Seattle Forward

Curbing Prescription Drug Abuse: A Practical Step

Yesterday the Council’s public safety committee approved a resolution supporting a new prescription drug take-back program in King County. The County is currently recruiting pharmacies willing to host drug take-back drop boxes. Pharmaceutical companies provide funding for the program; pharmacies won’t have to pay at all.

I cosponsored this resolution with Councilmember González to draw attention to a practical step we can take to curb prescription drug abuse.

News reports have focused recently on the epidemic of opioid abuse. We have seen local usage of narcotics such as heroin rise dramatically, resulting in a spike of deaths related to drug overdoses. And we know that these two are linked: prescription drug abuse leads to heroin addiction.

We also know that youth and young adults are most likely to experiment with opioid pain relievers using pills that came from a friend or family member’s prescription. Putting the pieces together, we can reduce abuse by reducing the availability of excess prescription pain medication in people’s homes.

For years pharmacies have collected unused over-the-counter medicines. Only recently, however, has the legal landscape changed to allow pharmacies to collect unused controlled substances like OxyContin, Vicodin, Valium, and Ritalin.

Encourage your local pharmacy to participate in this new program. They can sign up by contacting Taylor Watson, the program manager at King County ([email protected]).

This resolution will be considered by the Full Council on Monday, April 4.

Why I Voted “No” on Rescuing Pronto Bike Share

The following article was sent out in my City View Newsletter, which you can sign up to receive here.

Yesterday, the City Council voted 7-2 (Councilmember Herbold and myself voting “no”) to spend $1.4 million to rescue from insolvency the Pronto bike sharing service that has operated in Seattle for a little over one year.

While a bike sharing program has the potential to be an important, and desired, element of our transportation network, the current system is insolvent and lacks the ridership, membership and revenue to be financially viable. In essence, the Council was asked to rescue Pronto from insolvency in order for a theoretically more viable service to be developed.

Despite the passionate advocacy by some in favor of such a rescue, the risks of investing without a specific plan of action or a clear understanding of the City’s future financial exposure are exceedingly high. I believe such a rescue does not reflect the level of care the Council should exhibit as it exercises its fiduciary responsibilities to the taxpayers of Seattle.

The potential financial risk to the city is evident in the failure of Pronto to achieve its original ridership or revenue projections:

Our Bike Sharing Future

Update: I explain my "no" vote at the March 14 Full Council meeting in a separate post here.

Later today, I will vote “no” on legislation that would, if approved, have the city government purchase the insolvent Pronto bike sharing network and all of their bicycles, stations and equipment.

Instead, I will propose amended legislation that will position Seattle for a future bike sharing alternative that shifts most of the financial risk to a private partner. My legislation will:

• Acknowledge that Pronto faces insolvency at the end of March.
• Prohibit the City from investing in a failed enterprise which requires the City to carry ongoing financial risks by itself.
• Allow a partial lifting of the proviso to repay, if necessary, the $1 million federal transportation grant the City must repay if bike sharing does not continue in some form.
• Maintain the proviso on the balance of the funds, approximately $4 million, and reserves these funds “to support a future public-private partnership for bike share that does not rely on City of Seattle funding for operating revenue and jointly shares responsibility for capital expenses.”
• Maintain the proviso until SDOT “provides a detailed MOA between the City and an outside partner . . . that demonstrates a substantial shift in financial risk to the City’s private partner . . .”
• Shift the remaining funds to other “pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure projects” if a public-private partnership is not established by the end of 2016.

I believe this course is the most prudent, allows the City to quickly establish a better bike share system, and keeps some leverage for the City to influence and guide the public-private partnership into the future. Maintaining partial public ownership is preferable to an entirely privately-owned model because the City sometimes has policy goals – equity of access or distribution, for example – that may run counter to an enterprise focused more exclusively on profit.

The Council’s transportation committee meets at 2 p.m. today to vote on this issue.