Under one new bill up for a vote Tuesday, sidewalk repair and installation would be a mandatory part of any major paving project (Image: SDOT)
It is the final week of the legislative calendar for the Seattle City Council in 2023 — and the final days at City Hall for some outgoing incumbents including District 3’s Kshama Sawant who will wrap up her years on the council with a “Ten Years of a Socialist in Office” celebration Thursday night on Capitol Hill. In January, the Central District’s Joy Hollingsworth will be sworn-in for Sawant’s D3 seat after her decisive victory in the November election.
In the meantime, there is some final work to attend to including Tuesday’s final full council meeting for the current members. The winter recess will run from December 18th through January 1st when staff will be working to get the new council offices up and running.
Climate change bill: Tuesday’s full council meeting will include a vote on legislation officials say will “dramatically lower the carbon footprint of existing large buildings in Seattle.” The bill aims to achieve net-zero building emissions by 2050 by establishing emissions reduction targets for buildings greater than 20,000 square feet, measuring and verifying greenhouse gas emissions, helping building owners create decarbonization plans, and establishing fees. The proposal impacts around 4,100 existing buildings around the city including a handful of school, health, and residential buildings around Capitol Hill and the Central District. The standards would be phased in over five-year intervals with the city’s largest structures first on the list. Continue reading →
Seattle is preparing to target one of the most lucrative — and easily the most traffic-bloating — corners of the city’s “app” economy to raise more money for public transit, affordable housing, and, yes, further regulating and monitoring the industry.
Mayor Jenny Durkan has rolled out a 2020 “Fare Start” budget proposal calling for new legislation that would add 51 cents to the cost of every Uber and Lyft ride in the city and set new minimum wage requirements for the industry’s freelance drivers.
“Economic models really vary from app to app,” Mayor Durkan said Wednesday in a media briefing outlining the new proposal and explaining why the “transportation network company” industry tax and regulation ended up in Seattle’s fast lane. Continue reading →
Even with growing evidence that driving for companies like Uber and Lyft can be a real grind, the greatest bulk of entrepreneurial energy around Capitol Hill and the Central District continues to be professional drivers.
According to tax information from the City of Seattle, the “transit and ground transportation” category was, again, the single largest category of new businesses started in District 3 ZIP codes last year, topping its nearest rival with nearly six times more companies started in the area in 2017. Continue reading →
A night in the life of a Capitol Hill driver: James Jackson has been driving Uber and Lyft for about 8 months, he tells CHS. “The best time for any driver is weekends, Friday-Sunday, or at night. Anytime after 6 is a good time to drive. Myself, I get off at 3, I go pick up my kids and drop them with my wife, and I start driving after 6. After 6 the roads are more clear, it’s easier to pick up riders without the hassle of traffic jams. I usually go to 11pm, 12 five days a week.”
“I work for Seattle Public Schools as a teacher during the day, teaching special education.”
“I like people to ride in the front seat. I like to be more sociable, personable. It seems like we’re more than just taxi driver and passengers, it’s like I’m just giving a friend a lift.”
Do you have any concerns for your safety? “No. I’ve never felt that way. I did 5 years in the Army. I can refuse you a ride, or I can take you out of the car. There are concerns for safety, but I’ve never experienced anything like that.”
Seattle could become the first U.S. city to allow drivers for rideshare services like Uber and Lyft to collectively bargain with the app-based companies. The City Council is scheduled to take its final vote Monday afternoon on a controversial measure to allow independently contracted drivers to unionize in order to negotiate wages and working conditions with “transportation network companies.”
The vote will be closely watched nationwide and beyond as rideshare services have rapidly expanded, taking on hundreds of thousands of drivers worldwide.
UPDATE 3:45 PM: The City Council voted 8-0 Monday to allow Seattle’s for-hire drivers to unionize. The bill’s passage makes Seattle the first city in the nation to attempt to give drivers the right to collectively bargain with app-based ridesharing companies. Council members still have the difficult task of shaping the mechanism by which unions can represent drivers in Seattle, not to mention responding to all-but-certain legal challenges from TNCs and other for-hire driver companies.
Council member Mike O’Brien was the bill’s primary sponsor.
Council member Kshama Sawant said the bill was necessary as increasing numbers of workers are employed on a freelance basis. “Ever since sharecropping, the sharing economy has meant sharing in one direction. That is, workers have the privilege of sharing what they produce with their bosses,” she said.
After many committee meetings on the issue and an unusually in-depth analysis from the City’s law and finance departments, the council spent relatively little time discussing the bill. Drivers and representatives from the taxi company Eastside for Hire spoke against the measure during public comment, saying they were not given adequate time to learn about the bill. “There are ways to help drivers that are immediate and within your authority,” said Eastside’s Samatar Guled.
Following the vote, Mayor Ed Murray said in a statement that he would not sign the bill, but would not veto it either, paving the way for it to become law. “I remain concerned that this ordinance, as passed by the Council, includes several flaws, especially related to the relatively unknown costs of administering the collective bargaining process and the burden of significant rulemaking the Council has placed on City staff,” he said.
