Got word last night from comrades that six people who were arrested for protesting at Seattle City Hall in February of 2024 have all had their charges dropped!

https://southseattleemerald.org/news/2024/02/29/news-gleams-six-protestors-arrested-at-seattle-city-council-meeting-for-suspicion-of-criminal-trespass

#SaraNelson #Immigration #Seattle #PNW #ACAB #AnnDavidson #Housing #StopTheSweeps #AsylumSeekers #KingCounty

As is typical Seattle City Council is working one some bullshit to destroy our ethics code 🤨

A large crowd of Kshama Sawant supporters are currently in attendance at this afternoon's council meeting. Many of whom worked to pass some of the housing reforms this major ethics code change will likely also make it legal to destroy.

Official live stream below 👇🏿

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GqPV4DwnxGA

#Seattle #CityCouncil #SPD #ACAB #Ethics #SaraNelson #Housing #Sawant #I137 #I135

Today (Thursday 5/8) at the end of the 2pm meeting of the Governance etc. committee, they will be discussing Cathy Moore's Financial Ethics Unwinding Bill again (CB 120978) #ethics #cityofseattle #seattlecitycouncil #cathymoore #saranelson #financialethics seattle.legistar.com/View.ashx?M=...

RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:pxsx6uebhylyfaxejchrr7ls/post/3lojnslzww22t

MUST READ FOR SEATTLE FOLKS BY @wilsonkatieb.bsky.social #seattle #cityofseattle #ethics #seattlecitycouncil #cathymoore #saranelson #waynebarnett 👇👇👇

RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:4cehxdx5hfam37oos3yh5tta/post/3logwlnvsnk2y

#CallToAction

Next Week Seattle City Council is expected to change the ethics code in an alarming way.

The are planning on deleting economic conflicts of interest as a reason council members would be required to recuse from a vote.

It would be a good week to consider attending a city council meeting or emailing your (likely very terrible) council person and tell them to stop being so fucking corrupt.

https://archive.ph/OwGjb

#SaraNelson #Seattle #USPol #Corruption #Housing #Landlords

As we said months ago when the city council voted for this dragnet spy network, there are now people whose entire day and life will be on these cameras.

Each of these near neighborhood-wide deployments cover critical services and in some cases enough essential services that a person might be on camera everytime they leave home for years on end.

#Seattle #Soap #SODA #CathyMoore #BobKettle #SaraNelson #ACB

I remember the day Sara Nelson and her conservative council responded to their overlords of the Seattle chamber of commerce to try and kill the people's initiative - https://www.tiktok.com/@theseattlechannel/video/7441008151677259054

5 months later and guess what, she looks like an embarrassing failure!

#seattle #socialhousing #SaraNelson

Seattle prepares to pass budget with huge increases for safe streets + What CM Saka should do about Delridge

Thanks to Seattle voters, in 2025 the city is poised to invest $21 million in new sidewalks, $4.2 million in sidewalk repairs, $8.6 million in Vision Zero, $1.6 million in Safe Routes to School, $9.8 million in new protected bike lanes, and $1 million to upgrade existing bike lane barriers. To deliver all this, they are also going on a hiring spree, so if you know anything about building sidewalks you should keep an eye out for job listings.

The sidewalks funding line is particularly eye-catching and is the result of a decision to front-load sidewalk construction early in the first four years of the levy. Not only will this result in more sidewalks sooner, it should also help prevent sidewalks from getting cut in future years if some unforeseen issue arises that leads to cuts in the levy spending plan.

SDOT could get an even faster start if the Council dropped their proposed proviso on about half the levy funds for 2025 ($89 million), which would prevent the department from accessing those funds until they have presented a spending plan that the council approves. The council could instead request a spending plan by a certain date without holding up the funds, and they can always take action at that point if they want to change something. SDOT has a huge amount of work to complete in just eight years, including the time-consuming process of finding, hiring and onboarding new staff. Getting a slow start on Move Seattle projects was a huge problem for the previous levy, and a mistake the city should not repeat. The Council should not get in their way unnecessarily.

Seattle Neighborhood Greenways has put out an action alert urging folks to contact Councilmembers with a set of asks outlined at the bottom of this post. You can find documents regarding the Council’s budget amendments via the 2025-26 budget’s Legistar page. Many are within the “proposed consent amendment package,” though the final outstanding changes are in the “amendments for individual vote.” You may also need to reference Mayor Bruce Harrell’s proposed budget, which is found on a completely different website. The Council is debating amendments this week and will make their final votes on Tuesday and Thursday next week.

As part of the consent package, City Council has proposed creating a new $7 million per year Council District Fund within the SDOT budget for “neighborhood-scale traffic safety improvements and other district transportation priorities at the direction of the City Council.” In other words, a council slush fund. This would be a rare diversion from the usual way council and mayoral duties are divided in Seattle since Council rarely ever “directs” a department. Usually, the council is limited to providing (or placing conditions on) funding and setting official policy, but the actions of the departments nearly always go through the mayor.

I know “slush funds” have a bad rep, but I’m very interested to see how this new fund works in practice. It could be nice for Councilmembers to actually be able to respond more quickly to reasonable smallish requests from constituents. It’s frustrating for everyone when, say, a group of neighbors ask for a stop sign only to run into a dead end trying to get it onto SDOT’s workplan. But I’m sure the quality of return the public gets from these investments will vary greatly depending on the Councilmember directing the funds. I am also very interested to see what happens if a councilmember directs a project that the mayor opposes. Whose “direction” will win?

There are a handful of items that are still up for debate. We reported yesterday about the Council’s proposed actions to come up with a plan to shut down the South Lake Union Streetcar and remove the Center City Streetcar from the capital improvements list, so I won’t go into that again here.

Councilmember Sara Nelson has proposed a pointless and frankly obnoxious amendment that would “Request that SDOT provide a report on the performance measures and evaluation criteria used for consideration of bus-only lanes.” Specifically, she wants the report to detail how SDOT evaluates things like the “impact on general traffic capacity and congestion” and “any measures SDOT may take to mitigate potential underperformance.” Nelson and the rest of the City Council just passed a massive policy document called the Seattle Transportation Plan, and it includes meticulous explanations for how and why the city will make various transportation improvements including bus-only lanes. Here’s the transit section (PDF), which has a whole section starting on page T-62 about “defining success” that lists all the ways SDOT will measure outcomes from transit investments. Nelson either doesn’t understand what she voted for when approving the Seattle Transportation Plan or she is trying to undermine it. For example, the city very intentionally shifted to metrics that “prioritize person-throughput rather than vehicle throughput,” (page T-66) not metrics that prioritize the “impact on general traffic capacity.” Council should vote no on this one.

The transportation amendment that has gotten the most attention (other than the streetcar) is probably Councilmember Saka’s $2 million project in the consent package to allow left turns into the Refugee and Immigrant Family Center Bilingual Preschool. This is the site of the Delridge Way SW centerline curb that Saka infamously compared to the Trump border wall in an email years before he ran for City Council, as reported by Publicola. We addressed this location and those emails with Councilmember Saka in an introductory interview at the start of the year when he was named Chair of the Transportation Committee. That little curb, which prevents left turns into and out of the preschool his kids attended, was one frustration that helped set him down the path to running for office. The inflammatory border wall comment is hanging over the conversation about this amendment, but that annoying curb is one symptom of larger and genuinely frustrating issues with the Delridge design.

If I were to advise Councilmember Saka on this, I would suggest clearing the air about the border wall comparison. Mea culpa. Then expand the scope of this amendment to address issues at the core of the Delridge design problem so that the benefits expand across the neighborhood rather than just this one preschool, which feels a bit too specific for a public investment of this scale. Folks at the preschool were not the only ones who were ignored during the creation of this Durkan-era planning monstrosity. Many of the oddities on the street design (like the center buffer areas that look like turn lanes but aren’t or the fact that there’s only one bike lane on a two-way street) are because the street has three lanes southbound (one general, one bus and one bike) and one lane northbound, which is pure nonsense. Traffic is not heaver in one direction than the other, so why on earth would the road be designed this way? It’s as though the street thinks people head south and never come back. This is the actual source of Councilmember Saka’s issue. That center line curb is only needed because people would have to turn across multiple lanes plus the bike lane, a scenario we know to be potentially dangerous. The curb itself is not the problem, it’s a symptom of the street design’s illness. With a left turn pocket instead of a second southbound lane, people would only need to turn across one lane plus the bike lane, which is easier to do safely. All the unmarked crosswalks along Delridge would also become much safer with only one lane in each direction, another benefit. The primary tradeoff would be that southbound buses would need to use in-lane stops the way northbound buses already do, and SDOT staff would need to check that this would not negatively impact transit service. It would also be amazing if this project could add the missing northbound bike lane to the street because it makes no sense to have a protected bike lane in only one direction. I’d go as far as to say the Delridge street design is downright embarrassing to the city and the RapidRide name.

Below is the text of the amendment as currently written. Hopefully Councilmember Saka will do a rewrite before final passage:

This Council Budget Action (CBA) would impose a proviso on $2 million of appropriations in the Seattle Department of Transportation’s (SDOT’s) budget to make improvements to Delridge Way SW near the SW Holly St right-of-way to allow for left-turn ingress and egress from adjoining properties, including the Refugee and Immigrant Family Center Bilingual Preschool. These improvements would resolve access conflicts with the operation of the Delridge RapidRide service. It is the Council’s expectation that SDOT shall deliver these improvements, and that SDOT will begin project development and implementation no later than August 1, 2025.

One small note is that the revised budget reverses about $8 million over two years that the mayor’s initial levy-free budget had planned to add for “protected bike lanes and transit corridor improvements,” largely work that had been delayed past the end of the Move Seattle Levy. The plan from the start was to instead use Seattle Transportation Levy funds for these projects if voters approved it, which they did. When I initially saw the reduction in bike lane spending, I was concerned. But after a lot of budget diving and searching (can Seattle please make this process easier to follow?), I finally figured out that the “cuts” were from the mayor’s proposed budget, which had to be written assuming the levy would fail. The mayor’s office had cobbled together funds to finish projects that went past the Move Seattle Levy end point so that even if voters did not approve the levy, those projects could still be completed. Once the levy passed, those cobbled together funds were removed as planned. So really this change is not a problem, but I am leaving this paragraph here just in case someone else discovers those apparent “cuts” and has the same concern I did.

Seattle Neighborhood Greenways sent out an action alert calling for the following budget changes:

1. No cuts to Accessibility. There is a massive backlog to make our streets accessible for everyone. Funding from the newly passed transportation levy will make large investments in accessibility, but unfortunately the City Council is proposing to cut some of existing ADA funding in the mayor’s proposed budget. The levy is meant to be additive, not a replacement for existing funds. 
2. Don’t undo valuable safety projects. An amendment proposed by Councilmember Saka would spend $2M of taxpayers’ dollars to remove a safety barrier that prevents an illegal left turn into a parking lot on Delridge Way SW. Traffic safety barriers prevent the hitting and killing of pedestrians.
3. Do not hold Levy funding hostage. Council already approved this levy proposal in July before sending the package to voters. But now they’re proposing a proviso on half the levy, or $89M. This would delay SDOT hiring new staff and hinder their ability to advance projects quickly in 2025, and holds hostage funding that voters just approved by a landslide.
4. Automated camera revenue needs to go back into traffic safety. The 2025 budget includes an expansion of automated school zone speed cameras while diverting revenue from automated enforcement away from physical street improvements that keep kids safe on their way to school. Any automated enforcement cameras should be a temporary solution, and all revenue should go towards physical street improvements.
5. We also stand in support of the Solidarity Budget Coalition’s push against austerity budgeting. We need to shift funding from criminalization to invest in community needs and pass new progressive revenue to adequately fund our city’s needs. See here for more details.

#SEAbikes #Seattle

Cathy Moore, the person who wrote amendment 3, explains she wants the camera network to cover her entire district.

Sara Nelson thinks that's a wonderful idea and wishes the camera network would go all the way to the Aurora bridge ✨

Kathy mentions the only thing stopping them is the budget and she plans to raid that to expand the spy network asap.

Amendment three passes.

#CathyMoore #SaraNelson #Seattle #Surveillance

Public comment is going now, only 2 inperson and 10 online.

Two commentators have brought up the fact SPD already has a massive budget surplus. For many years we've given and increased SPDs budget for wages. They keep failing to hit their recruiting targets and now have a multiyear budget surplus.

People are questioning why SPD doesn't return those funds or use their own existing budget for these programs.

https://www.thestranger.com/news/2022/11/07/78710967/seattles-left-pressures-council-to-cut-funding-for-cops-and-sweeps

#Seattle #SaraNelson

They REALLY don't want people to know when they are debating terrible policies after how many people showed up for the last month of awful laws.

They left these off the agenda for today's committee meeting until the absolute last minute. At 3am on Sunday they amended the agenda hoping we wouldn't notice.

Ahhh the Seattle process ✨

Meeting today at 9:30am 👇🏿

https://seattle.gov/council/calendar?trumbaEmbed=view%3Devent%26eventid%3D177658796

#Seattle #SaraNelson #SPD #acab

Tammy Morales, the lone holdout voted in line with the voters to just enact I-137.

Meanwhile Cathy Moore and Dan Strauss were not present for the vote!

Notably Cathy Moore has abstained from many I-137 delay votes.

It's giving "friend who says they're totally going to jump off the bridge with you ... but doesn't" energy. ✨

Meanwhile council president Sara Nelson was remote and handed MC-ship over to Joy Hollingsworth.

#TammyMorales #CathyMoore #SaraNelson #JoyHollingsworth #DanStrauss

Then at 2pm the main showdown will begin, knee capping social housing.

One of the interesting marketing/get-out-thr-vote problems with the council's move is it changes how I-137 will appear on ballots. If they had not tried to make a sabotaged alternative it would just say "I-137" instead it will reas "Proposition 2" or something similar which is just enough friction to confuse a lot of voters.

https://seattle.gov/council/calendar?trumbaEmbed=view%3Devent%26eventid%3D177623102

#Seattle #SocialHousing #I137 #I135 #SaraNelson #BobKettle #CathyMoore

I dipped out of the city council meeting to watch the I-137 community forum, was pretty obvious how this was gonna play out.

The council has passed the SODA/SOAP bills which makes looking like a homeless person, a sex worker, or drug user in Seattle a reason a cop can stop you.

You can be banned from neighborhoods and fined $5k for existing in the wrong places.

https://archive.ph/rFVaM

#SODA #SOAP #Seattle #SaraNelson #CathyMoore #BobKettle #Sexworker #Homeless #DrugWar #SeattlePol

Ultimately Seattle city council advanced anti-homeless legislation and AGAIN illegally delayed Social Housing (I-137 certification).

Council did not put forth a replacement bill for I-137 and just decided to delay. (again, that's illegal lol). They even cited the fact they already were illegally delaying I-137 so no biggie if they continue to ignore the initiative process.

Tanya Woo reportedly wondered aloud "What IS social housing?" 🤦🏿

https://www.letsbuildsocialhousing.org/about-initiative-137

#Seattle #TanyaWoo #SaraNelson

Seattle City Council, time to wake up: An open letter to our first-year councilmembers

Yesterday needs to be this City Council’s worst day if 8 out of 9 of them want a chance at another term. They pulled one of the most chickenshit moves I’ve ever witnessed from my years covering city politics when they decided to hold an expensive special election for the voters’ initiative 137 rather than put it on November’s high-turnout general election ballot. They did this for the sole purpose of weakening its chances because they know the more Seattleites who vote on the initiative, the more likely it will be to pass.

The Seattle City Council (minus Tammy Morales) is admitting that their opinion on the initiative is unpopular among the people they are elected to represent, and they are pulling a chickenshit procedural trick in order to circumvent the people’s will. Not only are they wrong to do this, they should stop and think for a moment about the implications for their political prospects in this city.

https://www.instagram.com/p/C-WSKGco9F_/

It didn’t help that they then retreated to their offices to remotely approve a contract for more jail cells to imprison low-level offenders because the outcry of public opposition in the council chambers was too loud. It also didn’t help that they somehow didn’t anticipate last week how unpopular it would be to roll back the minimum wage law. Not sure how many more signs folks will need before realizing they are making deeply unpopular decisions.

Here’s what I think is going to happen. Councilmember Woo will be toast in November, losing her second City Council election in the span of a year. It won’t be close. One down. At the same time, the voters of Washington House District 43 (entirely within the bounds of Seattle) will elect Shaun Scott despite a majority of the City Council endorsing Republican Andrea Suarez (who pretends she’s a Democrat because she thinks her voters aren’t paying attention). Suarez may not even make it into the general election depending on how late primary ballots turn out, that’s how out of touch this City Council is with the people they represent (Full disclosure: My family recently hosted a fundraiser house party for Scott’s campaign because he’s great). Seattle will then hold a special election, and we will pass I-137. But even worse for this Council, they decided through their action yesterday to turn the I-137 vote into a referendum of the city’s support for investing in affordable housing (spoiler, we want more) as well as a symbolic referendum on this City Council. Not a smart move, y’all.

Is it too late for them to save themselves? For Tanya Woo, yeah it’s too late. I also doubt Sara Nelson can reform her image, either, since she’s the leader of it all and she’s up for election next year (she’s welcome to try). But most of the others are still in the first years of their first terms. They get to use the “I was new and didn’t know better” card one time, and this is a great time to deploy it because that card expires soon. They are clearly getting advice from the wrong people right now, but there is no law that says they must continue following them into the abyss. They were elected by the people, and the office belongs solely to them and their constituents. It doesn’t matter how much corporate PAC money was spent to get them into office, they don’t owe those funders anything.

Kick your cynical bad faith advisors to the curb and go out into your community in search of real problems to solve to make our city a better place. Untie from the sinking ship that is Council President Nelson and be your own leader. Seattle is still a big small town, and elections are still usually won based on community support.

If councilmembers don’t turn things around fast, they may not even make it to 2027. Coucilmember Tammy Morales suggested during yesterday’s meeting that by not prioritizing their consideration of I-137, they likely ran afoul of the City’s Charter and could face recall elections. I personally do not like recall elections and hope it doesn’t come to that, but that’s the path this Council is walking (running?) down. Once you start taking actions to defy the will of the people, recall is the people’s recourse.

I love Seattle, and I believe in our city’s potential to be the city the rest of the nation looks to when trying to solve big problems. That’s why I love writing Seattle Bike Blog. This is my love letter to our city. We don’t always rise to our potential, but folks here never give up. Then every once in a while, we do something extraordinary. We are due for something extraordinary.

None of what I said above will happen on its own, but I believe the people of our city will put in the organizing and volunteer work to make it happen. Seattleites are desperate to make housing more affordable, and we are beyond sick of being told by elected leaders year after year that for some reason we can’t do it. That’s the energy behind I-137. If you all won’t do it, then we will. We’re not going to continue sitting on our hands pretending like there’s nothing more we can do while more and more people get priced out of our city’s cheapest apartments and forced to sleep in the fucking rain.

As our elected leaders, you can join us in an extraordinary victory as we create social housing that people can afford, or you can fight us. But if you fight us, you will lose. You made a big mistake yesterday, now you gotta figure out how to make it right. Which side of Seattle history do you want to be on?

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#SEAbikes #Seattle

“[Previously] the city has clawed back funding …for empty jail beds and repurposed it for community-based health and housing programs. During the 2022 budget, the council voted…hold, on $3 million on jail beds it wasn't using, toward inflation on future jail beds or to other, non-jail purposes. Nelson voted against the amendment.”

https://open.substack.com/pub/ericacbarnett/p/a-shameful-legacy-of-defund-the-police?r=ct3l&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email
#SPD #SaraNelson #SCORE #AnnDavison

Now typically I'd encourage you to email and call politicians to urge them to do the right thing and be less of a corrupt scum bag.

And it's cool and much appreciated if you do in this case... but Sara Nelson just kinda has a mean streak.

I generally expect her to dig in any time she's challenged.

https://www.seattle.gov/council/meet-the-council/sara-nelson

#SaraNelson #Seattle

Seattle Corruption.

Sara Nelson, local aspiring political train wreck, happens to own a bar and brewery called Fremont Brewing. She's in the middle of selling the brewery(likely in the multi-millions). Meanwhile she's not recusing herself from issues affecting the value of this recent and notably lucrative business deal.

Why's Sara a train wreck? Because she likes interrupting anyone who speaks against her by arresting them. Dude got off light tonight 😅

#Seattle #SaraNelson #Corrupt

Faces in the Street
Henry Lawson

They lie, the men who tell us in a loud decisive tone
That want is here a stranger, and that misery’s unknown;
For where the nearest suburb and the city proper meet
My window-sill is level with the faces in the street—
Drifting past, drifting past,
To the beat of weary feet—
While I sorrow for the owners of those faces in the street.

Image Airline workers organiser #SaraNelson
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sara_Nelson_(union_leader)