-Welcome to "City Inside Out: Council Edition."
I'm your host, Brian Callanan.
A surge in federal immigration enforcement
has many Seattleites on edge.
But what can city leaders do
to actually keep ICE agents from doing their jobs?
Plus, is Seattle's Vision Zero plan delivering results?
I'm talking with Councilmembers
Alexis Mercedes Rinck and Eddie Lin
about these issues and asking your questions, too,
next on "Council Edition."
-Comparing the different responses,
it felt like there was some biased policing there,
and that is just unacceptable.
Voters spoke and sent a clear message
that they want to see a more progressive vision for our city.
-All that and more coming up next
on "City Inside Out: Council Edition."
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And here they are.
Citywide Position 8 Councilmember
Alexis Mercedes Rinck,
great to have you here. -Thanks for having me, Brian.
-Also with us, Councilmember Eddie Lin
from District 2 in South Seattle,
Yesler Terrace down to Rainier Beach.
-Great to have you, too. -Great to be here. Thanks.
-And I was gonna say happy new year,
but that already feels like months ago at this point here,
so I want to jump into it.
You both won your respective roles in the November election.
Congratulations to you both. Councilmember Rinck.
let's talk about what you want to accomplish this term
and maybe your thoughts
about having some new members on the council,
a new mayor, new city attorney.
A lot of new faces in Seattle right now.
-Certainly. It's an exciting time at City Hall,
and voters spoke and sent a clear message
that they want to see a more progressive vision for our city,
really taking up the issues of affordability as a key priority.
And so I'm excited to be chairing
our Human Services, Labor, & Economic Development Committee
this year and advancing an agenda
of making sure our neighbors
have everything that they need to thrive,
while also working to make sure
we have some good economic-development activity,
with great-paying jobs,
and supporting our amazing unionized workforce.
-Okay. Thank you for that.
Councilmember Lin, you jumped into your role early
due to a special election
to replace interim Councilmember Mark Solomon
down in D2.
You've been on the job since late November here.
You're gonna be chairing
the Land Use Committee on the council,
which is a very important role here.
Talk to me about where you want to guide that committee,
where you want to take this new and different
Seattle city government we have going forward.
-Yeah. Thank you so much.
And just want to thank again the voters of District 2.
Super excited to get to work on their behalf.
Yeah. We'll be chairing the Land Use Committee.
We have phase two of the comp plan,
which focuses on our transit corridors, our urban villages,
and, you know, our long-term vision for our city.
Affordability is a top concern
that we heard on the campaign trail.
And really, we need to open up more of our city
to create dense, affordable, walkable neighborhoods
to help us transition away
from our car-centric development.
And so that's really gonna be the bulk of that work
for the comp plan for phase two.
You know, the other thing that just really look forward to
is just being a strong voice for District 2 down at City Hall.
A lot of public-safety issues for District 2.
And, you know,
I want to sort of think broadly about public safety.
SPD has done a survey for the past two years.
-Yes. -Transit or traffic safety has been the number-one concern.
So, you know, as we think about public safety --
And I know we're gonna talk about ICE.
-Yeah. -They're creating public-safety concerns
particularly for District 2.
So, you know, there's a lot on the public-safety front,
and it's not just -- I mean,
there are the other concerns around gun violence
that we need to address.
But I just want to lean into constituent services
and meeting the needs of our district.
-Thank you. And I'll stay with you.
Let's talk about ICE here,
because the federal government has really ramped this up,
ICE officers, Immigration and Customs Enforcement,
here in Seattle, around the country.
This issue was brought into sharp focus recently
when an ICE officer shot and killed Renée Good
in Minneapolis.
I wanted to read an excerpt, if I could,
of a press release you put out soon after that shooting.
Here's part of it --
I wanted to point out that a day before that release came out,
three men were arrested by ICE in North Seattle.
According to Seattle police, the federal officers
were working out of an unmarked, white van.
I understand this idea that you don't want ICE in Seattle.
I've heard that from a lot of folks.
But what can the city really do to keep ICE out?
-Yeah. Well, first, I think we just have to acknowledge
that we are in an unprecedented time here.
And so there's not a lot
of great historical, you know, precedent
that we get to look at.
You know, in terms of legal issues, these are novel.
And, you know, it's not typically the federal government
that we have to worry about in terms of public safety,
but here we are.
-I can see your attorney mind going right now.
Yeah. -Yeah. And so, you know,
we see what is going on in Minnesota,
and it is heartbreaking.
You know, they are taking 5-year-olds
and using them as bait to then go after parents.
They are entering homes without warrants,
taking people out in their -- shirtless elders
and detaining them in sub-zero-degree temperatures.
And yeah, so we have to do everything we can.
The tools we have are not gonna be,
unfortunately, you know, as strong as we would like.
But we have to explore
both our legal authority, our resources,
and then we just really have to work with community.
What we've seen in Minnesota
is community standing up for their neighbors.
We've seen labor unions calling for a general strike today,
which shout-out to them for organizing that.
We see neighbors in sub-degree temperatures rallying,
making sure that their neighbors know if there's ICE activity,
making it uncomfortable for these ICE agents,
either in the street or, you know, at restaurants.
And they're not welcome here.
They are engaging in a reign of terror,
and it is unacceptable -- unacceptable.
It's cruel.
I believe it is unconstitutional.
And I think we're gonna look back
at this dark stain in our history.
And I hope that in the long term,
we are able to prosecute these folks
for the crimes they are committing on our communities.
-Thank you very much for that. Councilmember Rinck,
I want to shift towards another concern here --
the possibility of federal agents using Seattle's
newly expanded network of security cameras for ICE.
We had a viewer write this --
It's just another question about how can Seattle
actually stop access to this camera footage
if the feds want it?
I think federal authority
really steps over a lot of city authority in this case.
-Right. And that's certainly the concern.
And, first and foremost,
I want to commend just what Councilmember Lin
just eloquently said about, really,
the stakes that we're facing and how we need to,
as public officials -- local public officials --
condemn in the strongest of terms
what we are seeing
and continue to really send a message to the public
that this is entirely unacceptable, unconstitutional,
and we cannot stand for it.
And when it comes to the matter of surveillance,
you know, I was a vote against the expansion
to the surveillance pilot.
I spoke at length.
I think I gave a 16-minute speech.
-Not today, please.
-Not today. We don't have the time today.
But part of the reason is the matter
that as we're collecting this information
through CCTV cameras,
it is able to be subpoenaed or warranted.
The federal government can issue a subpoena at any time.
So when we're talking about things
like such as if there was a protest
or a demonstration that was caught on camera,
part of the proposed expansion, it goes to Capitol Hill,
where we see a lot of protests.
We know that the federal government is watching our city.
They have put a target on blue cities
around the country.
And so at any time, they could try and issue a subpoena
or a warrant for that footage,
and we would legally have to turn it over.
So the collection of it at face value presents a risk,
given the way and the posture we've seen
this federal government engage.
Which is why I've been a vocal advocate
to say now is not the time to expand.
In fact, I would like to see us pause
on the entire pilot program right now,
given that we haven't seen demonstrated results.
You know, part of the underlying legislation
requires, actually, an evaluation report
to be produced on its efficacy of the program.
We have not seen that report.
So we have not seen research-backed evidence
to demonstrate that this is making us safer.
And as Councilmember Lin stated,
right now the presence of federal agents
is actually making us a lot less safer,
as we see ICE terrorizing our community.
And if I can dive into this a little bit more
for a second... -Please. Yeah.
-...when we speak about terrorizing our communities,
you know, our office for the past year
has been fielding community concerns.
We'll hear directly from residents saying,
"Hey, I think there's ICE agents here."
-Yeah. -And it's notable that just this week,
for Seattle Public Schools, six schools --
-They went into lockdown. Right.
-In Councilmember Lin's district.
-Yeah, yeah.
-On unverified ICE activity.
-But high enough concern
that schools went into shelter in place.
And just to add to this,
we heard a lot of community concerns.
People are on high alert.
And we were able to debunk
some of those calls that were made to us
to say, "Actually,
that's other law-enforcement activity happening,"
whether it be from SPD.
But I think it really speaks to the moment
that our communities are on such high alert
that any law-enforcement activity showing up
in their neighborhoods, the immediate instinct is,
"Oh, no. ICE is here. I need to call.
I need to protect my community." -Yeah.
-And so I want to use this as an opportunity
to inform the public about the concept of SALUTE,
which is if you see suspected ICE activity
and you go to report it, to report it to
the Washington Immigrant Solidarity Network Hotline,
844-724-3737,
and to remember the acronym SALUTE
when you are sharing information.
Size and strength of the force that you see.
"A" for activity -- what are they doing?
"L" meaning location,
and being specific on cross streets.
Uniform -- what are the uniforms that they're wearing?
"T" meaning time -- What time did you see them?
And equipment and weapons. -Okay. Alright.
There's a lot to be packed in there.
And I do want to take this in another direction,
if I could, just following up
on these federal government concerns.
Maybe I can stick with you here.
The Trump administration has said it will cut funding
to so-called sanctuary jurisdictions,
like the state of Washington, in early February.
I know we've been talking about this a lot,
but what impacts are you expecting
that could have on Seattle's budget?
I know you've had this Select Committee
on Federal Administration and Policy Changes
that was happening last year.
Is that relaunching? What's going on?
-Yeah, absolutely.
We called for the establishment of a dedicated council committee
focused on federal policy changes,
because of all of these changes
we were seeing on the federal front.
We convened a number of times last year
to unpack all of these policy changes
and what they mean for our local work here.
And I'm pleased to share
that we'll be re-establishing this committee for this year.
I will continue to share it.
Councilmember Kettle will be our vice chair,
and we're working on scheduling that first committee date now.
And that first topic is likely going to be
on federal law enforcement, immigration,
given everything that is happening.
But on the funding front, we've come to understand, of course,
our city receives direct funding
from the federal government.
It's important to note
that federal funding shows up across our community
in a variety of different ways. -Right.
There's pass-through from the county,
pass-through from the state,
and, then, a number of our organizations across the city
have direct federal grants.
So, trying to assess all those impacts to speak
to the specificity for the city of Seattle,
it's approximately $120 million.
About half of that goes towards transportation projects.
The rest of that goes towards key human services,
senior services, nutrition programs, and so on.
I think it's a better conversation
with City Attorney Evans... -Yeah. Probably.
-...on the constitutionality of this,
but I think it's important to note
that our welcoming city policies are entirely legal
and within accordance of state law.
We are simply saying that as a city,
we are going to have all of our services be accessible,
regardless of immigration status.
-What are you most concerned about
when it comes to potentially federal funding
being withheld from the city of Seattle, Councilmember Lin.
-Yeah. Well, and definitely we have strong partners
with City Attorney Erika Evans,
with State AG Nick Brown,
and the county, as well.
And I think we have a good track record
on lawsuits against this administration.
But we know that they will continue
to get away with whatever they think they can,
and they oftentimes disregard the courts or legal precedent.
But, you know, withholding funding from a city
just because it's quote-unquote a "blue city" --
there's no justification for that.
But we know they're gonna try.
You know, one thing, just super thankful for the Shield Act
that voters approved last year,
that Councilmember Rinck sponsored.
That's gonna provide a ton of additional resources to help us.
-It's the change in the business and occupation --
-Correct. Yes.
But I think we're gonna have to look at
other progressive revenue sources,
because we see the needs of our community continue to grow.
We see the cuts from --
you know, there was a huge basically tax giveaway
to the wealthy last year from the feds,
but they continue to cut, you know,
services to, you know, Medicaid.
You know, premiums are going up,
although I know that there's still discussions
at the federal level.
But, you know, our communities are being hurt
by, you know, medical costs, just the cost of living --
you know, utilities, groceries, housing.
And we need to do everything we can locally
to provide additional resources.
And one last point.
When it comes to things like ICE, you know,
District 2 has probably
the largest concentration of immigrants.
And, you know, people are afraid to go to work,
and that's gonna --
you know, that's a hardship for them, right?
People are afraid to send their kids to school,
which is impacting our schools.
And so, you know,
we're gonna have to do what we can to support our community,
including we might need to do things like rental assistance.
You know, when COVID happened
and people couldn't go to work,
we had to, you know, deploy massive resources.
Unfortunately, in this case, it's not a virus.
It's the federal government that's causing this.
But, you know, there are similar impacts.
It's certain communities more so than others.
But we're gonna need to support them
through this turbulent time.
-Thank you. And I know we've seen a number of protests
here in Seattle and around the country
regarding federal policy.
And how Seattle police respond to protests
has really come under fire recently.
There are some footage that was released
from a May Day USA rally at Cal Anderson Park.
There were counterprotests
over transgender and LGBTQ rights that went with that.
This happened over Memorial Day weekend.
In the footage, a commanding officer said,
among other things, "We're here to 'F' people up now,
and we're going in this time with guns blazing
and all our pieces in place."
Several people spoke out about this
at a recent council meeting, including one man
who said he was injured by SPD officers.
Here's a clip.
-This was back in May,
but I've still not been able to work full-time since this day.
SPD brutalized folks, and we need to change.
When people who represent a city
go in with a goal to beat people --
a stated goal of beating people --
it shows that SPD anger
will trample our First Amendment rights.
-Councilmember Lin,
what message do you have for protesters and police
in response to this video release?
-It was heartbreaking to hear the video footage.
At the same time,
I think a lot of people suspected that was the attitude,
because we saw how police responded to the protesters
versus how they responded to the hateful rhetoric
from the religious-right group that was there.
And so, you know, comparing the different responses,
it felt like there was some biased policing there,
and that is just unacceptable.
We've been working on this for over a decade.
We just got out from under the consent decree.
And yet we see we still have a lot of progress to make.
I know that the Office of the Inspector General
is doing an analysis of what happened,
a Sentinel event review report.
And that should be released soon,
so I look forward to seeing that.
But yeah, we have to improve.
We cannot have biased policing.
It creates a public safety --
I mean, in this case,
the police themselves were causing harm to our community.
So, but it creates mistrust between certain communities.
And, you know, we need to be a welcoming city,
and that means we need bias-free policing.
-Okay. Councilmember Rinck,
we had a viewer write in about this, as well.
Wrote this --
So, the council of course passed this recently,
a 13% raise for Seattle's rank-and-file officers
with SPOG, the Police Officers Guild.
It's a deal that you and Councilmember Lin
and Councilmember Saka voted against.
How would you answer Kyle's question here
when it comes to funding and oversight
for the Seattle police?
A lot wrapped in here.
-Oh, yeah. No, certainly appreciate the question.
And just to go back even to, again,
the body-cam footage that came out
and hearing the rhetoric from officers,
I would note as the only Councilmember
who was there that day,
I'm unfortunately not surprised to hear that
because of the posture that I saw from a number of officers.
It became immediately apparent to me
that we needed to find some way for peaceful wind down,
as people were getting hurt.
And after a second string of arrests,
I was having direct conversations
with the mayor's office and SPD sergeants
to find a way to peacefully wind down.
But, also, our office has been firm
in wanting to ensure that we have accountability.
And just hearing this recent development again,
we just need to say, again, for the record,
that kind of language and posture is entirely unacceptable
and not what we should expect from our local law enforcement.
And building onto this point,
I was critical of the proposed SPOG contract because of
the lack of accountability measures in place.
What is it exactly that we are paying for as a city
when we see officers engaging in harmful behavior
and not being held accountable?
And now we've rewarded that with very high wages --
a wage increase.
So, all this being said, certainly this is something
I'm gonna be looking towards when we're talking about
what is a challenging budget environment
and high community need?
I was disappointed to see that
there's no police bargaining bill
in this year's state legislative session
or this is a part of the city's legislative agenda.
And there was a bill last year from Representative Scott.
-Right. -I have not seen one introduced so far this year.
-Short session. We'll see. Yeah, yeah.
-Fingers crossed, but ticktock.
Being able to address the issues
around police bargaining on a statewide level is critical.
The city has been clear on that position.
We simply need improved accountability measures,
and as a council body,
I would hope we continue to keep that pressure on,
because police accountability is something
I would hope all of all residents agree
is a really important matter.
We want to make sure that we're addressing this.
-Okay, thank you. Please.
-And I just want to add on one point.
You know, absolutely, we need greater accountability.
And I also just -- I want to be cautious
not to paint too broad a brush.
We have a lot of officers that are doing good work
that are providing bias-free policing.
And when we don't have accountability,
it actually harms those officers that are doing the good work.
And so, I just want to make it clear
that, you know, we can't say the entire police department,
but when we don't have accountability,
then it ends up a stain on the entire police department.
And so that's why it's so critical
that we lean into this work,
that we have strong leadership from the chief
to insist upon this.
And, you know, we probably need at some point,
some help from our state partners
to have changes to the bargaining laws.
-Thank you for bringing up that point.
I want to pick up the pace ever so slightly here
and talk about homelessness and the city's response to it.
Recently, Mayor Wilson visited
an unauthorized encampment in Ballard,
put a pause on removing it.
Part of her press release from mid-January says this --
The mayor said sometimes
clearing encampments is the best option
in that press release.
She didn't see that in this case, in Ballard.
And, Councilmember Rinck,
you are the council's Human Services Committee chair.
Do you have any insight
as to where the mayor might be going here,
what the city might be doing
when it comes to its homelessness response?
-Yeah, certainly.
Well, I think with the mayor issuing an executive order --
What was it -- last week? -Yes.
-With the mayor's issuance of an executive order
on housing and homelessness,
I think it's an encouraging sign that our new mayor
wants to take the issue of homelessness very seriously.
I'm looking forward to working with her and her office
on how they set that vision,
particularly as Human Services chair
and now being a governing committee member to KCRHA.
-Regional Homelessness Authority.
Keep going. -Thank you. I got to mind those acronyms.
-Yeah. -And I think we need to be clear
that we know better approaches for resolving encampments,
such as the state Rights-of-Way initiative,
which focuses on resolution
and actually getting people into housing.
And so I hope that as we work with the mayor's office,
we can really center approaches that we know work.
The state Rights-of-Way encampment-resolution program,
after two years of review,
72% of folks have remained housed.
That is a huge success
and one that we should really consider
scaling and dedicating local resources for.
Currently, it's funded through a state grant,
and so it really limits our work to just resolving encampments
on state right-of-ways that happen to run through Seattle.
-Right. -And so I would welcome a conversation with the mayor
around focusing some of our local dollars
towards using that approach in encampments throughout the city.
But we need to keep an eye on, we need to focus on
getting people housed and the support that they need
and really having a approach that also keeps in mind
that we're in a challenging situation
with federal dollars on the line.
My office has been leading on work
around the Continuum of Care funding.
-Yeah. For homelessness. Yeah, right. -For homelessness.
-Yeah. -And this is funding
that currently houses about 4,500 households
between Seattle and King County. -Right.
-And, so, in the budget process last year,
we put forward budget amendments
and have essentially put together a contingency fund
in case that federal funding falls through,
which they're trying to. -Yeah. Right.
-We're kind of in a court case, a legal fight over this.
-Sure. -But we took that step
because it is important that we keep folks housed
and making sure that we're maintaining
our permanent supportive housing that we do have
in the midst of this,
while keeping our eye on we need to scale our resources
and bring more folks inside is really important.
-Yeah. A whole other show, I know, on that one.
-Yeah. -Councilmember Lin,
I have another can of worms to open with you here.
It's a housing question.
You're vice chair on that council committee.
Here's what one viewer wrote in --
This is a note from an advocate for small landlords here,
but this is a very delicate issue
for a lot of housing providers out there.
Do changes need to be made
to our landlord-tenant laws in Seattle?
What do you think?
It is a delicate issue.
And I did listen to your discussion
with some of our housing providers recently.
-"City Inside Out." Thanks for watching.
-"City Inside Out," yeah. And, you know,
and partially what came up out of that discussion,
which I heard about
when I was working with the Office of Housing,
is, you know, during COVID,
there was an eviction moratorium,
and, then, the courts got backed up,
and that had its own sort of impacts
to our affordable-housing providers.
And so we are still sort of seeing
kind of our court system getting working again.
-Okay. -And so I think, you know,
we shouldn't be changing policy now
based on sort of a temporary issue
that came out of COVID.
I do think there are updates
that we probably should be making
to our landlord-tenant legislation.
Certainly happy to listen
to affordable-housing providers, to landlords.
Certainly happy to listen to our tenants.
And if we're gonna make changes,
we should have a robust discussion
with all impacted parties.
you know, certainly looking at things like junk fees,
which are impacting a lot of tenants,
looking at things like the way
tenants get billed for utility services.
And so, yeah, we will be looking at
landlord-tenant stuff.
And, again, we need to make sure that we're being thoughtful
and that we're engaging with everybody --
you know, not just landlords,
but landlords and tenants who will be impacted.
-Thank you for that.
I need to do the one-minute version here if I can.
I know I'm jamming in a huge topic, though --
transportation.
You're vice chair. You serve on the committee.
Councilmember Lin, let's take it to your district, if I could.
Brayden had this to say, wrote this in --
Thank you very much for that, Brayden.
Great to know you're on a first-name and nickname basis
with your constituents there.
Some thoughts on what's next for safety on Rainier Avenue?
I know this is important for you.
-Yeah. Well, and I mentioned earlier,
the number-one public-safety concern according to surveys
is transit safety or traffic safety.
-Yes. -And Rainier is one of the most dangerous corridors in the city.
District 2 faces the most significant traffic incidents.
And, you know, we lost a life during December,
a bicyclist that was on Beacon Ave.
But we see, yeah,
cars are dangerous, and humans are not perfect, right?
And so we need to design our roads better.
We also need to make it more feasible
for people to find other ways to get around the city,
because when there's just more and more cars on the street,
there's gonna be more and more dangerous accidents.
In North Rainier, especially with the new light rail opening,
the Judkins station right there,
we have a ton of new housing-development,
families on that corridor, and it is extremely dangerous.
We are working with --
I mean, WSDOT is looking at
some of the on-ramps and off-ramps...
-Right. -...of 90 and Rainier.
And so we need to prioritize public safety number one.
Vision Zero has to be our top priority.
And, you know, we need to prioritize things
like bus lanes, pedestrian safety, bicyclist safety.
-I've got about 30 seconds.
Some final thoughts on transportation, please.
-Oh, certainly.
You know, as I believe the only member of council
who doesn't own a car,
I know I represent the one out of five Seattle households
who are who are also car-free,
some by choice, some not.
And so there's a reality
where about 20% of our community relies on walking, biking,
taking the bus, taking light rail.
And so having a dedicated focus on this
will be really important.
This year, we'll be taking up renewal
of the Seattle Transit Measure, which funds our bus service. -Yes.
-And I'm really excited to work with my colleagues
on how we can ensure we're really focusing those dollars
on improving bus reliability and frequency, expanding access.
This currently funds our ORCA LIFT program.
so expanding access for our lower-income neighbors.
So a lot of discussions will be had
in Transportation Committee this year
on how we're delivering on exactly that
and, again, working towards Vision Zero,
which I certainly am in agreement
with Councilmember Lin
we need to really focus on
for the sake of safety on our streets.
-Thank you very much for that, Councilmember Rinck.
Councilmember Lin, appreciate that.
I'm Brian Callanan.
See you next time on "Council Edition."
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