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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A recap of the Olympia coverage we referenced:

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

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

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

Transcript

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[00:24:44] Amy: Indeed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Were you surprised to see this moving forward? Amy?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Housing and homelessness

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Affordable Childcare

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

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

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

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

Food access

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

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

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

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

Business pitch

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

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

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

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

Bus lanes and safe streets

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The workplan’s biggest opportunities

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The seeds of game-changing public realm improvements

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Early indications are the City will largely stay the course on Harrell’s growth plan in 2026, while queueing up additional neighborhood growth centers and broader transit corridor upzones to enact in 2027, once the City has conducted additional environmental review, which is intended to thwart legal appeals.

When Wilson took office at the beginning of the year, Seattle was right in the middle of a major update to its growth framework, which the state requires once per decade. Harrell signed a revamped Comprehensive Plan a few days before leaving office, and approved a major rezone of the city’s lower-density areas, intended to encourage smaller multifamily development.

Additional zoning changes were set to be transmitted over the coming weeks, including those allowing additional density in 30 new “neighborhood centers” that are clustered around existing business districts like Madrona, Tangletown, and Fauntleroy. Harrell’s plan also would upzone in the immediate half-block vicinity of frequent bus routes, which housing advocates (including the Seattle Planning Commission) criticized for being too limited and focusing new apartments along busy, polluted major roads.

The incoming administration faced a choice around whether to keep those plans moving forward, or to revamp them — and so far all signs point to keeping them moving and building on them at the first opportunity.

In an conversation with The Urbanist last week, Wilson described how she’s approaching changes to a growth plan that she had criticized as not going far enough in providing opportunities for housing growth throughout the city. She pointed to additional environmental review that the City’s Office of Planning and Community Development (OPCD) plans to conduct later this year a major chance hance to go further than the Harrell administration had decided to go.

“I think we’re going to have some exciting opportunities coming up later this year to potentially go further with opening up space for new housing,” Wilson said. “The supplemental EIS process is going to play out, and we’ll have the opportunity to look at additional neighborhood centers, potentially upzones within a larger distance from transit corridors. And I’m looking forward to having those conversations. And I think, in general, what’s passed already is a big milestone in terms of opening the way for new housing, and we also need to make sure that it actually results in new housing. And so that means paying attention to the details of how it’s playing out. We’re in a moment where there’s a downturn in terms of permit applications and the housing market generally.”

It will fall to Rico Quirindongo to oversee the work ahead. Harrell tapped Quirindongo to lead OPCD, Seattle’s long-range planning department, in 2023. So far, Wilson has given no signals she is planning an immediate leadership change. Reporting by The Urbanist and other outlets have shown how it was Quirindongo’s OPCD that was stifled by Harrell’s office itself, watering down a much more ambitious growth framework in late 2023, which delayed a long overdue draft of the plan.

Earlier this month at a meeting of the Seattle Planning Commission, Quirindongo was forthcoming about how things had progressed during the first few days of the Wilson administration, explicitly referencing opportunities that had been missed during the Harrell Administration.

“We have had a couple of great conversations with the new administration about where the Comp Plan is today, what’s been adopted, what were missed opportunities, and then what are the activities that we need to be leaning into in ‘26,” Quirindongo said, noting that the centers and corridors legislation the council is set to consider soon is required to keep Seattle in compliance with the state’s growth management act.

On the horizon, Seattle will need to make additional zoning changes around major transit stops to be in compliance with House Bill 1491, Washington’s transit-oriented development (TOD) bill, by 2029.

“Our message to the administration has been: we know there’s some new stuff that we want to do now that you guys are here, but we need to, rather than open up the box on the legislation that’s already complete, let’s get it sent down – there’s going to be lots of opinions about what’s in that package,” Quirindongo said. “Let’s get through that process, and then let’s explore through the supplemental EIS and the HB 1491 TOD compliance work that we need to do in ‘27, let’s go back and look at transit corridors again, look at the opportunities that we weren’t able to build into this round of [the] Comp Plan.”

OPCD also has its hands full with a full round of subarea plans, growth and transportation frameworks for individual neighborhoods that provide more detail than the larger Comprehensive Plan. After the Downtown Regional Center plan — which is open for public comment through early February — Northgate, First Hill Capitol Hill and Seattle’s two Manufacturing and Industrial Centers (MICs) in Ballard/Interbay and the Duwamish Valley are all set to come in quick succession, followed by South Lake Union, Uptown, University District and Ballard next year.

All of those plans were in the works well before Katie Wilson took office, but given enough time, they will clearly evolve to reflect the new administration. The Mayor said she’s confident that will be reflected in a growth framework that allows for more housing.

“I think that with the supplemental EIS, we’ll have some good opportunities to go further,” Wilson said. “And obviously that’s dependent on the will of the Council and building public support, but I remain committed to affordable and abundant housing, and I think that we’ve made some progress with what’s been done so far, but I think we can go a lot further.”

Doug Trumm contributed reporting to this story.

The post Katie Wilson Looks to Beef Up Seattle’s Housing Growth Plans first appeared on The Urbanist.

Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson rolled out two executive orders on Thursday morning, seeking to get two major initiatives rolling, two weeks into her term: expanding emergency housing to get homeless residents indoors and bus lanes to speed up the Route 8 bus.

“Seattle deserves world class public transit. Seattle voters have told us again and again that they want fast, frequent, reliable bus service. We cannot let one of our highest ridership routes consistently languish in traffic,” Wilson said. “That is not a good use of our transit tax dollars, and it’s not a good use of our time.”

For Wilson, this issue is personal. Route 8 is one of the transit routes she relies on, and she participated in the Race The L8 event this summer, in which more than 100 advocates successfully raced a Route 8 bus on foot, some of them juggling, dancing, or hop-scotching along the way.

“As a transit rider and as a rider of Route 8, I know the feeling of waiting at the stop for the bus to come, and it’s 30 minutes late or 40 minutes late. I know the feeling of sitting on the bus knowing that you could be walking up that hill faster than that bus is going. So it is time that as a city, we take seriously what it takes to deliver excellent public transit for our residents, for our workers.”

In the press scrum, Wilson said she wanted bus lanes in the most congested section of Denny Way, from Dexter to Stewart Avenue, where advocates outraced a Route 8 bus on foot this summer. www.theurbanist.org/2025/07/22/b…

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— Doug Trumm (@metropolitanglide.bsky.social) January 15, 2026 at 10:43 AM

Route 8 is one of King County Metro’s most delayed and unreliable buses. Nonetheless, ridership remains high, since transit users have few alternatives to connect east-west between Uptown, South Lake Union, Capitol Hill, and the Central District. Despite its speed and reliability issues, Route 8 averaged more than 6,000 daily riders in 2025.

Wilson’s executive order gives the Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) three months to put an implementation plan together. She cited concerns about impacts to other bus routes (which include other high-ridership workhorses like the Route 62, Route 40, and Route 70) that intersect Denny Way as a factor behind conducting due diligence before slapping down red paint for bus lanes immediately.

“The bottom line for me is I want as much transit priority as possible, and I want it to work,” Wilson said. “We also need to figure out, with the other bus routes in that area, to make sure that we are improving the experience for all the riders in our system. We’re directing SDOT to return to the Mayor’s Office with a timeline, budget and implementation plan by April 17, along with recommendations for additional corridors where transit priority investments can deliver high impact benefits for riders and the city as a whole.”

In other words, the Wilson administration will be looking to replicate the “red carpet” treatment for other bus routes, hoping to improve service for riders in other parts of the city.

While the exact Denny Way plan is still to be determined, Wilson said an eastbound bus lane between 5th Avenue N and Fairview Avenue would be the “minimum” expectation, since that section is the “worst problem” for bus delays. Through that section, drivers attempting to get onto the I-5 ramps at Yale Avenue can back up traffic for blocks.

Jason Li and Nick Sattele from the Fix The L8 campaign were on hand for the announcement, and commended the mayor for taking action. The duo co-leads the group which advocates for Denny Way bus lanes and organized the “Race The L8” event this past summer.

We are beyond honored to have joined Mayor Wilson this morning to announce an executive order for bus lanes on Denny Way. We can't wait to finally Fix the L8 and see what she has in store for the next 4 years of Seattle's transit

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— Fix the L8 (@fixthel8.bsky.social) January 15, 2026 at 10:17 AM

The Harrell administration had sought to rule out the key stretch of bus lanes that advocates were pushing for, citing a traffic worries and a dubious traffic study with some questionable assumptions that Li and other advocates criticized. Wilson has already swapped out the SDOT Director who made that decision, Adiam Emery, for another interim director, with a national search planned for this year to find a permanent leader for the department.

“The previous administration, we had met with them, and the previous SDOT director was very clear that while bus lanes were definitely warranted for transit riders, it would be too difficult to do from a traffic point of view,” Sattele told The Urbanist. “[This decision] meant that bus riders would have to continue to sit in traffic, which obviously we were not happy about.”

Potential for ridership growth appears high with a faster, more reliable bus.

“There are more people walking and taking the bus than driving on Denny, despite the fact that the bus sucks,” Sattele said. “We know that there’s a lot of demand for this, and it’s in spite of the fact that the bus is so unreliable.”

Transit advocates, including Fix The L8, have launched a broader campaign called Better Bus Lanes that is seeking to roll out bus lanes citywide. Denny Way, Rainier Avenue, and Aurora Avenue were identified as three top-priority corridors to improve for riders. Li argued success on Denny Way could propel further interventions.

“This will be a really good litmus test,” Li said. “If this works, then there’s pretty much no road in the city where this won’t work… If this turns out really well, any argument people have for, ‘oh, we can’t do this on Broadway. We can’t do this on 15th [Avenue NW]. We can’t do this on more parts of Rainier [Avenue].’ All that falls apart because we can just point to Denny: ‘Hey, it worked here.'”

Wilson focuses the city’s homelessness response on bringing people inside

Wilson is also seeking to accelerate “efforts to rapidly bring people inside by expediting the expansion of shelter and affordable housing.” Her executive order convenes some stakeholders and resources toward that goal.

“Yesterday morning, I went to visit an encampment in Ballard that was scheduled for removal, and we’ve delayed that removal to determine whether we can find a better outcome for the folks who are staying there,” Wilson said. “The conversations that I had on site with folks who are living at that spot and community advocates and our Unified Care Team here at the City really underscored for me the message that I was delivering all of last year during the campaign, which is that we do not have enough shelter, enough housing, enough services. And the vast majority of our neighbors who are sleeping unsheltered on our streets, they want help.”

Her executive order lays out a number of efforts to boost shelter and housing production:

• Immediately launching an interdepartmental team to identify options for incentives, permitting changes, and other policy changes that can speed up the process of opening new shelter and housing in Seattle.
• Identifying and prioritizing city owned public land and working with other agencies and levels of government to identify other public lands which could be used to temporarily or permanently site new emergency shelter and housing.
• Coordinating with our regional partners to identify shelter programs that have the capacity to add units to existing programs, and
• Working with organizations with expertise in behavioral health to support substance use disorder treatment and mental health counseling for housing and shelter programs.

“We’re going to be moving aggressively, and this is the beginning, not the end,” Wilson added.

The mayor gave her remarks at the “mid-point meeting” of her 60-person transition team, which is conducting outreach and planning to guide her administration’s early moves. Wilson indicated she would be leaning on the leaders in the room to keep making progress on affordability and housing issues, across income levels.

“This is a continuum, and we need everything: We need more affordable housing. We need more market-rate housing. We need more shelter,” Wilson said. “Over the coming weeks and months, we’re going to be taking a lot more actions to get there, and we’re going to be relying on all of you for your expertise and your organizing to help us make that happen.”

While the City seeks to expand its available shelter and supportive housing, Wilson signaled intent to do modify policy around encampment removals, using that tool less often than her predecessor. Under Mayor Bruce Harrell, Seattle greatly ramped up camp removals, conducting a record amount of sweeps.

“I heard this all last year during the campaign, where there’s an intense level of frustration with an approach that moves people around without actually getting inside,” Wilson told reporters. “And I really think that business owners and residents understand that. They understand that we need real solutions, and not just moving people around.”

Some news outlets appeared focused on the encampment removal side of the proposal, and how it could enflame homeowners and business owners. That said, the Downtown Seattle Association (DSA) greeted the news with a fairly supportive statement.

“Mayor Wilson’s executive order is an important and welcome step toward breaking down the barriers that slow the delivery of affordable housing and new shelter in Seattle,” said Dennis Sills, DSA’s Vice President of Advocacy and Economic Development in a press release. “Creating a dedicated, interdepartmental team to cut red tape, reduce costs and speed up permitting sends a clear signal that the city is serious about addressing urgency with action. It’s important Seattle move from a bias for rules to a bias for housing, and Mayor Wilson’s announcement is a great first step towards this paradigm change. 

The Downtown Seattle Association is looking for additional housing reforms, and has recently emphasized more housing downtown as part of its plans for economic recovery and activation.

“This announcement should be seen as a strong start, and we look forward to more reforms ahead that will speed up the production of all housing types across Seattle, while encouraging future housing financing and investment which is crucial component of developing more units,” Sills said. “Increasing housing supply at every level is essential to affordability, economic recovery and a more vibrant, inclusive downtown and city overall.” 

Update: This article was updated with the statement from the Downtown Seattle Association at 10:15am Friday.

The post Katie Wilson Orders Denny Bus Lane to Help Route 8 Riders first appeared on The Urbanist.

The Seattle Transit Measure is up for renewal this fall, and expanding bus service could be a greater focus in that package, based on our conversation. Wilson hinted that more bus lanes could be on the way, noting that she campaigned for Denny Way bus lanes for the perpetually late Route 8 — a bus lane the previous administration sought to rule out.

In her role on the Sound Transit Board, Wilson also pledged to bring a collaborative approach focused on delivering results for riders regionwide and looking at the system holistically. She shared skepticism of the idea of dropping the second downtown tunnel from the Ballard Link project (in hopes of addressing its ballooning budget). Bolstering transit capacity and system reliability is key and the second tunnel brings that, she said.

FIFA World Cup preparations are another topic we dove into, with transportation and public space improvements in the works to accommodate the throngs of fans that will be in Seattle for the matches that the city is hosting. It sounds like some improvements have a chance to become permanent.

Note: We also asked Wilson about Seattle’s growth plan — as it has played out through the never-ending Comprehensive Plan process — but we opted to pull that question out and turn it into a separate article. Watch for that piece later this week!

This interview has been edited lightly for clarity and brevity.

Transportation department

Doug Trumm: What changes would you like to see at the Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) and what direction did you give Angela Brady when it comes to running the department?

Katie Wilson: Yeah, there’s a lot. This year is very front-loaded with big decisions, big important things happening at the City regarding transportation. And I felt that it was very important to have someone at the helm who had really strong operational experience, and who was going to be able to just hit the ground running as we make some of these big decisions. And so I’m excited to work with Angela Brady on that.

Obviously, Sound Transit is a big part of what decisions need to be made about early this year, and I’m looking forward to taking up my seat at the board. Part of this is just wanting to make sure that we’re making the best decisions possible for Seattle and for our whole region in a difficult funding environment. So, we’re going to be working on that.

The Seattle Transit Measure renewal coming up, obviously, is another thing that’s very much on my mind. Our transit service is worse now than it was in 2020 when that measure was last passed. And that’s a problem. And so I really think we need to chart a course to getting back to 2019 service levels and better. So, that’s a very high priority for me.

As we think about levy implementation, we want to hit the ground running on delivering promised levy projects… because there’s so much there, right? And part of this is about just like doing the projects, delivering results, but I think really doing that through a lens of: what are the outcomes that we’re looking for? And we’re trying to improve mobility for people. So, as we look at the prioritizing on the levy projects, really making sure that we’re paying attention to what people are going to feel as they move around the city, and especially, of course, to the more vulnerable road users, and trying to improve improve safety, since we’re so far away from our vision zero goals.

So, that’s all fairly high-level things that are coming up early this year. But, those are some of the conversations that that I’ve been having with Angela.

Obviously, I’m also a big fan of bus lanes, and campaigned on bus lanes on Denny [Way]. And so I think another thing that we’ve been talking about is, what’s the low-hanging fruit in terms of improving the experience of transit riders in Seattle, making transit more reliable and more comfortable? And so that’s another thing that that’s going to be important.

Seattle Transit Measure renewal

Doug Trumm: You managed to answer our second question with your first answer, but I’ll just see if you had anything else to add. We wanted to see what you were thinking about the Seattle Transit Measure renewal measure. You mentioned getting service levels back up. Anything else that you wanted to add?

Katie Wilson: In my mind, the Seattle Transit Measure is about funding transit service. And so I know there’s a tendency to want to put a bunch of other stuff in there. I really do want to make sure that we are prioritizing getting our service levels and reliability back up.

I also have many, many memories from 2014 when we had a county-wide measure that failed, right? I care not just about Seattle’s bus service, but about our whole region’s bus service. And so I think having conversations with the county about how we get back to a regional measure and with advocates is also something that’s important to me. So, as we think about Seattle’s measure, we’re going to be having those conversations as well.

Obviously, affordable transit programs, transit access programs, which have been folded into that measure, also. I’m strongly supportive, and so we want to continue those. If there’s an opportunity to to expand on those, for example, by making transit passes available to more people who live in subsidized housing. I think that would be a great direction to move in as well.

Doug Trumm: Yeah, and I was curious, if wanting to partner with the county, is that something that’s still feasible in the 2026 timeline, or is that a future?

Katie Wilson: I don’t know. I had been assuming it wasn’t. If there’s a pathway, I won’t have that decision. [If not and] we’re just doing Seattle, then that’s a future conversation.

Seattle Library Levy

Amy Sundberg: I want to talk about the library levy, because that’s also a big one coming up. Of course, the libraries have suffered a lot because of the pandemic, and there are a lot of related library services that people don’t necessarily think about when they think about libraries that either are already funded by the levy or could be funded by the levy. So what is your broad thinking about that?

Katie Wilson: I love libraries. That’s probably going to be like the depth of my answer right now. So yeah, we haven’t really had a detailed conversation yet about what’s anticipated to be in the levy. I mean, I know there’s also some issues floating around about a levy lid, because there’s a several levies coming up, so it’s kind of that conversation. But yeah, we can maybe talk later in a more detailed way, once I’ve had more thorough briefing. But, yeah, I love libraries. Very supportive of libraries.

Sound Transit decisions

Doug Trumm: You’re taking the helm at a really sensitive time for Sound Transit. What are your top priorities heading into your first board meeting there? And how are you approaching the decisions made by your predecessors regarding the alignments, whether North and South of Chinatown-International District (CID), or others?

Katie Wilson: Yeah, high level, I think it’s really important that we are delivering what voters are expecting, and also funding problems are real, right? And so I’m going to be coming in, I’m looking forward to meeting with the other North King subarea folks, and just with all the board members. And I also think it’s really important to remember that we are building a regional system, and the whole system only works if the whole system works.

Seattle is the biggest in terms of people voting for the funding, right? So it is very important that we’re making the best decisions possible for Seattle residents and Seattle riders, but at the same time, again, the system only works if the whole system works. And so I don’t want to set up an antagonism between Seattle and the rest of the system. And so I’m looking forward to those conversations with all the board members, so that we can navigate these challenges together.

I’m very committed to building out the lines that we promised to voters. And we’ll be working with the other board members on the specifics of how we get there in terms of CID. My understanding of where things are at now is that we are still waiting for some analysis back from the agency around the North and South option, is that correct? And maybe the [4th Avenue] Shallow [option] as well. I’m looking forward to receiving that.

My position hasn’t changed from what it was during the campaign, which is basically, I want the best outcome for our transit system and transit riders in terms of connectivity, and also care about the impacts on the neighborhood and want to make sure that we’re developing stations in a way that’s minimizing the disruption and displacement. So, we’re going to be working with folks in the CID and paying attention to what Sound Transit comes back with making these decisions.

Doug Trumm: Lately some of the action has been around the single tunnel option, dropping the second tunnel in Downtown Seattle, and it seemed like the board chair and a few of his allies were like: let’s just not even think about that. But, there were other members who were interested in it. So it’s in limbo. Are you hoping that that is going to be at least an option for you going forward?

Katie Wilson: We need a reliable system, and I think it’s pretty clear that with the single tunnel, we don’t have a reliable system. And so as we’re building it out, we need that capacity, that a second tunnel seems to be the only way that we’re going to get that. I’m happy to have things looked at, but to me, it’s pretty clear that that’s the direction we need to go.

Homelessness and emergency housing plans

Amy Sundberg: Can we talk a little bit about emergency housing? I know one of your big commitments was 4,000 units by the end of four years, but I also had the understanding that you wanted to get moving quickly because of the World Cup. What can we expect that to look like? And what can we expect to see in the next three to six months?

Katie Wilson: Yeah, this is very, very top priority for me, something that my team is working on now. And, yeah, this is going to look like a few things. So, just on the defensive side, we need to not lose permanent supportive housing and shelter that we already have. And so we’re very engaged right now in the in the strategy and conversation around contingent care funds, and trying to make sure that we’re fortifying our permanent supportive housing against potential cuts so that we’re not adding to our homelessness problem.

I talked a lot on the campaign about tiny house villages, micro modular housing, being part of the solution. And so we’re going to be working on identifying sites, and that will mean looking at land that city departments potentially have at their disposal, and also working with partners, including the county, including the port, including the state, to try to identify sites that would be appropriate for tiny house villages or other kinds of micro, modular housing. And then, working with service providers that can operate that housing.

We’re also looking, right now, at the City budget, and figuring out what flexibility we have to funnel some money toward that. So that’s something that we will certainly have some announcements, more specific plans to share in the coming weeks. But yes, you’re right that there is urgency for us around the timeline of the World Cup and trying to make sure that we are opening up really significant numbers of new units before June, so that we can really help some of the folks who are unsheltered inside in the downtown core and adjacent neighborhoods, and neighborhoods around the city, but with a focus there, because of World Cup, and get folks the support that they need. So that’s part of it, and then there’s others.

I know that the Downtown Seattle Association and the PDA have a project in Pioneer Square around some new shelters. So we’re also trying to move forward and look for opportunities to open up other kinds of new shelter, not just tiny house villages. And this is really going to be a team effort, right? We’re starting the process of reaching out to potential partners, churches, faith communities, the business community, and we’re going to all have to pull together and identify space, identify operators, identify funding, and so, yeah, this is going to be one of the big things that we’re working on over the coming six months.

Amy Sundberg: Yeah, it’s a big effort. I always say it’s not an intractable problem, but it seems like it has felt that way.

Katie Wilson: It has felt like that for a very long time. We’re going to try to break that logjam.

World Cup preparations

Doug Trumm: Zooming out a little bit, we’re curious about not just homelessness and emergency housing, but what you’re looking at for your first six months as key things to get moving, whether that’s World Cup related or just in general and whether transportation-related, public space, or amenities.

Katie Wilson: I probably won’t have as specific an answer to this yet as you want, but very much aware that we need to make sure that our transportation system is ready for the World Cup, and I think there’s some opportunities around public space to make improvements that will last beyond the World Cup — don’t have specific announcements yet.

Public bathrooms is something that I talked a lot about on the campaign, and I think it would be great if we could start to actually do something about that pre-World Cup. I think we’re gonna have a lot of people in our city walking around enjoying the city, and it would be nice if they had a place to pee.

Doug Trumm: That isn’t just a porta-potty.

Amy Sundberg: Or even just the porta-potty. [Laughter]

Katie Wilson: I mean, there’s a lot of different ways to think about the World Cup, right? There’s the emergency mentality of like: oh, this big thing is happening, we have to be prepared and make sure it’s not a disaster, right? So there’s that lens, which obviously is important from the City’s point of view, but then there’s also the economic opportunity lens where there’s going to be all this money flowing into the city, and we want to make sure that that is benefiting small businesses around the city and residents. And so there’s that kind of lens, which is something that we’re also thinking about, how do we get all the visitors, not just kind of huddled around the stadiums, but out into neighborhoods and experiencing our culture and history of the neighborhoods, and also patronizing small businesses.

And then there’s the games themselves, right? And wanting to make sure that Seattle residents are have the opportunity to be excited about the games and to watch them and get kind of swept up in the World Cup moment. And so that’s another thing that we’re thinking about: how do we make sure that there are watch parties that are accessible to people and that you don’t just need to pay an exorbitant amount of money for a ticket in order to feel like this is an event that you’re part of as well.

Yeah, I also have an idea about getting people playing soccer, and we’ll see, we’ll hopefully be able to do something along those lines, too.

Surveillance and federal overreach

Amy Sundberg: Related to the World Cup, surveillance is hot topic. With what’s happening federally, of course, it’s become an even greater concern than it was before. I know that at least one or two groups have already sent you letters saying what they would like to see and asking for you to act fairly quickly on matters of surveillance. So I was wondering how you’re approaching that topic, and what you’re thinking now that you’re actually mayor.

Katie Wilson: Yeah. My position from the campaign has not changed. I’m very, very concerned about the the risks to immigrant communities and other vulnerable folks from expanding surveillance, and also from some of the surveillance that already exists in our city. And so, you know, it’s my third day on the job here, so… I take this very seriously.

And so as we’re standing up our team in the mayor’s office and starting to get all the wheels rolling in terms of our policy shop and our work with departments, we’re going to be reviewing all the surveillance policies and programs that are in place, and talking to the folks who have written in with concerns and others, and coming up with a plan. And so I don’t have the details of exactly what that looks like, but it’s very important to me that we’re protecting people’s privacy and not unnecessarily handing tools to the federal government that could be used to target people.

Media Strategy

Amy Sundberg: One of the things that I’ve been interested in that I think is going to be really important for your office, is having a direct line of communication with Seattleites. We saw the first right-wing media attack [of your administration] a couple days ago. So it started right away. I expect that will continue. Mayor Zohran Mamdani has just announced the Office of Mass Engagement as part of his strategy to deal with similar issues in New York. And so I wanted to know what your administration’s approach to that was going to be.

Katie Wilson: Yeah. I mean, there’s a number of pieces to this, right? There’s how are we getting accurate information about what we’re doing and why out to the public, and that is a challenge in our media environment, right? And we just saw that this week with the kerfuffle, if you want to call it that, around SPD and drug arrests. And I think it’s an all-of-the-above strategy. So we have to use traditional media as much as we can set the record straight, put out the statement that says: No, this is actually what happened, and hope that that filters out as much as possible.

And I think also there’s a very important social media side to this. A lot of people, that’s where they’re getting their news anyway. So if we can really build the mayor’s office’s and the city’s social media presence so that people are hearing from us directly in the videos that we make, or in the statements that we put out, and they can trust that, yes, this is actually from the mayor’s office, they’re talking to me, this is what they’re doing: that’s another important piece of that. And then also working through trusted community organizations and folks out in the community that have networks where they are also spreading news and information.

And yeah, we haven’t started an Office of Mass Engagement. Yeah, I’m just gonna be constantly compared to Mamdani, aren’t I?

Amy Sundberg: It was interesting idea. It’s a really big problem, right?

Katie Wilson: I think it’s very important that the city is working through ethnic media and non-English language media to make sure that we’re reaching communities that are not going to be like easily reached through traditional media as well. Again, getting out accurate information about what the city is up to and things that people need to be aware of. In this very challenging media environment, it’s going to be a multi-pronged strategy.

Also, I have this idea around public funding for local news outlets. And if we can get that going, that longer term, deeper project is strengthening our local news ecosystem so that news organizations actually have the funding that they need to do investigative reporting, to produce high-quality local news, then that also will help.

Police department, CARE, and culture change

Amy Sundberg: I wanted to ask about Seattle Police Department (SPD) Chief Shon Barnes. I know you decided to retain him for now, and he’s had kind of a rocky first year, and I’m sure you’re aware of all the reasons why that is. So I was wondering what expectations you’ve expressed to him in terms of what you’re looking for in his leadership of SPD?

Katie Wilson: Yeah, I guess I’ll say I’m really looking forward to working closely with him to move the department and to move the city’s public safety response in a good direction. And I retained him because I think we can do that. There have been some challenges, some stumbles over the last year, but really I think that there’s also responsibility for that to be put on the previous administration.

It’s very important that, as the mayor, I have a very close and trusting working relationship with my police chief. And this is a team effort, and I’m not sure that was really the case before. So, in terms of expectations, or the direction that that I think that I’m hoping that we can move, we’re going to continue hiring officers, right? And I think we’re also going to need to be really creative and intentional about how we’re using the force that we have to address the problems that people are experiencing in their neighborhoods and on the ground. So I’m really eager to be working with SPD and with stakeholders in different neighborhoods where there are persistent public safety issues to really get to a better place.

And we have some good models for how to start doing that, really in the work that’s going on in the U District and Downtown and several other neighborhoods. So I really want to build on that and make sure that we have a really good working relationship between SPD and the CARE [Community Assisted Response and Engagement] department.

Amy Sundberg: Yeah, that was going to be my follow up, because I feel like it’s not there right now.

Katie Wilson: Correct. And again, I think that it’s really not useful to try to assign blame in this case, and it’s really the responsibility of The Mayor’s Office to develop that partnership and to oversee that partnership and to make sure that those two departments have what they need, including strong direction from the Mayor’s Office to work together and make sure that the appropriate responder is coming to a given call. Obviously, we are somewhat constrained in that by the recently approved police contract. But within those boundaries, we’re going to do everything we can to make the best use we can of our alternative response and then also collaboration with the service providers that do similar work in terms of outreach and alternative response.

Amy Sundberg: My understanding is if SPD wanted to cooperate more, the contract wouldn’t be quite as crippling as it might otherwise be, because they still have a choice [as to when to refer calls to the CARE team].

Katie Wilson: Right, and so I think that part of the work ahead is really working with Chief Barnes to make sure that SPD and all of our officers are on the same page around our goals and making good judgments in the moment. So that’s very high priority for me. In general, I think within SPD that we want being an officer to be a good job, not just in terms of the pay that you’re getting, but that officers are there feeling that they’re providing a public service, feeling that they have a relationship with the public, with the neighborhoods that they’re working in, and also that within the force, they’re respected, they’re, you know, not sexually harassed, right?

I think it’s important that SPD be a place that women, that minority officers have a good experience working in. And this is so important if we’re trying to create a situation where our force reflects the communities that it’s serving and feels that they have that relationship. And so there’s some work to do there.

Amy Sundberg: Yeah, the culture there is another seemingly intractable problem. I guess we’ll find out.

The post One Week In, Katie Wilson Charts the Path Ahead first appeared on The Urbanist.

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

Podcast Transcript:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Doug: Too much.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So affordability, just pervading that.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Amy: Right, right.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ryan: It’s not a wealth tax. 

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

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

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

correctly, 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So, uh, I’m curious to see.

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

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

Doug: oh, I like it.

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

Amy: I am Amy Sundburg.

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

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