in the region.”

Her SoDo housing move did not appear to sway voters, who broke heavily for former Progress Alliance executive director Dionne Foster. The 25-point loss means Nelson will lose her citywide council seat after one term. Foster won the endorsement of a number of progressive groups, including The Urbanist Elections Committee (of which I am a member).

Port leaders celebrated following the ruling’s release Monday.

“This is a win for international trade, our region’s industrial workforce, and community advocates who stood against housing injustice. It’s disappointing that so many resources were expended fighting this bad policy. This was totally avoidable,” Port of Seattle Commissioner Toshiko Hasegawa said in a statement Monday, posted to her Instagram account. “I hope City leadership will join us in re-centering collaboration over conflict. We can build housing in appropriately zoned areas without compromising trade or commerce. Our communities, workers, and regional economy are counting on us to get this right.”

The City of Seattle could appeal the ruling to a Superior Court judge, or it could go back to square one and check all of the boxes that the growth hearings board says it missed and try and advance the proposal again. But with its biggest champion now heading out the door, it’s not clear that it will be anyone’s priority to advance forward at all.

The post Stadium District Zoning Change Declared Invalid After Port of Seattle Appeal first appeared on The Urbanist.