Seattle Forward

Time to Vote: My Recommendations

Your mail-back election ballot will arrive today or tomorrow, so here are my voting recommendations for your consideration.

 

Help set the future course of our city by returning your ballot no later than Tuesday, November 2.

 

Some candidates on the ballot have advocated extreme and destructively radical positions on homelessness, police services, and relations with our job-producing businesses. If you think our city is on the right track and you like and trust the current approaches at City Hall, then vote for these candidates.

 

On the other hand, if you believe the city is headed in the wrong direction, then vote for candidates who take more reasonable, pragmatic approaches. Leaders who want to govern effectively, who will recenter City government on implementing thoughtful solutions, not those hung up on ideological purity tests. Leaders who listen carefully, follow the evidence of what works to solve problems, welcome accountability, spend taxpayer dollars wisely, and exude a humility worthy of public servants. Leaders who aren’t afraid of compromise and focus on the vital services our city government is responsible for delivering every day.

 

With that in mind, here are my voting recommendations for some select positions, followed by additional comments.

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King County Executive: Dow Constantine

 

Seattle Mayor: Bruce Harrell

 

Seattle City Attorney: Ann Davison

 

Seattle City Council Position No. 9: Sara Nelson

 

Seattle School District No 4: Vivian Song Maritz

 

Seattle School District No 5: Michelle Sarju

 

Seattle School District No 7: Brandon Hersey

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The best choice for Seattle’s next Mayor is evident in the policy positions the two candidates have taken. I wrote about their differences a few weeks ago. Bruce Harrell is the best choice, in my opinion.

 

Bruce and his opponent, Lorena Gonzalez, are committed to public service. They are bright and engaged. They value our city and its people. But Bruce’s solutions for the challenges the city faces are more pragmatic, more data and research-based, and will address current and long-term problems more holistically. Bruce has a better chance of bringing people together to serve the common good and effectively govern, unifying city government employees (all 11,000+ of them), and making progress on the long-term inequities we see all around us. Vote for Bruce Harrell.

 

The Office of City Attorney is crucial to the effective operations of the city government. The City Attorney has a staff of about 200 and is responsible for prosecuting misdemeanor crimes in the city; these crimes include domestic violence assault, DUI, firearm violations, theft, menacing and harassment, and many others. The City Attorney also advises the Mayor, City Council, and city departments on legal matters and represents the city in court. As this article points out, the City Attorney plays a crucial role in coordinating the city government’s overall response to crime, everything from policing strategies to diversion programs and social services.

 

Here’s another piece that was written by three respected former Seattle police chiefs and published earlier today. These experienced police leaders make the case for electing a rational, pragmatic leader who can reform police services and keep our neighborhoods safe.

 

I will be very blunt, we dare not elect Nicole Thomas-Kennedy who has pledged to eliminate prosecution of most misdemeanor crimes and wants to abolish the police, both reckless and dangerous positions. The Seattle Times explained how unqualified Thomas-Kennedy is for this office because of her demeaning hostility and a rabid hatred of the police, her repeated encouragement of violence during protests, and her belief that property destruction is a “moral imperative.” In defending her position on dropping misdemeanor crimes, Thomas-Kennedy dismisses these crimes as minor and asserts that people are routinely being arrested and prosecuted for stealing a sandwich because they are hungry or a jacket because they are cold; those prosecutions rarely occur, and if they do, there is almost always other criminal behavior involved.

 

On her outrageous comments justifying violence, disparaging the police, or damaging property as a "moral imperative," Thomas-Kennedy now says she was joking or communicating sarcasm, and that she wasn't a candidate for public office when she made those statements. That's an interesting attempted makeover. Why doesn't she instead retract those comments and explain what she really meant? She refuses to do so.

 

Ann Davison is the other candidate for City Attorney. She describes herself as a moderate and has won the endorsement of The Seattle Times and former Seattle Mayors. She is supported by former Washington governors Gary Locke, Chris Gregoire, and Dan Evans, 30 retired judges, and a host of community leaders. Vote for Ann Davison.

 

Our public schools need our support and a firm commitment to eliminating the racial inequities existing for decades in Seattle. To do this, we need strong school board directors who will set specific goals and effective policies. We need board directors who understand their role to establish budgets, set policy, and ensure the day-to-day management of our schools is done effectively through the superintendent. As has been the case for far too long, we don’t need board members micro-managing district operations, leading to a revolving door of superintendents. Vote for three incredibly prepared, effective leaders: Vivian Song Maritz, Michelle Sarju, and Brandon Hersey.

 

Remember to return your ballot before Tuesday, November 2. You can mail it back postage-free or place it in a ballot dropbox. Click here for ballot box locations. You can also track your ballot to make sure it is received by King County Elections and counted. 

Seattle Mayor: An Incredibly Clear Choice

Voters will soon choose a new mayor to lead our city. The choice could not be more clear-cut.

 

One option is the current City Council president, M. Lorena Gonzalez, who grew up in eastern Washington, is a lawyer, and was first elected to the Council in 2015. Lorena's legal career focused on representing workers and victims of discrimination and police brutality.

 

The other option is Bruce Harrell, an attorney who has represented nonprofit organizations, telecommunications companies, and people who have experienced blatant discrimination. Bruce spent twelve years on the City Council before retiring in 2019.

 

Both candidates are intelligent, committed to public service, and care deeply about our city and its people. Both are political progressives who want to create more opportunities, especially for those on the margins. Both want a city where everyone prospers.

 

However, their visions for Seattle's future are incredibly different, most significantly regarding homelessness, policing, and their perspective of our job-creating businesses.

 

Gonzalez envisions a city with a dramatically reduced police force that pursues only the most serious crimes, leaving many misdemeanors, including property crime, unchecked. She has no real plan to bring those living unsheltered inside or stem the proliferation of tent encampments in our parks and on our sidewalks and says if elected she will continue the current approaches of the City Council. She's actively hostile to the downtown businesses that pay the bulk of taxes that fund city services. She promises to abolish all single-family neighborhoods, an astonishingly blunt action that will only create years of legal and political squabbling.

 

Sound incredible? Consider the evidence.

 

As president of the City Council, last year Gonzalez recklessly pledged to slash the police budget by 50%, even though that would necessarily lead to the loss of hundreds of dedicated police officers who ensure neighborhood safety, favoring instead shifting money to undefined, untested, and nonexistent alternatives to police protection. She allowed the debate over policing to become so antagonistic, so disrespectful of the women and men who serve our city, that the police chief — the first Black woman to lead our officers — resigned in protest.

 

Over the past 18 months, nearly 300 officers have left the department, many in total dismay and disgust over the City Council's approach to policing. This reduction in our police service is staggering and unprecedented; it represents about 22% of the total number of officers. These departures led the current police chief to recently inform the Council that he cannot deploy enough officers for each shift, leading to dramatically slower response times to 911 emergency calls.

 

Last summer, Gonzalez was a lead sponsor of a measure to defund the police recruitment and retention office that could have possibly staunched the flood of resignations; the Mayor rejected it, but a Council majority led by Gonzalez overrode the Mayor's veto. Two months ago, Gonzalez reinforced her "defund the police" advocacy when she answered a direct question on whether she would cut the police budget by "50% or more," she answered "maybe." Just last week, James Robart, the federal judge overseeing reform of our police department, said, "I have seen too much knee-jerk reaction and not enough forethought . . . there is an essential requirement for public safety." No kidding.

 

The Gonzalez approach to policing creates unnecessary risk at a time when violent crime has surged to the highest it's been in the past ten years, a documented increase comparing the January-July period each year between 2012 and 2021. 

 

On the other hand, Bruce Harrell seeks reform without risking public safety or demonizing the many officers who serve our city with professionalism and integrity, treating all people with dignity. Harrell understands safe neighborhoods are essential for shared prosperity. He appreciates the vital work of our police officers and isn't afraid to say so. He will rebuild our police service so that we all can have trust and confidence in our officers.

 

Harrell's record demonstrates that he has been a leader for effective reform. Seattle police officers wear body cameras today because of his insistence. He wrote and won passage of the first-ever anti-bias policing ordinance. He helped to repeal a reform-blocking, innovation-impairing 1970s law that prohibited hiring police commanders from outside our police department, arguing successfully that the police chief should be able to hire the best candidate wherever they come from.

 

The choice is glaring when it comes to homelessness as well.

 

Despite the homelessness crisis we can all see across our city, Gonzalez was the only City Council member to vote against the formation of the new Regional Homelessness Authority designed to chart a new, more strategic, and more outcome-focused approach. She voted to eliminate the extraordinary social workers and specially trained police officers who visited tent encampments to encourage people to accept emergency housing and services. And, Gonzalez opposes Compassion Seattle's Charter Amendment 29, a measure on the November ballot written by a group of homeless service providers, neighborhood and business leaders that will compel the city government to take a fresh approach based on the successes achieved in other cities.

 

In July, less than a month before the primary election, The Seattle Times wrote a story detailing the mayoral candidates' positions on homelessness. In that story, the paper reported, astonishingly, that Gonzalez did not seem to be prioritizing the issue and did not see any need for a change of direction on homelessness policy. “González has relied on her record [on homelessness] rather than promising a change in direction,” the Times wrote. “Her website didn’t mention the word ‘homelessness’ until Thursday, after The Seattle Times asked for more specifics about her plans.” 

 

On the other hand, Harrell supports the formation of the Regional Homelessness Authority and sees it as an opportunity to reset our approach and address the crisis as a truly regional problem. He supports Charter Amendment 29 because it will create an action plan to expand behavioral health services — mental health and substance use disorder treatment — and create 2,000 new emergency housing units within twelve months so those living outside can be brought inside. Harrell believes we can do better on homelessness and is not satisfied with the status quo.

 

As for the business community, as president of the City Council, Gonzalez routinely denigrates our city's business leaders — the very people who create jobs and ensure our prosperity. During this campaign, she even refused to complete the Downtown Seattle Association’s standard candidate questionnaire to which all the other leading candidates responded. You'd think the City Council president would want to attract new businesses and nurture the ones we have.

 

On the other hand, Harrell understands the value of companies of all sizes to the people of Seattle. These businesses are our job creators, and they make downtown and our neighborhood business areas vibrant, attractive places to work, live, and play. Through the business tax, the property tax, and the sales tax, these enterprises pay over half of the city's total tax revenues, which are used to fund essential city services. And unlike Lorena, Bruce fundamentally believes that the mayor of Seattle should be willing to talk to every major constituency, including those he may disagree with, in the effort to find common ground and shared purpose.

 

As for housing, on primary election night, Gonzalez said she would abolish all single-family zoning in Seattle. Consider the implications if you live in Beacon Hill, Rainier Valley, West Seattle, Lake City, Greenwood, Ballard, Wallingford, or Fremont. Gonzalez would rezone all these neighborhoods — and many more — to allow large multi-family apartment buildings, triplexes, duplexes, and condominiums. Her primary election night statement was consistent with the answer she gave The Seattle Times in late June; when asked if she would eliminate all single-family zoning, she answered "yes."

 

Harrell understands the significance and complexity of Seattle's housing supply shortage yet doesn't believe the answer is to completely wipe out single-family neighborhoods. He favors increased density where it makes sense, for example, along major transit corridors and arterials, including those in single-family zones.

 

As for leadership style, Gonzalez has allowed the politics of exclusion to dominate, the "us versus them" approach of confrontation and denigration of opponents. It's an approach largely responsible for the City Council's paralysis and dysfunctionality on so many issues and the public's appallingly poor perception of the Council. 

 

On the other hand, Harrell favors the politics of inclusion, compromise, and getting things done. He values inviting everyone to the civic table for honest, rational discussion and effective governance. He believes in seeking counsel from subject-matter experts, studying best practices, investing in initiatives that create real solutions, spending taxpayer dollars carefully, and avoiding loud rhetoric, division, and continual one-upmanship.

 

Bruce Harrell is the Mayor Seattle needs.

 

If you agree, here are two things you can do right now.

 

First, you can support Harrell with your endorsement and your financial contribution. You can do that at the Harrell for Mayor website. Contributions are limited to $550 per person.

 

Second, look at the independent expenditure political action committee Bruce Harrell for Seattle's Future, a diverse group of individual Seattleites who have come together to help elect Harrell. This committee is separate from Bruce's campaign but shares the goal of electing him as our next Mayor.

 

I urge you to join me in supporting Bruce Harrell for Seattle's Future. If able, please support this effort financially. There is no limit on the amount you can contribute; donations have ranged from $25 to $25,000. (Corporate contributions are not accepted.)

 

Your financial support will be used to communicate with Seattle voters exactly why Bruce Harrell is our best choice for Mayor.

Should Seattle's City Council Cut Police Services Even More?

Seattle’s City Council will tomorrow morning consider cutting more funding — approximately $5.4 million — from police services; it's part of their plan to shrink the size of the police department. This new reduction would come on the heels of the approximate 20% cut the Council imposed last fall through direct budget cuts and by moving some functions, such as parking enforcement and 911 services, elsewhere in the city budget.

 

See below for how you can share your opinion on this important subject directly with the City Council.

 

If adopted, these additional cuts would have significant negative consequences, including degradation of response times to 911 calls for help. If you think this is just some overdue belt tightening or a direct response to the crucial racial reckoning underway in our country, please read on.

Tent Encampments Are Here to Stay Unless . . .

The tents, dilapidated vehicles, and piles of trash you see in almost every Seattle neighborhood have become an enduring fixture. So has the human suffering.

We should quickly prioritize addressing these tent encampments and follow the lead of other cities that have successfully tackled this issue. Since 2015, when the mayor declared a homelessness emergency, we have spent hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars — and there are success stories to tell — but, tragically, there is no comprehensive plan to remove these illegal encampments or to help those living in them. Not now. Not any time this year or next. Not in five years. They are essentially permanent.

That’s because the City Council’s preferred approach has been one of tolerance and accommodation, evidenced by their elimination last fall, despite Mayor Jenny Durkan’s strong objection, of the Navigation Teams — outreach workers paired with police officers — that successfully nudged people in encampments to accept shelter and social services.

The City Council’s laissez faire approach furthers the terrible damage of substance abuse and mental health disorders for the majority of encampment dwellers. It’s also an approach that denies the public access to

Seattle Needs A Vision Reset . . . Quickly

Seattle needs a vision reset.

The mayor is not seeking re-election. The school superintendent has resigned. The police chief was pushed aside by the city council. The coronavirus pandemic has left us isolated. Downtown is desolate. Where and how we work is being transformed. Many essential workers are struggling mightily to keep up and pay the bills. Our infrastructure systems are inadequately maintained. First responders are overloaded and stretched thin. Campers have taken over many of our parks, greenspaces and sidewalks, preventing others from accessing them safely. Ideological and political divides are pushing us further and further into our dogmatic corners. Herein, opportunity presents itself.  

The urban theorist Richard Florida argues cities and surrounding regions will thrive as we move beyond the pandemic, just as they have following previous calamities: “Covid-19 is a once-in-a-century catastrophe, but it also hands us a once-in-a-century opportunity to rebuild communities to be

Mayor Durkan's Decision, Crime and Economic Recovery, Wrong Vs Evil

Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan's decision not to seek re-election didn't come as a total surprise, but it certainly creates uncertainty for our city going forward.

 

When I write that it's not a surprise I mean that in today's political climate where verbal personal attacks, threats of violence, and name calling — the politics of personal destruction — are so common I understand the Mayor's decision. Add to this ugliness the illogical populism of the far left and far right and we have a mess that makes governing all the more difficult. (Unrelated, but important, see below for Anthony Robinson's discussion of being wrong versus being evil.)

 

Mayor Durkan's decision to focus on the significant challenges we face instead of a re-election

How Out of Touch Is The Seattle City Council?

Just how out of touch some members of our City Council are became painfully clearer this week when prosecution of misdemeanor crimes was discussed. Some Council members want to make it more difficult to successfully prosecute these cases.

 

Misdemeanor crimes are those where punishment is capped at 364 days in jail — think simple assault, fighting, retail theft (shoplifting), car prowl, harassment, non-retail theft (stealing your bicycle from your porch or backyard), and many other offenses.

 

In December, or perhaps January, the Council will consider a new city ordinance expanding the already existing affirmative defenses available to offenders charged with misdemeanors. These

Six Steps to Effective Police Reform

This post was first published Friday, August 14, 2020 in The Seattle Times.

 

In its reckless rush to slash the police budget, the Seattle City Council has forced out Chief Carmen Best — the city’s first Black female police chief — and created unnecessary risks to public health and safety.

 

The council’s decisions have been hasty and ill-advised — no consultation with Best, no checking-in with the federal judge overseeing the police department’s reform efforts, no discussion with the court’s monitor, no counsel from national police-reform experts, no due diligence to discover that by slashing Best’s salary they were making the head of the city’s largest department the second lowest paid department leader.

 

This is careless governance, no matter how you look at it.

Important Steps to Police Reform

This post was first published today at Crosscut.com. It was co-authored by myself and Bernard Melekian, DPPD.

 

It took less than 9 minutes. That’s how long Officer Derek Chauvin pressed his knee into the neck of George Floyd, killing the 46-year-old man on a Minneapolis street on May 25, and that is how long it took to erase whatever public trust and confidence had been gained in American policing over the past decade of attempted reforms.

 

It was a callous killing committed in the light of day, documented on video for all to witness.

 

Both of us have experience with policing, one as a patrol officer and detective and as an elected official in Seattle, the

Where Are We Headed?

The challenges of policing in our country did not arise in a vacuum. They connect to a broad array of factors . . . They connect to the fact that in this country police shootings and police misconduct disproportionately affect Black people. The challenges connect, as well, to the shameful American legacy of slavery, to Jim Crow, to mass incarceration, to the “war on drugs,” to redlining, and to public schools that have and continue to fail Black children.

 

In this context, and at this time, it is important for someone in my position to say clearly — Black Lives Matter.

 

Black Lives Matter in policing.

 

Black Lives Matter in education.

 

Black Lives Matter in our economic system.

 

We must squarely face our history of racism and injustice, and, frankly, that’s something I don’t believe our country has truly done. We will know that we have when all people of color have equal opportunity, equal protection under the law, and never doubt their standing as Americans.

 

I spoke the above words in an address to the City Council on September 25, 2017, when I was serving as Seattle’s interim Mayor. Now, nearly three years later, here we are again grappling with the same challenges in policing and criminal justice.