-Joy, thank you so much for joining us tonight.
Um, so let's start with the -- we just had an election
in November, not that long ago, right?
Um, what were your takeaways from that election?
Do you, you know,
how do you see the kind of results
of that election impacting the council
and the city going forward?
-Awesome. Well, first of all, thank you all for having me.
This is not one of the questions you sent me,
but we'll go off the -- -[ Laughs ]
Yeah, those were all fake. -They're all fake.
And I came prepared.
Um, so the question was,
what did we take from this election?
And I think some of the most important things
that I know that I personally took
was looking at some of the people that ran,
so some of the candidates that ran,
and what was their platform,
what message was resonating with people?
We heard affordability was key.
A lot of young people are struggling in our city,
and we heard that from a lot of folks.
We also heard a common theme across all platforms,
which was housing,
whether it was owning, renting, rents, or a mortgage.
Housing was a big key player in that.
I also heard a lot of people talk about child care --
people, young families wanting to start in the city
and trying to figure out
how they were going to pay for child care
and all the costs that come,
being a young family in Seattle.
And we also heard from folks too, about,
hey, we want Seattle to be positive as well.
What are we looking forward to?
And a lot of the candidates that ran sold these things of,
hey, this is what we have to look forward to,
not about, hey, this is what's not working,
but this is what we have to look forward to.
And so, I took those messages.
Uh, you know, that's what I have been hearing
when I was in neighborhoods talking to people.
I'm constantly dialed into neighborhoods.
And that was a lot of the feedback we were getting.
But I know that it was very well shown in this election
with the candidates who won.
-So, you're the new president of the Seattle City Council
and, uh, unanimous kind of consensus pick
as council president.
So, um, so congratulations on that, first of all.
[ Applause ] But yeah, um, um,
but also tell us a bit about
how do you see the role of council president.
What do you see your role being, now that you're in charge?
-Okay, so let me tell you the lessons
I learned from last year.
Number one, communication is key.
So, oftentimes at council,
staff would -- we would have different meetings.
We would have, uh,
people say certain things at council on the dais,
and they would get reported differently
or they would show up on social media very differently.
Um, and so I realized that communication,
owning our own narrative
was going to be incredibly important.
So, you will see on our social media, on my social media,
on a lot of council members' social media,
I'm pushing them to push their own narrative,
to talk about things so you can hear it from them,
and not necessarily a reporter
or someone who heard something or an insider --
for them to own their own narrative.
The second thing that I think was important
was how we controlled public commenters.
And when I say control,
meaning how we manage that flow of when they came in,
being respectful, humanizing folks,
making sure we made eye contact with them,
just kind of just setting that tone so they could felt like,
number one, it's a safe place to say, you know,
to articulate and express their First Amendment rights,
but also a place where we were going to --
where we were going to embrace dialogue over division.
That was key.
Third, last but not least, was humanizing the council.
Oftentimes we're caricatures.
We are people that you read about,
but I'm pretty sure if people knew
that Dan Strauss was a kid from Ballard, grew up here,
they would maybe treat him a little differently
or look at him a little differently.
Or Bob, the Public Safety Hat chair is also,
and I said this in my speech, a guy who goes on Saturdays
and sits in a hot gym, gets yelled at by his wife,
running the CYO clock
at a basketball game for his kid, right?
If they could see that side -- or Rob, the dad from Delridge --
they could see us as humans?
I do believe that people could find that human connection.
So, those are the three things that I learned from last year,
that you're going to see us pushing,
that we are just people in Seattle.
We're just one of your friendly neighbors
that happens to be sitting on the council as well.
-So, let me ask a follow-up to that,
because that seems very optimistic,
about what the what the vibe is going to be
in council chambers during meetings and stuff.
You know, we all know what it's been like
at various points in the past.
But there was also, though, this kind of assertion,
and I think it got some traction that the previous council,
that there was a toxicity,
like, you know, there was bad blood between council members,
you know, that it was people were mean to each other
and stuff like that.
First of all, do you think that was an accurate portrayal
of the last council?
And if so, or if not,
like, what's going to be different now?
-Yeah, it was very clear that there were some council members
that might have had disagreements
that left the council and had different opinions
and different experiences that other council members had.
So, I do not deny that.
I also know that,
uh, we needed to do a little bit of a reset at council,
um, in terms of just finding out what our commonality is.
So, oftentimes -- I grew up in a city where it did not --
we had more labels about your neighborhood.
Okay? I'm from the Central District.
Someone's like, oh, I'm from Ballard.
Oh, I'm from the South End.
But we were all Seattleites.
And I think what I'm trying to get everyone to understand,
and I think we've all have a common --
uh, we have a commonality amongst the council members
is that we are all council members on this Team Seattle.
We might have different perspective, different views,
but at the end of the day, we're going to be respectful.
And I said that in my speech coming in,
that the respect is going to be the foundation of our success.
And I've seen that in people's doors open,
being able to go in and out of people's offices,
um, on the dais,
being respectful for when people are talking.
Now, it's only week three, okay?
So, let me just say that. Right?
Um, but I do feel like there's a little bit
of a shift of people understanding
we're on the same team here,
and especially as our federal government,
and we've seen the shift in our federal government --
we see the overreach, we see those pieces --
that we all have to be on the same team.
I call it the piece where we're all humans.
We all think that we're, you know, against each other
until the aliens come from outer space.
And now we're all a part of the human race,
and we're all like, we need to band together.
And so, that's where I kind of feel like we're at,
where you're going to find us, find more commonality,
because we see an external threat coming into Seattle.
-Let me ask about -- let me follow up
on the Trump administration. Right?
Because it certainly seems to me --
in fact, I think back in September, Trump even said,
like the big war is the war within, right?
He seems to have kind of declared, in some sense,
war on blue cities
and the values and culture of those cities,
which he sees as somehow, you know,
he's had all sorts of various names for it.
There's all sorts of concerns
about how the federal government is operating in Seattle, ICE.
There was just a thing where six Seattle public schools
had to kind of, you know, lock in place over just rumors
that ICE was in the vicinity and stuff like that.
So, how does this play out over the next year for the council?
How does the council respond to Trump and the administration?
You know, do we need to calm the waters?
Do we need to take them on more strongly?
What's your take on that?
-I think it's a little bit of everything.
So, last week when we saw what happened in Minnesota
with Renee Good,
you saw council members immediately
come out with statements
to just completely reject that type of behavior
from ICE and federal government overreach,
and how that was elevated on different social medias
or how they were in different news, legacy media.
You saw that immediately, right away.
The second piece I think we need to do,
and we have to kind of get -- there's --
we see what's happening on social media.
But I think we're oftentimes losing sight
of our immigrant and refugee community
that has told us this is -- telling us what they want.
"Joy, we need resources. We want, you know,
to make sure that we're not pressing buttons
when you're saying certain things.
We want to make sure that, you know,
we can be able to navigate certain issues
if something happens."
And so, we're taking the lead from them, oftentimes.
So, when people hear maybe we're not doing something
as fast enough or we're not saying certain things,
we are taking the lead from a lot of these
immigrant and refugee groups,
and especially in our office.
We're one of the few offices
that has an office of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs
in the country, where we actually gave --
and I got to give a shout-out to Council Member Rinck,
who wrote an amendment to give them even more funds
for this year to be able to have for legal defense,
make sure people have resources for the different groups,
housing, food, all these pieces
that make sure communities are taken care of.
Um, we're taking the lead from them.
And so I don't want to get away with folks
that want us to do certain things
that might not be close to a lot of those populations.
I think it's going to be a delicate balance of that.
-So, let me let me ask about the new council itself, right?
Along with you becoming council president,
we've got a couple new council members, right?
Eddie Lin in district two, uh, Dionne Foster, um, citywide.
They certainly won big in their races,
and they were running kind of more in the progressive lane
than sort of the moderate lane.
So, there's a little bit
of a ideological shift on the council.
And it seems like the conventional wisdom
that's come out of all of that
is that we got this kind of ideologically
really mixed council, right?
People are talking about this three, three, three, right?
We're all trying to put you in boxes, right?
There's three over here on the left
and three on the, you know, on the center,
and three kind of in between.
And you being part of the three in between.
So, is that how you see --
how do you divvy up this council,
and how do you see the kind of ideological interplay
among your the nine of you?
-Well, number one, I hate labels.
-Every politician says that.
-Yeah, I hate labels.
Um, if I had asked this room right now
how many people would consider themselves progressive,
like, just a show of your hands?
Right? Thank you. Okay.
Um, but how many people maybe not care about labels
and they just want to get stuff done?
Okay. Yeah.
It was a good trap.
-The progressives aren't liking where you're going with this.
-Progressives, y'all don't like when I come tap dance
on your side? No, I'm just playing.
Y'all don't like it because I call myself a free agent.
Um, in a way where I --
I just -- I say this with all love.
I think we've gotten away --
progressives are really good, and I've said this before,
really good at breaking things that need to be broken.
But now we have to show
how we're going to build them back up.
And I want to be a part of that party
that builds up systems that are functional,
that we're not looking at perfection,
that are not super aesthetically appeasing.
We have been focused in Seattle,
hyper-focused on aesthetics, about what does it sound like?
Does it make you feel good?
What does it look like? Instead of the functionality.
And so if you can focus on the functionality
and have a delicate balance of both,
that's the party I want to be in.
I don't care what label it is.
I just want to make sure that our parks are clean,
that our kids are safe, that our roads, our potholes.
I've said this before,
I'm not going to progressively fill your pothole
or conservatively fix the sidewalk.
I say that to everyone.
I just want to get stuff done
and make sure that I can focus on those common shared goals
of better basic government,
just city basic government as best as possible.
-So, let me ask about the new mayor, right?
Katie Wilson, um, uh,
really came out of nowhere
to, uh, win that race to become our new mayor.
Um, you obviously had a long-standing family
and personal friendship with Bruce Harrell,
the outgoing mayor.
So, talk a little bit about that transition.
What's your relationship like with the new mayor?
Have you guys had a chance to kind of sit down and talk?
What's that been like? -Yeah, it was --
well, you know, it was a transition.
I think we saw, uh,
the former mayor in government for 16 years.
So, we saw a little bit of the old guard
versus, like, the new guard,
the exchanging old Seattle, new Seattle.
And what is this identity going to be?
And we all had a great working relationship
with the former mayor.
I expect to have a great working relationship with Mayor Wilson.
That's what Seattle deserves.
I respect the office,
and I know as all council members we do.
And will we have disagreements,
like we did with the previous mayor?
Absolutely.
But I think oftentimes I think people are going to see
that we have more shared values rather than differences.
I'll give you an example.
Um, we all -- the mayor and I both believe
groceries are too high in Seattle.
We believe that, you know, I go to Tucson.
I can get a bag of groceries for 30 bucks.
Gas is $2.50, by the way, down there.
But I just want to throw that out there.
But I can get groceries.
And the affordability is way different in Tucson.
But we believe in Seattle
that groceries should be affordable food access.
Totally agree.
The way we get there is very different, right?
You have one theory about, hey, government-owned grocery stores,
and I have a theory of, well,
if we just did some things differently
operationally in Seattle,
maybe we can drive down those costs for that business.
Very different.
But the outcomes -- we still want lower groceries.
If we can start not from the ground up but backwards,
and say, hey, what are the outcomes that we want?
Okay, we want cheaper groceries. Awesome.
Okay, how do we get there, right?
What's the next step to that?
And we work backwards from that.
I think that that methodology and thinking
will get us closer to our goals,
rather than us fighting on the ground
about which ramp on the freeway we're going to take, right?
So, that's where I want to be, and I think we're going to have
more common shared goals than anything.
-So, let me ask a little bit more about a follow-up on that.
Mayor Wilson won very close mayor's race, right?
It was, I think, 2000 votes in the end
that her margin of victory,
um, the closest race in modern Seattle history.
We've got former mayor Greg Nichols here
who won a close race back in 2001.
Um, yeah. -I'd consider that recently.
-Yeah, yeah. That was recent.
But this was even closer, right, than the race
that Mayor Nichols won a few years ago.
So, does that have an impact here?
And the reason I ask this is when Bruce Harrell won in 2021,
he won a big victory.
I think for a long time,
for the first few years of his mayoralty,
he had kind of sky-high approval ratings,
and there was this sense, at least a sense that I had --
and you can tell me I'm wrong about this --
but that he had a lot of political capital
and the council was pretty deferential to the mayor,
at least in the first couple, three years of his term.
Um, is that the same vibe now?
Are you guys going to be like, hey,
if the mayor comes to us and says,
"I want this, this, this, and this,"
you guys are going to be like, "Okay,
let's figure out how we do it,"
or is there going to be a little bit
more of a back and forth, do you think?
-I think we're going to -- I think there could be.
Okay, so, some things I think
that the mayor brings to the table for the council,
there might be like, hey, we have alignment.
Let's figure out how we execute this and do this.
Um, do I expect some things that come to the council
where there will be back and forth?
Absolutely. There are nine council members.
The only time we agree on stuff
is usually at the beginning of the year, right?
When it's just like stuff coming through the legislation
or, you know, just things that are beginning,
like the first couple of weeks, the unanimous votes.
So, do I believe that we'll have a little back and forth?
Yes.
Do I feel like hopefully a lot of those,
um, hopefully a lot of the legislation
that is sent down to council is baked with council members,
so there is some type of, you know, alignment
and agreement with council members,
where we can kind of make sure that the work
and the committee can kind of just be able to put,
you know, just the paint color on the car
so we can keep it going because we have an agreement
and we don't have to build it in committee.
So, you know, I'm hoping
that there's going to be a lot of work like that done.
Uh, just the -- when we have bills come out,
I have a new thing now,
and I've learned my lesson with a lot of bills
that we've presented.
But we have a thing where it's people, process, policy.
So, who are the people involved?
And this is taken from Marcus Lemonis
because he does people, process, product.
So, it's people -- who are the people involved?
So, we talk about if we're doing a bill, who are we getting,
what advocates, what labor, what community.
What is the process that we're running?
Are we running meetings? Are we doing outreach?
What is the feedback we're getting,
making sure that that process is really well?
And then, what is the policy that has come out from there?
So, I'm hoping that when we're working with Mayor Wilson,
that we'll be a part of the people piece in this,
because I think that's going to be important
as we're pushing bills through.
-Let's talk about some of the issues.
-Yeah. -You know,
what do you see as the big priority issues
for the council in 2026. -Yeah.
So, some of the issues that I know that we've heard
and then I'll go into -- maybe the next question will be
what do you see as some of the issues.
-I am going to ask you about your priorities, too.
-Okay, so some of the stuff we have
coming up at council levies,
we have the implementation of the families education levy.
So, that's going to be important.
We also have a library levy
that's going to be on the ballot.
We also have phase two of my favorite,
the comprehensive plan.
That is amazing, right? Jesse Simpson --
-And you chaired the comp plan committee, right,
for the phase one? -I did.
That was an amazing experience. I'll say that.
Um, I will say that.
-That can be read many ways. -It was amazing.
We had tree activists. We had people about zoning.
It was a good mix of folks.
Um, but so, we have our comprehensive plan,
which is phase two,
which we're going to talk about the height
of the different neighborhood zones, regional centers,
urban centers, the height of stuff.
Um, we also have, uh,
the Seattle transit measure coming up
that we're going to have to do.
So, there's a lot of things that are on our plate.
I'm sure I forgot one,
but there's a lot of things on our plate
that are coming down for council,
in addition to some of the stuff that we're seeing,
um, you know, people have on their --
ICE, you know, and saying,
"Hey, what are you guys doing to protect us as a city?
Local government's the front porch of the city,
and we need you all to stand up and protect us,
um, when we're under these threats."
So, you're going to have --
that's going to be a conversation this year.
Also, federal funding cuts, potentially,
and how those impact people, how those impact programs.
We also have a big budget deficit.
So, we have, uh, budget chair Strauss,
who I know is going to have his hands full.
He always starts early in the process
to engage with people and community.
And then the council members as well,
during his finance meeting as well.
Um, those are the things that are more internally.
And then I can talk about externally
what we've heard from people as well.
-And there was a lot of continuity, right,
in sort of the committee assignments.
Um, a lot of the committee chairs,
the council members
who had certain committee chairs last session
kept them this year.
Dan Strauss kept budget, you know.
And so, what was new in the committee chairs, right?
You have, uh... -Yeah,
so, one of the committee chairs --
so, uh, going down the line,
Maritza Rivera, libraries, education.
She kept that.
Dan Strauss kept the finance committee.
Rob Saka kept transportation.
We did add the waterfront and the Seattle Center
to that committee.
We also had public safety. Bob Kettle chairs that.
Uh, for Dionne Foster,
Office of Housing and Civil Rights and Arts.
So, we combine that together, so she's running that.
Uh, Eddie Lin, God bless him, has stepped in to run land use.
Um, and so he's going to be running that
and the comprehensive plan.
He wanted to run it, so he's going to watch this.
Thank you, Councilmember Lin. I appreciate you taking that on.
Um, I wanted to keep public utilities.
I love public utilities.
Uh, interesting fact.
It takes 35 minutes for
when you flush something down the toilet in district three
to get to our wastewater treatment over in,
uh, over in Discovery Park.
-Are you timing it with a stopwatch?
-No, no, no. They told me this.
So, I just -- it's quicker than the bus,
quicker than a car.
So, I just wanted to throw that out there.
It's kind of cool.
So, it pumps up and down, up and down.
It's pretty dope.
Um, and so I like public utilities.
That's what I kept.
And I also took on some of the governance stuff as well.
And then Debora Juarez is City Light and Parks,
um, and I believe that's it.
Debora Juarez, we moved her around a little bit,
so I don't think I missed anyone.
-Let me ask about the comp plan in particular.
Obviously phase two is coming this year.
-Oh, I missed Councilmember Rinck because she's going to --
I'm sorry. I'm going to cut you off.
Councilmember Rinck,
she is doing Office of Economic Development.
She also has Human Services,
and she also has office -- uh, labor as well.
-Thank you.
-So, I didn't want to forget her. She will get mad at me.
-Um, comp plan phase two.
So, you talked earlier
that when you looked at sort of the lessons
of this last election,
one of them was there does seem to be a broad feeling
like we got to do more on housing
and the affordability issues around housing
and the price of housing.
Does that mean we're going to go --
and the other political thing on the record for years now,
saying that urbanism is the fastest rising political force
in the city, if you look at the chamber index polling,
they do every six months, they ask some of the same questions.
They've been doing it for about five years now.
And you can just see the graph of people
who say they're more open to density
in their neighborhoods and stuff like that going up.
Um, and I think there was a criticism
from the urbanist community
and from the left of the previous mayors,
I would say kind of status quo
kind of approach to the phase one of the comp plan.
So, does that all add up to,
we're going to go bigger in phase two,
or is it too soon to tell?
Or where are we at on that?
-It will be interesting to see where the mayor lands on this
with our Office of Planning and Development,
but this is what I will tell you.
I've had more friends move out of Seattle into different areas,
either not just King County, but out of the state.
So, a lot of my friends have moved
because they can't afford to live here.
I think about my parents, who are making $65 to $70,000 each,
bought their home for $135,000 in Rainier Beach in 1996
and were able to plant roots.
And when I'm talking to a lot of young people that are, you know,
trying to figure out where they're planting roots,
a lot of people have said,
"Joy, I'm just going to be a renter forever.
And I have -- and I know that."
Or "I can't afford to buy a home,
and so I have to move out of the city."
And, you know, that really hurts
because you're listening to people
who want to build roots, who want to plant seeds.
And so, it's a combination of zoning, absolutely.
It's a combination of us getting our stuff together at the city
for permitting and making sure
that when someone's building a new apartment building,
that we're not making them also replace the massive
water line in the middle of the street as well.
There's a little bit of making sure
that folks can be able to convert their house
into a duplex and a triplex and ADU.
I've heard people say, we're not going to, you know,
that's not going to be the only answer.
I get it, but I also know
that there's a ton of people I talk to
that I've seen when I'm walking around my neighborhood
and I'm walking my dog Santana,
and I'm looking at people's houses.
I've seen more conversions of homes
that have added a basement unit, that have added an ADU,
that have converted their house into a triplex or duplex.
I ran into a six-plex off Yesler the other day.
I was shocked because I had never seen a six-plex before,
and it was just so beautifully crafted,
but you're going to see more of that in Seattle.
The original affordable housing providers
were just the mom and pops
who wanted to rent out their basement to keep their home
so they could pass it on to their kids.
They didn't raise rent like that.
They were just, "Hey, we just want people
that are going to take care of our homes."
And so, it's a little bit of everything,
of having our developers build housing,
having our people that live in Seattle build housing,
making it easier for anybody and everybody to build housing.
I know we've all read the book "Abundance" by Ezra Klein,
and that's all this -- all the book --
all the progressives put in my face.
"Have you read that book, Joy? Have you seen it?
And what have you learned?"
And it's like, "Thank you, Mr. Teacher."
But the key with that,
and I and I totally agree with it,
is just building a ton of housing,
but it's not just going to be through zoning.
It's going to be a little bit of everything,
a part of the process in our city.
-Let me ask you about a couple more issues.
Uh, well, let me start with homelessness,
because you and I have had a conversation
and this may get to some of your priorities, too.
You and I, you've been talking about,
you've got some ideas for how we might be able to better
move forward on homelessness
in terms of dealing with encampments and stuff like that.
What do you see happening on that front, um, this year?
-Yeah, two years in and, um, you know,
to not make a lot of progress
where we're at right now is a little disappointing,
especially when you see a lot of the dollars
that have been spent and understanding,
okay, what are the impacts that you want to have?
Um, and so the investment still needs to be there.
But I think our strategy needs to shift a little bit.
And the one thing that I called for last year,
and I had to reengage with people just to figure out,
okay, what am I actually --
what is the strategy behind this
was when I'm talking to fire fighters, police officers,
mental health support workers,
or anyone that might be trying to figure out an encampment
or be the traffic controller for certain issues on our streets,
they're always telling me, "Joy, I don't have a landing zone.
I don't have a shelter to take this person.
I don't have a place to take this person
if they're suffering from mental health.
I don't have a place for someone if they need treatment."
So, I have been calling them stabilization zones.
They are not new.
I know they're, uh,
they have tent cities and other things in our city,
but I'd like to see more of those communities in a way
where we can be able to take people to.
-The second thing --
-So it's a kind of authorized, sort of larger --
-Correct.
-...encampment kind of situation.
-Yes.
So, encampment where you have water, sewer, garbage,
you have, uh, social workers.
Some people have said, "Well, Joy,
why don't we put tiny homes there?"
I want all of the above. It's not one or the other to me.
So, um, I would like all of the above.
The second thing is,
I would like to see our health department, with King County,
the harm reduction that we do,
I would like them to pair that with a, um,
a rapid response for people to get treatment.
So, instead of giving someone a referral
and thinking they can go across town 30 minutes
to get treatment the next day,
for us to have some type of rapid response
to treatment for people.
I don't know what that looks like.
I'm not a professional,
but what I do know is what we're doing is not working,
and I think we can make it --
we can disrupt patterns for folks that are
suffering on our streets
to have those readily accessible to people.
And those might be mobile treatment centers
that we've seen, whatever it is that can break up that person,
to snap them back into reality, to say, hey,
I know you don't want to be here.
I know this drug is 100 times more potent
than heroin or anything.
I had a social worker tell me,
"Joy, it would be easier for me to talk to people on heroin
than it is for me to talk to folks
that are on fentanyl right now,"
that the step down from fentanyl is heroin
and they were telling me about their challenges
in just stabilizing people
and getting them to a certain place of reality.
And so, I think our approach right now has been based on data
that has been on drugs that are not the type of drugs
that we're seeing on the street,
and we're doubling down on these processes,
and we're doubling down on this.
And I'm saying, can we just try something different?
Can we still have the same investment and money,
but can we just try a different strategy to this approach?
-So, the new mayor,
obviously she's been spending a lot of time
in these early days getting her administration stood up,
working through all the department directors
and making decisions about who she's keeping.
But the one big marker she put down,
and she put this down during the campaign
and has reiterated it since,
is she wants to do 4,000 --
get 4,000 unhoused people into some form of shelter
over the course of her term,
and she wants to go big and go now, right?
And so she's been talking about maybe 500 new shelter slots
between now and the end of May or the World Cup.
So, have you and the council started to engage on that?
Do you see that fitting in?
I mean, that's a short timeline, right?
-Absolutely.
-And there's going to be big decisions involved.
And we need to wait to see what the mayor says about
how she wants to do that.
Right? But it's going to cost money.
All of those sorts of things.
That's going to be all sort of council decisions.
So, do you see the urgency there and getting --
do you think we're going to have 500 new units of shelter
by June?
-Um, this is what I am looking forward to.
I'm looking forward to seeing the plan
for it to get sent to council.
Uh, we are willing and ready to work.
We all believe that we want to get people inside
and off the street.
All of the council members believe that.
And so, we're going to be working and willing
and defining out like, hey, what's the plan?
What's different than what you think we've been doing?
What can we do better?
And I think we're sitting and just ready to engage
and then also trying to figure out, okay,
where's that money coming from?
So, are we -- is it progressive revenue?
So, what are the progressive outcomes?
Are we taking from something?
So, what is the plan?
And I think that we're willing --
I can't comment on that,
but I know that we are all willing and ready
to work with the mayor to make sure
that people are getting off the streets and inside.
-You mentioned progressive revenue, right?
And, um, muni cap gains tax,
municipal capital gains tax came up in the last --
last year's budget session.
You were kind of on the, you know,
you voted for it in committee,
ended up voting against it.
And on the final vote, where are you on progressive revenue?
It obviously seems like
with the election of Eddie and Dionne, there's going to be --
and the mayor said that she wants as part
of the budget process to bring forward.
She's got sounds like a couple of ideas on progressive revenue.
-Oh, for sure. I've said this before. I'll say it again.
Progressive revenue should equal progressive outcome.
And I've put my flag in the sand.
And I said that any tax that we might vote on
or bring to the table should put money back in families' pockets.
I do not want to see any money go back
into government and bureaucracy.
And so, if that's a universal basic income,
if that is a child tax credit, if that is a health care credit,
if that's a credit for you to be able to take care
of your aging parents,
if that's a food access card, I don't know what it is,
but I don't want any more money
going back into our government process.
I believe that if we're really --
if we are really serious, progressively,
on the redistribution of wealth, then if you want to do a tax,
it should go back into families' pockets
directly, as much as possible.
So, that's kind of where I stand.
-Okay. Um...
-That's what I'll be looking for.
I'll just say that. What is --
What are the taxes going towards?
-Yeah, well, I have one last question,
one last issue area I want to talk about.
And then I want to open it up to questions,
so we get the audience involved.
Public safety, right?
Um, probably, maybe the place
where kind of left and center left in the city
have sometimes butted heads the most,
around issues around public safety,
policing, street disorder. -Yeah.
-How do you see --
are there specific issues you see coming up?
How do you see all of that stuff playing out, right?
And we add into that
not just police staffing but police reform, right?
Questions around the culture of SPD.
-Well, I wish public safety was a nonpartisan issue.
I'll just say that. But it's not, and I get it.
And every neighborhood has their own different ideas
or needs and wants on what public safety is.
In the last two years,
I have learned that it's not just
how many social providers you might have,
how many officers, all these different things that --
the public safety is, you know,
it's a system of first responders.
You also have your judges.
You also have your social care providers.
There are different type
of public safety levers all in the city.
And one of the things I --
one of the things, the challenges
I know that we're going to have in Seattle
is do we want more police or less?
And whatever the federal government
is happening on that level
really affects Seattle on different things.
And do I believe
that we should have more officers on the street?
I believe we should have a healthy number comparison
to what our other counterpart cities have,
so we can be able to have low response times.
We can be able to have investigations,
that we can see beat cops.
The one thing I will say this --
no matter what party lines,
everyone has said, "Joy,
I want to see our officers walking around
and knowing the neighborhood and talking to people.
So can we just start from there with saying,
'Hey, can we get our officers out the car,
walking and talking to people and connecting with folks
and humanizing themselves?
Can we just start there?'" I do believe we can.
And then we can get to how many officers
and what does that look like?
And, you know, all those different things.
The second thing I'm excited for is our care team
and them being way more visible
and being able to go on calls without an officer,
but just being in neighborhoods.
-And the care team is the kind of, you know,
is the alternative kind of social worker response there.
-Thank you, the social worker response
when there's, like, a mental health piece.
But, again, they don't have places for people to go.
And so, that's going to be the next bottleneck
in this social --
excuse me, in this public safety system,
where now we have to have places for people to go.
We have a phenomenal fire department.
The fire department gets left out a lot
in the public safety piece.
They have a Health One program
that will respond to people
with social workers all across Seattle
and be able to give them medical attention,
be able to take them to the hospital, check on them.
"Do I need to get you meds?
Who can I call to be able to check on you for food?"
All different types of things.
And so, just building out that system is going to be key.
But landing zones, landing zones, landing zones
is going to be the key. -All right.
Let's open it up to audience questions.
Um, yeah.
-Um, so congratulations again.
I'm curious if you think Seattle has anything to learn
from what Mayor Lurie has done in San Francisco
and what the other networks report.
Uh, so, Danny Westneat wrote this article about it.
Says, "Keith Wilson did to Portland
with respect to public safety and homelessness,
of course, Lurie has been doing it here for a while."
Do you think there is -- there are models there
or examples that we could learn from?
-Yes, and just let me repeat the question
so that everyone understands the question from Peter was
the example of Mayor Daniel Lurie,
who got elected just a little over a year ago in San Francisco
and has been making a lot of changes in terms
of some of their policies
around homelessness and crime and issues like that.
And then Mayor Keith Wilson, who's also now in Portland,
who's also now been in office for a year
and has made some pretty significant moves also
in changing, moving towards opening more shelter, uh,
in his first year.
And so, the question was, are there lessons or models there
in Portland or San Francisco that we can take away?
-San Francisco, the turnaround city
that we've seen where, um, I have --
what I've learned from Mayor Lurie
is basics of government and making them work better.
So, for example, we talk about affordability
and a lot of people want to hit that home run
or I'm going to give a ton of sports analogies,
so I apologize.
So, I'm going to give you a football one, okay?
Everyone wants to throw the Russell Moon ball
on affordability. So, what is that?
"Hey, I want a comprehensive plan.
And just, like, you know, get this going
and upzone the whole city."
And that is a 30-year process.
And what you've seen is I go back to three and a half yards.
I need three and a half yards a carry
to get a first down every time.
And to do that,
I know that if I can make sure your bus runs on time,
that you are not late to picking up your kid,
you don't have your $15 fee,
and then you can be able to afford other things in life.
Or if I can clean up that park
and make sure that there's an operational restroom,
that you don't have to take a break at half time
getting in your car, spending gas,
going to a coffee shop to go to use the restroom,
and spending $8 on a latte.
And so these are, like, the basic things
that I think that the mayor in San Francisco,
when he's talking about affordability,
is thinking about it
in that, like, that very granular piece of affordability
of these little micro actions that when you look up,
next thing you know, you have a first down,
and next thing you know, guess what?
You're not throwing an interception like my guy did
for Miami last night.
You are in the end zone like the quarterback did with Indiana
when he ran it in and got hit twice, right, and did a dive in.
So, I think those are the things
that I learned from the mayor in San Francisco.
The mayor in Portland
had made promise of getting people off the street
and inside and opening up shelters.
I think it's going to take a --
it's going to take, I don't want to say a lot in Seattle,
but I do believe that we can do it in Seattle
with public-private partnership
and a sense of direction as well -- that is very key.
We have to have a sense of direction.
People like to meet here, just to meet
to talk about the next meeting.
So, let's have a sense of direction.
And I think what we can do is take the examples
of Mayor Wilson in Portland
and find out, hey, what did you do?
How did you get it working?
What makes sense?
I'd like to do a deeper dive into --
figure out what he did to make that stuff go
and be able to hit those goals,
um, so we can start implementing those here in Seattle.
Oftentimes, we make things so hard.
We're like, we want to be the first in Seattle,
or we want to do it differently and creatively.
And I'm like, no,
let's just take what we learned over here and make it fit here.
And I think we're going to learn a lot from those cities
as they continue to progress.
-Uh, Jordan? -Yeah.
Um, when you talk about affordability, I think,
is there any effort or will there ever be any effort
to look back the last 20 years of policy making
and see what the policies implemented by the City Council
and the various mayors?
We've had a lot to choose from.
-I was like, "Careful."
-But like, what is the role of some of those policies
in the affordability crisis that we have?
Because we've had a lot of inflationary policies
that I could probably go into.
And I'm sure you do feel like those too.
But is there -- can you describe any effort to look back at that
and go, "You know, we made some mistakes back then
on some of these things."
And that's part of the affordability crisis
is not necessarily that we're, you know,
you can always tax people more.
-Yeah. -Uh, but what role...
Is there ever going to be an effort to look at that
and kind of analyze that and try to correct some mistakes?
-Yeah, I think so.
I'm always trying to look forward.
But you're always --
I think some of the policies that --
So, give me an example of a policy that you said,
"Joy, this probably impacted this."
Give me one right now. -Yeah, I'll give you one.
The minimum wage hike. -Yeah.
-I'm all for it, but it's inflationary policy.
That's why when the new mayor has a campaign thing,
"Why is a slice of pizza so expensive?"
Well, you're paying the person 21, 22 bucks
to make that slice of pizza.
So, the pizza is going to be more expensive.
That's just the way it is. -Yeah.
-Um, so that's just one I could go into,
like, property tax, levies, whatever you want to do.
But we made it more expensive to build housing.
The council recently passed 18% increase in permit fees.
That makes it more expensive to build housing.
-And if I could take that one back, I probably would.
Um, just because there was so much --
And what you're talking about was, um, a vote that we had
that SDCI put more fees on folks
that were building an ADU in their --
just on permit fees, just on regular, small,
mom-and-pop buildings.
And that's one that is like, I wish I could have that one back.
Um, but it's -- yes.
So, anyways, um, so I don't --
-You could you could lower it if you wanted.
-Yeah, we could. Absolutely.
So, I think there is -- okay.
So, I think what there is appetite for on council
is not to look back and say,
"Hey, let's dismantle this, you know, policy, whatever."
It's to learn from those
and say, "Okay, moving forward, let's not do that,
but let's think about when we are, for example,
when we are saying, hey, we want to make sure
that a grocery store
can be able to operate functionally in Seattle
and not have to raise their prices here
because it just operationally, you know, is harder,
um, can we figure out a way where, you know,
we have, um, potentially laws that are shifted towards,
um, uh, like, more officers responding to grocery stores?"
Like, the grocery stores have asked us to think of them
as an essential line in Seattle
and not your traditional big box store.
And so can we make sure that when we are passing laws
that might add taxes, are we excluding them?
Can we make sure that we're going to the state
to advocate so they can get out of certain taxes
because they're a necessity?
They're a lifeline to folks.
So, I think there's appetite for that.
Um, just understanding,
just thinking about not all business
is the same business in Seattle.
Um, and I think that's going to be key.
I'd also like to see more, and I've talked about this,
public-private partnerships.
I remember like yesterday, I was --
and I won't say the name because we're on the Seattle Channel,
but there was a gap in funding for a certain project.
And this group was like,
"We don't want money from this company in Seattle
because we think
all the money should come from the government."
And I was like, well, the money you're getting from us
came from them, too, but okay.
Um, but it was just that piece of, "We don't want that."
And I just would like to see more openness to --
if we want this outcome.
They weren't going to brand the field in their logo.
They just wanted to, you know,
probably just get a tax break, right?
But also fund this project as well.
Um, so, I would like to see more of that with those --
with the outcomes.
-Could you see just on the grocery store question
because I've heard this thrown out there
that rather than going kind of full public grocery stores,
maybe there could be some kind of program
working with some of the grocery store companies
to incentivize opening grocery stores in an area of the city.
-Yeah, we passed -- -Penciling.
-Yeah, we passed that council.
Okay, prime example, PCC downtown.
They closed up shop.
They were, what, 10, 15,000 square feet down there?
They were pretty large, their footprint.
Um, they closed up shop because of,
you know, it wasn't profitable.
And some things, some public safety challenges downtown.
They work with OED.
They came back, they opened up half the size,
5,000 square feet.
And they're not a full-service grocery store.
They close at a certain time.
They're not open on the weekends at a certain time.
They don't have the full service piece that you would --
if you went to a Safeway or QFC or other places.
I think that model in different neighborhoods
is going to be key
when we're thinking about different grocery stores
around the city,
but also, too, making sure that they're also clean,
that the police are responding in time
if they're having a disturbance,
making sure that they can operate functionally
in our city.
Those things, like,
I was talking to a grocery store
that was having a hard time with some freight delivery
because SDOT was doing some type of construction
and they messed up the road,
and they didn't even think about
that grocery store having access.
And so, now they have to drive around a certain area
just to get in, and it adds another 30 minutes.
And so that adds to the driver's time.
And then that --
like, all these different things play a part in that.
-Another question from the audience.
-And as you see, I'm going to answer questions long,
so I only have to do short --
so I only have a couple questions.
No, I'm just playing.
-Yeah. Joy, you are wonderful.
Um, I have two questions, but maybe you can make them brief.
One is Microsoft,
um, this last week came out with their suggestions
to increase housing, ban Amazon.
Full page ad in the Sunday paper.
Curious your thoughts about that.
And number two,
we have a remarkable new King County executive
I think shares a lot of your values and beliefs.
Talk about ways the city can more effectively
partner with King County to accomplish things his way.
-That is a great question.
And someone in here gave me this joke.
So, I'm gonna steal their line that the county and the city
are two elephants looking at each other through a straw.
And that's what it -- and I always tell people,
I want to remove that straw so we can see
how big we are as elephants
and we can start walking together.
And so some of the projects that I think the first,
especially in our district,
um, is going to be the crisis care clinic.
Can we get that up and running?
Can we make sure that neighborhood is
not negatively impact,
that it's a positive to that community
and also, too, that we also clean up the area
around there as well,
so we make it a vibrant, you know, Capitol Hill.
Capitol Hill is the nightlife, heartbeat center of Seattle.
It is not downtown anymore. It's Capitol Hill.
That is the economic driving force at night in our city.
And there are a lot of things where the county and the city
have just been asleep at the wheel on.
Public health is one of them. That is huge.
Another piece is our wastewater.
When you get a bill, 25% of your bill is from King County waste.
And when their rates go up, our rates go up.
And so I think there can be a lot of, uh,
there can be a lot of connection there and collaboration,
making sure that that goes --
uh, that that's stabilized as well.
Um, I think our King County executive is great.
I might be a little biased there because he is my brother-in-law.
But, uh, um, so, I'll always talk highly of him,
but he knows.
-Nepotism. Nepotism. -Yeah.
-Congratulations. -Thank you.
He attaches to me more than I to him, but, um...
Just playing.
Um, but I think the one thing
that I'm looking forward to with Mayor Wilson,
with the executive in Zahilay is that, you know,
they don't really come from government.
They weren't really, you know,
like they weren't really bred in that piece.
And so, maybe there'll be a little bit more collaboration
and understanding,
a sense of urgency for the community
and thinking outside the box on a lot of issues.
And I've so far,
in the last two or three weeks,
I've seen a commitment from King County
way more than I did before,
where people are responsive.
They're saying, "Hey, how can we work on this?"
Or, "Hey, I saw this. I'm thinking about you.
Do you want help from the county?"
Or, "Hey, how can we help?"
I've seen a lot more of that from departments.
Council members were always great.
I had a great working relationship
with Councilmember Mosqueda and other folks,
but I think I've seen it more from departments
who have reached out to our office
about certain issues in our district,
which has been, you know, very, very helpful.
-And the Microsoft Amazon...
-I didn't see that article -- or the ad. I haven't.
So I don't want to talk out of...
-Yeah.
-I've heard you talk a lot
about being focused on hyperlocal.
-Yeah.
-And, uh, in your district, hyperlocal, 12th and Jackson...
-Yeah. -...is a mess.
And it's been a mess... -Yeah.
-...since, well, you know, in the last administration.
It's been on the radar a long time.
Girmay's been there on the street.
Everybody's been there.
Tell me your three-and-a-half-yard strategy
for that area and what's going to happen
and when and how and what do you need?
-Well, I'm glad it's in district two,
so it's outside -- it is.
-It's not her problem. [ Laughs ]
-Yeah.
So I will tell you this, when I get an e-mail
and it's not in my district, I go straight to --
no, I'm just playing.
Um, but I will say this --
12th and Jackson is -- I mean, obviously it's Rainier,
so it is not my district,
but it's right across the street from the district
and it affects, you know,
how things that are going up
Jackson on 23rd or into our neighborhood
over by Bailey Gatzert school, all these all these things.
I think the three-and-a-half-yard approach,
the first thing I would do is send two to three, um,
mobile treatment centers to 12th and Jackson.
And that hasn't been done yet.
-Why, though?
-Mobile treatment centers?
-Why hasn't that been done yet?
-I have no idea.
I wasn't pulling the levers on the seventh floor
or, you know --
honestly, I've had issues in my district
where if I just worried about 12th and Jackson,
I wouldn't be able to work Pike and Pine.
So I was focused on Pike and Pine and those issues
because Capitol Hill, people in Eastlake
who are challenged with the J Line
and those restaurants right now are doing --
a woman just did like $30, $40 for a lunch, you know,
because they don't have any guests coming in.
So I've been hyperfocused about different neighborhoods,
but the first thing I would do
is send out mobile treatments to 12th and Jackson.
I would also have --
and there's different strategies with police,
with the dealers
that are dealing some of those drugs
that are also spilling into First Hill as well.
That would be -- That would be an approach that we would use.
But it would start with mobile treatment centers
for people.
-Do you see -- let me ask a follow-up question on this.
Council President, do you see a role --
back in, I think it was '23 you voted for this.
The council passed a new misdemeanor drug possession
and public drug use law, right?
And, you know, there had been, because of the Blake issue,
there had been no law against
possession of hard drugs in the city of Seattle.
And you all took a couple of tries,
but you all ended up passing a law finally.
Do you see a role for the use of that law
in dealing with stuff like open-air drug markets,
whether it's at the Blade or 12th and Jackson?
Or is this all a kind of treatment-centered
or social-service-centered outreach?
-So the drug-use law --
are you talking about the one in 2023?
-Yeah, yeah, yeah. The misdemeanor possession law.
-Yeah, so I wasn't -- I didn't vote for that.
I wasn't on council at the time.
-Oh, I'm sorry!
-No, you're fine, but I -- -No, you're right.
You came out for it at the time.
-I did. I would have said yes to align with the state law.
-Sorry. -No, no, no. You're good.
What was the -- so I didn't vote for it.
He was thinking -- 2023.
-My candidate was against it. [ Laughs ]
-Yeah. Yeah, she was against a lot of stuff, which was good.
But it was cool. I love her. She's great.
-I told her she should be for it, but she didn't listen.
-It's okay. She was cool. I got so much respect for her.
-Yeah.
-So, what was the question? I'm sorry.
-Do you see a role for,
you know, I guess maybe more broadly,
like the kind of, you know, police arrest piece of this
in dealing with open-air drug markets
like we have down in Little Saigon?
-Yeah, I don't know.
I've heard people say -- and actually,
I heard Scott Lindsay on your show,
who I thought was phenomenal,
articulating some of this, saying,
you know, "We're not gonna arrest our way out of this.
We're not gonna treat ourselves out of this."
Like, is it a mix of everything?
I would just like to see more --
I don't know the answer for this.
I do not have the magic pill about fentanyl,
because what we are experiencing here
is the same as Hastings Street in Vancouver.
It's the same in San Francisco.
It's the same -- the Tenderloin.
It's the same in Philly, right? You've seen it?
I've seen it in Phoenix, at bus stops.
-Skid Row in Los Angeles, MacArthur Park, yeah.
-What I am supporting are
just more accessible treatment facilities and mobile treatments
where someone's on the street and they say,
"Joy" -- or whoever -- "I want out,"
that they can be able to get in a car
or get treatment right then and there.
I'll tell you one example.
We were walking around
for the crisis care clinic to look at things.
I was with Department of Health.
I was with our friends at King County,
I was with some city officials,
and we were walking around, and I saw a girl, her name is T,
and she was on the street, and I grew up with T.
And I said, "Hey, do I need to call your mom?
Do you need -- what do you need?
Do you need money? Do you need -- whatever it is."
And at that moment she was like,
"Yeah, I need you to call my mom.
And there was no number that I could call
besides her mother to say, "Come get her.
She is ready right now," at all.
I don't know how long that would take to get someone
like that help,
but I caught her at a moment where she recognized me.
I snapped back from the street stuff to,
"Oh, I remember playing basketball with you,
and there was no one I could call to be like, "Hey,
can we get her off?
Can we get her help right now?"
And I think that's what our city is waiting for.
That's what we can figure out.
And that's what I'm going to be pushing for this year.
-I think one more question. Way in the back.
-Yeah, so, I'm Elaine Gibbons.
I have a question about the World Cup,
proper football, as we mentioned.
[ Laughter ]
It is a time when the world
will be looking at the city of Seattle.
I'd love to hear what you're thinking about
and what your council members are thinking about
in terms of functioning well.
showing up well as a city,
and being ready for such a significant event.
-We are so excited for the World Cup.
-Question about the World Cup.
-The World Cup, yes. The World Cup.
How excited we are, number one, for proper football.
What would you call American football?
Just American football? -Seahawks.
-Throwing and catching.
-What did you say?
-I call it throwing and catching ball.
-Ooh. Throwing and catching ball. Okay.
And hitting, right? Okay.
So, excited about World Cup. I think we all are.
The three things that are on my mind is, number one,
can we make sure the city is safe?
That is throughout the whole city,
making sure that -- transportation safety,
making sure that people --
a ton of people are going to be in a small space at one time.
I will never forget the day
where I saw Barack Obama get elected in 2008,
and we were all standing on the Mall like sardines,
and no one had a cell service.
Couldn't get out. It was just too much.
So just making sure that the city is safe.
The second thing is gonna be transportation,
moving people around, making sure our buses are running,
making sure the traffic is flowing,
that we have enough operators,
making sure people are flowing
back and forth into the city,
that Sound Transit is running properly,
that our G Line on Madison is running up and down
in a nice -- in a nice flow
and all of the different components
on transportation is key.
And the third thing is the economic impact.
There are a ton of businesses that are outside downtown,
and a lot of people get tired of talking about downtown,
and I love them because they're like,
"Joy, what about us over here in this neighborhood?
What about us?"
Making sure that those funds get distributed
into different neighborhoods.
So pulling people outside of Sodo
and into different areas and neighborhoods
and just making it accessible and walkable and those things.
So when people see that we had the World Cup,
that they're like, "Seattle is a beautiful city,"
that we can knock out all the stereotypes
that people think about us,
that we've seen on Fox News or other things
of Seattle dying and all these things,
that people see that Seattle is a beautiful, beautiful city.
-Council President Joy Hollingsworth,
thank you for being our guest tonight at the Block Table.
-Thank you so much. -Really appreciate it.