‘In Recess’ — Arrests after protest disrupts Seattle City Council

The Seattle City Council stopped its proceedings multiple times and six people were arrested Tuesday after public comment was limited during a demonstration at City Hall calling for support for a group of asylum seekers that has been bounced around the region as housing options have fallen through.

“Officers were called to Seattle City Council Chambers at about 2:55 p.m., as people filled the room and continued to interfere with the session,” SPD reported in a brief on the Tuesday arrests. “Those who were part of the disruption were told to leave the chambers, but they refused and were told they would be arrested if they continued.”

Police say the protesters were arrested for criminal trespass with one man also facing charges of obstruction.

With shouts growing as the time allotted for public comment ended, the protest and disruptions left the council and its six first-time members as well as council president Sara Nelson scattered with some calling for police to intervene. Continue reading

A debate over Seattle’s ‘Technology Assisted Crime Prevention Pilot’ plan at the District 3 public safety meeting

Report: ShotSpotter wastes officers time, provides little help in court, targets overpoliced communities — syracuse.com

Last week’s D3 meeting (Image: CHS)

Tuesday brings the final day of public comment on a roster of “Technology Assisted Crime Prevention Pilot Technologies” being pushed toward deployment in Seattle by Mayor Bruce Harrell and proponents of boosting the city’s struggling police department with better surveillance and intelligence systems.

The proposal would create a plan “a new public safety program that will combine a Closed-Circuit Television (CCTV) System with an Acoustic Gunshot Location System (AGLS) integrated with Real-Time Crime Center (RTCC) software together in one view,” the administration says. Last year, the Seattle City Council approved Harrell’s request for $1.5 million in the 2024 budget to test acoustic gunshot detection systems like ShotSpotter.

Supporters say the new surveillance system would help boost the department’s ability to quickly respond to gun violence and knock down the city’s record pace of homicides. But examples of real world deployments show the tech doesn’t necessarily work as advertised and can actually hinder police response.

With a public hearing scheduled for Tuesday night and online feedback also being gathered for the meeting, District 3 representative Joy Hollingsworth heard more from constituents at the latest in her office’s monthly public safety meetings held last week.

In the meeting held at North Capitol Hill’s Seattle Prep, there was a stark divide on the hopes around ShotSpotter. Continue reading

Seattle Parks collecting feedback on 2024 Parks and Open Space Plan

The Bullitt property will one day be home to an official city park

The Seattle Parks department is collecting feedback on the next update to its strategies for determining where in the city to develop new park space and make improvements to existing facilities.

You have until March 9th to weigh in on the latest update to the Parks and Open Space Plan.

The parks department says the plan helps determine “where park development, improvements, and asset maintenance projects should occur; and where open space should be prioritized for acquisition.”

Every six years, Seattle Parks must update the plan to maintain the city’s eligibility for state grants. Continue reading

After the race for District 3, Hudson continues advocacy work and sees hope in Seattle’s big 2024 goals: an equitable comprehensive plan and an ambitious new transportation levy

Hudson making a 2023 campaign stop before her new path with Commute Seattle (Image: @AlexHudsonforSeattle)

It is very likely the voters in the Seattle City Council’s District 3 could not go wrong in November. Though Central District born and raised Joy Hollingsworth reached a solid victory, First Hill neighborhood and transit champion Alex Hudson also would have brought a strong fight for the needs of Seattle’s core neighborhoods to City Hall.

After the election, Hudson has spent the past few months finding a new path to helping the residents of First Hill, the Central District, Capitol Hill and the entire city resting up from the long campaign, sorting out her new priorities, and moving forward in her new role as executive director at Commute Seattle.

“Running for office is an incredible experience and a grueling task,” Hudson told CHS. “I was grateful for the opportunity, especially right after the election, to take a little break—spend some time with my family, catch up on much needed sleep, unwind my brain, and thank people and reflect on the experience.”

She also snatched up the leadership position at Commute Seattle, a nonprofit that works towards making the city more walker and bicycle friendly, while centering those disproportionately impacted by transportation costs.

Hudsons calls her new role the “perfect fit”and is “still very much doing the work that I love and that I’m committed to around transportation, transit and mobility, and doing that in service of the people of the City of Seattle.”

Running for D3 has changed Hudson, she said, by helping her come to appreciate the community’s experiences and real concerns around safety. From her campaign team canvassing a total of 18,000 people during her campaign, Hudson listened to residents’ genuinely held concerns that were backed up by numerous negative experiences, and holds a well of compassion and empathy for those who are struggling in society.

“I think it has helped to crystalize so many of the values that I had walking in—that people deserve a government that works for them,” Hudson said. “People deserve to have a government that invests in opportunities that spreads that fairly, that has meaningful and specific plans for making life better here in the City of Seattle. I feel more committed to making that possible than I did before.” Continue reading

‘The scale of this deficit is significantly larger than in past years’ — Council committee hears update on Seattle’s looming $230M+ budget hole

Seattle’s City Hall will be pinching pennies and on the hunt for new sources of revenue as it tangles with a looming, more than $230 million budget deficit next year.

The Seattle City Council’s Finance, Native Communities, and Tribal Governments Committee will hear an update on the numbers, an overview of how we got here, and a look at some of the possible paths to take climb out of the hole in a presentation (PDF) Wednesday morning.

According to the City Budgeting Office update, while the 2025 deficit will top $230 million, it could balloon to more than $452 million in 2026. Continue reading

Mayor’s ‘State of the City’ report touts progress increasing trust and confidence ‘in local government’s ability to serve our residents’

Mayor Bruce Harrell will deliver his 2024 State of the City speech “addressed to the City Council and the people of Seattle” Tuesday afternoon. The speech will mark Harrell’s second State of the City address.

Harrell’s office says the speech will outline his “One Seattle” vision and priorities for the year ahead. In 2023’s speech, Harrell launched the One Seattle campaign and “Space Needle thinking” amid optimism for a hoped for downtown revival stoked by the return of Amazon and more office workers to the city’s core. Those hopes have been slow to play out.

In conjunction with Tuesday’s 2024 speech, the Harrell administration has released a report detailing progress on the One Seattle initiatives and touting Harrell’s attendance at 285 “community engagement events” across the city.

The mayor continued his effective working relationship with the City Council, passing 187 bills, confirming 8 department directors, and approving the 2024 budget which included record investments in affordable housing, wage increases for human service providers, and support for diversified emergency response options to improve public safety.

“[A]bove all else, we worked to increase trust and restore confidence in local government’s ability to serve our residents,” Harrell says in the report’s introduction. Continue reading

Next District 3 Community Safety Meeting will take place next week on North Capitol Hill

District 3 representative Joy Hollingsworth will be joined by officials from the mayor’s office and the Seattle Police Department at a community meeting next week on Capitol Hill to discuss ongoing efforts to address public safety concerns.

The Tuesday, February 20th meeting follows a session held last month in the Central District as Hollingsworth has pledged to host monthly community gatherings around the district to address concerns ranging from deadly gun violence and drug overdoses to day to day property crime and street safety.

“Most of the email we get in from our email box is public safety,” Hollingsworth told the Central District crowd last month as the first-term councilmember and her office staff fielded questions and concerns from attendees, tried to offer some information and solutions, and pledged to continue listening to the issues. Continue reading

Hollingsworth’s parks and utilities committee gets down to business considering Cedar River trees

An example of a healthy Cedar River forest from Wednesday’s briefing (Image: City of Seattle)

While most of the rest of the newly formed Seattle City Council committees have gotten off to slow starts this year with overviews and introductory presentations from the city departments they represent, the committee chaired by first-term District 3 representative Joy Hollingsworth was all business Wednesday afternoon hearing the introduction of legislation that would clear the way for the city to thin the thickly grown forest around its highly protected Cedar River Watershed for “ecological thinning” and a limited timber sale.

The first bit of business pertained to issues far from Capitol Hill and the Central District in the city-owned forestland along the Cedar River in eastern King County.

With support from the Muckleshoot Tribe, the legislation that started with Hollingsworth’s committee Wednesday would authorize Seattle Public Utilities to sell timber as surplus property from the thinning effort as it works to clear 600 out of the watershed’s 90,638 acres over five years. Proceeds would go into the city’s Water Fund. Continue reading

Hollingsworth joins in raising red, black, and green of the Liberation Flag for Seattle’s Black History Month

(Image: @CMJoyHollings and @CMRobSaka)

Seattle City Council representative for Capitol Hill and the Central District Joy Hollingsworth marked Black History Month by joining in a ceremony with Mayor Bruce Harrell to raise the red, black, and green Black Liberation Flag above Seattle City Hall Tuesday afternoon.

Hollingsworth was joined in the ceremony by West Seattle rep Rob Saka. The two first-year city legislators are the first Black councilmembers in Seattle since Harrell left office in 2019. Continue reading

Seattle City Council’s new public safety chair unveils vision and ‘6 Pillars addressing the Permissive Environment’

With a slate of new members promising stronger support for police and law and order, the Seattle City Council’s public safety committee will take on some of the most important work at City Hall this year. Tuesday, the newly elected chair of the new-look council committee will present his vision for the legislative team

District 7’s Bob Kettle will convene his first meeting of the committee Tuesday morning with overviews of the city’s public safety resources including the Seattle Police Department and Seattle Fire. Kettle will also present his vision for the committee based around what is office says will be “6 Pillars addressing the Permissive Environment.”

According to the presentation, the “permissive environment” is defined as “the underlying factors behind crime tied to the lack of deterring structures that allow people to endanger themselves and our city.” Continue reading