♪♪
-Hello. I'm your host, Brian Callanan.
A proposal to expand the use of surveillance cameras
in Seattle has been put on hold.
Also, the city is taking a close look at gaps in its 911 system.
Plus, a plan to rapidly install more homeless shelter spaces
is facing new scrutiny from the City Council.
Council members Bob Kettle and Maritza Rivera
are responding to these issues
and the questions you're sending in, too --
next on "City Inside/Out: Council Edition."
-We want to protect our residents in Seattle,
including our immigrant population.
-One of the things that we need to get away from
is this bipolar world of SPOG and CARE,
and that's what we're gonna do.
-All that and more
coming up next on "City Inside/Out: Council Edition."
♪♪
Welcome once again to "City Inside/Out: Council Edition."
I'm Brian Callanan.
Great to be with you here on the Seattle Channel.
Also great to be with a couple of Council members here
for our monthly show, including Council Member Maritza Rivera,
who represents District 4 in Northeast Seattle.
Also chairs the Libraries, Education,
and Neighborhoods Committee.
Good to be with you. -Thank you, Brian.
Nice to be here.
-And, also, we have with us
Council Member Bob Kettle. Represents District 7
from Downtown to Magnolia,
Interbay out to South Lake Union.
Also chairs the Public Safety Committee.
Thank you for being here.
And I should mention you were the Grand Marshal
of the St. Patrick's Day parade
not too long ago here in Seattle.
-Yes. A great honor. And an honor to be here, too.
-All right. Top of the afternoon to you.
Here we go.
I want to start with some current events, if I could.
Mayor Wilson recently announced a plan regarding
surveillance cameras that I know you both are aware of.
She's actually pausing a planned expansion
of closed-circuit or CCTV, cameras,
with an exception for areas around the city's stadiums
before the World Cup,
but she won't turn off any of the cameras
the city currently uses,
except for one near a clinic
with reproductive health services.
She's pausing the use
of automated license plate readers, too,
until the city can get aligned
with a newly approved state law about that.
The mayor says she has heard from a lot of passionate,
emotional people who support
and who do not support expanding the use of cameras
in her press conference.
-But precisely because different people
and different communities
experience the cameras differently,
it's important to base a decision on more than feelings.
It's important to ground our actions
in a thorough understanding of how the cameras are being used,
of the public benefits they are providing,
and of any harm they are causing or could cause.
-So both of you put out statements regarding this.
And, Council Member Kettle,
maybe I can get your reaction here first.
The mayor is talking about further study
of the impacts of expanding surveillance,
with concerns about
how that could impact local immigration populations
during the federal immigration crackdown
or women seeking reproductive care, too.
Some thoughts about this?
-We've already had those thoughts.
We've been working these issues from day one,
starting in 2024 with ALPR,
CCTV, the closed-circuit TV, the first time.
And by the way, ALPR -- automatic license plate readers.
-Yes. Thank you.
-And then we came around again with CCTV, as well.
And then on top of that is the Real Time Crime Center.
So all these points that are raised,
we've been working in.
And to the point of the mayor's comments yesterday,
I welcome a audit. I welcome a review.
Key here is that it has to be done by the World Cup --
ahead of the World Cup. -Mm-hmm.
-That is so important.
Secondly, you noted the ALPR again --
the automatic license plate readers.
We just had a bill passed in Olympia.
-Yes. -And it's important.
And so we do need to do our checks on that,
see where we need to adjust and fix.
And I will say on that,
if you look at all the protections and the things
that we built in, the protocols that we built in with our ALPR,
and you add things from Olympia,
like the 21-day rule and importantly,
the Public Disclosure Request Exception, the PDR exception...
-Yeah.
-...we basically addressed the issues that people raise,
and so we should be moving forward with ALPR,
however way that we need to do it.
There's a couple pieces that need to be adjusted, of course,
but we've really addressed all the issues related to ALPR,
so we should be moving forward once that adjustment is made.
-Okay. Stay tuned.
I know there's some more information coming
from your committee on this.
But, Council Member Rivera,
I want to get your opinion on this.
And if I could, I'm gonna add in a question from a viewer
to set things up here.
Mark writes this --
"We put cameras on an apartment property
that we own that had constant crime --
car break-ins, et cetera.
The criminal activity stopped once they saw the camera system.
How can the city use and encourage the use of cameras
and ensure that the surveillance isn't used to track
illegal aliens, so they are politically acceptable?
We have to stop the crime!"
Council Member Rivera, some thoughts here?
And if you could weave in some thoughts
about what Mark is asking about here, too.
-Yeah. Thank you for the question, Brian.
You know, my colleague Council Member Kettle
and I are aligned on this.
And this is something that Council worked a lot on
when we passed the Real Time Crime Center cameras
and the ALPR. -And you're both
on the Public Safety Committee, right?
-I am now.
I wasn't before. But this is something
that my constituents care deeply about, as do I.
And I also care about privacy protections,
which is why former Council Member Moore
and I put privacy protections in place for ALPR --
for instance, ensuring that there's only, um, you know --
If office-- well, this is Real Time Crime Center
actually, also --
is, officers need to ask permission.
There's only one person who can view the footage.
And any officer wanting to look at the footage
has to have written permission and just that kind of stuff.
And then, also, Council Member Moore
put privacy protections in it
where, um, the provider -- the -- the --
not the provider... -The camera operator?
-Axon. -Yes. Right.
-The company. -The vendor we're talking about.
You got it. Yeah.
-If they had a reach-out or a warrant to see --
sorry -- to see the footage,
that we would get notified and so forth.
And that way, we were trying to avoid
and really try to protect folks
that would come here for reproductive
or gender-affirming care.
That is important to us. -Yeah.
-So we want to make sure that folks did not have,
including the feds, access to that information.
And that's why we put those privacy protections in place.
So I would say to Mark, the person who asked the question,
it is an important tool.
It's not the only tool,
but it is an important tool on the investigative side,
when crime happens
and we use cameras in order to be able to investigate
that crime, like you saw this week.
Um, a detective at SPD
was able to use camera footage in part
to make the arrest of the two tragic -- the murders...
-Down at Rainier Beach. Yeah. -Down at Rainier Beach.
That's right. -Yeah.
-And so it is a tool and it is an important tool and one
that we support -- that I support using.
And, you know, we care about the privacy protections,
which is why we put those in place.
And then to my colleague's point,
we'll have to align to the state on the ALPR.
Um, but we support the use of it.
And I will say I was disappointed to hear --
I appreciate that the mayor kept the current cameras in place
and the Real Time Crime Center in place.
I do appreciate the mayor did that.
She sees the value in that.
I was disappointed that we're not moving forward with --
We're putting the cameras at the stadiums,
but we're not turning them on. -Yeah.
-We've got FIFA coming and I think that is really important.
And, also, outside of Garfield High School,
there's a camera pause.
And we've heard from parents who --
They want the cameras around the schools
so that when these things are happening,
unfortunately, we have, you know,
access to footage in order to investigate these crimes.
-Thank you for that.
And I wanted to take this a little more broadly, if I could,
and just look at some of the actions
the City Council has taken recently
when it comes to responding to concerns
about federal immigration activity, specifically.
A few examples. The Council passed a ban on allowing
federal immigration officers to stage any actions
on city property.
You passed a moratorium on building detention centers.
City employees are not allowed to share information, et cetera.
Council Member Rivera,
how will these actions protect Seattleites?
Should immigrant communities feel safer, fully protected?
How do you look at that?
I look at this as that we are all aligned on this issue.
I will say everyone on the City Council --
and the mayor supports this, as well --
We want to protect our residents in Seattle,
including our immigrant population.
And so we're doing all we can.
Some of this stuff, we'll have to wait to see how it plays out,
but that doesn't mean that we're not doing all we can,
and we should do all we can.
So my bill actually was codifying
Keep Washington Working laws
to not share -- not just SPD share information,
but, also, I added the piece about any city department
should not be sharing non- publicly-available information
related to civil immigration enforcement.
So hopefully these things will keep
our immigrant population safe. Some of these other things,
like the staging, other cities have done, as well.
And we will have to see how those play out
if, uh, you know,
the fed should come here and try to stage, right?
Some of this stuff, we'll have to see how it plays out.
-Yeah. Council Member Kettle,
you were the sponsor behind some of these bills, too.
How do they make Seattle safer?
Can I ask that general question?
I think that they're very important, each of themselves,
but I would add that the end result is greater
than the sum of its parts
because they reinforce each other.
And they also show leadership and they show
where our values are.
And then on a practical side, we have --
So we're making a statement related to, like, staging
on city property, you know.
And part of this is, under the Constitution,
we have the right to do that. And part of --
We have to show that. We have to make that point known,
'cause, otherwise, it could be lost.
And so this combination says, "Hey, these are our values.
You cannot do this."
And if they were to do something like this,
we're working with the city attorney's office,
whose name has not come up yet, but the city attorney, Evans,
in terms of getting injunctive relief.
So this combination with, like, setting the standards,
professional standards in terms of all law enforcement,
whether it's federal, state,
county, or surrounding jurisdictions --
We set the standards.
And you combine these things and it sets the expectation
so if something does happen,
we have that baseline to work from.
-Can I talk about those professionalism standards?
I want to talk about that
and also what the state is now doing --
a law prohibiting officers from wearing masks,
which has been a trademark of a lot of these ICE agents
as they've come into different cities.
This activity at the local and the state level
has drawn some pushback from the Seattle Police Officers Guild
and some other officers, too.
The new SPOG president, Kent Loux,
recently said this about that policy --
"If the powers that be,
if certain politicians want to have this feud with the feds,
in my opinion, leave us out of it.
We're not going to put ourselves in a position
where we are now obstructing federal law enforcement
from doing their job or conducting their operation."
So you got some local officers saying,
"We don't want to have to report on federal officers."
What's your message to the rank-and-file cops out there?
-Well, two things.
One, if you look at the bill that was just passed in Olympia,
it is a law. It was just signed by Governor Ferguson.
But, you know, there's high legal risk with that.
We didn't go that route with that,
as you saw with the California case.
And I didn't want to go with that.
Instead, what I did in terms of my bill -- resolution
was to have the professionalism standards piece showing
that what we expect from Seattle PD
is what we expect from law enforcement.
So the head of SPOG, our new chief of SPOG
can come and explain to me how he can be against that,
because everything I've been doing
has been respectful of those pieces and respectful
and supportive of our chief and of our men and women
in Seattle Police Department.
You know, if there's a 911 call
regarding an armed kidnapping on Aurora,
they need to respond.
You know, they need to engage, aka respond to that call.
And once they're there, they don't know if these,
you know, kitted-up people are actual law enforcement
or just somebody else doing something else.
-Right. -And so they need to engage.
You know, "Hey, what's your credentials?"
And they've been doing that professionally.
There's nothing wrong with that.
And then, as part of that process,
you get a sense of probable cause, too.
And then the documentation piece is,
okay, you got the body-worn video and you got the vehicle.
We're not asking for Seattle PD to be doing --
What I do not want in our streets is the OK Corral.
Absolutely not.
But what we are asking through the directive with Chief Barnes,
and what we've done, as well,
and what I've said as chair of Public Safety,
is respectful and professional, and it's our duty to do that.
So SPOG can look at that and they can come to my office
and we can talk about it.
But as somebody who's been working public safety
in this city and as a retired naval officer,
I have him come to me and say --
explain why everything that we've done in this city
is not appropriate.
-Okay. Fair enough.
Council Member Rivera, your thoughts
about this pushback from SPOG, other police officers
about this policy?
What do you think?
-Yeah. Brian, I -- You know,
the only thing I would add to Council Member Kettle's remarks
is just that we need to ensure --
And I'm sure the mayor will be working with the police chief
to be clear with officers on what the expectation is.
I think if you're clear on the front end
on what the expectations is -- what the expectations are,
you get better outcomes in the long run.
So I think that will be important in terms
of how the -- how these directives roll out.
-Got it, got it.
One more touch on the police officers' union
before we leave it.
I want to raise an issue
that recently came up during a Public Safety Committee meeting
from the chief of CARE, Amy Barden.
So CARE, of course,
the Community Assisted Response & Engagement Department,
takes in 911 calls,
also dispatches CARE teams -- trained social workers
who can handle less serious calls like a person down,
et cetera.
But Chief Barden was saying
that even with the Council approving funding
to have more CARE teams going citywide,
they haven't been able to do as much
as they're actually capable of doing
because of the city's contract with SPOG.
It's stopping CARE teams, she's saying,
from responding to certain calls.
-Today, we estimate that the 24 responders are, on average,
fulfilling only 28% of their capacity
due to the constraints described.
And so we must innovate.
It is unacceptable to not fully maximize this important team.
And it's also unacceptable to waste even a dollar
in such a challenging budget environment.
Council Member Rivera, can I start with you?
What's going on here?
-Well, Brian, I'll say about this point
is that at the moment,
we should focus on what CARE can do.
I understand there are parameters,
so I don't want to excuse the parameters,
but I want to say that we have a team of people.
I've met with the CARE folks and they very much want to help.
And we have a CARE team in the University District,
for instance.
All our districts have CARE teams.
And I will say that I would very much like
to have a conversation with Chief Barden and others
about, how can the teams help within the district,
across the neighborhoods, across the city?
Because there are things that they can do
besides respond to 911 calls.
They can do -- You know, there are folks in the right-of-way
that need assistance.
And if they're walking around,
they should be offering assistance to those folks.
There's nothing to prevent the CARE folks
from walking around our neighborhoods --
they're already in the neighborhoods --
and responding to folks.
There is not a lack of folks needing help,
unfortunately, within our neighborhoods.
We want to help those people.
They want to help those people, as well.
Let's do that and let's focus on that for the time being,
given the parameters that are in place.
I just feel like -- I agree with her.
Let's not waste the resource.
I don't think we need to. -Okay.
-I think there are things that we can do and that CARE can do.
And I would like to see that. -Got it.
Council Member Kettle,
I know the mayor's office was saying at this meeting,
"Maybe there's a way to work with the city attorney
to compel a different interpretation
of the SPOG contract."
I know this is a really challenging issue.
Can you talk about this?
Where are we in this process?
What's going on?
-Um, well, I'm aware of what's going on,
and that's one reason
why I designed the meeting the way I did.
Um, I had the three chiefs -- Instead of having
the three chiefs talk about their departments,
I had them talk about alternative response.
And I always say alternative response,
by the way, instead of just CARE,
because alternative response is broader than CARE.
-Yeah. SPD's doing stuff, Fire Department.
Yeah. Yeah. Yes. -So that was all purposely done.
And I knew it was gonna raise things to the surface, Brian.
But you know what?
You have to have things raised to the surface to deal with it.
And so now I've had a meeting --
a call with Chief Barden and previous calls
and I said, "Okay, okay, this is what we're gonna do.
You know, we're looking at the CARE-enabling legislation.
Okay, what can we do there?
You know, give me ideas."
I talked to Chief Scoggins from Fire.
I said, "Chief, you know," and he's been around.
You know, he gave me some great background.
And says, "Hey, from your perspective,
what can be different?
You know, one of the things that we need to get away from
is this bipolar world of SPOG and CARE.
And that's what we're gonna do because,
um, CARE has a public health piece --
behavioral health particularly. -Yes,
-Who's responsible for public health?
-The county mainly. Yeah. Right. -The county.
So we can look at relationships with King County.
There's about three main areas that I'm looking at.
Um, who else does health? Like, health health.
Fire. -The state. Okay. All right.
-So we can look at, you know, relationship with Fire.
So we need to move around this CARE-SPOG thing.
And this is what's gonna happen when we go through this
and it's gonna be different things on the executive,
I think, in the future.
But I also think that we can either update the SPOG-enab--
I mean, the CARE-enabling legislation
or new legislation that builds on it.
And I think that's really important, and separately,
'cause it's tied to this,
is also the public drug use and possession ordinance.
And so what was not around back then was CARE.
-Yeah. -Mm-hmm.
-None of this is by accident, by the way.
Who's a big piece of the public drug use and possession?
'Cause they're supposed to be two answers --
either diversion or jail, right?
-I've been getting a few of these wrong.
I'll let you tell me. Yeah.
-Diversion is primarily through PDA.
-Right. Yeah. Purpose. Dignity. Action.
-Exactly. Now, where does PDA now reside?
Does it reside under Human Services Department anymore?
No. It resides under CARE. -Right. Okay.
-And so we have pieces in terms of the alternative
as it relates to public use in terms of substance use disorder
and, you know, the general addiction pieces.
So we have avenues to work this.
So what I'm doing right now
is, I'm engaging with the stakeholders on this.
We're looking at possibilities and working with Central Staff.
I get input from my colleagues. By the way,
Council Member Rivera is fantastic on different pieces,
bringing her sharp legal mind on some of these...
-Okay. -With amendments.
And this goes way back. Back to ALPR in the spring of '24.
-Sure.
-And so we're gonna be doing this.
And so I've given you kind of, like, some broad outlines.
And then -- So maybe in the summer,
I can come back and then we can talk about it.
You know, just ahead of recess or ahead of budget,
we'll have a review. -Okay.
That sounds like a plan.
Council Member Kettle, let me stick with you
a little bit more on emergency services.
The Seattle Times recently did a report on some gaps
in the city's 911 system. In one case,
a woman called the city's nurse line, waited for 10 hours,
unfortunately passed away.
The city's nurse-ordered ambulance rides are exempted
from wait-time standards
and tracking here in the city of Seattle.
You've said the city needs to look into this.
I know you have some concerns about this.
What's the latest? What's going on here?
-Yes. We have to look at this.
As I said to Mr. Chroman at Seattle Times and others --
Mr. Beekman at The Seattle Times,
actually -- that, um, I've been to the Fire Alarm Center.
I've been there.
I've listened to them talk to the nurses' line,
talk to the nurses as calls were coming in.
I have great confidence in the system,
but there's always room for improvement.
So I had a conversation --
I mentioned I already talked to Chief Scoggins as related
to alternative response.
I also talked to him about this, as well,
and I think we have some opportunities
to do a look at it.
I think it's good to have this on the committee agenda.
It's probably gonna be later
because we're so jam-packed in terms of issues
that we're working,
but that allows Fire and the executive,
particularly since we have a new administration,
to work through this in terms of looking at the contract,
looking at the parameters of what's going on with AMR,
looking at the relationship between the nurses' line
and the Fire Alarm Center,
where our firefighters are, and say, "Hey,
what can we do differently?"
'Cause it's important and it's important
because she could be my mother.
She could be anybody's mother or sister or daughter.
And we need to be doing right.
And I believe in this case,
you know, it's looking at some of those contract positions
and also, like, who knows what, when, where.
Does one person have the full story?
Does the AMR crew that came to the door --
Did they have the full? You know?
So you ask these questions, you work through these pieces,
and then we can work to adjust and adapt
anything that we may need to do with working
with Fire Department and so forth
and then look to make those changes.
-Council Member Rivera, anything to add here?
-I mean, I would just say, you know, review is important.
You've heard me say, Brian,
that, you know, we run these programs
and we have to make sure that we're reviewing
and make sure they're doing what they're intended to do.
And here is our now opportunity to look at this.
Unfortunately, something tragic happened.
And we should be looking at things before that happens.
But nevertheless, we're at this point
and I appreciate the chairs giving attention to this.
And we're all gonna be looking at this.
And, you know, giving that review is really important.
-Okay. Thank you very much.
Council Member Rivera, I'm gonna stick with you
and talk about a new plan for Mayor Wilson
that would have a big impact on neighborhoods.
I'm thinking of the committee you chair here.
So the mayor wants to have 1,000 people
who are homeless inside by the end of the year,
500 by the time the World Cup comes to Seattle in June.
She's hoping to expand capacity first at Seattle's
tiny home villages.
Some of these villages
moving from 100 to 150 residents, for example.
Others could be as big as 250 people.
Just generally here, what do you think of this plan,
how it's gonna impact our neighborhoods, please.
-Well, Brian, I have a lot of questions.
This is a newer proposal at least that got sent down to us.
I know a lot of people,
including constituents, have questions.
And so we need to get through those questions.
We need to get a lot more information.
How will this all work?
I will say that I appreciate the idea
to have behavioral health and case management 24-7 on-site.
I do think going from 100 to 250 people is a lot,
given the high acuity needs of this population,
and we want to make sure people have the access to services
so they can succeed.
I also have a concern about public safety
around these sites.
So ensuring what is the plan for 24-7 security
so that we're actually also making sure
that the neighborhoods are safe?
That has been an issue that we've had across the city
at different sites.
And we want -- And we've been talking about it
since we got here, Chair Kettle and I.
And so I want to make sure that we are addressing that
and not adding, you know --
while we're helping people -- and we need to --
we're also addressing the public safety needs
of the neighborhoods. -Got it.
Council Member Kettle, this happened at a recent briefing,
and you actually raised some concerns about
just how fast the mayor was trying to make this happen,
how that might impact some neighborhoods,
the communication going on there.
I want to talk about those concerns.
We've got an e-mail from Brit, who wrote this --
"How are we going to make sure we support
our unhoused neighbors during the World Cup,
because sweeping them from the area only leads to them
distrusting the city and community more,
which makes getting them into any kind of safe space
in the future even harder."
Let's talk about this, please.
-Well, the first thing is,
I don't allow the word "sweeps" in my office
'cause sweeps is like a PR term that's been used for those
that want to, like,
have positions against certain things.
And so that's not what happens.
You know, earlier, you talked about, you know,
passionate and emotion, you know, and then --
And then what happens is,
when you're on the campaign trail,
like with the mayor's campaign,
you know, you hear these different voices,
but then you come in the office, like, on surveillance.
She's now learning. She said this yesterday --
"Oh, actually, the program does this very differently."
It's the same thing with Unified Care Team
and the efforts that the city's doing,
because this is Seattle.
We have those values.
And so we're working them in. This idea
that we're against this is wrong.
And I think this is great for the new team coming in
'cause they're realizing --
And it should be a lesson for everybody,
particularly the team that's coming in,
that the voices that you heard on the campaign trail
were not knowledgeable about the topic
on which they were talking.
And with that backdrop, you know,
what we need to do is, like, the lessons-learned point.
We talked about this
with the earlier conversation with the 911.
Lessons-learned attitude.
How do we make it better?
So we've all been on the streets.
By the way, all of us council members, we're out and about,
you know. And not to bring this up,
but, like, this morning, I was on the street
and I saw a dead man on 3rd Avenue, 3rd and Vine.
-I'm sorry to hear it. -Yes.
And so we're -- And I'm talking to the officer, you know,
about, "Hey, what's happening here?"
and these issues that are happening.
It was an O.D., and it's striking.
And so it's like, "Hey, what's happening here?
How can we get answers?"
And so I'm aware of these pieces,
you know, that area -- 3rd and Blanchard and so forth.
And then, so it's like, "How do we do this?"
So I know tiny home villages, by the way, says "home,"
but it's shelter.
It's not housing. -Right.
-But we've been incorporating these lessons-learned pieces
in terms of security.
I had, you know, a tiny home- combination RV village
within, like, a half mile of my home.
But because we're engaging
and they're learning the lessons learned,
the service providers, we're putting in place
those public safety pieces, those protocols.
-Okay. -We're adding in,
you know, the wraparound care,
you know, the counseling.
That's what happened at the Salmon Bay Village.
And that made a big difference moving forward.
And if we keep doing that -- And we're augmenting it, by the way,
in the legislative department,
because we have this Neighborhood Engagement
and Mitigation Plan process under way,
and we'll work with the executive on that.
-Okay. Thank you. -And if I can add, Brian...
-Briefly, please. -I mean,
on the tiny home villages,
we need to ensure we have a plan for off-ramping,
for getting people permanent housing.
I mean, we're seeing a lot of folks staying longer
in tiny house villages that weren't intended.
That isn't --
-It's intended to be short-term.
-Exactly, exactly. It's meant to be short-term.
So what are the off-ramping strategies?
There's a tiny house village in my district
where folks have been there for years.
And so how do we get folks hous-- you know,
permanent housing and not just this temporary housing.
So all those questions need to be answered as part
of this endeavor, as well.
-Thank you.
I need to do the minute-long version with you,
Council Member Rivera, about the Library Levy.
This is big for the Council.
The mayor presented a plan for about a $410 million levy,
up from $219 million
when voters passed it seven years ago.
Does this proposal need to be tweaked?
What's going on?
Give me some rough sketches on this, please.
-I will say this is a really exciting levy.
It's a really exciting proposal.
We are -- In this proposal,
we're maintaining all the great services
that the library provides, including open hours.
Um, folks in the city love libraries, as do I...
as I know, Council Member Kettle joins me in loving libraries.
And for me, this is an opportunity
to keep maintaining the services that we have.
Um, the 2019 levy was very supported,
highly supported by constituents.
And I believe this will be, as well.
-Okay. Thank you for that.
I'll throw one more question to you, Council Member Kettle.
Photo evidence reveals you are
the tallest Seattle City Council member.
So I'm giving you the basketball question.
Should Seattleites get their hopes up about the Sonics
coming back to town?
We have a strong case and the arena's in my district.
I have a strong relationship with the Storm and others
that are -- like the Kraken and everybody else,
and we have all the pieces that are there.
And with the NBA, usually come in pairs.
So Vegas and Seattle is the natural.
And so I am confident, but cautiously confident
'cause I don't want to jinx anything.
-Okay. All right.
I'll call that a mid-range jumper
from Council Member Kettle.
Council Member Rivera, thank you for joining me.
We got to get out of here. I'm Brian Callanan.
See you next time on "Council Edition."
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